Shy (Prologue) (Part 2)

At last the night came. The moon was fat and full like a peach. All day the castle rumbled to the sound of its many visitors, and as the evening’s entertainment drew nearer, the princess found herself lingering in her bedchamber, wondering what excuse she could concoct this time.

Just as she resolved to wander once more into the woods and find the ugly old woman, there was a knock at the door.

It was the king.

She had already wrapped herself in a cloak when the army of servants filtered in, tore the cloak off her, and stuffed her into a dress.

An hour later she was walking in step with the king, along with the king and queen of the neighbouring kingdom and their son, the handsome prince.

As they entered the castle’s grandest hall, all the clocks chimed at once, and the king’s lords and ladies and knights and wanderers all bowed low and parted to let them take their elevated seats ready for the feast.

The sound in the hall soon rose to a din as the talk grew lively and loud. Usually the princess would have thrown herself head first into such chatter, but tonight she found she couldn't get a word in anywhere. Every time an opening in a conversation seemed to suggest itself, she would go to speak, but then it would seal up again. One time she managed to get several words out – 'Yes, you could say it's rather like–’ – but then she was interrupted and the conversation hurried along without her. Out of the corner of his eye, the king seemed to notice what had happened, and when that particular conversational thread ended, he said, 'What were you going to say?'

'Sorry?' said the princess.

'You were going to say something, no? “It's rather like ...”?'

'Oh, yes. Well, I ... forgive me, I can't remember what it was now.'

The princess didn't get a chance to see what the king's expression was, for he looked away then, over at their royal guests, who seemed to be laughing at some joke of the Old Bear’s.

And then the king was on his feet. 'Old Bear,' he called above the din. A silence fell. 'Repeat what you just said, for all to hear.'

The Old Bear looked at him, a little confused, then said, ‘You mean the joke, Your Grace?'

The king nudged the princess with an elbow and hissed, 'Go on. Do it. Now.'

The princess didn't understand. 'Do what?'

'The voice,' he hissed.

'Oh. I ...'

Everyone in the hall looked on, not quite understanding.

'Anything more I should say, Your Grace?' said the Old Bear.

'Come on,' hissed the king.

The princess rose to her feet.

'Is everything quite alright, Your Grace?' said the Old Bear.

'Is everything quite alright, Your Grace?' said the princess.

'Pardon?' said the Old Bear.

'Pardon?'

The Old Bear shuffled his feet. 'Um. I ...'

'Um. I ...'

The silence in the hall began to creak.

The voice was all wrong.

It wasn't that the princess's talents had deserted her. At least she didn’t think it was. It was just that, with all the eyes looking at her, her throat had grown so dry and her heart so shaky that it didn’t come out right.

Then a voice from one of the farthest tables spoke up. 'Oh I get it.'

'Yes,' said another voice. 'It's an impersonation. It's the Old Bear.'

'Hmm,' said another voice.

And before too long there seemed to be some general sense of agreement in the hall that it did sound, well, somewhat like the Old Bear, and then everyone in the hall was having their own stab at the impersonation, and their attempts, good and bad, produced some tittering and giggling here and there. It was laughter. But was it the kind of laughter the king had wanted?

When the princess and the king sat for the next course of the feast, the talk began to swirl around the princess again. All the while she sat there, solemn, not saying a word, wondering what everyone in the hall was thinking about her. The king, for his part, was twitchy and constantly on the lookout for some opportunity to bring the princess and the handsome prince together. Eventually, the king turned to the princess and said, ‘Is something the matter?'

The princess blushed. 'Forgive me. I'm a little tired is all.' Another excuse. Another lie.

'I see. Well. Eat up. You'll need the energy. The play is next.'

The problem this time was not a lack of laughter.

The hall roared at most every line of the princess’s play. The gap-toothed girl and the princess's giggling girls pranced their way back and forth across the stage, winning laugh after laugh, all whilst the princess orchestrated things from behind the stage.

But when the final line was uttered and the last of the applause died down and the revellers started to make their way out, the king spoke up again.

'Wait!' he called. 'Wait. It is not over.'

There was a faint murmuring.

Then he hissed, 'Princess. Now is the time. The great unmasking.'

The girls looked back at him in confusion.

'Now, princess,' he hissed. 'Now.'

But nothing happened and no one understood.

So the king marched over to the stage and grabbed the gap-toothed girl by the face and ... and pulled.

The girl shrieked in agony.

'Take it off!' the king insisted. 'Come on, princess. Show yourself. Show them that it was you all along.’

At that moment the princess appeared from behind the stage.

'Off!' the king yelled, pulling harder.

Once he'd stopped and seen what had happened, he stood, shoulders heaving with the effort of it all, and said just a single word. 'Oh.'

The gap-toothed girl’s face was streaked with blood and she lay in a crumpled heap.

The princess shrank into herself.

The only sound in the whole hall was the king’s heavy breathing.

It could not be denied that the rest of the night had a sour taste to it after that.

The king, being the way he was, made a joke of the whole thing and had the girl whisked away before ushering his guests into the ballroom for a dance. But once the dancing had begun, it was clear that the damage was already done. The princess kept to the shadowy corners avoiding all the lordlings’ gazes, and when she did get coerced onto the dancefloor she found that she didn’t know how to stand or what to do with her hands. The king, meanwhile, tried his best to encourage the handsome prince from the neighbouring country towards his daughter, but the prince spent the whole of the dance looking for the gap-toothed girl who had wooed the court with her charms. He never even saw the strange, quiet figure at the far end of the ballroom.

Very few people, in fact, saw the princess after that.

Rumours swirled from that day forth.

Some said the princess had fallen foul of some terrible ailment, and was being confined to her sick bed till further notice. Some said there was no curing her because she was already dead: in one last fit of sadness, she had hanged herself in the draughty north tower. Some even said that the king had killed her himself, for she was no true heir of his.

Other tales were more fanciful. One story went that she had snuck through a secret passageway and now lived in the walls of the castle, peering through cracks and mirrors and paintings at all that happened there. It was said she heard every thought, every stirring, every shudder. Speak ill of her and she would know.

Another story said she walked the forest path endlessly in search of an ugly old woman who kept her bloody tongue in a jar on some shelf and would not give it back until the day the princess could make a woodland pool still again.

Then there was the most curious story of all. It told of the princess’s quick flight from the castle. She had fled to the shore, where she acquired a boat and rowed herself to a ship that sat in the depths of the ocean. But it was no normal ship, the whispers went. It was the king’s ship, called the Peach – and shaped like a peach too, for it was an enormous gnarled sphere made of old, tired metal and honeycombed with passages and tunnels and secret ways beyond count. Most of the ship lay hidden beneath the water’s surface, so that from a distance the only part of it you could see was a lonely watchtower that protruded from its top. And it was in the uppermost chamber of this tower that the princess lived out her days.

What she did there, no one knew. Some said she wasted away her time reading books and playing with dolls. Others said that the great structure that roared and creaked beneath her was not forged in the shape of a peach, after all, but in the shape of her mind, and that down in its darkest depths she ran terrible experiments with forgotten things from forgotten places – experiments that would fix her; fix her because – and there could be no doubt – she was broken.