This week’s Fiction Friday features another excerpt from my novel, The People the Fairies Forget.  You can read the first chapter here.  This excerpt is partway into chapter two.

The story so far: Tarragon is a unusual fairy.  Besides disliking sparkles, he prefers ordinary people to royalty.  The story opens when Tarry attends a christening where Echinacea curses the Princess Rosaline to prick her finger and die, and Tarry’s cousin Marjoram (a certified Good Fairy) changes the death into sleep.  Tarry suggests a bet with Marj on whether a non-royal couple can have True Love.  The details of the bet haven’t been explained yet, but sixteen years after the christening (give or take), Tarry is back at Rosaline’s castle looking for a couple who can prove his point.

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            I wandered out of the stable and into the courtyard, where a flock of kitchen girls were gathered in the sunshine.  They were pretty girls, and I drifted that way.  I might have anyway, but right now it served my business too.  Some of them had to be romantically involved with someone.  Maybe even with the goatherd who was sitting on the stoop in their midst.  I knew he was a goatherd because there was a baby goat sitting next to him, and because I’m magical.  Magic also told me his name was Jack.

            I sat down near the fringe of the group, to listen in on the conversation.  No one knew me, but none of them noticed anything odd in that.  That’s an easy piece of magic.  Not an invisibility spell, just a don’t-take-much-notice-or-think-about-it spell.  That’s a useful one when I really want to go at a banquet table without attracting stares.  Keeps people from reacting to the pointed ears too, if the hair isn’t enough to hide them.  Or a good hat works.

            The kitchen girls, and goatherd, were having an animated conversation about the princess and her curse.  It would’ve been more useful to me if they had been talking about their romances, but I stayed anyway, thinking I still might be able to pick up something.

            The head cook, a woman clearly fond of her own cooking, had been at the christening and was relating the story now in thrilling tones.  It had grown more dramatic over the years.  Echinacea was uglier, the smoke was darker, the general horror was greater, you know how it goes.  Though to give the cook credit, she wasn’t entirely silly.

            “There’s some who say that it has to be a prince that wakes the sleeping princess,” the cook said, “or that it has to be true love’s kiss to break the spell, but I was there, and all that fairy said was a kiss.  Could be anyone.”

             That was true.  That’s what Marj said and that’s how the spell goes, not that she ever makes those details plain.  Somehow, just about everyone’s locked into the idea that it has to be true love, and of course they’re convinced that you only find that with a pair of royalty—thus the prince assumption.

            The goatherd frowned thoughtfully.  “But if it’s that simple, when the princess falls asleep can’t they—”

            A horrified chorus arose.  “If, Jack, say if!”

            He ducked his head before the onslaught of feminine wrath.  “Sorry.”

            “Don’t ever say when she falls asleep,” a blonde serving girl scolded him.  “Do you want to bring bad luck on us?”

            “Or the King’s wrath, more likely, if it gets heard,” another said in dark tones.

            “Leave him alone,” a third girl broke in, and something in her tone made me think I might want to pay attention to this one.  I looked sideways at her and concentrated—Emmy; that was her name.  “He’s only been bringing his goats to the castle for a few months.  You know people talk about it less away from here, and less still in other countries like Perrelda.”

            I had thought Jack’s inflections were different from everyone else’s, although there’s not a strong difference between a Waldisane accent and a Perreldan one.

            “Is that why you’re so curious, goat boy?” the blonde asked.

            Jack straightened up.  “Goatherd, I prefer, miss,” he said with exaggerated politeness.  “‘Goat boy’ makes me sound like a satyr, which I don’t think is quite what you meant.”

            The fellow had at least some nerve, and that meant at least some potential.  And I didn’t fail to notice that the blonde sniffed disdainfully, but Emmy smiled at him.  There were possibilities here.

            “All I was going to say was,” Jack continued, “if it only takes a kiss, if she falls asleep, couldn’t somebody just kiss her and wake her up again?”

            “Not for a hundred years,” another girl said.  “She’s supposed to sleep for a hundred years.”  I had wondered when that idea would come up.

