How to Break an Evil Curse Page 3

  Conroy was by no means happy, but he had been bracing himself for worse. Farland hadn’t taken into account the fact that, to most men, their children only become real to them on a true emotional level when they are actually holding them in their arms for the first time.

  “It may not seem like a big deal now,” Farland pointed out, “since you’re not even married and the prospect of offspring is a bit down the road, but I assure you that once your child is born you will wish you’d never crossed me! You’ll have to remodel the whole castle to accommodate the child. And no riding, no hunting, not even taking a walk! Family trips will be a logistical nightmare!”

  Conroy mulled it over, and the more he thought the worse it did seem. But then something occurred to him and he brightened. “This only applies if the ring is on my finger?”

  “Yes, but the ring will never leave your finger. It’s stuck on. With magic.”

  Prince Conroy pulled a dagger out of his boot with a fancy flourish and held it, not to the wizard’s throat as the slack jawed onlookers had expected, but to his own ringed finger. “And if I cut off my finger?”

  “You will die.”

  “Oh...” Conroy’s hands fell to his sides. Defeated, but not defingered. “Drat...”

  Farland looked at Mirabella and raised his eyebrows with a look that clearly said, “Impressive, huh?”

  She chuckled a soulless chuckle and nodded her approval.

  Farland enjoyed a cozy glow of pride. Even if the murder wasn’t panning out, this was a nice consolation prize: a bit of recognition from the lady he fancied.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Conroy asked, his voice affected a pleading tone. He was looking now at the house where his future wife was peeking out into the yard through a gap in the shutters. He met her one visible eye and saw there a horrified look that showed she had heard all. This was her future child they were discussing, too.

  “There’s no way of proving my curse short of testing it,” Farland said dryly. “Cut off your finger, see if you live. Or, open a window during the day when you are in a room with your child.” He grinned. “Then you’ll know whether there’s a curse. Maybe that ring is just stuck on your finger because you’ve put on weight living in the lap of luxury.”

  “I have not put on—” Conroy started defensively, but then snapped his mouth shut, not wanting to sound petty when Lillian was listening. “Is there anything that can break the curse?” he asked. “There’s always something that can be done to break a curse3.”

  Reluctantly, Farland admitted this. “It is true that part of the procedure of concocting a curse requires the creation of a counter-curse. The key to success, however, is to make it really, really hard. Something so outrageous that it is almost impossible. Almost being the key word there, my friend. For if it were utterly impossible it wouldn’t—”

  “I get it. Go on, already,” growled Conroy.

  Farland blinked once in annoyance. “In order to break the curse, your child must fall in love with a person who has spent their whole life at sea, whose parents were once part of a traveling theater troupe, who can play banjo and accordion and harpsichord, and who is allergic to asparagus.”

  “Surely no such person can exist!” cried Conroy.

  “But it will be amusing to watch you search for this individual, because search you will. No matter how impossible you think the task. After all, the world is large, my friend—there was a sour tone on this word—“and full of people with all sorts of backgrounds, interests, and allergies. It is not impossible for such a person to exist, only improbable. But rest assured, if I ever do catch wind of someone who fits the description, I will kill them. That won’t negate the curse, either, because there could always be another individual who fits the bill somewhere out there on the high seas.”

  Prince Conroy’s shoulders sagged. What had he done to deserve this?

  “You’ve annoyed me ever since we first met,” Farland answered instantly. “All the annoyances over the years just started stacking up.”

  “You can read minds?” Conroy exclaimed, thinking frantically back to what must have been thousands of things he’d thought in the presence of the wizard that were better left unshared. If he could read minds then, Conroy had to admit, Farland really did have reason to think ill of him. Conroy tried to come off as a good guy, but there was a lot of stuff that went on in the ol’ gray matter that was not so pretty. Also, some of the things Farland had doubtless found out by reading his mind were of a very personal nature. Conroy turned an un-princely shade of red.

  Farland smiled, looking off into the distance in a reminiscent sort of way without bothering to answer.

  “If you weren’t a wizard who could vanish in a puff of smoke whenever you chose, I’d have you banished, too! No, I’d have you executed!” Conroy cried, totally losing his cool.

  Farland laughed a final evil laugh, gave Mirabella a courteous nod, and disappeared in a puff of smoke. All assembled coughed, stumbled about, and staggered out of the smoke to get some fresh air.

  The Prince, who had anticipated Farland’s smoky exit with enough time to take a deep breath, recovered quickly. When he next whirled in a fit of regal rage on Mirabella, she was still coughing, and he enjoyed the feeling (rare when talking to her) that he was the one in control of the conversation. “You, traitor, have five minutes to collect your belongings and say your goodbyes. Then you will be escorted to The Forest of Looming Death where you will live the rest of your blighted days in darkness and solitude. Solitude except for the other banished criminals, anyway,” he said vindictively, “but they’re mostly murderers, so I can’t imagine they make the best company.”

  He then turned his back on her coughing form, hoping never to set eyes on her again, and strode over to the house, hoping Lillian hadn’t taken this whole affair too badly. One look into the eye he could see through the gap in the shutters showed she had been crying.

