~ The Prince In The Flowerbed ~
by
My mother was enchanting.
Not the “Oh, my dear Fern, you are so beautiful and enchanting” kind of enchanting. No, it was more the “Pass me the eye of newt and tongue of frog” kind of enchanting.
Of course, eye of newt and tongue of frog were a little too exotic for our household budget, so my mother was substituting with “eyelet of boot” and “dung of hog”.
I didn’t expect her results to be quite what she was hoping for.
I wasn’t wrong.
~*~
The three of us--my mother, my twin, and I--lived in a little cottage in Wister Woods.
The nearest village was Little Barrel, made up of a few dozen buildings and maybe forty people max. The buildings were saggy and grungy. Unfortunately, so were the villagers. And they had a hearty suspicion of both Wister Woods and anything that lived there. Aside from the run-of-the-mill forest creatures: rabbits, deer, birds, and fairies, that pretty much meant us: Fern, Vanilla, and me, Rosemary.
When we went into the village on market days, we were greeted with scowls and dirt clods.
But we still went into the village on market days.
Little Barrel was just an insignificant freckle on the face of the Kingdom of Wist, but it was our insignificant freckle. It didn’t matter whether we loved it or hated it. What mattered was that we’d never leave it.
Or so I thought.
~*~
Mother was at it again when I pushed open the cottage door and tromped in, wiping at a mud splotch on the back of my tunic.
It wasn’t a market day, but I’d been to Little Barrel anyway.
Brother Veracity had an arm on him worthy of a pro baseball player. Too bad baseball was still several hundred years off.
So how did I know about it? Well, it was described in detail in section eight of my mother’s Book of Future Worlds--under the subheading: “Recreational Activities For Those With Nothing Better to Do”. I was fascinated by the future--as well as by the thought of having nothing better to do. Future worlds sounded a lot more interesting than the one I was living in at the moment. Who wouldn’t prefer video games, fast food, and shopping malls over herb gardens, mashed turnips and outdoor toilets?
“--comfrey leaves and lobelia petals, equal parts, stirred widdershins--” Mother stood over a bubbling cauldron, her round cheeks flushed as red as apples, tendrils of white hair curling into corkscrews around her face, mumbling to herself.
“--a speckled toadstool fresh from the shady side of a rowan tree.” She squinted, and fumbled through the jumble of things on the trestle table. “If I could just find my glasses,” she murmured. She patted her head, found them, slid them down to her nose, and sorted through the items on the table again.
“Oh dear,” she said to herself. “No speckled toadstool. And it was already smelling like a winner.”
Any second now, I was going to hear--
“Rosemary! I need an ingredient! Would you be a dear child and--”
“--go find it for you?” I finished for her. I gave one final swipe at the mud. “Sure. Why not?” I thought longingly of The Book of Future Worlds, which I’d shoved under the cushion of the window seat a few hours earlier. I’d rather have gone back to reading about such exotic creations as potato chips and toilet paper, but duty called.
“Sweet child,” Mother murmured.
“Vanilla is the sweet child,” I said. “I'm the other twin.”
She looked up at me with a hint of her old sharpness, but it faded as fast as a snowflake on the nose of a dragon. “Both of my daughters are sweet,” she said vaguely. “In their own sweet ways.”
Leaving her cauldron over a too-hot fire and her clutter of ingredients and kitchenware spread out all across the table, she headed to her small room at the back of the cottage, murmuring to herself.
Business as usual.
I tucked my dagger more securely in my boot and ran a thin-fingered hand through my tangle of brown curls. Giving a tug to the hem of my muddy tunic, I headed for the cottage door. My hand was on the latch when Vanilla looked up from her needlework.
“Are you going out again, Rosemary?”
I looked at my hand on the latch, then at my twin. “Mother needs an ingredient.”
Vanilla set her needlepoint neatly aside and stood in a fall of gracefully ruffled skirts. Her docile golden curls bobbed gently as she wafted over to me.
I knew what was coming.
“If you see any fresh berries along the way--”
“--will I gather some for you?” I finished for her. “Sure. Why not?”
“Dear heart,” she said so sweetly that I felt a cavity coming on.
“Actually, that’s redundant. A deer is a hart. Or, more specifically, a hart is a deer, of the red male variety, especially after it has grown its full complement of antlers.” It wasn’t just future worlds I read up on.
Vanilla was still smiling, but no spark was going on in those blue, blue eyes. Some people just had no interest in being educated.
“Never mind.” I tugged on the latch and swung open the door.
I was more than happy to step back out into air heavy with the smell of pine. Next to reading The Book of Future Worlds, I loved tromping through Wister Woods best. A good thing I didn’t mind being alone; I got opportunities by the bucketful around here.
I closed the cottage door behind me with a little more force than necessary.
The roses on the bush by the door nodded to me as I passed: one perfect white rose, for my perfectly beautiful sister; one slightly rumpled red rose, for me. They grew together on the same bush, rain, shine, snow, summer, winter, spring or fall. My mother might not have been much of an enchantress, but she was one heck of a creative gardener.
I headed off at a good clip, muttering to myself. Books are all well and good, but sometimes only intelligent conversation will do. Which is why I was talking to myself.
“Grin and bear,” I murmured.
“Were you talking to me?” a voice asked from my left.
I glanced over. “Of course not. Why would I be talking to a bear?”
“Right,” said the bear. “Sorry I asked.”
I took a few more steps, before it registered.
A talking bear.
A talking bear?
But when I turned back, the bear had disappeared.