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A Wise Pair of Fools: A Retelling of “The Farmer’s Clever Daughter”

For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge.

Faith

I wish you could have known my husband when he was a young man. How you would have laughed at him! He was so wonderfully pompous—oh, you’d have no idea unless you’d seen him then. He’s weathered beautifully, but back then, his beauty was bright and new, all bronze and ebony. He tried to pretend he didn’t care for personal appearances, but you could tell he felt his beauty. How could a man not be proud when he looked like one of creation’s freshly polished masterpieces every time he stepped out among his dirty, sweaty peasantry?

But his pride in his face was nothing compared to the pride he felt over his mind. He was clever, even then, and he knew it. He’d grown up with an army of nursemaids to exclaim, “What a clever boy!” over every mildly witty observation he made. He’d been tutored by some of the greatest scholars on the continent, attended the great universities, traveled further than most people think the world extends. He could converse like a native in fifteen living languages and at least three dead ones.

And books! Never a man like him for reading! His library was nothing to what it is now, of course, but he was making a heroic start. Always a book in his hand, written by some dusty old man who never said in plain language what he could dress up in words that brought four times the work to some lucky printer. Every second breath he took came out as a quotation. It fairly baffled his poor servants—I’m certain to this day some of them assume Plato and Socrates were college friends of his.

Well, at any rate, take a man like that—beautiful and over-educated—and make him king over an entire nation—however small—before he turns twenty-five, and you’ve united all earthly blessings into one impossibly arrogant being.

Unfortunately, Alistair’s pomposity didn’t keep him properly aloof in his palace. He’d picked up an idea from one of his old books that he should be like one of the judge-kings of old, walking out among his people to pass judgment on their problems, giving the inferior masses the benefit of all his twenty-four years of wisdom. It’s all right to have a royal patron, but he was so patronizing. Just as if we were all children and he was our benevolent father. It wasn’t strange to see him walking through the markets or looking over the fields—he always managed to look like he floated a step or two above the common ground the rest of us walked on—and we heard stories upon stories of his judgments. He was decisive, opinionated. Always thought he had a better way of doing things. Was always thinking two and ten and twelve steps ahead until a poor man’s head would be spinning from all the ways the king found to see through him. Half the time, I wasn’t sure whether to fear the man or laugh at him. I usually laughed.

So then you can see how the story of the mortar—what do you mean you’ve never heard it? You could hear it ten times a night in any tavern in the country. I tell it myself at least once a week! Everyone in the palace is sick to death of it!

Oh, this is going to be a treat! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a fresh audience?

It happened like this. It was spring of the year I turned twenty-one. Father plowed up a field that had lain fallow for some years, with some new-fangled deep-cutting plow that our book-learned king had inflicted upon a peasantry that was baffled by his scientific talk. Father was plowing near a river when he uncovered a mortar made of solid gold. You know, a mortar—the thing with the pestle, for grinding things up. Don’t ask me why on earth a goldsmith would make such a thing—the world’s full of men with too much money and not enough sense, and housefuls of servants willing to take too-valuable trinkets off their hands. Someone decades ago had swiped this one and apparently found my father’s farm so good a hiding place that they forgot to come back for it.

Anyhow, my father, like the good tenant he was, understood that as he’d found a treasure on the king’s land, the right thing to do was to give it to the king. He was all aglow with his noble purpose, ready to rush to the palace at first light to do his duty by his liege lord.

I hope you can see the flaw in his plan. A man like Alistair, certain of his own cleverness, careful never to be outwitted by his peasantry? Come to a man like that with a solid gold mortar, and his first question’s going to be…?

That’s right. “Where’s the pestle?”

I tried to tell Father as much, but he—dear, sweet, innocent man—saw only his simple duty and went forth to fulfill it. He trotted into the king’s throne room—it was his public day—all smiles and eagerness.

Alistair took one look at him and saw a peasant tickled to death that he was pulling a fast one on the king—giving up half the king’s rightful treasure in the hopes of keeping the other half and getting a fat reward besides.

Alistair tore into my father—his tongue was much sharper then—taking his argument to pieces until Father half-believed he had hidden away the pestle somewhere, probably after stealing both pieces himself. In his confusion, Father looked even guiltier, and Alistair ordered his guard to drag Father off to the dungeons until they could arrange a proper hearing—and, inevitably, a hanging.

As they dragged him to his doom, my father had the good sense to say one coherent phrase, loud enough for the entire palace to hear. “If only I had listened to my daughter!”

Alistair, for all his brains, hadn’t expected him to say something like that. He had Father brought before him, and questioned him until he learned the whole story of how I’d urged Father to bury the mortar again and not say a word about it, so as to prevent this very scene from occurring.

About five minutes after that, I knocked over a butter churn when four soldiers burst into my father’s farmhouse and demanded I go with them to the castle. I made them clean up the mess, then put on my best dress and did up my hair—in those days, it was thick and golden, and fell to my ankles when unbound—and after traveling to the castle, I went, trembling, up the aisle of the throne room.

Alistair had made an effort that morning to look extra handsome and extra kingly. He still has robes like those, all purple and gold, but the way they set off his black hair and sharp cheekbones that day—I’ve never seen anything like it. He looked half-divine, the spirit of judgment in human form. At the moment, I didn’t feel like laughing at him.

