[[Rabbitskin->1]]
She decided to escape as soon as her father made the announcement, but she had to wait a while for the perfect time to run. She'd need to be very clever to get away; her mother had fought and fought against her father for a long time and he'd become very good at keeping his women at home.
She stayed in her chambers with her door locked from the inside and listened to the guards posted outside her door. She could hear them hem and haw and shift their feet all day. There were at least two that she glimpsed when meals were brought to her - one man during the day and another through the night.
The night watchman had trouble staying awake. She didn’t. Through the night she listened to him stamp his feet and mutter to himself to stay alert. He’d sing sometimes, always sad love songs.
In the smallest wee hours he’d slip away from her dark wing to catch a little night air. She held her breath as he walked off in the direction of the tower stairs to reach the roof. He was never gone for more than a few minutes.
[[next->2]]
Three nights before her wedding she redressed herself after her maid put her to bed.
[[She went about her preparations as quickly as she could.->failure a]]
[[She moved carefully and silently across the stone floors.->success a]]
She didn't stop for breath until she was well past the treeline. She already knew where she wanted to go. Her mother had told her about a magic tree between two kingdoms that held women's secrets and treasures. She'd looked like she wanted to say more, but up until the day she died her mother was always watched.
The princess felt sure that this tree was real and that her mother had left her something there.
As soon as she got her wind back she started again towards the border of the next kingdom. Her grandfather had been king there once, but it was somebody else’s now. Her mother had smiled when she got the news that her father’s head had been thrown from the battlements. The princess didn’t want to meet the man who had done that.
She thought that she would have trouble finding the tree but she found it after a morning of hard travel. It looked exactly the way that her mother had described it, and the princess knew it instantly.
[[next->4]]
She crossed the clearing with long strides and peered into the tree’s hollow. The first thing she saw was writing scratched into the back of the empty space: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” No one had ever taught her that language but she liked the sounds it made.
Inside where two cloaks: one was a rich glossy brown and the other was ugly, patchy and gray. There was no dust or leaves on top of them at all; they looked as if they’d been left only hours ago. Beneath the cloaks were a little knife and a tinderbox that looked like something out of another time. The knife looked like ones she’d seen before, but the box looked old although it didn't have a speck of rust or wear. She took it and the knife out and tucked them into her clothes. She needed some good things to help her with life on the road.
Her mother had told her stories about such cloaks, whispered them into her ear at night when they were out of watchers’ earshot. The gray cloak made a girl so ugly as to be beneath everyone’s notice while the brown made her powerful like a she-bear. The princess had enjoyed the stories then, but now she had a new suspicion about why her normally noisy and defiant mother was so careful that her watchers never heard a word about the cloaks or the tree.
The princess took both cloaks out of the hollow and inspected them closely. The brown one looked warm and plush. It smelled like her mother had, only muskier. She cried a little and folded it carefully back into the hollow. The other cloak seemed like it could fall apart any moment but somehow she knew it never would. She replaced it as well.
[[next->5]]
She sat against the tree to think. She couldn’t stay in the woods forever; there was no gap between her father’s lands and the next king’s. The woods were too small to vanish into. Perhaps the whole world was too small. She’d seen so little of it and her father never let her into the receiving hall to hear the news of other lands. She didn’t even know how big the world was beyond the kingdoms bordering her home and prison.
Her ignorance made her so angry.
All she knew was that she would have to travel as far away as possible if she wanted to stay free, but she wasn’t quite sure how. She had nothing in her hands and nothing, it seemed, in her mind.
She was still sitting against the tree when she heard something down the road; it sounded like the clanking of armor.
[[next->6]]
The princess stood up and got ready to run, but soon the clanking figure came around the bend in the road. It was a peddler, not a soldier. The clanking was the pots and pans strapped to her back.
The princess felt a little more at ease. Peddlers were outsiders. They didn’t belong to any country or recognize any king. She could only hope that word of a generous reward for her capture hadn’t reached the peddler class.