            “Fairy didn’t say anything about a hundred years, either,” the cook said.

            “Well, maybe it would work then,” Jack persisted.  “Why wouldn’t it?”

            “Jack, you’re too practical to deal with fairy curses,” Emmy said.  “Somehow they’re never solved by perfectly practical solutions.”

            “But it ought to work.”

            “Sure, for all we know it makes sense, but there must be more to it than that, or why would their majesties be so worried?” she pointed out.

            Because royalty never think of the practical solutions to magical dilemmas.  It takes the ordinary people for that.  The people who deal every day with ordinary problems that have practical solutions—they think of practical solutions to extraordinary problems.  That’s something Marj and her crowd never think of; two somethings actually, practical solutions and who thinks of them.

            “She’s not going to fall asleep anyway,” the cook said, in a tone to shut down opposing ideas.  “Their majesties have banned spinning wheels and burned every spindle that was in the kingdom.  So that’s that.”

            “Never that simple either,” Emmy murmured, loud enough for Jack—and me—to hear, but soft enough that the cook wouldn’t.  Emmy was right.  It never is that simple.

            “I suppose you young folk’ve never seen a spinning wheel,” the cook remarked, and glanced at Jack.  “Except you from out of country, of course.”

            “I’ve seen a drawing,” Emmy said, voice going soft of a sudden.  “My family worked in cloth.  Spinning, weaving, dying, all of it.  But then it all ended when the spinning wheels were burned.”

            “They couldn’t spin, but couldn’t they do the rest?” Jack asked.

            She shook her head.  “It all starts with thread.  The best and cheapest way is to spin it yourself, next best to buy it from nearby.  But no one nearby could spin, so the only thread in the kingdom was coming from across borders.  Anything foreign always costs more anyway, with the price of transportation, and since the merchants knew there was no local competition, the price of thread rose to the skies.  There wasn’t any profit in cloth after that.  Today everyone in Waldisan buys their cloth from Perrelda, my family had to give up the business, and I work in a kitchen.”

            “Nothing wrong with that,” the cook was quick to say.

            “Of course not.  I like cooking.  But my parents, cloth was all they knew, and when making it became impossible, that just left washing it.  They always talked about moving somewhere else, somewhere they could spin and weave again, but we never did.  Everyone and everything they knew was here, and we never had the money to go anywhere besides.  There’s not much money in washing clothes.”  She shook her head.  “But that’s not here nor there now, they’ve both been dead three years, and I have a job not likely to be interrupted by a curse.  That’s why my mother wanted me to learn cooking instead; she thought people would always need to eat.”

            “How long has it been?” Jack asked.  “Since the curse and they burned the spinning wheels and all?”

            “I was three, so nearly sixteen years,” Emmy answered.  “The princess’ sixteenth birthday is soon.”

            “Anyone know when the curse might strike?” Jack asked, and quickly added, “If it happens.”

            I knew.  On her sixteenth birthday.  It always is.  Magical cosmic forces gather and the universe is in the right alignment and…well, it’s always on sixteenth birthdays.  No one else knew, though, and I didn’t say anything.

            Jack stretched his legs out in front of him, scratched the baby goat’s head with one hand and reached the other hand into Emmy’s wooden bowl, to steal a handful of the peas she was shelling.  She slapped his hand before he could get any, and he grinned and withdrew it again.  “It’s like a story, isn’t it?” he said.  “An old legend, maybe.”

            “You wish we were in a legend, don’t you, lad?” the cook remarked.

            “Should I?”

            “In old stories, the goatherd always turns out to be a prince in disguise,” the cook said.  “Then he breaks the spell, and marries the princess in the end.”

           “Maybe I don’t want to marry the princess.”  Theoretically he was saying that to the cook, but he was looking at Emmy.

            I focused carefully; it was faint, but she was blushing.  He’d been coming here for a few months—I wondered how long they’d been dancing around each other.  My bet was all of those few months.

            “You have your stories wrong anyway,” Emmy said, brisk tones at odds with that faint blush.  “Jacks don’t turn out to be princes.  Jacks are always clever knaves who win their way in the world by their wits.”

