Garden Princess (15 page)

“He’s hurt!” she said.

They hurried to his side, and Adela saw that he was young. He can’t be much older than I am, she thought. His hand was bleeding. She touched it, and his eyes fluttered open.

“Princess!” he said, gripping her hand. “You’re all right!”

Did she know him? Adela knew she had not met the young man at the garden party. And if not there, then where? His eyes seemed to look right inside her. They were brown, almost as dark as his hair. They were beautiful eyes, and she was suddenly acutely aware of the touch of his hand on hers.

“Who are you?” she asked. She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let go.

“My name’s Ned — Edward . . .” He tried to sit up, and she had to help him, just as Garth had helped her.

Edward looked at the marble statue. “Is she — is she
destroyed
?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Adela.

“You were right. It wasn’t treasure in the box.”

“What box?”

“The one she buried. It had a ruby in it. Only it couldn’t have been a ruby, because it shattered when I grabbed it. It’s just like that flask, isn’t it?”

Suddenly Adela knew who he was. “You’re the magpie!” She stared at him, astonished to find her speculation about its being under a spell come true.

Edward’s expression was anxious. She smiled to put him at ease. And blushed. She couldn’t help it. He was still holding her hand, and the words
enchanted prince
had flitted through her mind.

“Your Highness?”

Adela gave a start. Her hand slipped from Edward’s, and she looked up to see Marguerite making her way toward them. Garth jumped to his feet, hurrying forward to help her through the crowd.

“What is going on?” asked Marguerite. “Who are all these women?”

Adela looked around, and for the first time, she fully understood all that had happened. “They’re Hortensia’s garden!” she said. “They’re the flowers.”

The flowers had vanished. So had the walls of Hortensia’s garden. There were only several hundred extremely pretty and very confused young women to show that it had ever existed. Some of them listened as Adela told Marguerite and Garth what had happened. Edward went on to explain that Hortensia had been holding garden parties for years — inviting beautiful young women and turning them into flowers, inviting handsome young men and turning them into her servants.

“How many years?” Adela asked, remembering the servant she had seen wearing old-fashioned clothing.

But Edward couldn’t remember. None of the guests could. Finally, someone asked what year it was. When Adela told them, Edward turned pale. Some of the women listening burst into tears. One of them who looked no older than fifteen or sixteen revealed that she had been an amaryllis for more than twenty years.

And so the dreadful tale spread through the crowd.

“What a horrible woman that Hortensia was!” said Marguerite. “You were very brave to stand up to her, Garth!”

He looked sheepish. “All I did was chop down a tree and dig up a box. And I never would have done that if it hadn’t been for the magpie — I mean,
him.
”

He nodded toward Edward, who looked as uncomfortable as Garth at the suggestion that he had done anything heroic. “All I did — except maybe right at the end — was try to steal your jewelry, Princess. I’m sorry about that.”

Edward’s apology — and his obvious remorse — made Adela like him even more than she already did. She wondered who he was and where he was from. He clearly wasn’t an enchanted prince. His accent suggested that he came from one of the poorer neighborhoods of one of the coastal cities; he slurred his words together like one of the gardeners at home. As Cecile would put it, Edward wasn’t
of the gentry.
Which meant, for example, that he didn’t know he should say
Your Highness
when he spoke to her. Not that she minded. She felt a small thrill when he called her
Princess.
She hoped he didn’t notice that she turned pink whenever he looked her way.

The mention of jewelry had caused Marguerite to realize that hers was missing. “The diamond necklace. And the earrings! Where are they?”

Adela was pretty sure that she knew where the necklace was. She jumped to her feet. “Wait here! I’ll be right back.”

But Edward followed her. “I’m the one who took the earrings,” he said. “They’re in my — that is, they’re up in a tree on the front lawn.”

But there were no trees on the front lawn, for they had vanished along with the garden. Hortensia’s house was gone, too. Her servants, looking every bit as confused — and as beautiful, Adela noted — as the former flowers, were wandering about in what she guessed had been its approximate location. She soon found Hortensia’s pile of stolen jewelry, lying untouched in the grass. “My guess is that you’ll find the contents of your nest on the ground as well, Edward,” she said.

He went to look and, sure enough, returned within minutes with a smaller hoard. He handed the jewels to Adela with yet another shamefaced apology.

“You were a magpie! You couldn’t help what you were doing,” she told him. “I can’t say the same for Hortensia.”

Adela retrieved the diamond necklace from the pile on the ground and put it in her pocket along with the diamond earrings and blue stone pendant from Edward. She made a basket of her skirt and raked all the other jewels into it.

Then she looked around. “People are already leaving, aren’t they?”

Indeed, the numbers of the crowd were dwindling.

“I don’t think anyone but Marguerite cares much about jewelry right now,” said Adela. “Perhaps the best thing to do is to take all this with us. My father can issue some sort of decree inviting people to come and claim what they’ve lost.”

When they rejoined Garth and Marguerite, the pair of them were discussing how to get home. “What about the carriage?” Garth asked Adela.

“I don’t think it’s here anymore,” she said. “I looked for it yesterday, but I couldn’t find any stables. I hope Axel is all right.”

“Is that your coachman?” said Edward. “Hortensia sent him home the day you came to the party.”

