Nobody's Princess (23 page)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nebula Award winner
STHER
F
RIESNER
is the author of 31 novels and over 150 short stories, including “Thunderbolt” in Random House’s
Young Warriors
anthology, which led to the creation of
Nobody’s Princess.
She is also the editor of seven popular anthologies. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, Poland, and Italy. She is also a published poet, a produced playwright, and a onetime advice columnist. Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in
Writer’s Market
and Writer’s Digest Books.

Besides winning two Nebula Awards in succession for Best Short Story (1995 and 1996), she was a Nebula finalist three times and a Hugo finalist once. She received the Skylark Award from NESFA and the award for Most Promising New Fantasy Writer of 1986 from
Romantic Times.

Ms. Friesner’s latest publications include
Temping Fate;
a short story collection,
Death and the Librarian and Other Stories;
and
Turn the Other Chick,
fifth in the popular Chicks in Chainmail series that she created and edits. She is currently working on the sequel to
Nobody’s Princess,
titled
Nobody’s Prize.

Educated at Vassar College, receiving a B.A. degree in both Spanish and drama, she went on to receive her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale University, where she taught for a number of years. She is married, the mother of two, harbors cats, and lives in Connecticut.

Ms. Friesner’s proudest public-appearance moment came while serving as toastmaster for the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, when she took the stage as Rapmaster Toast and, yes,
rapped
before an audience of thousands. And at her age, too. She has promised her children not to do that again.

Maybe.

T
HE ADVENTURES CONTINUE IN

Read on for a sneak preview of Helen’s

journey on the high seas—available now!

Excerpt copyright © 2008 by Esther Friesner.

Published by Random House Children’s Books.

PART I
IOLKOS

I stood in the bow of the little fishing boat and gazed at the glittering city high on the bluff ahead. Even so late in the day, with the sun setting and the early summer light fading from the sky, I could see how tall the palace walls stood. I marveled at how many buildings clustered at their feet. Only the richest cities were so crowded with houses and shops and temples.

Iolkos!
I thought happily.
It
must
be Iolkos. After so many days’ sail from Delphi, the gods grant it’s no place else.
My heart beat faster as I scanned the harbor that lay in the shadow of the citadel, seeking one special ship among all the rest. Where was it? Where was the vessel that would carry me off to adventure? Was it that one, with the almond-shaped eye painted in red just above the prow? Or that one, with a swarm of men busily at work, taking down its blue-bordered sail? Where was
my
ship, the ship Prince Jason was going to sail to the farthest shores of the Unfriendly Sea, the ship of heroes who would dare anything to fulfill the quest for the Golden Fleece? Where was the
Argo
?

“There she stands, lads, Iolkos!” the fisherman called out to Milo and me from his place at the steering oar, confirming my hopes. “And less than a day’s sail away.” He winked at me when he said “lads,” and I grinned back. Though I wore a boy’s tunic and my skin was deeply tanned from our voyage, I was no more a lad than that man’s daughter.

The fisherman knew my true name and rank—Helen, princess of Sparta, Lord Tyndareus’s heir, Queen Leda’s daughter—but I’d spent so much of our voyage from Delphi teaching him to call me “Glaucus,” the boy’s name I’d chosen for myself, that it came to his tongue naturally. He’d keep my secret. The real question was whether I could do the same. My brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, waited behind the walls of Iolkos, waited to sail with Prince Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece. I intended to join them on that quest, but for that to happen they must not recognize me as their sister or my adventure would be over before it began.

I leaned as far forward from the prow as I could without toppling out into the waves. Sea spray was cool and salty on my lips. There was a fine breeze filling our sail, and the sky swirled with squawking gulls. Soon we’d land, and I’d put the next step of my plan into action.

I wasn’t the only one in a hurry. “Is it true?” Milo exclaimed eagerly, scrambling to stand beside me. “Are we there at last?” My friend was
not
the world’s happiest sailor.

“Soon enough,” the fisherman said. “Tomorrow morning.” He leaned against the steering oar and turned our boat’s nose toward the shore.

“‘Tomorrow’?” I echoed. “Why not today?”

The fisherman chuckled. “You know the answer to that.”

