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Chapter 16
By Setcheti Posted in Story on 5 December 2021 2990 words
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In the Land of Stories Old

Chapter 16


Weeks had passed with no word from Arthur or Jack, and then one night when a storm was threatening and lightning was streaking the distant sky the guards came to get Merlin saying that Arthur was back with Jack and a strange princess besides. Merlin almost fell down the stairs trying to get to the antechamber, and then staggered in shock when he saw Arthur, back to full size once again, and Jack the same but sitting in the back of a wooden cart with one arm strapped across his chest via a makeshift sling. The strange princess the guard had said was cursed looked to be around seventeen or eighteen and could have been Jack’s sister with her spun-gold hair and bright blue eyes, and Merlin couldn’t help but notice that she seemed ill-at-ease and kept eying the stone walls as though they might close in and trap her. He nodded to her. “My lady, no one is going to keep you here against your will, you have my word. Captain?”

The ghost bowed. “Of course, I’d not even think of doing such a thing. And there is a bit of a garden someone can show you to later, my lady, if being surrounded by stone troubles you too much.

Arthur chivied the girl forward. “Allow me to introduce the Princess Serena, who Jack decided to adopt for a sister after he found her livin’ alone in the woods. He was plannin’ to bring her to our old home in the mountains where she would be more comfortable, but after the incident,” he rolled his eyes, “I decided the castle was closer and safer.”

Merlin swallowed hard, but his only response was to bow. “Princess Serena, welcome to the Black Castle. Princess Snow will be glad to have another woman about, I think, but we can see you through the mountains once the weather is less troublesome if that is what you wish.”

Serena offered him a curtsey. “Thank you, Your Highness, but I will be fine. Please don’t trouble yourself on my account.”

Merlin couldn’t help notice that Jack was smiling like a proud father at this pretty display of manners and thought there was probably a long story there even though at the moment he was too shaken to want to hear it. He nodded to her, and then made way for Snow when she appeared, wide-eyed, in the antechamber. “Snow, I believe I need to re-introduce you to Arthur and Jack, and this is the Princess Serena, who Jack has taken as a sister.”

Snow inclined her head to Serena, and then all but threw herself at Arthur to hug him. “Oh you didn’t…”

He snorted. “No, I only had to have my heart broken into a million pieces. Jack’s the one who tried to one-up Merlin.”

She squeezed him so hard he felt his bones creak, brushing tears away as she rounded on Jack. Who cringed. “I did not, I swear it! It just…” he gestured with his good arm, “happened?”

Hans had appeared, and he snorted just like Arthur had. “Of course it did,” he said. He offered Serena a small bow, and then started taking charge of Jack. “Can you walk up to your room, or are we pulling this cart up Merlin’s favorite stairs?”

“I’ll…”

“I’ll carry him,” Snow interrupted. “Arthur looks exhausted.”

“I’m prepared to be jealous, but I’ll deal with it,” Merlin said, and found a smile when her damp eyes widened. “You can’t deny Fantastique breeds them just ridiculously pretty, my love.”

She kissed his cheek. “I could say the same about your homeland,” she told him. “Princess Serena, just let me help get Jack settled and then I’ll be back, all right?”

Serena just nodded. Hans looked Arthur up and down. “You know where the kitchens are, take her there and get her something hot,” he said, and then smiled when Serena’s blue eyes went wide again. “We are all very informal here, Princess—like a family. And as there are no servants and the guards are not alive, it is up to all of us to pitch in.”

He was a bit surprised when that seemed to perk her up, as was everyone else but Jack. “I…I can pitch in,” she said. “I thought…”

“She thought this would be like her parents’ ridiculous, stuffy castle,” Jack finished for her. He blushed when Snow scooped him up out of the cart, but relaxed into her hold with a wince and a sigh. “It will be all right, Serena, just like I promised you. And I am certain your help in the days to come will be much appreciated. I taught you well.”