Looming on his throne, he asked me, “Is it true that you advised this man to hide the king’s rightful property from him?” (Alistair hates it when I imitate his voice—but isn’t it a good impression?)

I said yes, it was true, and Alistair asked me why I’d done such a thing, and I said I had known this disaster would result, and he asked how I knew, and I said (and I think it’s quite good), that this is what happens when you have a king who’s too clever to be anything but stupid.

Naturally, Alistair didn’t like that answer a bit, but I’d gotten on a roll, and it was my turn to give him a good tongue-lashing. What kind of king did he think he was, who could look at a man as sweet and honest as my father and suspect him of a crime? Alistair was so busy trying to see hidden lies that he couldn’t see the truth in front of his face. So determined not to be made a fool of that he was making himself into one. If he persisted in suspecting everyone who tried to do him a good turn, no one would be willing to do much of anything for him. And so on and so forth.

You might be surprised at my boldness, but I had come into that room not expecting to leave it without a rope around my neck, so I intended to speak my mind while I had the chance. The strangest thing was that Alistair listened, and as he listened, he lost some of that righteous arrogance until he looked almost human. And the end of it all was that he apologized to me!

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather at that! I didn’t faint, but I came darn close. That arrogant, determined young king, admitting to a simple farmer’s daughter that he’d been wrong?

He did more than admit it—he made amends. He let Father keep the mortar, and then bought it from him at its full value. Then he gifted Father the farm where we lived, making us outright landowners. After the close of the day’s hearings, he even invited us to supper with him, and I found that King Alistair wasn’t a half-bad conversational partner. Some of those books he read sounded almost interesting.

For a year after that, Alistair kept finding excuses to come by the farm. He would check on Father’s progress and baffle him with advice. We ran into each other in the street so often that I began to expect it wasn’t mere chance. We’d talk books, and farming, and sharpen our wits on each other. We’d do wordplay, puzzles, tongue-twisters. A game, but somehow, I always thought, some strange sort of test.

Would you believe, even his proposal was a riddle? Yes, an actual riddle! One spring morning, I came across Alistair on a corner of my father's land, and he got down on one knee, confessed his love for me, and set me a riddle. He had the audacity to look into the face of the woman he loved—me!—and tell me that if I wanted to accept his proposal, I would come to him at his palace, not walking and not riding, not naked and not dressed, not on the road and not off it.

Do you know, I think he actually intended to stump me with it? For all his claim to love me, he looked forward to baffling me! He looked so sure of himself—as if all his book-learning couldn’t be beat by just a bit of common sense.

If I’d really been smart, I suppose I’d have run in the other direction, but, oh, I wanted to beat him so badly. I spent about half a minute solving the riddle and then went off to make my preparations.

The next morning, I came to the castle just like he asked. Neither walking nor riding—I tied myself to the old farm mule and let him half-drag me. Neither on the road nor off it—only one foot dragging in a wheel rut at the end. Neither naked nor dressed—merely wrapped in a fishing net. Oh, don’t look so shocked! There was so much rope around me that you could see less skin than I’m showing now.

If I’d hoped to disappoint Alistair, well, I was disappointed. He radiated joy. I’d never seen him truly smile before that moment—it was incandescent delight. He swept me in his arms, gave me a kiss without a hint of calculation in it, then had me taken off to be properly dressed, and we were married within a week.

It was a wonderful marriage. We got along beautifully—at least until the next time I outwitted him. But I won’t bore you with that story again—

You don’t know that one either? Where have you been hiding yourself?

Oh, I couldn’t possibly tell you that one. Not if it’s your first time. It’s much better the way Alistair tells it.

What time is it?

Perfect! He’s in his library just now. Go there and ask him to tell you the whole thing.

Yes, right now! What are you waiting for?

Alistair

Faith told you all that, did she? And sent you to me for the rest? That woman! It’s just like her! She thinks I have nothing better to do than sit around all day and gossip about our courtship!

Where are you going? I never said I wouldn’t tell the story! Honestly, does no one have brains these days? Sit down!

Yes, yes, anywhere you like. One chair’s as good as another—I built this room for comfort. Do you take tea? I can ring for a tray—the story tends to run long.

Well, I’ll ring for the usual, and you can help yourself to whatever you like.

I’m sure Faith has given you a colorful picture of what I was like as a young man, and she’s not totally inaccurate. I’d had wealth and power and too much education thrown on me far too young, and I thought my blessings made me better than other men. My own father had been the type of man who could be fooled by every silver-tongued charlatan in the land, so I was sensitive and suspicious, determined to never let another man outwit me.

When Faith came to her father’s defense, it was like my entire self came crumbling down. Suddenly, I wasn’t the wise king; I was a cruel and foolish boy—but Faith made me want to be better. That day was the start of my fascination with her, and my courtship started in earnest not long after.

The riddle? Yes, I can see how that would be confusing. Faith tends to skip over the explanations there. A riddle’s an odd proposal, but I thought it was brilliant at the time, and I still think it wasn’t totally wrong-headed. I wasn’t just finding a wife, you see, but a queen. Riddles have a long history in royal courtships. I spent weeks laboring over mine. I had some idea of a symbolic proposal—each element indicating how she’d straddle two worlds to be with me. But more than that, I wanted to see if Faith could move beyond binary thinking—look beyond two opposites to see the third option between. Kings and queens have to do that more often than you’d think…

No, I’m sorry, it is a bit dull, isn’t it? I guess there’s a reason Faith skips over the explanations.

