The Wide-Awake Princess (5 page)

Annie was standing on the battlement facing the road into town when she noticed movement in the distance. The roses had overgrown the road for nearly a quarter mile, but beyond that it looked as if people were
gathering. Wagons heading to the castle had stopped on the road, unable to get past roses that had grown higher than the horses’ heads. Men on horse back were milling around the wagons, gesturing to one another and pointing at the castle.

Annie was concerned about what could happen to the sleeping inhabitants of the castle, but until now it hadn’t occurred to her that the rest of her parents’ subjects might be in danger as well. With the king asleep and not likely to wake any time soon, Treecrest had no one to make important decisions. And because most of his army was garrisoned in the castle, they were sound asleep as well, leaving only the soldiers currently on patrol to protect the people from bands of thieves, marauding trolls, and flocks of harpies. Annie wished she could get in touch with even one patrol, but she had no idea how to find any of them. If only there was someone she could turn to for help! She was sure that her uncle Rupert would come if she could get a message to him, but he was commanding the forces stationed at Delaroo Pass, high in the White Mountains. Even if he could leave someone else in charge of keeping the mountain trolls from entering the pass, it would take at least a month for word to reach him, then another month for him to make his way through the dragon territory that lay at the base of the mountains and cross the land that was said to be the most dangerous in all the kingdom. Annie didn’t think she had that much time. Once word got
out that the curse had taken its toll, unscrupulous people and nasty creatures would be pouring into the kingdom.

Annie’s eyes grew wide as another horrible thought came to mind. Without the king’s army, other kingdoms could invade Treecrest and be in control of the kingdom long before her family woke. Her parents could open their eyes to find themselves prisoners in their own kingdom. If Annie were to locate a prince to kiss her sister and wake everyone in the castle, she would have to do it quickly or the kingdom would be lost. Too bad she’d never traveled more than a few minutes’ ride from the castle and knew only what rumor and books had told her about the rest of the kingdom.

Annie’s first inclination was to start on her journey right away, but it was almost dusk and she wasn’t ready to go. Deciding that she’d leave as early as she could in the morning, she went to the kitchen and collected food to take with her, then ate some cold ham and cheese and drank a cup of cider before returning to her room for the night. Although she had seen for herself that she was the only person awake in the castle, she felt uneasy and dragged a heavy trunk in front of her door to block it.

She was up before dawn the next morning after a restless night spent starting at every creak of the castle walls and whisper of a breeze outside her window. The sound of the wind chimes was so faint in her room that she could barely hear it, but the moment she opened
the door it grew louder, serving as another reminder of everything that had happened the day before.

Dressed in the boy’s tunic and breeches that she had worn when she learned how to ride, she tucked her hair inside a boy’s cap, packed a gown, a few coins, and the other items she planned to take with her into a worn leather satchel and returned to the chamber where her mother still slept. Annie checked on her mother and sister. Reassured that they were sleeping peacefully, she went down the stairs to see her father, who, like everyone else in the castle, hadn’t moved since the day before.

It felt odd creeping around in her father’s private meeting room while he and his nobles were there, but she needed one of the maps kept rolled up on a row of narrow shelves. Finding the map of Treecrest and the surrounding kingdoms, Annie kissed her father on the cheek, something he never would have allowed when he was awake. He woke only briefly at her touch, but not enough to know that she was there.

The king was already snoring again when she pulled the tapestry away from the wall and reached for the latch of the hidden door. The fabric was heavy against her back as she slipped behind it and entered the secret passage that only members of the royal family knew existed. Wrinkling her nose at the musty smell, she stepped onto the landing and pulled the door closed behind her. It was dark inside the passage, but she’d been this way before. With the flint she’d brought with her clutched tightly in
her hand, Annie patted the rough wall beside her until she found one of the torches kept for emergencies. She used the flint to light the torch, and descended the circular stairway that led down past the lower floors and through the center of the dungeon. Closed off from everything around it, the stairwell had little ventilation and the air felt damp and heavy.

After what seemed like forever, she reached the last step and the long, low tunnel that led out of the castle. Years before, a magic spell had been placed on the tunnel to keep it intact; Annie didn’t dare linger for fear that her lack of magic might make the tunnel unsound. She walked holding the torch in front of her, relieved that she could no longer hear either the tinkling of the chimes or the collective breathing of the sleepers in the castle.

When the floor began to angle up, she hurried, anxious to get out of the tunnel. She finally emerged into a small cave and pushed aside the undergrowth that hid it from view of anyone passing by in the forest. Stepping out of the cave, she raised her face to the early-morning light filtering through the leaves overhead and paused to listen to the songs of birds, an ordinary sound that she’d missed while in the sleeping castle.

It occurred to her that she should go back and tell the townspeople what had happened to the king. Perhaps someone there could help her find the closest patrol or even go fetch Digby. She shouldered her satchel and tried to get her bearings. Knowing that the tunnel led straight
from the castle, Annie figured out from the direction of the cave which way she’d have to go to reach the road.

She was picking her way through the bracken and fallen twigs when she heard voices up ahead and smelled bacon cooking. Although she was about to call out to them, she pressed her lips closed when she heard the tone of their voices. She drew closer, slipping as quietly as she could from tree to tree so they wouldn’t see her, until she was within a stone’s throw of a makeshift campsite. A wagon was parked between her and the men, and she recognized it from the shape of the seat and the faded paint on the side as the one that had been used to deliver the trunk.