Adela was relieved. “So he’s all right! And if he came home without us, Father already knows something’s wrong. He’ll have sent someone to find us.”

But Edward shook his head. “She put your coachman under a spell. He won’t remember a thing about anything he saw here. And Hortensia sent letters to your families about the rest of you — magic letters to keep them from worrying and to make them forget about you over time. I know because I delivered yours, Princess.”

“But we’ve only been gone a few days,” said Adela. “They couldn’t forget about us that quickly, could they?”

“Maybe not. You’re lucky if that’s true.”

Adela had a flash of insight. “Are you worried about your parents, Edward?”

He nodded, this time avoiding her gaze. “My mother . . .” he began. “She didn’t want me to come here. When I got the invitation, she . . .” His voice trailed away.

Adela wasn’t surprised to learn that Edward had been invited to a garden party. He was easily as handsome as the other men Hortensia had enchanted.

“I’m sure your mother will remember you when she sees you.” But even as she said this, Adela could see a problem. She thought of the woman they had met earlier — more than twenty years of enchantment! How long had Edward been a magpie? What if his mother was an old woman now? Why, she might even be dead! Was that the reason he looked so worried?

“We’ll have to walk home,” said Garth, interrupting her thoughts. “That’s what everyone else is doing. We’d better hurry if we want to get down the mountain before dark.”

“You should come with us, Edward,” said Adela, and immediately felt herself blushing.

But he was looking up at the statue of Hortensia, which loomed over them, its expression disturbingly lifelike. “What about her?” he said.

“She can’t hurt anyone now,” said Adela.

He didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure she’s dead?”

Garth reached out and touched Hortensia’s marble hand. “Solid stone,” he confirmed.

“Still . . .” Edward stared at the statue for a moment. Then, with a look of determination, he gave it a shove.

The statue didn’t budge.

Adela thought she must be feeling what Edward was, because suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to see the statue knocked down. She stood next to him and pushed. Garth and Marguerite joined in. At last the statue toppled, hitting the ground with a powerful crash that broke Hortensia into pieces.

“I can’t imagine her coming back from that,” said Adela.

Garth leaned over to look at Hortensia’s face. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? To be so very beautiful and so very wicked?”

Edward frowned. “I don’t think she was beautiful at all,” he said. “A beautiful person is someone you want to look at because they’re good and kind. Because being with them makes you happy. I’ll be happy if I never see Hortensia again.”

He looked at Adela. “Now, Princess. If you really meant I should come with you, I’d like that.”

But Adela couldn’t speak. She was thinking about what he had said — that a beautiful person was someone who was good and kind, who made you happy.

She thought of what Hortensia had said, that people loved beauty most of all.

But they don’t, thought Adela. They love what’s inside a person. That’s what makes people worthy of love.

Edward was watching her, and she wondered what he saw. Did he see someone whom Hortensia had chosen to turn into a dandelion — a weed? Or did he see someone more beautiful than that — someone who was brave and kind?

Because when she looked at him, Adela felt as if she could see more than the handsome face that had won him an invitation to Hortensia’s garden party. She felt as if she could see inside Edward.

And what she saw was beautiful.

He knew what it was like to be a bird — to spread his wings and escape into the air. And now, after so long, he knew what it was like to be himself again. Edward’s mind stirred with conflicting memories and impressions.

It was dark now. The sun had set hours ago, and they were at a farm. He had walked down the mountain with the princess, the gardener, and the girl with the diamonds —
Garth and Marguerite,
he reminded himself. The princess had just hired a horse and wagon from the farmer, paying him with the diamond necklace she had loaned Marguerite. It seemed like the sort of thing a princess
would
do, paying for something with diamonds.

“I’ll drive,” said Garth.

“I’ll sit with you,” said Marguerite.

“Do you mind riding in back with me, Edward?” asked the princess.

She was
Your Highness,
or maybe
Miss Adela,
or maybe simply
Adela.
He didn’t know what to call her. He shook his head. “No. I don’t mind, Princess.”

She hoisted a cloth bundle into the wagon. It was the gardener’s coat, wrapped around the jewelry Hortensia had stolen. Edward had thought of offering to help the princess and her father return the jewels to their owners. After all, he had visited most of the homes of Hortensia’s guests to deliver their invitations; he was sure he would remember which person had worn which jewel. But it bothered him that he remembered that particular detail about each guest — a detail only a thief would recall. What would the princess think of him if she knew he was a thief?

She climbed into the wagon, turning so that she sat with her legs dangling out the back. Edward pulled himself up beside her.

“It’s chilly, isn’t it?” she said, rubbing her arms. “I suppose Hortensia must have enchanted the weather along with everything else. This feels more like October than the past couple of days.”

Edward pulled off his jacket. “Here. Take this.”

“But you’ll be cold!”

“I’ll be fine,” he said as he draped the jacket around her shoulders, adding, when she started to protest, “I’m used to being outside. That’s what thirty years as a magpie will do for a person.”

“Thirty years! Oh, Edward!”

He hadn’t meant to tell her that. How would she feel about him, knowing that he’d spent more years as a magpie than he’d spent as a man? “It’s all right,” he said quickly.

“But your mother!” said the princess.