So to return to the point: no matter what Faith tells you, I always intended for her to solve the riddle. I wouldn’t have married her if she hadn’t—but I wouldn’t have asked if I’d had the least doubt she’d succeed. The moment she came up that road was the most ridiculous spectacle you’d ever hope to see, but I had never known such ecstasy. She’d solved every piece of my riddle, in just the way I’d intended. She understood my mind and gained my heart. Oh, it was glorious.

Those first weeks of marriage were glorious, too. You’d think it’d be an adjustment, turning a farmer’s daughter into a queen, but it was like Faith had been born to the role. Manners are just a set of rules, and Faith has a sharp mind for memorization, and it’s not as though we’re a large kingdom or a very formal court. She had a good mind for politics, and was always willing to listen and learn. I was immensely proud of myself for finding and catching the perfect wife.

You’re smarter than I was—you can see where I was going wrong. But back then, I didn’t see a cloud in the sky of our perfect happiness until the storm struck.

It seemed like such a small thing at the time. I was looking over the fields of some nearby villages—farming innovations were my chief interest at the time. There were so many fascinating developments in those days. I’ve an entire shelf full of texts if you’re interested—

The story, yes. My apologies. The offer still stands.

Anyway, I was out in the fields, and it was well past the midday hour. I was starving, and more than a little overheated, so we were on our way to a local inn for a bit of food and rest. Just as I was at my most irritable, these farmers’ wives show up, shrilly demanding judgment in a case of theirs. I’d become known for making those on-the-spot decisions. I’d thought it was an efficient use of government resources—as long as I was out with the people, I could save them the trouble of complicated procedures with the courts—but I’d never regretted taking up the practice as heartily as I did in this moment.

The case was like this: one farmer’s horse had recently given birth, and the foal had wandered away from its mother and onto the neighbor’s property, where it laid down underneath an ox that was at pasture, and the second farmer thought this gave him a right to keep it. There were questions of fences and boundaries and who-owed-who for different trades going back at least a couple of decades—those women were determined to bring every past grievance to light in settling this case.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to lose what little patience I had. I snapped at both women and told them that my decision was that the foal could very well stay where it was.

Not my most reasoned decision, but it wasn’t totally baseless. I had common law going back centuries that supported such a ruling. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all. It wasn't as though a single foal was worth so much fuss. I went off to my meal and thought that was the end of it.

I’d forgotten all about it by the time I returned to the same village the next week. My man and I were crossing the bridge leading into the town when we found the road covered by a fishing net. An old man sat by the side of the road, shaking and casting the net just as if he were laying it out for a catch.

“What do you think you’re doing, obstructing a public road like this?” I asked him.

The man smiled genially at me and replied, “Fishing, majesty.”

I thought perhaps the man had a touch of sunstroke, so I was really rather kind when I explained to him how impossible it was to catch fish in the roadway.

The man just replied, “It’s no more impossible than an ox giving birth to a foal, majesty.”

He said it like he’d been coached, and it didn’t take long for me to learn that my wife was behind it all. The farmer’s wife who’d lost the foal had come to Faith for help, and my wife had advised the farmer to make the scene I’d described.

Oh, was I livid! Instead of coming to me in private to discuss her concerns about the ruling, Faith had made a public spectacle of me. She encouraged my own subjects to mock me! This was what came of making a farm girl into a queen! She’d live in my house and wear my jewels, and all the time she was laughing up her sleeve at me while she incited my citizens to insurrection! Before long, none of my subjects would respect me. I’d lose my crown, and the kingdom would fall to pieces—

I worked myself into a fine frenzy, thinking such things. At the time, I thought myself perfectly reasonable. I had identified a threat to the kingdom’s stability, and I would deal with it. The moment I came home, I found Faith and declared that the marriage was dissolved. “If you prefer to side with the farmers against your own husband,” I told her, “you can go back to your father’s house and live with them!”

It was quite the tantrum. I’m proud to say I’ve never done anything so shameful since.

To my surprise, Faith took it all silently. None of the fire that she showed in defending her father against me. Faith had this way, back then, where she could look at a man and make him feel like an utter fool. At that moment, she made me feel like a monster. I was already beginning to regret what I was doing, but it was buried under so much anger that I barely realized it, and my pride wouldn’t allow me to back down so easily from another decision.

After I said my piece, Faith quietly asked if she was to leave the palace with nothing.

I couldn’t reverse what I’d decided, but I could soften it a bit.

“You may take one keepsake,” I told her. “Take the one thing you love best from our chambers.”

I thought I was clever to make the stipulation. Knowing Faith, she’d have found some way to move the entire palace and count it as a single item. I had no doubt she’d take the most expensive and inconvenient thing she could, but there was nothing in that set of rooms I couldn’t afford to lose.

Or so I thought. No doubt you’re beginning to see that Faith always gets the upper hand in a battle of wits.