There were three men at the campsite, two of them sitting beside a smoking fire while a third held a pan of sizzling bacon over the flames. Roughly dressed and unshaven, they looked and sounded like the vagabonds she had feared would take advantage of her kingdom’s helplessness.

“No one’s seen that princess on the battlements yet today. What do you suppose she’s doing in there?” said one of the men.

“Doesn’t matter as long as she doesn’t get out,” replied the cook.

“How could she?” said the third man. “No one can get past those stinkin’ roses. Soon as you hack ’em out, they grow back again. Can’t go a foot without those things wrapping around you and tearing at your fleshy parts.”

“Fenley’s never going to stop complaining about those thorns.”

“Shaddup, Twitch! You’ll be the first to have a go at them the next time she makes us try. Then we’ll see who’s laughing when we pull the thorns out of your pudgy self.”

“The old bat won’t make us try to go in there again. My bet is once she sees that the princess is trapped like everybody else, she’ll forget about this castle and build a new one somewhere else. That’s what I would do.”

“Is that bacon almost ready? I likes it limp, not that burnt stuff you always make.”

Annie crept away, careful not to make a sound while the men argued behind her. There wasn’t a minute to waste. She had to get Digby to come kiss Gwendolyn as soon as she could. The sooner her father woke up, the sooner he could chase away the interlopers before they could do any real damage. It sounded as if a woman had sent them, although she couldn’t imagine who. Voracia wouldn’t need men like that to do her work for her. But if it wasn’t the wicked fairy, then who could it be?

Annie decided not to go to the town after all. If the woman didn’t know that Annie had left the castle, she might think she had a lot more time to do whatever it was she had planned and not be in a hurry to do it. Realizing that by not talking to the townspeople, Annie might be buying her father a little more time, she turned away from the road to the village and headed east to Shimshee, the kingdom where Digby’s family ruled.

Because much of Annie’s childhood had been spent exploring the land around the castle, she knew this part of the forest, including the location of a little-traveled path that would take her in the general direction that she wanted to go. She walked for most of the morning and didn’t stop even when her stomach started to growl. Taking out the bread and cheese she had packed in the satchel, she continued to walk even as she tore off a hunk of each. Intent on putting the rest away, she didn’t notice the old woman standing in her path until she’d almost run into her.

“You wouldn’t have any food to spare for a starving old woman, would you, dearie?” the old woman asked. “It’s been three days since I had my last bite to eat and I—”

“Sure,” said Annie, who was more concerned with getting to Shimshee than she was in talking to strangers. “Here,” she said, handing her the food she’d already torn off. “I’m sorry I can’t stay to talk, but I’m in a hurry and—”

“I ask for food and you give me this?” the old woman said, sniffing the cheese and looking at it with disdain. “I wouldn’t give this to my dog, if I had one.”

Annie watched aghast as the old woman pitched the bread and cheese into the underbrush. “That was perfectly good food!” Annie exclaimed. “I was about to eat that myself.”

“Liar!” said the old woman. “You probably have the good stuff hidden in your satchel. And for refusing to be kind to an old woman in need...”

“I gave you my lunch!” said Annie.

“You will have to pay!” the woman concluded as she raised her hand and pointed one gnarled finger.

“You really don’t want to do that,” Annie told her. The old woman was already chanting something ominous about words and snakes when Annie brushed past her. “I don’t have time for this,” she said as she walked away. The sound of rattling bones reached her ears just before the magic hit her and bounced back to the old woman. There was an anguished cry and Annie glanced over her shoulder. Frogs, snakes, and lizards spilled from the old woman’s mouth as she tried to scream at Annie.

“You can’t say that I didn’t warn you,” Annie said, and hurried on her way.

AN HOUR LATER, Annie reached unfamiliar ground. She stayed on the path she thought would take her to the branch of the Crystal River that led toward Shimshee, but by late afternoon she was no longer so certain. Although the path seemed to be going in the right direction, she had yet to see or hear running water. She began to wonder if she was lost. By the time the sun began to sink behind the trees, she was sure of it.

A wolf howled somewhere in the forest and Annie remembered the story she’d heard about a wolf following a little girl and eating her grandmother. She was considering climbing a tree for the night when she smelled wood smoke. Hoping to find the home of a woodcutter, she hurried toward the source of the smoke and entered a clearing, where she found a small cottage that hummed with magic. The candles flickering in the window looked ordinary enough and the magic didn’t
sound like the nasty kind, so Annie tiptoed to the window and peeked inside.

An old woman with white hair and the plump, sweet face of a kindly old grandmother carried food to two small children seated at a wide plank table. She used a cane when she walked, shuffling across the floor with an unsteady gait. When Annie bumped into the shutter, breaking off a corner, the children turned in their seats and stared at her through big, dark eyes set in pale faces. They were beautiful children with silky hair the color of walnuts and dark lashes framing their eyes, but their cheeks were dirty and tear streaked, and their clothes were soiled and torn. The boy looked as if he was a few years older than the girl, but their features were similar enough that Annie thought they must be siblings.

The boy and girl appeared frightened at first, but when they saw Annie they looked at her for only a moment before shifting their attention back to the food on the table. The old woman had seen them turn their heads and had followed their gaze to Annie. She smiled now and said in a playful voice, “Nibble, nibble, little mouse. Who’s that nibbling at my house?”

“I wasn’t nibbling,” Annie replied. “I just wanted to see if anyone was home.”

“I’m here, so you’re welcome to come in. Children are always welcome, especially if they’re tired and hungry. I have some very yummy food cooking. It’s... What did I tell you it was, little boy?”