  “Dearest!” cried he. “Poor thing, I have deprived you of your only sister! But surely—”

  “Oh, I’m not crying about that!” Lillian blubbered. “I’m crying because…how could she! How could she…conspire to kill the man I love?” At this last, she gasped and covered her mouth (not that he could see that).

  Conroy staggered backward a few paces.

  “You—you—love me?” he stammered, all his troubles momentarily forgotten. “Oh, Lillian! Such joy! Such happiness! You have transformed this day from—” he thought “—from the worst day of my life to the best!” Not as flowery of language as he would have liked, but this situation had snuck up on him. Had he known words of love were going to be exchanged, he would have had the court poet whip up a little something for him, but as it was, he had to wing it on his own, which was not his forte.

  What Conroy could see of Lillian’s tearstained face broke into a grin of delight. “Conroy! Oh, Conroy!”

  “Oh, Lillian!”

  She opened the shutters a bit more, enough to stretch her hand through. He took her hand in both of his and gave it a gentle squeeze as he smiled at her, forgetting the guards and knights and pages and Mirabella fidgeting around behind him. “Lillian, will you tell your father to come to the castle tonight? I have something particular to tell him.” He wiggled his eyebrows significantly.

  Mirabella cut in from behind, “That you wish to apologize for banishing one daughter without giving him a chance to say goodbye, and on the same day taking his other daughter away to marry, thus leaving him and his wife on this farm in their declining years to tend the asparagus on their own?” Though in truth, she didn’t mind at all that she’d never again see the parents who had cared for her all these years against the constant advice of friends and family to ship her off to an asylum.

  A guard shook her roughly by the shoulder and whispered, “Quiet!” He was staring with rapt attention at Conroy and Lillian, a single sentime
ntal tear trembling on his lashes.

  Lillian didn’t even spare her sister a glance. Mirabella would not ruin her happy moment with mention of the reality of the hardship their parents were now facing. Besides, Conroy would surely provide for them if this conversation were really going the direction it seemed to be. (He wouldn’t really provide for them). “Of course I’ll tell him, my only!”

  Jubilation, cheers, happiness from all assembled (except, of course, for Mirabella).

  With one last look that spoke volumes, the Prince turned and instructed two of his most trusted knights to see to Mirabella’s banishment, and then he mounted his steed and trotted back home to the castle with the rest of his retinue trailing in his wake. He was happy as a clam, which I guess is pretty happy if we are to put our trust in the people who make up such expressions, though what a lonely little bottom-feeder scraping along the ocean floor eating fish excrement and decomposed plants and animals has to be all that thrilled about is beyond me.

  * * *

  1Don’t go thinking Farland some misguided progressive guy with the idea that the ends sometimes have to justify the means on the road to a greater society, because (1) his fancies ran more toward anarchy than democracy, and more important (2) killing people is pretty much never the best solution to a problem unless we’re talking tyrannical monarch or poison-happy tower witch or some such. But in this case, we are not. While the Royal Family was quite self-absorbed and entitled, one must admit that those qualities seem to go with the profession—there is almost no getting around the fact that royalty thinks more highly of themselves than they probably should. The meaner members of this particular royal family could be rather oppressive to their subjects and had unreasonable taxes and laws, but no more so (and often less so) than their cohorts in neighboring kingdoms. Even the dungeon they spirited the particularly unruly citizens off to was smaller than most and stocked with fewer sadistic employees than might be expected. So, yes, the Royal Family of the Land of Fritillary was sort of bad, but not bad enough to justify all this hoopla on Farland’s part.

  2A practice that, in case you are not familiar with it since you have been raised in a modern age with heightened awareness of diseases and cleanliness, involves both parties cutting themselves and then holding the cuts together, the idea being that one party would then have the other’s blood flowing through their veins and vice versa)(never do that, by the way—it is disgusting).

  3This is, indeed, true. For every evil curse that is created, there has to be an opposite and equal good that can cancel it out. A scientist said so and everything, sort of. The problem is that the creator of the curse is the one who also gets to choose the counter-curse, and so the odds of finding the good tends to be rather bleak.

  Chapter Three

  The great castle where dwelled the Royal Family of the Land of Fritillary was the finest castle around. Top notch. Grade A. It was by far the largest and the most aesthetically pleasing, situated on a lush hilltop overlooking the coast of the ocean with nearby a preponderance of waterfalls and many a cave, inlet, and hollow.

  The castle itself was beautiful beyond description, but let’s give it a try, shall we? Wherever there was a place that would benefit from a nice pillar or a bit of carving, there was a nice pillar or a bit of carving. Wherever there was fabric (curtains, banners, upholstery, and so on) it was of the finest possible quality. Wherever there were doors, they were made of the best wood available, and their hinges never squeaked. The furniture was the grandest, the floors and ceilings tiled the most intricately, the ironwork the most curved and twisted, the nooks and crannies the most cozy, the gargoyles the most fierce, and the cherubs the most sweetly angelic.