I kept my distance that evening—let myself stew in resentment so I couldn’t regret what I’d done. I kept to my library—not this one, the little one upstairs in our suite—trying to distract myself with all manner of books, and getting frustrated when I found I wanted to share pieces of them with Faith. I was downright relieved when a maid came by with a tea tray. I drank my usual three cups so quickly I barely tasted them—and I passed out atop my desk five minutes later.

Yes, Faith had arranged for the tea—and she’d drugged me!

I came to in the pink light of early dawn, my head feeling like it had been run over by a military caravan. My wits were never as slow as they were that morning. I laid stupidly for what felt like hours, wondering why my bed was so narrow and lumpy, and why the walls of the room were so rough and bare, and why those infernal birds were screaming half an inch from my open window.

By the time I had enough strength to sit up, I could see that I was in the bedroom of a farmer’s cottage. Faith was standing by the window, looking out at the sunrise, wearing the dress she’d worn the first day I met her. Her hair was unbound, tumbling in golden waves all the way to her ankles. My heart leapt at the sight—her hair was one of the wonders of the world in those days, and I was so glad to see her when I felt so ill—until I remembered the events of the previous day, and was too confused and ashamed to have room for any other thoughts or feelings.

“Faith?” I asked. “Why are you here? Where am I?”

“My father’s home,” Faith replied, her eyes downcast—I think it’s the only time in her life she was ever bashful. “You told me I could take the one thing I loved best.”

Can I explain to you how my heart leapt at those words? There had never been a mind or a heart like my wife’s! It was like the moment she’d come to save her father—she made me feel a fool and feel glad for the reminder. I’d made the same mistake both times—let my head get in the way of my heart. She never made that mistake, thank heaven, and it saved us both.

Do you have something you want to add, Faith, darling? Don’t pretend I can’t see you lurking in the stacks and laughing at me! I’ll get as sappy as I like! If you think you can do it better, come out in the open and finish this story properly!

Faith

You tell it so beautifully, my darling fool boy, but if you insist—

I was forever grateful Dinah took that tea to Alistair. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the loophole in his words—I was so afraid he’d see my ploy coming and stop me. But his wits were so blessedly dull that day. It was like outwitting a child.

When at last he came to, I was terrified. He had cast me out because I’d outwitted him, and now here I was again, thinking another clever trick would make everything well.

Fortunately, Alistair was marvelous—saw my meaning in an instant. Sometimes he can be almost clever.

After that, what’s there to tell? We made up our quarrel, and then some. Alistair brought me back to the palace in high honors—it was wonderful, the way he praised me and took so much blame on himself.

(You were really rather too hard on yourself, darling—I’d done more than enough to make any man rightfully angry. Taking you to Father’s house was my chance to apologize.)

Alistair paid the farmer for the loss of his foal, paid for the mending of the fence that had led to the trouble in the first place, and straightened out the legal tangles that had the neighbors at each others’ throats.

After that, things returned much to the way they’d been before, except that Alistair was careful never to think himself into such troubles again. We’ve gotten older, and I hope wiser, and between our quarrels and our reconciliations, we’ve grown into quite the wise pair of lovestruck fools. Take heed from it, whenever you marry—it’s good to have a clever spouse, but make sure you have one who’s willing to be the fool every once in a while.

Trust me. It works out for the best.

#the bookshelf progresses #fairy tale retellings #inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge 2024 #the farmer's clever daughter #theme: eros #story: complete #this one was *so much fun*#i was grinning throughout the brainstorming process #faith and alistair just *loved* telling me their story #and especially in the first scenes i kept stopping just because i was having so much fun with the lines #maybe it's horribly boring to read but as a writing exercise it was fantastic #i love these two so much #i haven't had this much fun since writing last year's epistolary story

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bookshelf-in-progress · 2 months

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Marks of Loyalty: A Retelling of Maid Maleen

For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge

Seven years, the high king declared.

Seven years’ imprisonment because a lowly handmaiden pledged her love to the crown prince and refused to release him when his father wished him to marry a foreign princess.

Never mind that Maleen’s blood was just as noble as that of the lady she served. Never mind that Jarroth had been only a fourth prince when he and Maleen courted and pledged their love without a word of protest from the crown. Never mind that they loved each other with a fierce devotion that could outlast the world’s end. A handmaid to the sister of the grand duke of Taina could never be an acceptable bride for the crown prince of all Montrane now that Jarroth was his father’s only heir.

“Seven years to break your rebellious spirit,” the king said as he stood in the grand duke’s study. “More than enough time for my son to forget this ridiculous infatuation.”

“This is ridiculous!” Lady Rilla laughed. “Imprison a lady of Taina for falling in love? If you imprison her, you must imprison me on the same charges. I promoted their courtship and witnessed their betrothal. I object to its ending. I am Maleen’s mistress, and you can not punish her actions without punishing me for permitting such impudence.”

Rilla believed that her rank would save her. That the high king would not dare to enrage Taina by imprisoning their grand duke’s sister. She believed her brother would protest, that the high king would relent rather than risk internal war when the Oprien emperor posed such a danger from without. She believed her words would rescue Maleen from her fate.

Rilla had been wrong. The high king ordered Rilla imprisoned with her handmaiden, and the grand duke did not so much as whisper in protest.