The princess didn’t know anything about peddlers beyond the girlish storybooks which were her only teacher besides her mother. In the stories peddlers were magical tricksters laden with enchanted trinkets. The princess liked peddler stories, although there weren’t many of them on the little shelf in her girlhood room.
She watched the peddler walk towards the clearing with her new knife in hand. When she saw the princess she drew up short. Peddlers were lonely people and jumped at any chance to have a chat. Big groups were either dangerous or indifferent to a lowly peddler but there was a special bond between the peddler and the lone traveler; people who spat on peddlers in town broke bread with them on the road and peddlers were less guarded in the “between” places, their native country.
[[next->7]]
The peddler stopped when she was within speaking distance of the princess. “Hello!” she said. “Camping there tonight?”
The princess blinked up at the hearty woman. She was laden with an incredible amount of junk, but she stood up tall in the drops of afternoon sun that filtered through the trees.
“No,” said the princess. “I’ll walk on before long.”
“Well,” said the peddler woman. “I’ll take my midday with you anyways.” She stepped fully into the clearing and started divesting herself of her wares. Many minutes later she had taken off enough packs, bags, and heavy-laden cords wrapped around her body that she could sit down across from the princess.
The peddler produced a big hunk of brown bread and after a moment tore off a portion to offer to the princess. She took it gratefully and started working on it with her teeth - it was hard and strange food to a girl raised on the lightest flour.
“So,” said the peddler, “What news?”
The princess stopped her careful chewing. “I don’t know any news. I don’t know anything about anything.” She pushed another wedge of stale bread into her mouth.
The princess imagined that she could feel the peddler’s pity on her and it made her face hot. Because she was afraid to look into the peddler’s face, she didn’t see that the woman wasn’t looking at her but at her mother’s golden ring. In avoiding the peddler’s eyes the princess glanced to her pile of wares. A scrap of dewy white fur was glinting through the scrap metal and bits of tack.
[[next->8]]
The peddler looked towards her pile. “Good eye. It’s my best thing. Cloak made from one of those big valley rabbits past the lake.” She reached over and dug it out. It looked soft and light; the princess couldn’t believe that it had come from just one rabbit. It was harvest time now but the weather would be getting cold soon: she needed a warm cloak.
“How much?”
“More than you’ve got.” The peddler smoothed a hand over the fur. “But let’s try a deal, a bet. I’ll give you a riddle, and if you answer it right you’ll have the skin; answer it wrong I’ll have that fine ring on your finger.”
There was a special bond between peddlers and lone travelers, but the bond between peddlers and their own bellies was far more sacred. This peddler had been eating only stale bread for a long time and wanted something richer.
The princess looked down at her mother’s ring. Her mother had never seemed to like it, but she had never liked much of anything besides her daughter. Her father knew she’d been wearing it and wouldn’t take it off - every person looking for her would know what the ring looked like. She’d be well rid of it.
[[accept the riddle]]
[[bargain]]
“I accept.”
She took the terms as they were because she knew of no other option. There was no such thing as haggling in the princess’ royal books and her parents had always been the most uncompromising of people.
The peddler slapped her thighs and drew herself up. She thought about her hardest riddle. This know-nothing girl would probably be undone by any of the puzzles that the peddler had heard in her years on the road. She went with an old favorite:
“Who is the most pitiable woman of any land, knowing of riches and yet slave to the land itself?”
[[farmer's wife->wrong]]
[[peddler->wrong]]
[[queen->right]]
[[mother->wrong]]
[[crone->wrong]]
[[princess->wrong]]
[[slave->wrong]]
The princess thought for a long moment before giving her answer. She didn’t feel sure of it and her uncertainty was confirmed when the peddler tried to replace her grin with an apologetic expression.
“Sorry, child, that’s not it.” She held out her hand for the ring. The princess needed a few moments to work it off of her finger. She’d worn it for years but it had never seemed loose, not even when she was a girl. It always squeezed her finger and it felt even tighter now as she tried to take it off.