So I did. “Always keep the shore in sight,” I recited dutifully. While I’d spent our voyage from Delphi teaching the fisherman to call me by a boy’s name, he’d spent it teaching me the basics of sailing. “A strayed boat’s a doomed boat.”

“And—?” he prompted.

“And only owls and foxes can see in the dark,” I went on. “The wise sailor beaches his boat by dusk.”

“Good. Now come here and show me what else you’ve learned.” He stood to one side and patted the steering oar that guided our little vessel.

“You want
me
to beach us?” I could hardly believe it. I’d never expected such a privilege. My father could buy a dozen great ships with the oil from just one season’s olive harvest, but for the fisherman this lone little boat was his entire existence, his livelihood, his only way back home.

“Are you
sure
?” I asked.

“I know this shore. It’s friendly enough. Go on, steer us. I’ll mind the sail, but I’ll step in if I see you doing something wrong.”

I said a prayer to Poseidon as I took the steering oar with both hands and braced my bare feet against the boat’s sun-warmed hull. I leaned against the long wooden oar and felt the power of the waves pushing back against me. There wasn’t much resistance, just enough for me to feel the message of the sea:
I am immortal, endless, stronger and wilder than a thousand bulls. If you think that you’ve tamed me because you’ve made me carry you where you want to go, you’re a fool. Respect me, or pay for your pride.

Yes, Lord Poseidon,
I thought as I turned the boat toward shore.
I hear. I know. I ask your blessing.

The god answered in his own way, by letting me beach the boat without much trouble. When I felt the bottom grate along the sand and pebbles, I took a deep breath of relief.

Milo was the first to leap from the boat. “I’ll make the fire!” he called out, racing away to gather bits of wood.

“Helpful, isn’t he?” the fisherman remarked as we dragged the boat a safe distance onto the beach.

“He’d volunteer to kill a dragon if it meant he’d have solid ground under his feet,” I replied.

After Milo got the fire started, we cooked some red mullet we’d caught and ate them along with the last of the bread and cheese we’d bartered for at a small village two days’ voyage south. I was convinced that I’d be too excited to eat or sleep that night. My mind rang with
Iolkos! Iolkos! Iolkos!
My body had other ideas. I gobbled up every bit of food in front of me and my eyes closed as soon as my head touched the ground.

That night, my dreams were strange and terrifying. I was back in the forests of Calydon, once more running with the hunt for the monstrous boar that was ravaging the land. The beast rushed out of the darkness the same way that he’d come when I’d helped the great huntress Atalanta meet his attack.

In my dream I stood alone.

Stop!
I shouted at the charging beast, holding the great boar spear steady.
Stop! I order you, as Sparta’s future queen!

The boar kept coming. I jammed the spear’s butt against the earth and dug in my feet to meet his attack, but when I glanced down, I saw a blood-chilling change. Instead of wearing a boy’s tunic, I was weighed down by a heavily flounced dress. Instead of a spear, I held a spindle tangled with gleaming gold thread. A strand leaped out and lashed itself around my wrists.

Then the boar struck. One moment I was standing, the next I was sprawled across the beast’s back. The boar tore on down the mountain, through the trees. My thoughts were thunder. With one winall/lose-all motion I jerked my bound hands down and slashed the thread apart on the boar’s own tusk. I gave a shout of triumph as I grabbed the creature’s shaggy pelt and threw one leg over his spine, ready to ride him to the edge of the world.

“Wake up! Lady Helen, wake up! You’re having a bad dream.” A strong hand on my shoulder shook me. I bolted upright. The sky was just beginning to turn light, the horizon shimmering with a pearly glow soft and rosy as the smile of Aphrodite. As I rubbed grit from my eyes, I felt my hair stir in the dawn breeze. My nostrils filled with the clean, briny smell of the sea, my ears with the cries of gulls and other seabirds.

“You’ve
got
to stop calling me ‘Lady Helen,’” I said drowsily.

“I’m sorry, Lady Hel—” Milo squatted beside me on the beach, biting his lower lip.

“Never mind, it’s all right.” I wanted to take that look off his face. Milo was my friend, but he always took anything I said to him much too seriously. It was as if I were already queen of Sparta instead of just fourteen, probably not much older than he was himself. Of course, it was impossible to say exactly how old he was: No one kept track of a slave boy’s age.

