How to Break an Evil Curse Read online

  Yes, all in all Delia thought Julianna was a weird child and would not have been overly suspicious of a bit of unexplained dirt; she probably would have just assumed Julianna liked to play in the potted plants in the middle of the night.

  Julianna hopped out of the tub, got into her PJs, turned another page for Dexter, and then succumbed to her exhaustion and went to her bedroom, where she collapsed into her four-poster canopy bed. She fell asleep quickly, dreaming of reaching the end of her tunnel. After a few hours, Delia woke her.

  “Rise and shine, sweetheart,” Delia trilled. “Remember your mother is coming down for lunch today.”

  The older Julianna got, the less her parents visited. It had gotten to the point where Conroy came down for a chat about once a week, and her mother visited once every few days for lunch. Julianna knew her dad was super busy dealing with an increasingly unhappy populace (they’d been getting more and more unhappy ever since Lillian had released that huge influx of prisoners into the city and thrown off the delicate balance) and Julianna knew her mom was really into being the figurehead of the women’s rights movement, but still she felt that if they loved her like parents should love their kids they’d be down in the dungeon every single day playing chess, reading books with her, and asking what was going on in her life.

  It didn’t help that the visits had really dropped off since her little uncursed heir-to-the-throne brother, Conroy Jr., had been born seven years earlier, just when she’d been getting into her moody early teen years. Eventually, she had grown out of the resentment she had felt from that period of her life. Rationally, she realized that perhaps part of the reason they had stopped visiting so much was that she yelled at them and gave them the cold shoulder whenever they stopped by, but they were her parents, and if they weren’t going to put any effort into helping her deal with her emotional distress, then who was going to5?

  So, Julianna was sort of happy and sort of not that her mom was coming for lunch.

  Another downside of the visits was that the older Julianna got, the more her mom talked about her future—a subject that made Julianna really, really uncomfortable. Would she languish away in the dungeon, a spinster to the end of her days? Would they find someone willing to marry her? Marriage was a chilling thought, because the way she looked at it, only a super-weirdo or a creep would consent to be all right with having a cursed wife who was confined for life to an underground chamber.

  Over the course of her life she had met all the potential marriage candidates in the aristocracy pool and hadn’t connected with any of them. They had been brought down to visit her whenever their parents had come to town for royal business, but none of them had been the types that she’d even want to be friends with, let alone marry. They tended to talk an awful lot about swords and archery and horses, and most of them had not read one single book in their lives that had not been assigned by their tutors. None of them had the slightest interest in philosophy or math or any of the subjects she’d developed a fondness for.

  It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want to talk about swords and archery and horses, but that there was so much more she would have liked to discuss. Warfare and related subjects seemed to be all these noblemen’s sons seemed to care about. It did make sense, since that was what they were going to be when they grew up, so it was the primary focus of their parents and teachers, but it sure made them boring. She couldn’t feel too superior to them, though, because she supposed that if she hadn’t been cursed, she might well have turned out to be just as one-dimensional, obsessed with dresses and hairstyles and parties and boys, since that was what a normal princess’s life revolved around.

  But since she was cursed, she got to pursue whatever interest she wanted; her parents wished to do whatever they could to keep her from going stir crazy.

  Thankfully, though, the subject of husbands didn’t come up nearly as much as might be expected. This was, unbeknownst to Julianna, because her parents were still under the assumption they’d find the man who’d break the curse, that she would marry him, and that she would be able to live a normal life. They were still using every available resource to search for him, and wouldn’t allow themselves yet to think about an alternative fate for her. Her parents had decided early on not to tell her about this mystery man who was the key to breaking the curse, because it would only cause her anxiety, and there was nothing she could do anyway to aid the search.

  So, matrimony was not a subject that Lillian was likely to pester her about, but there was a lot more to Julianna’s future than boys. Lillian’s favorite topic lately had been how Julianna was going to fill her adult life in the dungeon. She was not a child anymore and was done with her formal education, and now, according to her mother, it was time to consider adulthood.

  Adulthood is a stressful thing to consider for most young adults because of the myriad of options available to them; what if they make the wrong choice? It was stressful to Julianna for quite the opposite reason; it made her feel ill to think about languishing about in her dungeon contributing nothing, doing nothing of consequence, and pretty much leading a life that had so little impact on the world that (as far as the world was concerned) she might as well not exist at all. Julianna tried hard to block out all thought on the subject, but every time Lillian came to visit these days, she tended to talk of nothing else, thus forcing Julianna, for the duration of each visit, to dwell on what she felt was her meaningless existence. Lillian would totally depress her daughter with no notion that she was even doing so, then she would kiss her on the nose, flit off upstairs, and go live her life in the sunshine doing her queenly job of having well-publicized visits with peasants where she would distribute food and recite pre-written speeches about women’s rights.