She dropped her only possession into the peddler’s hand. The peddler tucked it away in a pocket of her coat and stood up. She bustled around to get her gear back on now that business was done.
“Good luck, love,” was all she said as she set off down the road.
[[next->failure 1]]
What could be sorrier than a queen? She was owned by the king, who answered to no one because he was the Country itself. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch her daughter grow into the same fate. The princess gave her answer with perfect confidence.
The peddler’s face soured. The riddle was one meant to comfort poor women and perhaps make them laugh at the idea of a woman who manages to be unhappy even when she’s bathed in rosewater; this stranger wasn’t supposed to get the joke. In fact, it didn’t seem like she did. Her young face was sad and clear.
The peddler thrust the cloak into the princess’s hands and made ready to leave. She’d lost a lot of money during her lunch break - probably more than she could recoup before winter. She’d have to walk far and fast now if she wanted to survive until the thaw.
[[next->9]]
The princess sat a little longer against the tree before standing and continuing down the path away from her father’s kingdom. The other two furs she left in the hollow; she couldn’t quite bring herself to touch them again.
She walked and walked but she never felt that she was far enough away from her father. As it grew colder she became more afraid and hungry. She knew that it was probably safe to seek shelter in the villages yet she was too afraid to leave the trees. She made fires with her tinderbox and sometimes caught a little food with her knife; she toiled and traveled all day with her meager tools so that she could sleep with an empty belly through the bitterly cold nights.
[[next->failure 2]]
By the time the snow began to fall she was already resigned to her death. If she’d been cleverer maybe she could have found a way to live. She wished that she’d mustered the courage to go into the villages to work for food and shelter, but it was too late. At least she was dying on her own feet, not in a bed in her father’s house.
With that thought, the cold became almost like warmth and death almost like sleep.
[[try again?->Rabbitskin]]
As the peddler stomped away the princess wrapped herself up in her brand new rabbitskin. She relished her ownership of it: the first thing she’d ever earned for herself. She wished that she could tell her mother that she’d won her own cloak - just like the girl in the stories who’d fought the bear for its skin.
The princess wanted to keep having this feeling. She set off down the road that she hoped would eventually lead her away from both her father’s and her grandfather’s kingdoms. She’d read that there was uncharted land beyond the edges of her family’s control. She’d like to see land that no one had ever seen before.
She walked along the path for a while but soon she felt the impulse to run, to be gone as soon as possible. She started to run and she just kept going and going. She thought running was supposed to make people tired, but she had never tried it before; perhaps she just didn’t know what being tired felt like.
[[next->10a]]
It never occurred to her that there were people who liked it much better when lonely old women had no way of reading edicts or calculating their taxes. The princess left behind her a trail of little old ladies and young families who were refusing to give quarter to soldiers and arguing on their own behalf in a way that they couldn’t before.
The magistrates and tax men began to grumble amongst themselves. These were small men of small towns who protected their small power jealously. It didn’t take them long to catch wind of the girl in a rabbitskin cloak who had spent the night in each household that spoke up.
The magistrates’ grumbles eventually reached the petty lords, who passed the gossip along to the great lords and king’s advisors who, finally, mentioned it to the king.
The king hadn’t considered the possibility of a soft insurrection sprouting up from beneath the flagstones of his kingdom; however, he considered himself to be a terribly clever man, and so he easily came up with a solution.
“Any imbecile can tell by the towns she’s visited that that she’s heading for the border,” he said to his advisors. “Obviously she’s clever, I’ll meet her at the border crossing and give her a challenge that no clever girl could refuse.”
The king took his men and his ladies and servants to a country estate near where the main road crossed from his kingdom to the next. The princess had indeed been following this road and after only six days of waiting the king’s sentry returned and said that the rabbitskin girl would arrive at the border the next morning.
[[next->11]]
At dawn of the seventh day the king took a few of his men and servants and set up a lavish picnic at the border crossing, complete with banners bearing the royal seal. He waited, eating and laughing, until he saw the strange girl in the rabbitskin cloak approaching him at a swift trot.
