Eight Princesses and a Magic Mirror Read online

  EIGHT

  PRINCESSES

  AND A MAGIC MIRROR

  For my princesses

  —NF

  For Sylvie, with all my love

  —LC

  CONTENTS

  THE ENCHANTRESS AND THE MAGIC MIRROR

  THE PRINCESS AND THE KNIGHTS

  THE DESERT PRINCESS

  THE PRINCESS OF ABSOLUTE LOVELINESS

  THE PRINCESS OF THE HIGH SEAS

  THE PRINCESS AND THE CROCODILE

  THE STORY PRINCESS

  THE PRINCESSES IN EXILE

  PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

  THE MAGIC MIRROR AND THE ENCHANTRESS

  THE

  ENCHANTRESS

  AND THE

  MAGIC MIRROR

  Once upon a time, in a faraway place, a king and a queen asked a powerful enchantress to be godmother to their baby daughter. The enchantress replied that she would be delighted and promised to help her goddaughter become an excellent princess.

  But later, as she was getting ready for bed, the enchantress wondered what she had let herself in for.

  “An excellent princess,” she mused. “What does that actually mean?”

  “It means,” scolded a maid, as she tugged a brush through the enchantress’s tangled hair, “that she must be pretty.”

  “And tidy,” grumbled another maid, picking up the clothes the enchantress had dropped on the floor.

  “Hmm.”

  The enchantress jumped into bed and landed on the cat, who hissed that excellent princesses—unlike enchantresses—were always kind to animals.

  Pretty, tidy, and kind to animals.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Now, in the enchantress’s library, hanging from floor to ceiling between two bookcases, was an ancient magic mirror, gold and engraved, which claimed to know the answer to every question in all the worlds. The enchantress didn’t consult it often, because it was grumpy and full of its own importance, but it occurred to her that it might be able to help. She flung back her blankets and padded down the corridor to the library.

  “What makes a princess excellent?” she asked.

  The mirror was silent. The enchantress sighed.

  “Mirror, mirror on the wall, wisest and best of mirrors all, what makes a princess excellent?”

  Still the mirror did not speak.

  “What now?” cried the enchantress. “I asked you properly, didn’t I?”

  “It’s not an easy question,” said the mirror.

  “But you’re supposed to know everything!”

  “Clean fingernails,” said the mirror. “And being good at lessons.”

  The enchantress groaned.

  “Also, manners,” the mirror added.

  The enchantress went back to bed.

  All night, the enchantress tossed and turned. She fell asleep just before dawn but woke around teatime with a plan.

  “What we need,” she told the mirror, “is to find out about other princesses. Lots of other princesses.”

  “That is the sort of question it takes a lifetime to answer,” it informed her. “You have one month until your goddaughter’s naming day, and you are very busy. Too busy, if you ask me, which you never do. You’ll just have to do the best you can for the child.”

  “Oh, I intend to.”

  The enchantress held out her hands, as if she were trying to frame the mirror between them.

  “What are you doing?” it asked.

  The enchantress smiled.

  It happened fast. One moment the grand old mirror was in its rightful place in the enchanted palace. Then the air began to shimmer, and—pfffff!—the library had vanished, replaced by a forest. The mirror had shrunk to the size of a compact, the sort with a clasp that you flick open and that people keep in their pockets or handbags. It was still gold and engraved but—well—it was small.

  “What have you done?” it cried.

  “Shh,” whispered the enchantress. “A princess is coming.”

  “Make me big again!”

  But the enchantress was hanging the mirror from the branch of a tree on a scarlet ribbon.

  “Be my eyes and ears in the universe,” she whispered. “Know all who come across you.”

  THE

  PRINCESS

  AND THE

  KNIGHTS

  Heart thumping, Princess Héloïse rode alone through the dark forest, on a quest to find a witch to save her poor sick sister, Emmeline.

  This was not, she felt, how things were supposed to be. Her father’s castle was full of enormous knights with equally enormous horses. Knights armed to the teeth with swords and bows and arrows, and all highly experienced at questing. Héloïse excelled at studying but she was small and unarmed, had no sense of direction, and was riding a fat little pony called Snowflake.

  Yet here she was.

  Questing.

  Not that she was surprised. Héloïse had a poor opinion of the knights, who all wanted to marry Emmeline and spent their whole time showing off by fighting, jousting, and, lately, chopping down trees in the deep, dark forest to build grand castles. The forest grew back faster than they could chop it down, with ten trees growing for every one they felled, but they were too stupid to stop, or to realize that Emmeline didn’t care about castles. All Emmeline cared about was poetry and eternal love. Despite the knights’ showing off, when the castle doctor announced that he could not save poor Emmy, and Héloïse sensibly suggested that one of them should ride out to find the witch who lived in the deep, dark forest, they had dithered like chickens in a farmyard.

  “But this witch is a gifted healer!” Héloïse cried.

  “She turns people into pumpkins!” said one of the knights.

  “Toads!” declared another.

  “She puts people into cages and fattens them up to eat!” whispered a third.

  “We wouldn’t be able to find her anyway,” announced a fourth. “That’s the way of witches. They play tricks with the forest until you’re lost and then they find you.”