Milo was no slave now. I had bought his freedom from my uncle, the king of Calydon. I had bought my own freedom as well, freedom from skirts and spindles and the life everyone said a royal daughter
must
lead, but I hadn’t made that bargain using gold. I’d bought my liberty with a decision, choosing to turn away from the safe road home to Sparta to go on the quest for the Golden Fleece.

I got up and stretched, then patted Milo’s shoulder. “There’s no harm in you calling me by my real name when there’s only the two of us. I’m just worried about what could happen if you slipped up in front of other people.”

“You can trust me,” Milo replied. “I’d die to protect your secret.”

“You won’t have to.” I spoke quickly. “Just watch how you speak to me. The moment we set foot in Iolkos, there is no Lady Helen of Sparta, understood?”

He ventured a small smile. “I’ll guard my tongue, but who’s going to guard yours?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you were asleep, you kept yelling about who you are, how you’re Sparta’s next queen—” He spread his hands, letting go of any blame. “It woke me up.”

It was my turn to feel embarrassed.

“People say all sorts of things in their dreams,” he reassured me. “Once we’re aboard the
Argo,
I’ll look out for you, awake or asleep.”

“And what happens when you topple overboard and drown because you’ve spent your nights standing guard over my dreams?” I teased.

“If it was for your sake, I’d be glad to—”

“What are you two jabbering about?” The fisherman appeared from behind the far side of his beached boat, a wooden spear in one hand, a string of fat fish in the other. “Not bad for a little wading in the shallows, eh?” He held up his catch proudly. “Now build up the fire or we’ll have to eat these beauties raw.”

Later, as we picked the last of the fishes’ meat from their bones, our host looked at me and said, “Today we part ways. You’ve brought me good fortune and safe seas on this journey…Glaucus. Is there any favor I can do for you when I return to Delphi?”

I didn’t have to think twice to answer that. “Tell Eunike I send her my love and thanks for everything she’s done for me,” I replied. “Tell her that you left Milo and me well, safe, and happy at Iolkos.”

The fisherman made a face. “As if it’s that simple for a man like me to get an audience with the holy Pythia.”

I gave him a knowing smile. “You’ll be able to do it easily enough if Lady Helen of Sparta puts in a good word for you.”

Then we both laughed, for we shared a secret: The only reason I’d been able to steal away to Iolkos was because people have eyes and ears, yet most don’t use them. My friend Eunike was the Pythia, priestess and prophet of Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. When she spoke, people heard the all-seeing sun god’s own words, predicting the future. When she declared that Lady Helen would not leave Delphi when her guardsmen headed home, everyone assumed it was Apollo’s will. (She didn’t lie: My guards marched off to Sparta one day before Milo and I sailed for Iolkos.) After that, whenever any of the priests who kept Apollo’s shrine saw a royally dressed girl walking through the temple grounds, who else could she be but Lady Helen? In reality she was the daughter of the same fisherman who’d brought me this far in my journey.

I hoped that the same trick that let a fisherman’s daughter pass for a Spartan princess would also fool my brothers on the
Argo.
Even the largest ship is a small, enclosed world. We
would
run into one another, unless I spent the whole voyage hiding in a chest, and what would be the point of that? When my brothers saw me, I wanted them to look right at me and say to each other:

Is that our sister?

What,
here
? Did you get too much sun? That’s just one of the other men’s weapons bearers.

I was very confident that was exactly how things would work out. I was so eager to see it all unscroll smoothly that after breakfast I danced around our smothered fire, urging the fisherman to launch his boat. I wanted to be in Iolkos
now.

The winds were with us. The sun wasn’t even a hand-span above the horizon by the time we beached on the strand at the foot of the great city on the Wavy Sea. I reached into the leather belt-pouch I carried and pulled out a little golden disk as big as my thumbnail. My best skirts from home were trimmed with a fortune in such charms, dresses fit for a princess. Before we left Delphi, I’d harvested the gold, silver, and gemmed ornaments to trade for necessities. I tried to give this one to the fisherman, but he refused it.