Lady Rilla had always treated Maleen as an equal, calling her a friend rather than a servant, but Maleen had never dreamed that friendship could prompt such a display of loyalty. She begged Rilla to repent of her words to the king rather than suffer punishment for Maleen’s crimes.

Rilla only laughed. “How could I survive without my handmaid? If I am to retain your services, I must go where you go.”

On the final morning of their freedom, they stood before the tower that was to serve as their prison and home, a building as as dark, solid, and impenetrable as the towering mountains that surrounded it. In the purple sunrise that was to be the last they would see for seven years, Maleen tearfully begged her mistress to save herself. Maleen was small, dark, quiet, hardy—she could endure seven years in a dark and lonely tower. Lively, laughing Rilla, with her red hair and bright eyes, was made for sunshine, not shadows. She loved company and revels and the finer things of life—seven years of imprisonment would crush her vibrant spirit, and Maleen could not bear to be the cause of it.

“Could you abandon Jarroth?” Rilla asked.

In the customs of the Taina people, tattoos around the neck symbolized one’s history and family bonds, marked near the veins that coursed with one’s lifeblood. Maleen had marked her betrothal to Jarroth by adding the pink blossoms of the mountain campion to the traditional black spots and swirls. Color indicated a chosen life-bond, and the flowers symbolized the mountain landscape where they had fallen in love and pledged their lives to each other.

“Jarroth has become part of my self,” Maleen said. “I could as soon abandon him as cut out my own heart.”

With uncharacteristic solemnity, Rilla said, “Neither could I abandon you.” She rolled up her sleeves far to reveal the tattoos that marked friendship, traditionally marked on the wrist—veins just as vital, and capable of reaching out to the world. The ring of blue and black circles matched the one on Maleen’s wrist, symbolizing a bond, not between mistress and servant, but between lifelong friends. “I do not leave my friends to suffer alone.”

When the king’s soldiers came, Maleen and Rilla entered the tower without fear.

Seven years, they stayed in the tower.

There was darkness and despair, but also laughter and joy.

Maleen was glad to have a friend.

The seven years were over, and still no one came. Their tower was isolated, but the high king could not have forgotten about them.

The food was running low.

It was Rilla’s idea to break through weak spots in the mortar, but Maleen had the patience to sit, day after day, chipping at it with their dull flatware until at last they saw their first ray of sun.

They bathed in the light, smiling as they’d not smiled in years, awash in peace and joy and hope. Then they worked with a will, attacking every brick and mortared edge until at last they made a hole just large enough to crawl through.

Maleen gazed upon the world and felt like a babe newborn. She and Rilla helped each other to name what they saw—sky, mountain, grass, clouds, tree. There was wind and sun, birds and bugs and flowers and life, life, life—unthinkable riches after seven years of darkness. They rolled in the grass like children, laughing and crying and thanking God for their release.

Then they saw the smoke. Across a dozen mountains, fields and forests had been burnt to ashes. Whole villages had disappeared. Far off to the south, where they should have been able to make out the flags and towers of the grand duke’s palace, there was nothing.

“What happened?” Maleen whispered.

“War,” Rilla replied.

Before the tower, Maleen had known the Opriens were a threat. Their emperor was a warmonger, greedy for land, disdainful of those who followed traditions other than Oprien ways. But war had always been a distant fear, something years in the distance, if it ever came at all.

Years had passed. War had come.

What of the world had survived?

Left to herself, Maleen might have stayed in the safe darkness of the tower, but Maleen was not alone. She had Rilla, who hungered for knowledge and conversation and food that was not their hard travel bread. She had Jarroth, somewhere out there—was he even alive?

Had he fallen in battle against the Oprien forces? Perished as their prisoner? Burned to death in one of their awful blazes? Had he wed another?

Rilla—who had developed a practical strain during their time in the tower—oversaw the selection of their supplies. They needed dresses—warm and cool. They needed cloaks and stockings and underclothes. They needed all the food they could salvage from their storeroom, and all the edible greens Maleen could find on the mountain. They needed kindling, flint, candles, blankets, bedrolls.

On their last night before leaving the tower, Maleen and Rilla slept in their usual beds, but could not sleep. The tower had seemed a place of torment seven years ago. Who would have thought it would become the safest place in the world?

“What do you think we’ll find out there?” Maleen asked Rilla.

“I don’t know,” Rilla said. “Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

It was worse than Maleen could have imagined.

Not only was Taina devastated by war and living under Oprien rule.

Taina was being wiped out.

The Taina were an independent people, proud of their traditions, which they had clung to fiercely as they were conquered and annexed into other kingdoms a dozen times across the centuries. Relations between the Taina and the high king of Montane had been strained, but friendly. Some might rebel, but most were content to live under the high king so long as he tolerated their culture.

The Oprien emperor did not believe in tolerance.

Taina knew that under Oprien rule, Taina life would die, so they had fought fiercely, cruelly, mercilessly, against the invasion, until at last they were conquered. The emperor, enraged by their resistance, ordered that the Taina be wiped from the face of the earth. Any Taina found living were to be killed like dogs.

Maleen and Rilla quickly learned that the tattoos on their necks and arms—the proud symbols of their heritage—now marked them for death. They wore long sleeves and high collars and thick cloaks. They avoided speaking lest their voices give them away. They dared not even think in the Taina tongue.