  “I don’t believe any of you are strong or brave,” grumbled Héloïse.

  She pulled on her cloak, swapped her velvet slippers for boots, and, after tying a piece of string around her glasses in case she fell off, trotted away on Snowflake.

  It did not take her long to realize that the fourth knight had been right: the witch was playing tricks with the forest.

  Héloïse had set out on a wide, straight path. But when she glanced back to see how far she’d come, the path was gone, replaced by a thick, close line of trees. She looked ahead: there it was, stretching out before her. She nudged Snowflake on, then stopped and looked back.

  Gone again.

  The trees pressed toward her, their branches like a skeleton’s hand.

  Héloïse’s heart thundered.

  Pumpkins . . .

  Toads . . .

  Cages, fattening up and eating . . .

  Perhaps if she charged, the trees would let her through.

  She kicked Snowflake, bouncing in the saddle until her glasses slipped down her nose.

  “Gee up!”

  Snowflake didn’t budge, and the trees crept closer. . . . Héloïse sighed.

  “You’re right. We have to go on, for Emmy.”

  She pushed her glasses back up her nose and rode deeper and deeper into the darker and darker forest with the trees always close behind until, suddenly, the path ended.

  She was in a clearing full of sunlight and birdsong. In the middle, surrounded by a neat herb garden, was a cottage, its windows framed by a tumble of pink roses. A very small old woman stood by the garden gate, a raven on her shoulder and a fox cub at her feet.

 
She appeared to be casting a spell.

  Héloïse had found the witch.

  Héloïse wasn’t sure what she had expected in a witch, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  “Why, ’tis a child, like you,” the old woman crooned to the fox cub. “And there was I expecting one of them pesky tree-chopping knights.”

  Héloïse slid off Snowflake’s back and dropped into a wobbly curtsy.

  “If you please, ma’am . . . I am the Princess Héloïse and I have come to ask if you would kindly . . . ”

  Her voice caught, and she ended in a rush. “Please, my sister’s ill, and the doctor says she’ll die, and even though my father the king doesn’t know I’m here, I’m sure he will pay however much gold you ask, and the knights wouldn’t help even though they say they love her, but can you?”

  The witch’s eyes were quick and clever. “I don’t want your father’s gold. I want payment of a different kind, and I’ve a feeling in my bones I want it from you. Do you promise to pay, to save your sister?”

  Pumpkins! thought Héloïse. Toads! Cages and tricks! And now bones!

  But Emmeline . . .

  “I promise.”

  “Then let’s be away.”

  The witch clapped her hands twice, and a new path opened. She clapped again, and a bay mare appeared.

  They rode out of the clearing together, the witch on the mare, with the raven flying overhead and the fox cub running alongside, Héloïse following on Snowflake. A few yards along the path, they saw a shiny object dangling by a scarlet ribbon from a branch.

  “A mirror!” exclaimed Héloïse. “Whatever is that doing here?”

  She reached for it, but the witch was quicker.

  “Interesting,” said the witch, and slid the mirror into one of her cloak’s many pockets.

  All the way to the castle, the witch talked. Héloïse’s head spun. The witch knew so much! She pointed out mushrooms that could kill at the smallest bite, and plants that could heal any wound, moths that looked like bark, and birds that looked like moths, vines that shot up overnight, and trees that were centuries old. Héloïse felt that she had never properly looked at the world before, and now she saw that the forest was like a glorious, living library.

  Héloïse loved libraries.

  After riding a while they stopped by some newly felled trees. Héloïse gasped. The forest looked like a graveyard. There must be four dozen trees cut down, all ancient.

  The witch and her mare were still as the fallen trunks. Not a flick nor a twitch from either of them. Only the witch’s cloak moved, and as it fluttered about her it sounded like the rustle of leaves.

  At last, she gave a shuddering breath.

  “Come,” she said. “Your sister waits.”

  Héloïse looked over her shoulder as they rode away. A copse of young trees was growing, already tall and strong, where the old trees had fallen. She glanced at the witch. She seemed smaller—more stooped.

  “It is tiring work,” said the witch, reading her mind.

  For the first time, it occurred to Héloïse that by bringing her to Emmeline, she might be putting the witch in danger.

  “There are knights,” she said. “In the castle. They hate you. I’m afraid they want to kill you.”

  Sure enough, as they entered the Great Hall, the knights rose as one with their hands on their swords. But before they could take a step toward the witch a cloud of seeds and dandelion puffs from nowhere blew straight into their eyes.

  “Witchcraft!” bellowed the blinded knights. “Kill her!”

  “Feed her to the rats!”

  “Hang her by the ankles!”

  But by the time they could see again, the witch and Héloïse were gone.

  In Emmeline’s chamber, the witch built up the fire and boiled a cauldron of water. She measured in herbs drawn from the deep pockets of her cloak and made a potion. Emmeline drank every drop, then fell back onto her pillow, white as morning snow.

  “She’s dead!” wailed the maid who had been tending the fire.

  She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s dead! The cry echoed to the Great Hall, and the castle shook under the weight of the knights’ boots as they thundered up the stairs.