  Julianna sighed and walked to the dining area—a space right off the main chamber that used to be a large cell where the new prisoners had lived until the guards had gotten around to processing them. Once the bars had been removed and Daisy had worked her decorating magic, it had been transformed into a lovely little alcove with tapestries of forest scenes on the walls, lush potted plants in the corners, a beautiful rug in earth tones on the stone floor, and a dining table and chairs that seated far more guests than Julianna had ever had down in the dungeon at one time, even counting when the ghosts sat, too.

  She plopped down in her big golden chair with comfy green upholstery, stared down into her empty golden plate, twiddled her golden fork around distractedly in her fingers, and let herself daydream about the possibility that she really was about to reach the end of the tunnel. Her daydream-self was just digging out of the tunnel and taking her first breath of fresh air when Lillian finally came down into the dungeon more than an hour late.

  “Sweetheart!” Lillian crooned.

  “Mama,” Julianna answered, happy to see her mother but also suddenly distracted because it had just occurred to her that she had to do some packing before going up into the tunnel. She couldn’t just go scampering out into the world unprepared. Reading fairytales had taught her that princesses who ventured out into the world on their own tended to get into all sorts of trouble, and, while she knew those stories were fictional, she still saw some sense in them. She’d need food, money, a weapon of some sort, and probably tons of other things too. She’d do some brainstorming with the ghosts at night once Delia had fallen asleep.

  They ate their dinner and chatted about what was going on in Lillian’s life; they did not talk about what was going on in Julianna’s life since Lillian always assumed (and usually rightly) that there was nothing to report. Their conversation shifted to small talk too boring to waste ink on and then Lillian left, but not before Julianna covertly reached into her mother’s pocket when they hugged each other goodbye and found a little pouch of what felt like money. She had never held or even seen money before so she couldn’t be sure, but the ghosts would certainly confirm it. Assuming it was money, then she already had one item to cross off her li
st of things to pack!

  Feeling pretty good about herself, she went off to her bedroom to have a whispered conversation with her friends.

  After chatting with the ghosts about her escape plans, Julianna felt she had a good list of necessities to spend the day tracking down. She also decided it would be wise to take Dexter with her—a while back, she had discovered through some research on the paranormal that ghosts were thought to be tethered at the time of their death to something in the material world. This was what held her three ghosts to a clearly defined perimeter around the dungeon. This habit of ghosts’ spirits to be tied to a physical thing that was nearby when they died was surely why the majority of the dungeon’s ghosts had disappeared when the dungeon had been cleaned out. Since soldiers had hauled away the majority of the dungeon stuff to a waste management facility on the outskirts of the city, there must be a very haunted trash pile out there somewhere.

  Through some trial and error exploring the dungeon and measuring how far the ghosts could go in each direction, Julianna had discovered that Montague’s spirit was stuck to a big rock on the bathroom wall, Curtis was stuck to a big steel ring that had been anchored so firmly into the wall that the interior decorator had not been able to have it removed, and Dexter was tethered to a slightly protruding brick in the hallway.

  Since the brick, when pried loose, was small enough to be carried around without trouble, it was only a matter of time before Julianna’s curiosity got the better of her and she loosened it from the wall and found that, if she moved the brick around the dungeon, Dexter’s perimeter changed from its usual one to a new one, always with the brick as the epicenter. Through the day she kept the brick in the wall, since it was right at eye level and Delia would surely notice its absence, but at night she sometimes removed the brick so that Dexter could accompany her up the tunnel. However, he rarely went up with her anymore since the novelty of being able to move beyond his usual range had worn off for him long ago and now he thought the tunnel boring.

  Speaking of boring, while her plans and her gathering of supplies were quite important and essential to her imminent escape from the dungeon, they were not all that interesting from a storytelling perspective.

  But, if we take our focus from the castle dungeon out across the Bay of Fritillary and then a few miles north into the ocean, we will be fortunate enough to find that which neither Farland nor Mirabella nor Julianna’s parents have thus far been able to locate: the ship that was home to the strapping young lad who was the antidote to the spell that cursed Conroy’s firstborn. The ship was, coincidentally, making its way into the Bay that very day.

  * * *

  4Fun fact: fish is pretty much the only naturally occurring source of vitamin D besides sunlight.) But nutrition science didn’t really exist in Fritillary, since it and every other science were viewed with extreme suspicion by a populace that much preferred to explain away every ailment and trouble by saying it was because the sick person had angered some wizard. Consequently, everyone assumed it was Farland’s curse that was causing all Julianna’s symptoms.

  5There was no psychiatry in Fritillary (yet another field that people looked at with suspicion and tended to burn its practitioners at the stake for).

  Chapter Six

  Warren Kensington was in the Captain’s quarters, hard at work practicing the harpsichord and cursing under his breath because, due to either the humidity or the salty sea air or the jostling of the waves, the dratted harpsichord was always out of tune. Despite that fact, Warren had always felt a strange, inexplicable draw to the instrument that, up until the time he’d discovered it in the Captain’s quarters a few years back, had only been used as a decoration the Captain had chosen in order to make himself look deep and well-rounded.