            Jack looked gloomy for a moment on that thought.  Unless I was mistaken, he didn’t consider himself clever.  I could see he had a pragmatic bent, though, and that’s often more useful.  He perked up after a moment, and, obviously trying to sound casual, asked, “Do Jacks marry princesses often?”

            Emmy’s eyes flicked to him, and then back to her vegetables.  “Sometimes.  Sometimes they fall in love with commoners.”

            He pressed the point.  “Kitchen maids, for instance?”

            Her lips curved into a smile.  “Sometimes.”

            That was good enough for me.  He liked her, she liked him.  I didn’t have a multitude of concrete evidence, true, but I had a good feeling.  I happen to have a firm belief in my own gut.  I sidled away from the group and into a shadow, where I shifted my take-no-notice spell into a full invisibility one.  Then I conjured up Marj.

            She wasn’t happy about coming.  She was invisible to everyone but me, but popped in with extra sparkle regardless.  She hovered a foot off the ground, little wings fluttering—a meaningless gesture, considering they weren’t actually holding her up.  She had her hands on her hips, and gave me a reproving look.  “What do you want, Tarry?  I was stringing flowers into garlands with the girls.”

            Would you want to put your fate in the hands of someone who considers that activity the height of recreation?  I wouldn’t.  I ignored the garland comment entirely.  “We made a wager, remember?  Time we followed up on it.”

            “About Princess Rosaline, you mean?”  Since I had legitimate business, she backed off on the reproving look.  “Naturally I remember.  Has it been sixteen years already?”

            “Near to it.”

            “Imagine.  How time does goes by.”  She glanced around the courtyard, evidently taking it in fully for the first time.  Her nose wrinkled in disapproval.  “Why are we here?  This is the common part of the castle.”

            “Right.  Where else would I go to look for commoners to prove my point with?”

            “But it’s so…very common.”

            “Extremely,” I agreed.  “So’s that goatherd over there.  He’s very common, and he’s the one I’ve picked.”

            “A goatherd,” she said.  “Really.”

            “Mm-hmm.  He’s in love with that kitchen maid he’s sitting next to.”

            “And those are the ones you’re choosing?”

            “Exactly.  The whole point is to find someone common and ordinary and not royal, right?”

            “Well, yes, but I thought you’d at least pick a courtier, or a lady in waiting, or something.  It hardly seems fair to you.”

            “Don’t worry about me.  I’m satisfied.”

            Marj shook her head doubtfully, and ruffled her wings.  “You really think that they’re Truly in Love?  And you’re sure he’s not a prince in disguise, or possessed of a magic flute?”

            “I do think they‘re in love, and of course he isn’t, you can see that for yourself.”

            Princes in disguise are easy to spot; they just ooze princeliness, and, barring a very strong spell to hide it, one magical being is always alert to someone else’s magic.  That pretty much ruled out the flute theory too.

            “He is rather good-looking, I suppose,” Marj said after a moment’s study.  “And she’s pretty enough.”

            Now that she mentioned it, Jack was good-looking, in a hazel-eyed, sandy-haired sort of way, and Emmy had striking black hair.  I thought it was more significant that he looked like a pleasant fellow, and that she had some snap to her blue eyes.  “Where did you ever get the idea that only beautiful people can fall in love?”

            Marj was beginning to look reproving again.  I don’t know if she would have answered the question—I’m guessing not—but either way she didn’t have the opportunity.  Around us, everyone was suddenly scrambling to their feet; the royalty was passing through.

            It wasn’t much of a procession.  It was just the fair Princess Rosaline, with a few ladies-in-waiting and a few guards, apparently taking a shortcut through the less elegant part of the castle.  Everyone hurried to get to attention all the same.  Jack and Emmy, busy looking at each other, were behind the rest.

            The princess had hair like spun gold reaching long and loose past her waist, pale skin, a perfectly symmetrical face and impossibly blue eyes.  She was very beautiful, if you like that sort of thing.  I don’t see how her looks can really be counted to her as virtue, though.  I heard Tamarind magic them up at her christening. 