One night as they camped in a ruined church, Maleen trusted in their isolation enough to ask, “If I had given up Jarroth—let him marry his foreign princess—do you think Taina would have been saved?”

Rilla, ever wise about politics, only laughed. “If only it had been so easy. I would have told you to give him up myself. No, Oprien wanted war, and no alliance could have stopped them. No alliance did. For all we know, Jarroth did marry a foreign princess, and this was the result.”

Maleen got no sleep that night.

Jarroth had not married.

Jarroth was the king of Montane.

The wind had the first chill of autumn when Maleen and Rilla entered Montane City—a city of soaring gray spires and beautiful bridges, with precious stones in its pavements and mountain views that rivaled any in Taina.

Though its territories had been conquered, Montane itself had retained its independence—on precarious terms. Montane was surrounded by Oprien land, and even its mountains could not protect it if the emperor’s anger was sufficiently roused. Maleen and Rilla could not be sure of safety even here—the emperor had thousands of eyes upon his unconquered prize—but they could not survive a winter in the countryside, and Montane City was safer than any other.

“We must find work,” Maleen said, “if anyone will have us.” She now trusted in their disguises to keep their markings covered and their voices free of any taint of Taina.

“The king is looking for workers,” Rilla said with a smile.

Even now, Rilla championed their romance, but Maleen had grown wiser in seven years. Jarroth’s father was no longer alive to object, but a king—especially one surrounded by enemies—had even less freedom to marry than a crown prince did. Any hopes Maleen had were distant, wild hopes, less real than their pressing needs for food and shelter and new shoes.

But those wild hopes brought her and Rilla at last to the king’s gate, and then to his housekeeper, who was willing to hire even these ragged strangers to work in the king’s kitchen. The kitchen was so crowded with workers that Maleen and Rilla found they barely had room to breathe.

“It’s not usually like this,” a fellow scullery maid told them. “Most of these new hands will be gone after the wedding.”

Maleen felt a foreboding that she hadn’t felt since the moment the high king had pronounced her fate. Only this time, the words the scullery maid spoke crushed her last, wild hope.

In two weeks’ time, Jarroth would marry another.

As Maleen gathered herbs in the kitchen garden—the cook had noticed her knowledge of plants—she caught sight of Jarroth, walking briskly from the castle to a waiting carriage. He had aged more than seven years—his dark hair, thick as ever, had premature patches of gray. His shoulders were broader, and his jaw had a thick white scar. There was majesty in his bearing, but sorrow in his face that was only matched by the sorrow in Maleen’s heart—time had been unkind to both of them.

She longed to race to him and throw her arms around him, reassure him that she yet lived and loved him. A glimpse of one of her markings peeking out from beneath a sleeve reminded Maleen of the truth—she was a woman the king’s enemy wanted dead. She could not ask him to endanger all Montane by acknowledging her love.

Sensible as such thoughts were, Maleen might still have run to him, had Jarroth not reached the carriage first. When he opened the door, Maleen saw the arms of a foreign crown—the fish and crossed swords of Eshor. The woman who emerged was swathed in purple veils, customary in that nation for soon-to-be brides.

Jarroth bowed to his betrothed, then disappeared back into the palace with his soon-to-be wife on his arm.

Maleen sank into a patch of parsley and wept.

Rilla was helping Maleen to water the herb gardens when the purple-veiled princess of Eshor wandered into view.

“Is that the vixen?” Rilla asked.

Maleen shushed and scolded her.

“Don’t shush me,” Rilla said. “Now that I’m a servant, I’m allowed the joy of despising my betters.”

“You don’t need to despise her.” She was a princess doing her duty, as Jarroth was doing his. Jarroth thought Maleen dead with the rest of her nation.

“I will despise who I like,” Rilla said. “If I correctly recall, the king of Eshor has only one daughter, and she’s a sharp-tongued, spiteful thing.” She tore up a handful of weeds. “May she plague his unfaithful heart.”

Since Maleen could not bear to hear Jarroth disparaged, she did not argue, and she and Rilla fell into silence.

The princess remained in the background, watching.

When their heads were bent together over a patch of thyme, Rilla murmured, “Will she never leave?”

“She often comes to the gardens,” Maleen said. “She has a right to go where she pleases.”

“But not to stare as if we each have two heads.”

Out of habit, they glanced at each others’ collars, cuffs, and skirts. No sign of their markings showed.

“We have nothing to fear from her,” Maleen said. “In two days, the worst will be over.”

A maid came to the kitchen with a message from the princess, asking that the “pretty dark-haired maid in the herb garden” bring her breakfast tray. Cook grumbled, but could not object.

Maleen tried not to stare as she laid out the tray. The princess sprawled across the bed, her feet up on pillows, her face unveiled. Her height and build were similar to Maleen’s, but her hair was a sandy brown, and her face had been pockmarked by plague. Even then, her eyes—a striking blue, deep as a mountain lake—might have been pretty had there not been a cunning cruelty to the way they glared at her.

“You are uncommonly handsome for a kitchen maid,” the princess said. “You have not always been a servant, I think.”