The princess had been very excited when she set off that morning, but she was frightened as well. This was the first border she’d crossed since leaving her father’s kingdom, and she still felt afraid of them.
When she saw the group with its royal banners a few yards from the border she felt vindicated in her fear. She almost tripped over herself turning to run but her retreat had already been cut off by the king’s soldiers.
“Rabbitskin!” he called out. “That’s what they’re calling you, isn’t it? Here, come and have something to eat.”
The princess walked towards the king because the men behind her were closing in. The sense of freedom and contentment she’d carried with her through this man’s kingdom was gone and she felt empty and cold despite her dear cloak. Soon she’d been forced within speaking distance of the king. She didn’t think her little knife would be any good to her but she wrapped her hand around it anyway.
[[next->12]]
“Hello,” he said. “I have a wager for you. I bet your freedom against my book - a magic book filled with every scrap of information in the known world. I’ll give it to you to keep if you can answer my three questions correctly. One wrong answer and you’ll return to the capital as my prisoner.”
“And if I don’t take the wager?”
“You’ll cross the border, but I’ll take your tongue for a toll tax. Can’t have you sneaking back over and teaching the law to my peasants.”
The princess felt herself shrinking under her fear but tried to consider her options. She couldn’t be the prisoner of a king again and she didn’t want to risk it happening. If the king really did have access to a book of all the knowledge in the world how could she answer his questions?
But she wanted to see that book. She wanted to see the book and she didn’t want to lose her tongue. If she hadn’t been able to speak she wouldn’t have been able to help all of those people with their letters and taxes. She was afraid of the pain and the blood, but what good was speech in a jail cell?
[[Take the challenge]]
[[Leave the tongue]]
“Yes, I’ll play.” She was pleasantly surprised by the strength in her voice.
She was less pleased by the slow, smug smile that spread across the king’s face.
“Very well,” he said. “Best luck. This is my first question: what makes a princess a princess?”
The princess felt a surge of hot fear. She tried to think even as her hands and feet tingled and her mind told her to run. There was no way that the king knew who she was. Did he? She didn’t recall meeting this man; he hadn’t been king for long. Had he set a trap for her? She knew the answer to this question; she’d known it since her mother died. But what would the right answer cost her? Her fingers twitched around her knife and she wondered what good she could do with it.
The king took Rabbitskin’s expression to mean that he had already won the battle. “Take your time to answer,” he said with false graciousness.
The princess stood still for a few more moments, trying to sort out her thoughts. Finally, she opened her mouth to answer:
[[a royal name->wrong 2]]
[[a golden ring->right 2]]
[[a beautiful face->wrong 2]]
[[a kind heart->wrong 2]]
“I’ll pay your tax.” Her voice sounded small in her ears, but at least she didn’t cry.
The king raised his elegant eyebrows. He couldn’t imagine turning down such a wager; it was easy to take risks when your own freedom and life weren’t at stake. He had never faced a decision that bore the risk of true consequences for his royal self.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
[["Yes."]]
[["No.]]
The princess felt her voice falter even as she answered and she knew that she was lost. The threat on the king’s face evaporated when he knew that victory was assured.
“Wrong.” His voice was almost sing-song. “So sorry, Rabbitskin. You’ll enjoy my hospitality to the end of your days.” The princess felt as if her whole body was sinking into the earth.
In a panic, the princess lunged for him with her knife. The king overcame her desperate attack easily. He seized her wrist to restrain her; as he forced the knife from her hand he caught sight of her mother’s royal ring.
[[next->discovery]]
The princess clenched the hand that bore her mother’s ring and knife into a fist as she answered. The question wasn’t much of a riddle, really, but more like a cheap attempt to put down a girl who didn’t know the ways of royalty. As the king’s face started to fall she began to wonder if he was really as clever as he thought he was.
“Correct. This is the second: A man is sentenced to death. His executioner gives him his choice of three rooms in which to die: a room full of fire, a room full of men with swords, and a room full of lions starved for months and months. Which room should the man choose?”