            “Your boy there is staring at the princess,” Marjoram pointed out, elbowing me at the same time.

            It was true Jack was, but I refused to act bothered.  “So?  Everyone’s staring at her.”  That was true too.

            “Do you suppose he’d fall at her feet if she looked at him?”

           “Let’s find out.”  Still invisible, I sidled through the crowd and over to the baby goat.  I suspect Jack had, for the moment, forgotten the kid existed.  She was still sitting on the ground next to him, making it easy for me to lean over and suggest to her that now would be the best possible time to make a bid for attention.

           She pawed at Jack’s ankle and bleated, managing an impressively high volume for someone so small.

           He turned crimson.  “Not now, Little One,” he hissed.  “Be quiet.”

          She ignored that direction entirely, and stubbornly butted her head against his leg, baaing all the louder.  He picked her up, trying to quiet her, but she just stuck her head up above his restraining hands and bleated even more.

          Heads were turning his way, while Emmy was turning pink with repressed laughter.  As I had expected, the Princess noticed the commotion as well.

            “Oh, what a darling lamb!”  That spell about “a musical voice with silvery, dulcet tones” was working fine.  “How old is he?” she asked, approaching Jack.

            “She’s a baby goat, actually,” Jack corrected, looked suddenly mortified that he’d corrected her, and hastily added, “Your Highness.  She’s just a few weeks old.”

            “Doesn’t she have a mother?”

            “Her mother died birthing her, so I’ll keep her with me until she gets older,” Jack explained, with a few fumbles, tacking on, “Your Highness,” somewhat belatedly again.

            “Oh how sad!”  That spell about compassion was apparently working too.  I always wonder what these magicked people would be like sans the spells.  “That’s ever so nice of you to take care of her,” Rosaline said, face glowing with approval. 

            Jack turned redder.  “Oh, it’s just…um…”

            His job.  It’s just his job.  That’s what he was trying to say.

            “…thank you, Your Highness,” was all he actually managed.  He didn’t fall over, though.

            She reached out to pat the goat’s head.  “What is her name?”

            Jack swallowed and managed a complete sentence.  “She’s just the Little One, Your Highness.  We’ll give her a better name when she gets bigger.”

            Rosaline extended the hand she’d used to pat the Little One towards her nearest lady in waiting, who promptly wiped it off with a handkerchief.  “Do you have any ideas for names?” the princess asked.

            “Not yet, really,” he admitted.  “Something more creative than the Big One.”

            So it wasn’t the best joke, but points for trying.  Emmy looked amused.

            The Princess nodded rather seriously, and agreed, “No, that wouldn’t be a very good name.  What about Fluffy or Cotton?”  Her brow wrinkled in thought, which in no way detracted from her beauty.  “Those would be better for a sheep, wouldn’t they?  Perhaps Bess or Jane then.  Those are nice names too.”

            Seems to me that a girl with twelve names herself ought to be able to come up with more creative names than those.  Just commenting.

            “I’ll keep them in mind, Your Highness, thank you,” was all Jack said out loud.

            With that the princess swept on and out of the courtyard.  Jack watched her go.  “She’s beautiful,” he said, idly scratching the Little One’s head.

            “Yes,” Emmy said.

            “Is she as nice as she seems?”

            Emmy frowned.  “Of course.  The fairies know what they’re doing when they make someone good and kind and charming.”

            “So we do,” Marj said, smugly, and asked me, “Still feeling as confident?”

            I had to admit I wasn’t quite as confident as I’d been before the princess walked onto the scene.  To myself, I had to admit that.  I didn’t have to admit anything to Marj.  “Let’s just say I have faith in him.”

            “If you say so,” she trilled, and popped out in a shower of gold sparkles and little hearts.

            I brushed hearts and sparkles out of my hair and sat down on the stoop next to Jack, who was sitting again with the Little One in his lap.  Still invisible, I reached out to scratch the Little One’s head.

            “So what do you think?” I asked her.  “Can I rely on your buddy Jack here?”

            She baaed a noncommittal baa.

            “That’s just how I feel.”