  But—

  Come with me, dear reader, down a dark hidden hallway, through a dark hidden doorway, to a dark hidden staircase. Let us pause, summon our courage, and walk down, down, down.

  To the dungeon!

  Many a poor soul has disappeared in these depths, never to reappear again. The stone steps extend for an eternity and the torches are few, far between, and rarely lit. At the bottom of the dark and uneven steps, we find ourselves in a high-ceilinged chamber festooned with all manner of unpleasant-looking gizmos and machines whose purpose is plainly to inflict pain on the unhappy lodgers of the dungeon. Only two of the ten visible devices are in use at the time our story reaches this dreadful chamber, which says something for the head jailer and his boss the King, I suppose. Not much, but something.

  Four dark passages lead off the main chamber, one north, one south, one west, and one east. Between the passages barred cells line the chamber walls.

  The head jailer, Jim, was shuffling through some papers at his desk by the stairs, mumbling about the bother of paperwork and opining that they should get some dame down there to do the filing, thus freeing him up for more Man Work. But no, he’d put in a request to his boss for a secretary and he’d turned Jim down flat, saying the dungeon was no place for a woman, they being so delicate and prone to fits and things of that nature. Plus, they just get married and pregnant and quit, and you have to hire another one and start the whole darn process all over again. Women! Bah! Yes, Jim supposed it really was best if they stayed home and cooked and had babies and didn’t get uppity ideas about employment and financial independence. So, when his boss had refused his request for a secretary, he had been annoyed but unsurprised.

  Glancing up from some new admittance forms at the scene of blood and groaning before him, Jim had to concede that there might be some logic to the refusal. Dames didn’t study the Secretarial Arts with this sort of workplace in mind. He allowed himself a moment of fun and spun around a few times in his swivel chair, then looked back down at his work, but the final sheet on the stack of long-postponed drudgery would have to wait, because just then something odd happened.

  He cocked his head to one side, for he had heard something strange: footsteps coming down the stairs. Of course, footsteps are not, in general, strange, but these were. They sounded... female. Those feet were wearing not boots but shoes that sounded as though they didn’t even have hard soles. Slippers? And was that the swish of fabric against the wall? A gown?

  Closer and closer the newcomer came, and, after a few moments, voices could be heard. Two women? The visitors rounded the bend, and Jim found himself staring straight at the Queen. Despite the general spirit of shock that swept around the room like a cyclone, Jim and everyone else had the presence of mind to fall into the customary groveling bow. That is, everyone who wasn’t affixed to a device that prevented it.

  Oblivious of her prostrate subjects below, Queen Lillian was talking energetically to her maid, Eugenia, who was as always trailing a few steps behind her. Jim heard the last bit of what she was saying: “—never even knew there was a dungeon in the palace! Imagine my surprise! But I simply had to come down here and see it for myself, because I think it would be just the perfect place!” Here she took another step as her eyes scanned the room, seeing but not seeing. “Deep underground, no windows, quite sizeable. All we’d need is a good interior decorator…”

  Her voice trailed off. Her gaze had fallen on a prisoner chained to the wall. A full minute of incoherent stuttering and stammering ensured, then she gasped, “Who is in charge here?”

  “I am, Your Majesty,” Jim said, still bowing.

  She glanced at him and waved her hand distractedly. “Oh, do stand up.” Her eyes drifted back to the room and she stared, momentarily waking from a lovely dream of a charmed life married to her handsome king to the nightmare of what truly went on behind the scenes of her fairytale castle she called home. “Does the King know about this place?” she asked in a low whisper. It was a silly question, but even now she was still inclined to believe the very best of her husband.

  Before Jim could answer in the affirmative, Lillian gave a trill little laugh and continued, “No, he couldn’t possibly,” and of course Jim
wasn’t about to contradict the Queen.

  But the truth was Conroy knew very well about the dungeon. As his father and his advisors had taught him, the dungeon was a key component in their formula for running a manageable kingdom. Scoop up just enough citizens for committing petty crimes or speaking ill of the King and imprison them for unreasonable amounts of time (or never release them at all) and you can bet your bottom dollar that gossip will spread like wildfire that you are not a ruler to cross. After centuries of trial and error Conroy’s kingly ancestors had worked the process out to a science. Take too many commoners at a time and you run the risk of the populace banding together and having riots. Take too few and no one really notices, but take just the right amount and the dungeon becomes a mysterious, fearful place whispered about before the fireplace on cold nights—a place that is possibly a rumor, maybe true, but certainly terrifying.

  Yes, the key to keeping a populace under control was just the right amount of fear that they might be carted off for some minor offence and locked away forever. Once every few years, when his spies said that talk of the dungeon was dying down, the King would have a prisoner released—one who’d been driven crazy and thus couldn’t give too many specifics—and rumors would begin to fly anew.

  When Lillian herself had been a lowly peasant on the asparagus farm, she had never heard the gossip since she tended to block out all things unpleasant. But her parents had talked fairly often about a cousin’s friend’s uncle who had disappeared shortly after refusing to pay his taxes.