Maleen tried not to quake. There was something terrifying in her all-knowing tone. “I do not wish to contradict your highness,” Maleen said, “but you are mistaken. I have been in service since my twelfth year.”

“Then you have been a servant of a higher class. Your hands are nearly as soft as mine, and you carry yourself like a princess.”

“Your highness is kind.” Maleen nodded her head in a quick, subservient bow, then scurried toward the door.

“I did not dismiss you!” the princess snapped.

Maleen stood at attention, her eyes upon her demurely clasped hands. “Forgive me, your highness. What else do you require?”

“I require assistance that no one else can give—a service that would be invaluable to our two kingdoms. I sprained my ankle on the stairs this morning and will be unable to walk. Since I cannot bear the thought of delaying the wedding that will bind our two nations in this hour of need, I need a woman to take my place.”

A voice that sounded much like Rilla’s whispered suspicions through Maleen’s mind. The princess was proud and her illness was recent. She would not like to show her ravaged face to foreign crowds, and by Montane tradition, she could not go veiled to and from the church.

Knowing—or suspecting—the truth behind the request didn’t ease any of Maleen’s terror. “No!” she gasped. “No, no, no! I could never…!”

“You will!” the princess snapped, sounding as imperious and immovable as the high king on that long ago day. “You are the right build—you will fit my gowns. You have a face that will not shame Eshor. You are quiet and demure—you will be discreet.”

“I will not do it! It is not right!” To marry the man she loved in the name of another woman, to show her face to the man who thought her long dead, to endanger his kingdom and her life by showing him a Taina had survived and entered his domain, it was—all of it—impossible.

“It is perfectly legal. Marriage by proxy is a long-standing tradition. I will reward you handsomely for your trouble.”

As she had defied the high king, so Maleen defied this princess. With her proudest bearing, Maleen looked the princess in the eye. “I will not do it. You have no right to command me. You will find another.”

“If I do,” the princess said, “there is an agent of the Oprien empire in the marketplace who will be glad to know the king of Montane harbors a fugitive from Taina.”

Maleen’s blood ran cold.

The princess smirked—a cat with a mouse in its claws. “If you serve me in this, no one ever need know of your heritage. I will even spare your red-haired friend. Do we have a bargain?”

Maleen bowed her head and rasped, “I am your servant, your highness.”

That night in their shared quarters, Rilla kept Maleen from bolting.

“We must flee!” Maleen said. “She knows the truth! If we are gone before dawn—“

“She will alert the emperor’s agent and give our descriptions,” Rilla said. “Nowhere will be safe.”

“If Jarroth sees me!”

“Either he will recognize you, and you’ll have your long-awaited reunion, or he won’t, and you’ll be well rid of him.”

“He could hand me over to the emperor himself. He is king and has a duty—“

If you think him capable of that, you’re a fool for ever loving him.”

Maleen sank onto her cot, breathing heavily. Tears sprang from her eyes. “I can’t do it. I’m too afraid.”

“You’ve lived in fear for seven years. I should think you well-practiced in it by now.”

“Will you be quiet, Rilla?” Maleen snapped.

Rilla grinned.

But she sank down on the cot next to Maleen and took Maleen’s hands in hers. With surprising sincerity, she said, “We can’t control what will happen. That’s when we trust. Trust me. Trust heaven. Trust yourself. Trust Jarroth. All will be well, and if it’s not, we’ll face it as we’ve faced our other troubles. You survived seven years in a tower. You can face a single day.”

What choice did she have? What choice had she ever had? She loved Jarroth and would be there on his wedding day, dressed as his bride. What came next was up to him.

Maleen embraced Rilla. “What would I do without you?”

“Nothing very sensible, I’m sure.”

The bride’s gown was all white, silk and lace, with a high collar, full sleeves, and skirts that hid even her shoes. Eshoran fashions were well-suited for a Taina bride.

When she met Jarroth on the road to the church, he gasped at the sight of her. “My…”

“Yes?” Maleen asked, heart racing.

He shook his head. “Impossible.” Meeting her eyes, he said, “You remind me of a girl I once knew. Long dead, now.”

The resemblance was not great. Seven years had changed Maleen. She was thinner, paler, ravaged by near-starvation and hard living. She had matured so much she sometimes wondered if her soul was the same as the girl’s he’d known. Yet the way her heart raced at the sight of him suggested some deep part of her hadn’t changed at all.

Jarroth took her hand and they began the long walk to the church, flanked on both sides by crowds of his subjects. So many eyes. Maleen longed to hide.

She glanced at her sleeve, which moved every time Jarroth’s hand swung with hers. “Don’t show my markings,” she murmured desperately.

Jarroth glanced over in surprise. “Pardon?”

Maleen looked away. “Nothing.”

At the bridge before the cathedral—the city’s grandest, flanked by statues of mythical heroes—the winds over the river swirled Maleen’s skirts as she stepped onto the arched walkway.

“Please, oh please,” she prayed in a whisper, “don’t let the markings on my ankles show.”

At the door to the church, she and Jarroth ducked their heads beneath a bower of flowers. She felt the fabric of her collar move, and placed a hand desperately to her throat. “Please,” she prayed, “don’t let the flowers show.”

“Did you say something?” Jarroth asked.

Maleen rushed into the church.