  More practical for a life at sea were Warren’s banjo and accordion, both of which he could rival the most seasoned professional at in a musical duel. Not so with the harpsichord, but still Warren plugged away at the thing with equal parts love and frustration. The Captain let him have pretty much unlimited access to the instrument throughout the day because it meant that at least Warren was out of his hair, which was more than the Captain could say of the rest of the Kensingtons.

  You see, Warren’s family was a traveling theater troupe, and they had been, for the past few years, paying the Captain to transport them about the seas; the money they paid was just enough for the Captain to overlook the fact that they were a very annoying lot. Warren’s father, a tightrope walker named Bernard, was always climbing up into the rigging to practice his craft. His mother, Emily, a fire eater, was a positive menace on the deck.

  The Captain had assigned a crew member with a bucket of water to follow her around whenever she was practicing; the very last thing they needed was to have the sail or mast or other ship bit burst into flames. And Warren’s sister Corrine was very irritating due to the fact that she, as the playwright of the family, was always traipsing around reciting her poetry, or distracting the crew by asking their advice about whatever scene she was working on–and, since she was a young lady, much of the crew was so infatuated with her that they would drop whatever they were doing in order to help her out. It is a problem when crewmembers on ships will literally drop whatever they are doing while on the job; dropping a rope before a knot is properly secured can result in a boom or sail smacking another crewmember in the face; dropping a cannonball before it is in the cannon can result in a hole in the deck; and dropping one’s hold on the helm can result in the ship meandering off course while the person in control of steering is instead helping Corrine find a good rhyme for “purple.”

  So, the Captain was more than happy to give Warren access to the harpsichord in his quarters since it meant that Warren was out of the way. And the general ruckus of the crew hollering and running around doing their ship sailing stuff meant that they could barely even hear the horrible sound, which was a bonus.

  Over the discordant plinking of the keys, Warren heard the pitter-patter of rain hitting the deck above him and then some thunder off in the distance, which meant his family would be busy above.

  Warren’s family loved storms. His father would be climbing into the rigging because he liked to practice his balance in adverse weather, his mother would be practicing keeping fire burning in the rain, and his sister would probably be climbing into the crow’s nest to soak up the feeling of the dramatic forces of the stormy sea–she found storms to be quite inspirational. Warren himself loved storms too; they were quite motivating for composing banjo music. He usually sat on deck as the rain poured down, playing frantic tunes that made the already-anxious crew downright jumpy. Thunder sounded again and Warren stood to go find his banjo.

  Meanwhile, up on deck, it was apparent to Captain and crew that a storm was a’brewin’. A nor’easter. “Tell the passengers to stay down below!” barked the Captain to his first mate, Biggby. The Captain knew only too well how the family behaved during storms, and since this storm was looking like it was shaping up to be a pretty bad’un he didn’t want his crew to have to deal with dodging a tightrope walker in the rigging, a fire eater on the deck, and a daydreaming poet in the crow’s nest, all while being regaled by a wild banjo tune from the boy. The captain scanned the fast-approaching, menacing black clouds and yelled, “Move, Biggby!”

  Warren was just exiting the Captain’s Quarters when he was shoved back in by Biggby, who was walking past on his way to find his family. Biggby barked, “Stay in there!” then slammed the door. Warren narrowed his eyes with annoyance, but he knew better than to try to venture out again–Biggby was super scary when he was mad.

  Warren sauntered over to the porthole to watch the storm. Then he heard the door open again, and turned in time to see Biggby fling his sister unceremoniously into the room before slamming the door shut behind her.

  As she caught her balance and brushed off her dress, looking miffed, they both heard the door being lo
cked from the outside.

  “A storm’s a’brewin’?” Warren asked.

  “Must be,” she growled with annoyance and sat down, glaring at him as though he was the one who’d pulled her from where she’d been basking in what little was left of the sunshine composing poetry, without so much as a “Sorry about that! Captain’s orders!”

  “Geez, don’t look at me like that,” Warren muttered.

  “These people, Warren, are downright brutish,” she grumbled.

  “Well, they are pirates,” he pointed out.

  “Still, I mean, Mom and Dad are paying them good money to transport us around. You’d think it would be money enough to earn us a bit of respect.”

  “I think it has earned us a bit of respect,” Warren said. “You know how they treat people who don’t pay them.” The deal they had struck with the pirates years back was simply this: the pirates attacked and raided the smaller ships and got all the spoils, but for the bigger ships (the ones that would be harder to raid successfully anyway) the pirates pulled down the Jolly Edmond (Fritillary didn’t have a Jolly Roger), masqueraded as roadies (seasies?) for the troupe so the family could perform their plays and songs and acts, and the pirates got a 25% cut of those profits. In return, the family got room and board, and a much more streamlined mode of transportation than they would otherwise have been able to afford, thus enabling them to reach more ships, get more money, and gain a greater fan base.

  Corrine was silent a moment, thinking back to what she’d glimpsed through her porthole as she watched what she could of the pirates’ most recent raid. “True,” she said at last with a shudder. “Good point.”

  Warren went back to studying the sheet music at the harpsichord and she ambled over to sit beside him at the bench. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Oh, just trying to figure out this—”