[[fire]]
[[swords]]
[[lions]]
Its royal origin was unmistakable. Word of the distant princess who had fled from her barbaric father had reached even his kingdom at the edge of the mountains. The king pulled the ring to his face to inspect it further, failing to notice the shame and fear burning the erstwhile-Rabbitskin’s eyes and face.
“Princess, I’m so sorry,” the king said with genuine horror. “You could have had your tongue cut out! Oh, can you forgive me? You’ve endured a cruel ordeal, Princess, but don’t be afraid. It’s over now.” As he spoke the king held onto her royal hand with both of his. She tried to tug it free but he didn’t seem to notice her at all now that the ring had caught his eye.
“Will you let me go?” she asked quietly when his elaborate apologies were over.
“Go? Princess, where will you go?” was the shocked reply. “No, you’ll return to my castle in state! Indeed, it’s my duty to protect you! We’ll be married and there will be nothing for your father to do. You’ll be my first wife, a full queen in your own right! What amazing fortune that I found you. There are so many dangerous people in this world, Princess.”
The princess knew how this world worked. There was nothing to be done; she was under the control of another king. The soldiers had put down their bows, but they could drag her back to the castle without killing her just as easily, like her father’s soldiers had contained her mother.
She didn’t have her mother’s strength, she couldn’t bear to fight for so long. She’d have to find another way to cope with her life. Perhaps the book would give her solace through the long days and interminable nights.
[[next->17]]
The princess pondered for a long moment before answering. “The room of fire.”
“Ha!” said the king. “Wrong. The correct answer is the room of lions, who obviously would have starved to death.”
The princess frowned. “But the man will die no matter what, will he not? Even supposing the lions were starved, wouldn’t the man suffer the same fate in that room? I have gone hungry, sir, and I shouldn’t like to starve to death, I would prefer to burn.”
The king was defeated by the poor wording of his own riddle by a disrespectful little girl. His face began to turn red.
[[next->13]]
The princess pondered for a long moment before answering. “The swords.”
“Ha!” said the king. “Wrong. The lions would starve to death in their room and so that is the correct answer.”
The princess pushed her hood a little higher up on her head. “But, sir, you said he had ‘his choice of rooms in which to die.’ If he chooses the room of lions, will he not starve to death just as the beasts had? I’ve known hunger, sir, and I should prefer to be stabbed to death than die that way.”
The king was defeated by the poor wording of his own riddle and disrespectfully to boot. His face began to turn red.
[[next->13]]
The princess thought for a few minutes. “I suppose, sir, that the correct answer is ‘the lions' room.’”
The king sneered. “You ‘suppose’ correctly. The final-”
“But the riddle doesn’t make any sense,” she interrupted him. “For even in the lion’s room won’t the man die? It would just be a slower death by starvation. Or is his sentence conditional on the cleverness of his selection?”
The king curled his lip. He wanted this girl to rot in his dungeons for her impertinence.
[[next->13]]
“The final question,” the king proclaimed. “What is carved in the hollow of mythical Traveler’s Tree?” the king meant to finish his question there, but he couldn’t help flaunting his knowledge (especially in the face of Rabbitskin’s obvious dismay).
“The Traveler’s Tree is a guardian to travelers and women in distress-” here he leered at her, “-The first Traveler’s Tree said to have been watered by the eye-blood of a distant nation’s first queen, shed when her husband's hunting hawks put out her eyes and captured her for his kingdom. It’s said to provide comfort and protection to the traveler who truly carries nothing with them. It has a phrase carved into it. What is it?”
[["locus eremus"]]
[["nolite te bastardes carborundorum"]]
[["mors es quies viatoris, finis est omnis laboris"->wrong 2]]
[["Ab ursa ante, ab asino retro, a muliere undique caveto"->wrong 2]]
The princess felt an answer tingling at the back of her mind but she ignored it and gave the more logical answer: the one short enough to be carved in a tree, “Locus eremus.”
“Correct,” the king ground out. He’d plumbed the depths of his mystical and logical knowledge and the upstart girl-child had defeated him at every turn. He was livid.
