Oskar pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, and hopped over the low railing that separated the corridor from the gardens.
The guards gaped at him, but none of them moved to stop him as he strolled deeper into the garden.
The monster-princess lost all resemblance to the royal family when she saw him coming. She wore a look Oskar had never seen on any member of the royal family—alive or dead. She resembled a dog that had been abandoned—distrustful and frightened.
She shifted a little so her back was not to him, her eyes drowning with pain and fright. Oskar suspected it would have hurt him less to take a spear to the chest than to witness such a look again. In that moment, she ceased to be the monster-princess in his mind, and simply became the princess.
He crouched in front of her and offered her a clean handkerchief. She shrunk away from him, breaking his heart a little more. “It’s okay,” he said in his most soothing voice. She didn’t pull back any more, but she didn’t move to take the handkerchief either.
Oskar sat there so long his legs started to cramp and his feet grew numb. But he was rewarded when the princess, as cautious as a mouse, crept forward and took the handkerchief from him.
Her eyes were glazed with a lingering fear, but her lips trembled, and it took Oskar several moments to realize she wassmiling.
Oskar came from a good, loving family. When he was a child, every night his parents embraced him before he was sent to bed. Looking at the princess, he wondered when the last time a member of her family spoke to her, much less touched her.
Breaking every protocol pertaining to royalty that had been drummed in his head since he was first employed at the palace, Oskar reached out and ruffled the princess’s white hair.
The princess stared at him in shock and awe but Oskar, hearing a guard shift behind him, stood. He winked at the princess and sauntered off as casually as he had come. He nodded at a guard, jumped the railing back into the corridor, and strolled off, whistling merrily.
He waited until he rounded a corner and was at the south side of the palace to sigh and pinch his eyes shut. “I see it, Anja. I see it.”
Later he would beashamed to admit it, but Oskar thought of the imprisoned princess infrequently. She was easy to forget as she was locked in her tower, separated as if she were diseased.
Years passed. Anja left—her family moved to a small backwater village. Oskar suspected Anja’s daughter—like the princess—possessed magic, and Anja and her husband were moving to hide it. He said nothing in spite of his suspicions, but he was sorry to see the cheerful head cook leave.
Oskar worked furiously towards his employment goal and, at age twenty, was respected by his peers, courting a lovely girl, on the verge of becoming Prince Steinar’s personal attendant.
It came as a surprise when he received instructions to carry a trunk to the princess’s quarters. He didn’t question it—he wanted that promotion—so he carried the trunk, which weighed about as much as a boat anchor, to the dank, cheerless tower hidden behind the palace, in the fringe of the forest.
I wonder how she has grown. Has the isolation cracked her? Has she become the monster they think her to be? I can’t imagine anyone surviving what she has with much goodwill.Oskar thought as he ambled towards his destination.
Six soldiers stood guard outside the tower door. One of them opened the door, and Oskar peered inside with curiosity and apprehension.
In that instant, he wished he hadn’t come, that he had insisted they send someone else, for though the princess had grown, her expression was still as frightened and as harmless as ever.
She sat in the corner of the tower, curled into as small of a target as possible as she watched maids pack her belongings. Her eyes were pools of pain and fright.
Three soldiers stood around her in a semi-circle, their weapons aimed at her.
I knew it was bad, but this…this is inhumane!
A maid approached Oskar. “Wonderful, put the trunk over here, careful now.”
Numbly, Oskar did what he was told.
“Thank you. We’ll be able to finish packing with this.” the maid said. She glanced back at the princess and shivered. She gave Oskar a charming smile and leaned closer so she could whisper. “We don’t want to be tarrying—‘tis a danger to be here.”
Oskar knew he should have returned the smile—and backed away, his darling wouldn’t take kindly to the scant distance between him and the maid—but Oskar barely noticed her. He was still staring at the princess, who had lowered her gaze to her hands and was pressing herself against the tower wall.
He shuffled outside, jumping when the door closed behind him with a bang.
“She’s an eerie thing to behold,” a soldier said when Oskar stood, frozen in place.
“Unnatural,” a second soldier agreed.
“No.” Oskar shook his head and made his feet move, leaving the tower behind him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t as easily banish the princess’s sad expression from his mind.
Oskar sawher again exactly one week later. He was one of a dozen servants assembled to load the princess and her few belongings—clothes, mostly—into a wagon caravan that would take her to her new home on Ensom Peak. A small garrison of soldiers would escort her—whether it was to keep her from running, or to guard her from any attackers, Oskar did not know. One thing was certain, however: the princess was being exiled.