She sat beside him through the wedding service—the day she’d dreamed of since she’d met him nearly ten years ago—crying, not for joy, but in terror and dismay. He had seen her face and did not know her. He believed her long dead. She was so changed he did not suspect the truth, and she didn’t dare to tell him. Now she wed him as a stranger, in another woman’s name.

When the priest declared them man and wife, Maleen dissolved into tears. He took her to the waiting carriage and brought her to the palace as his bride. Maleen could not bear it. She claimed fatigue and dashed in the princess’ chambers as quickly as she could.

She threw the gown, the jewels, the petticoats on the floor beside the bed of the smiling princess. “It is done,” she said. “I owe you no more.”

“You have done well,” the princess said. “But don’t go far. I may have need of you tonight.”

That evening, Rilla wanted every detail of the wedding—the service, the flowers, the gown, and most of all, Jarroth’s reaction.

“You mean you didn’t tell him?” she scolded. “After he suspected?”

“How could I? In front of those crowds?”

“You’ll just leave him to that woman?”

“He chose that woman, Rilla.”

“But he married you.”

He had. It should have been the happiest moment of her life. But it was the end of all her hopes.

After dark, a maid summoned Maleen to a dressing room in the princess’ suite. The princess—queen now, Maleen realized—sat before a mirror, adjusting her customary purple veils. “You will remain here, in case I have need of you.”

The hatred Maleen felt in that moment rivaled anything Rilla had ever expressed. Not only did this woman force her to marry her beloved in her place—now she had to play witness to their wedding night.

The princess stepped into the dim bedchamber—her ankle as strong as anyone’s—leaving Maleen alone in the dark. It felt like the tower all over again—only without Rilla for support.

What a fool the princess was! She couldn’t wear the veil forever—Jarroth would see her face eventually.

There were murmurs in the outer room—Maleen recognized Jarroth’s deep tones.

A moment later, the princess scurried back into the dressing room. She hissed in Maleen’s ear, “What did you say on the path to the church?”

On the path?

Her stomach sank at the memory. She could say only the truth—but the princess wouldn’t like it. “My sleeve was moving. I prayed my markings wouldn’t show.”

Another moment alone in the dark. Another murmur from without, then another question from the princess. “What did you say at the bridge?”

“I prayed the markings on my ankle wouldn’t show.”

The princess cursed and returned to the bedchamber.

When she came back a moment later, Maleen swore the woman’s eyes sparked angrily in the dark. “What did you say at the church door?”

“I prayed the flowers on my neck wouldn’t show.”

The princess promised a million retributions, then returned to the bedroom.

The next time the door opened, Jarroth loomed in the threshold, a lantern in his hand. His eyes were wild—with anger or terror or wild hope, Maleen couldn’t begin to guess.

He held the lantern before her face. “Show me your wrists.”

Maleen rolled up her sleeves and showed the dots and dashes that marked the friendships of her life.

“Show me your ankles.”

She lifted her skirts to reveal the swirling patterns that marked her coming-of-age.

“Show me,” he said, his eyes blazing with undeniable hope, “the markings around your neck.”

She unbuttoned the collar to show the pink flowers of their betrothal.

The lantern clattered to the floor. Jarroth gathered her in his arms and pressed kisses on her brow. “My Maleen! I thought you dead!”

“I live,” Maleen said, laughing and crying with joy.

“And Rilla?” he asked.

“Downstairs.”

He put his head out the door and called for a maid to bring Rilla to the chambers. Then he called for guards to make sure his furious foreign bride did not leave the room.

Then he and Maleen began to share their stories of seven lost years.

The pockmarked princess glared at Jarroth and Maleen in the sunlit bedchamber. “You are sending me back to Eshor?”

“I have already wed a bride,” Jarroth said. “I have no need of another.”

The princess spat, “The emperor will be furious when he knows the king of Montane has wed a Taina bride.”

“Let him hear of it,” Jarroth said. “Let him go to war if he dares it. The people of Taina are always welcome in my realm.”

Jarroth played politics better than Rilla could. A threat had no power over one who did not fear it, and Eshor risked losing valuable trade if Montane fell to war with Oprien. The princess never spoke a word.

Maleen wandered the kitchen gardens with Rilla and Jarroth, luxuriating in the fragrance of the herbs and the safety of their love and friendship.

“Is this wise?” Maleen asked. “To put all the people at risk over me?”

“Over all the people of Taina,” Jarroth said. “My father was monstrous to tolerate it.”

“We will have to tread carefully,” Rilla said. “No need to provoke the emperor. No need to reveal his bride's heritage too soon."

"We can be discreet," Jarroth said. "But what shall we do with you, Lady Rilla?”

Rilla bowed her head in the subservient stance she’d learned as a kitchen maid—but there was a sparkle of mirth in her eyes. “If it pleases your majesties, I will remain near the queen, who I am bound by friendship to serve.”

Maleen took her friend’s hand and said, “I would have you nowhere else.”

#the bookshelf progresses #fairy tale retellings #maid maleen #four loves fairy tale challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge 2024 #theme: philia #theme: eros #story: complete #i set myself the challenge of writing this today and it got out of hand #no time for revising #you can probably pinpoint the spot where i started running out of time #so be it

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