He was already thinking about how to reclaim a victory as he handed the magic book to her. She rushed up to seize it as quickly as her caution would allow, but once she’d taken it from his hands he’d hit upon a solution; even this girl wasn’t better at contract tricks than the king himself, chief arbiter of all contracts in the realm.
“Congratulations,” he said sweetly.
The princess was too busy admiring the book to notice the abrupt change in his attitude. There were so many questions in her mind that when she opened it up she could only see smeared inky shapes. She turned the pages but nothing resolved into letters and words. She closed her eyes for a moment and focused; surprisingly, she thought of her rabbitskin first. When she opened her eyes there was a picture of the “big valley rabbit” (with a more sophisticated name) and information about the species.
[[next->14]]
She said the answer confidently and without thinking. Her resolve didn’t even waver when she saw the king’s triumphant expression.
“Wrong!” he proclaimed. “It’s ‘locus eremus,’ or ‘solitary place.’ Your answer is both vulgar and grammatically incorrect.”
“I’ve seen the tree myself,” the princess said calmly. “And those words were carved within its hollow.”
“Ridiculous!” said the king. “the Traveler’s Tree is an ancient myth, no encounter with it has ever been written…”
The princess held up a hand to stop the king’s tirade. “Your magic book contains all the knowledge of the known world.”
“It does!”
“Then it should confirm what I say, because I am within your known world.”
[[next->16]]
When the princess closed the book she was beaming. She was close to the king now, and the border as well. She’d put her knife away to hold the book in both of her hands. She clutched her prize to her chest and tried to step around him to reach the border.
He held out his hand to stop her. “Congratulations,” he said again. “You’re a very clever girl. One of the cleverest I’ve ever met. I think I’m in love. You’ll join my wives’ house and live in splendor for the rest of your days.”
[[next->15]]
The princess couldn’t speak for a moment. She felt her body tremble and eyes burn with tears. “No!” she said. “We made a deal!”
“And I’m keeping it,” the king said coolly. “The book is yours, and you won’t be my prisoner, but one of my honored wives. Come, youngest wife. Give me your hand and we will return to the castle together.”
The princess tried and tried to think of a way to escape - she kept thinking, //marriage and prison are the same why doesn’t he understand, is he lying?// - and so before she could do anything to stop it, the king snatched up the hand adorned with her mother’s ring.
[[next->discovery]]
The king glared at her for several moments before he bent to pick up his book. He opened it and read in a rush: “'The Traveler’s Tree was long reported to be carved with the inscription "locus eremus," but a new account from the legendary princess known by the common folk as "Rabbitskin" reveals that the Tree’s motto is in fact "nolite te bastardes carborundorum," a phrase whose origin has not yet been recorded.'”
The king had read to the end of the passage in his eagerness to get all the facts. The word “princess” didn’t sink in until his second reading. The king stared at the book, and then looked at her again. She quailed under the force of his gaze and stepped back to run.
He reached out to stop her and grabbed the hand adorned with her mother’s ring.
[[next->discovery]]
She bowed her head and returned to the clever king’s castle. It was as she expected, for all that the clever king had decided to be kind to her. She packed most of herself away into her book of all knowledge, which indeed did make her life bearable.
She took some comfort that this king tended to be easy-tempered and dissolute rather than harsh and fanatical like her father and grandfather. Perhaps this marriage wouldn’t kill her like her mother and hers before, and her daughter might be less miserable. Perhaps she will bear sons. She looked to the rest of her life not with optimism, but with something less than mortal despair.
[[next->18]]
Despite her new husband’s avowed dislike for her father, they made their long marriage-visit in a timely fashion. Even riding in a well-sprung carriage with her rabbitskin over her lap she enjoyed this journey much less than her first one; she wanted to see some of the friends she’d made on her walking journey but she feared what her husband would do if he met the people who’d been starting trouble for his tax men and magistrates.