  “Give us the witch!”

  Swords at the ready, they threw open the door to Emmeline’s chamber. . . .

  Héloïse gasped as a hawthorn hedge sprang up to bar their way. She looked fearfully at the witch.

  “Oh, witch!” she whispered. “Have you killed my sister?”

  “Hush your worrying, Princess, and pay no heed to those ruffians. Have an eye to your sister instead.”

  Héloïse obeyed. Was she imagining it, or was pink returning to Emmeline’s cheeks?

  Her heart danced.

  “She’s sleeping!” she shouted through the hawthorn hedge. “Go away!”

  The knights slunk back downstairs to the sound of Héloïse’s laughter.

  For three days and three nights, sitting at her sister’s bedside waiting for her to wake, Héloïse plied the witch with questions. What was in the potion she had given Emmy? What would she give the princesses’ maid for her headaches? Or their father for his aching joints?

  “Elderberry and yarrow,” the witch murmured. “Valerian and red raspberry, feverfew, willow bark, meadow saffron and heather . . . ”

  “What would you do if a knight were wounded in battle?”

  “Leave him to die, probably,” cackled the witch, and Héloïse petted the fox cub to hide her grin.

  “Could you make an eternal love potion?” she asked. “Emmy would like that, when she wakes up. It’s all she ever thinks about.”

  “Eternal love!” The witch tapped her fingertips together. “Now that is more difficult. . . . For eternal love, you need the single star flower with solid gold tips that grows at the summit of the tallest of the Eastern Mountains, and a scale of the emerald fire dragon that protects it. . . . ”

  Héloïse’s eyes grew round as plums. “Dragons exist?”

  The witch laughed. Héloïse blushed.

  “Now don’t look like that, Princess, all crestfallen and embarrassed. You’re not the first to ask, and you won’t be the last. I’m not saying dragons don’t exist, but there’s no such thing as a flower with solid gold tips. And even if there were, love’s not something you can drink. Love is courage, and kindness, and a whole lot of other things besides . . . like riding through a tricksome forest for your sister and sitting with her till she’s better. You didn’t need to pick a flower for that, did you?”

  Héloïse felt a little better. “Can I learn?” she asked. “About plants and healing? Could I do it too, or do you have to be magic?”

  “You’ve brains, haven’t you, and courage? Why shouldn’t you learn, when all this is over?”

  “You mean when Emmy’s better?”

  “That too,” said the witch.

  The witch, in the castle! The knights couldn’t believe their luck. You would think they would be grateful that Emmy was better, but they weren’t. The witch and Héloïse had shown what cowards they were, and they couldn’t forgive that. And something else . . .

  The way those seeds and puffs had blown into their eyes . . .

  The way that hawthorn hedge had appeared . . .

  “She’s the one who’s been spoiling our castles!” realized one of the less stupid knights. “I’ll bet she poisoned Princess Emmeline too. With a spell! Then came along to save her, to impress the king!”

  “Kill her!”

  “Avenge our honor!”

  “Save our castles!”

  The king wouldn’t like it, of course, because he thought the witch had saved Emmeline. But that was too bad.

  The witch, in the castle!

  On the morning of the fourth day, Emmeline woke up and asked for breakfast. With a wave of the witch’s hand, the hawthorn hedge disappeared, and Héloïse ran to the kitchen. When she returned, she found her sister’s chamber in an uproar, full of knights shouting, and Emmeline
crying, and the king pacing back and forth. The witch stood perfectly still and quiet in the middle of it all, wrapped in her traveling cloak, just as she had been when Héloïse first saw her. And when the king gave in and the knights marched the witch away, it seemed to Héloïse that she glided through the castle as easily as she had ridden through the forest, with the raven on her shoulder and the fox cub at her feet, and her cloak rustling like leaves.

  Down they took her, down, down to the deepest cell in the damp, dire dungeon.

  “Let’s see her get out of that!” they roared as they locked the spiked iron door.

  In the Great Hall, Héloïse begged for the witch to be released. The knights accused her of poisoning and treason.

  “Kill the witch!”

  “Let her live!”

  “She poisoned the princess!”

  “She saved Emmy’s life!”

  On and on they shouted, with no sign of ever stopping, when . . .

  CRACK!

  A giant oak tree exploded through the floor and . . .

  SMASH!

  The stained-glass window above the stairs shattered as ivy burst through the panes.

  A guard ran in, shouting, “The witch has escaped!”

  Willow shoots sprang up between the flagstones.

  “What’s happening?” wailed the king.

  “’Tis the witch!” shouted the knights. “She will destroy your castle, sire, as she has destroyed ours!”

  And then silence fell, because into the commotion trotted the fox cub and flew the raven with something shiny in their jaw and beak, which they dropped like gifts at Héloïse’s feet.

  From the fox cub, she received the mirror the witch had plucked from the branch.

  From the raven, a gold coin.

  “What is the meaning of this?” cried the knights, as the ivy snaked around the pillars of the Great Hall.

  “Héloïse, explain yourself!” stammered the king, as the fire in the grate blew out in a tumble of pink roses.