As they passed through her kingdom she kept her eyes on the road to look for her mother’s tree. When she saw it she reached out to her husband and used every trick she had to convince him to stop and let her out to catch some air. She gathered up her dear skin, little knife, and tinderbox and took them to the tree. The other two skins were still there, just as they had been.
She placed her skin and gently atop them. Among them she tucked the tinderbox and knife, and her own gift for the Traveler’s Tree: a page torn from the magic book telling the story of its origin. She arranged the treasure trove carefully and wet it with a few tears before tamping herself back down and returning to the carriage.
END
“Yes,” the princess said, her voice breaking. “Let me cross the border first.”
“...All right,” said the king. This was not the outcome he had expected, but he never made promises that he couldn’t afford to keep. A bet was a bet and she certainly would never cause him trouble again with no tongue.
The princess walked slowly towards the border sign. She was almost overcome by her shame but she fought to swallow it down. She would give up a piece of herself to keep her freedom. She could still be herself without speaking.
She stopped as soon as she passed the sign. She thought about running for a moment until she heard the sound of a bowstring being pulled. She turned back to the soldier who had followed behind her. She knew that he could drag her back to the king if he wanted, but she didn’t think that the king would break his word. This was gruesome enough.
The unlucky soldier who had to do the deed walked towards her with his knife in hand. “Wait, please,” she said to him. “Can you use this?” She held out her own little knife. The man inspected it and nodded. He put his own knife away and took hers out of her hand.
[[next->19]]
“I…no. Ask me your questions.” The princess said this before she could think it through, she had been so sure of herself before, she couldn’t believe how quickly her resolve had crumbled.
“That’s what I thought,” the king said smugly. “Well, let's start. Best luck. This is my first question: what makes a princess a princess?”
The princess felt a surge of hot fear. She tried to think even as her hands and feet tingled and her mind told her to run. There was no way that the king knew who she was. Did he? She didn’t recall meeting this man, he hadn’t been king for long. Had he set a trap for her? She knew the answer to this question, she’d known it since her mother died. But what would the right answer cost her?
The king took Rabbitskin’s expression to mean that he had already won the battle. “Take your time to answer,” he said with false graciousness.
The princess stood still for a few more moments, trying to sort out her thoughts. Finally, she opened her mouth to answer:
[[a royal name->wrong 2]]
[[a golden ring->right 2]]
[[a beautiful face->wrong 2]]
[[a kind heart->wrong 2]]
The pain was blinding, but brief. Soon her entire mind was concerned with the blood that she was choking on. The soldier hadn’t considered this either (were soldiers not well versed in severing tongues? was her inappropriate thought).
Without thinking she stuffed the corner of her rabbitskin cloak into her mouth. Red began to spread across the beautiful white almost immediately.
She was gagging and crying, and the king was satisfied. He nodded to his men and started to pack away his campsite. One man would stay behind to assure that she walked in the right direction. Before he left the soldier who’d severed her tongue dropped her little knife next to her in the dirt.
[[next->...]]
That night she knocked on another door. Her appearance was so haggard and pitiful that she was welcomed in with no expectation of service. The woman was shocked into weeping when she saw the mess in the princess’s mouth; she was so upset that she bullied her husband into calling the local doctor.
They were kind people in this country and a bit better educated than the people for whom she’d lost her tongue. The doctor was a good one. She survived.
After her wound closed over she left the kind woman’s home. She was sorry that she didn’t have anything to give to the family in return. She had even tried to clean the princess’ bloody rabbitskin but even after clever washing it kept its deep fresh blood color. It was soft, but not as sweetly soft as it had been. The princess didn’t mind it this way - at least it was still warm.
[[next->21]]
She didn't want to, but she returned to the forest. The woods in this kingdom looked different: there were more pine trees and the soil was rocky. She’d heard the woman talk about mountains nearby. She liked the solitude and thought that she might like the mountains.
She was a little bit better at living on her own than she had been when she first left her father’s castle. She was grateful every night for the tinderbox because that was how often it saved her life.
Eating was hard with no tongue, but after her terrible loss she could not abide dying during her first winter. She’d given too much for this freedom to waste it. She pounded, mashed, and boiled everything she ate into a thin clear broth. If it had a flavor she didn't know it to hate it. She missed the taste of tea and the bursting sweetness of berries, but her heart beat on without them.
[[next->22]]
She often had to resort to begging . Some people were scared by her red cloak and limited hand gestures; others wanted to help all the more because of the way she looked. The best sad story is the one that is only implied, rather than spoken.
[[next->23]]
The princess didn’t like begging, but it’s hard to remain attached to dignity when you can’t speak up for herself. She didn’t live very long but during the years before she died she schooled herself to savor each scrap of freedom carefully. With no tongue to taste it, she could therefore enjoy only freedom’s scent, texture, and memory.
[[She wished she could return to that border crossing.->12]]
[[Even as she died she had no regrets.]]
[[Try again?->Rabbitskin]]
She traveled for a long time. With her cloak shielding her face she felt confident enough to knock on doors to ask for food and shelter. She preferred the houses of old women who lived alone, or perhaps with a sister or grown daughter. In exchange for a hot meal she’d often do bits of sums or reading for farmers.
She liked the scruffy and brash children that lived in these houses. They didn’t care about the official papers that she’d read to their parents, so she’d tell them her favorite stories as well as she could remember them. She’d scratch some pictures into the dirt for them and teach them how to write their names.
She didn’t know what to do with their gratitude. She hadn’t even realized that there were people who couldn’t read and had no way to learn. She felt guilty exchanging a few minutes of reading for room and board, but she was hungry and so she took the hospitality that she didn’t think she deserved.
The children and adults all liked to use her tinderbox; apparently they didn’t have devices like it in this part of the world. A few clever carpenters and blacksmiths took down the designs for it and swore that the device would make them rich. They’d almost always thank the princess with an extra helping of stew. Even if she never lit a fire with it, the tinderbox had served her well.
As she would read and explain the latest edict from the magistrate to small groups of people or calculate how much a business really owed in taxes (it was always less than the tax man told them) the people often chatted about politics and farming, housecraft and animals. After weeks of travel the princess began to feel like maybe she knew a little bit more than nothing.
[[next->10]]
During her preparations she heard the night watchman step closer towards her door. She stopped what she was doing and turned all of her attention to him. She could almost see him with his ear cocked to her door, listening just as hard as she was.
He didn’t go up the tower roof that night, and he didn’t seem very tired either.
The next night she tried again.
[[This time she was careful to be as silent as possible->success a]]
The night watchmen didn’t hear her footsteps and assumed that she was asleep. At the darkest part of the night, just like usual, he went to look at the stars and wake himself up in the cool night air. The princess heard him go, and waited a few moments before slipping through her door and fleeing the castle.
No one would know that she was gone until breakfast.
[[next->3]]
[[...->interlude]]
The same soldier was left with a tongue in his hand that he unequivocally did not want. He looked towards the king to get a hint of what to do with it. The king frowned and jerked his head, and the soldier took that as permission to throw it away. He tossed it into the bushes on the king’s side of the border.
The tongue lay there in the land that Rabbitskin had traveled for so many weeks. It set roots and spread, and after a few years every peasant who crossed that border or walked through those woods in which the princess’ tongue was sown returned home with a nagging dissatisfaction. It was as if a clever child was asking in their ear, why? Why? why?
In that part of the world the tax men and kings who came to make their fortunes seldom lasted more than a few years, so hounded were they by peasants asking each other the right sorts of questions.
[[next->interlude 2]]
Rabbitskin’s tongue spoke more loudly than she would have ever believed, but it didn’t take root until after she died. It wasn’t the day that she lost her tongue, but as she spat out her own blood into the dust she felt sure that she wouldn’t live.
The princess used all of her power to pull herself through the dirt to lean against a tree. She sat there, against a tree by the side of the road just across the border all day and through the night. When the sun rose and her entire rabbitskin was stained red; she stood up and started walking. She left the knife behind her.
[[next->20]]