You taught her something useful?” Hans questioned. “Will miracles never cease…”

Merlin took charge again. “Well, I guess we’re all to go to the kitchen.” He looked over the cart, and then picked the wooden handles up himself. “If you’d escort Princess Serena, Arthur, I’ll just bring this the rest of the way in. Where did you get it?”

“Jack built it,” Serena told him. “He wanted me to have everything that was mine, and it was too much for us to carry.”

Jack built this?”

“He’s been holdin’ out on us,” Arthur observed, putting Serena’s hand in the crook of his arm and leading her out of the chamber. “Wait’ll you hear what else he taught her to do.”

“It’s going to be quite the story, I’m sure.” Merlin pulled the cart along in their wake, glad that it was small enough to fit through the door—although he thought he probably shouldn’t be surprised, since Jack would have made it as a dwarf. “If he’s up to it, of course.”

“He should be,” Arthur reassured him. “He got over the bump on the head after a couple of days and most of the bruises too, it’s only that broken arm and his ribs keepin’ him down now. Serena’s been helpin’ him with his hair.”

Serena put her little button nose in the air, just a bit. “If you look better, you feel better.”

Merlin had to laugh. “Now that is definitely something Jack taught you.” He let the vaguely besotted look on Arthur’s face pass without comment.

Once in the kitchen with the cart parked just outside the door, Merlin rummaged around and brought out a plate of cake and some mugs, moved the kettle to hang over a hotter part of the fire, and sent a hovering spectral guard to let the triplets know that Arthur and Jack had returned. Arthur’s exhaustion was catching up to him, and he propped his head on his hand and stared blearily at the empty mug. “So, Hans?”

“Fed a hungry girl while he was out hunting truffles, and she kissed him,” Merlin said, and had he been more awake Arthur might have been alarmed by the shadow that flickered over his friend’s face and lingered in his eyes. The moment was gone in a second, however, and Merlin was being his charming self with Serena and then introducing the triplets to her before the three of them swarmed around Arthur and then darted upstairs to look in on Jack. Tea was poured, something fruity and heavily doctored with cream and honey, and then Hans came bustling back in and then bustled Arthur and his mug right out to the baths where there was hot water waiting and he was warned not to drown himself and to go straight up to bed once he was finished.

And Arthur, trusting his friends to take care of Serena and Jack, did as he was told.

~

Late the next morning Arthur staggered downstairs to the kitchen and found nobody in residence except King White, who greeted him jovially enough and congratulated him on his transformation but then quickly found reason to retreat from the room. Arthur watched him go with some confusion, until the guard who had followed him in cleared his throat. “He’s ashamed of himself, Prince Arthur,” the ghost said. “You fought to save his daughter, not to mention your friends, and he believes—rightly—that he should have done at least as much.” He waved toward the hearth. “Prince Hans left a covered plate there for you, he said you would no doubt be starving once you woke.

“I am, and thank you.” Arthur fetched the plate with its domed metal cover and found a generous breakfast which he set to without delay, putting the king’s personal dilemma aside to think on later.

Hans came in as he was finishing and brought out seed buns and fresh butter for him, and poured out strong black tea to go with. “I had nearly forgotten how big you really are,” he said, sitting down with a mug of his own and claiming one of the buns. “So, you were just wandering when you found Jack, were you?”

Arthur made a face. “I…was feelin’ a bit at loose ends, after,” he said. “I needed time to stretch my legs and think.”

Hans nodded and blew on his tea. “Merlin thinks I don’t know that the starving princess who found me in the woods was a ghoul,” he said. “I worked it out on my own after he came back—he spent days poring over books filled with terrible things, and then he left for a week and returned with blisters over blisters that he thought he could hide from me.” He snorted softly. “That poor girl. Someone had put her in an incorrectly cast enchanted sleep and forgotten about her.”

Arthur almost choked on his tea. “You encountered a ravening ghoul?”

His friend shrugged. “She was hungry, I fed her. She kissed me and broke my curse and then vanished into nothingness. I admit to still having been a bit in shock when I came back, and Merlin made me promise I wouldn’t go to that particular wood alone the next time I want truffles.”

“Of course I did, because Snow and I suspect it’s a remnant of the cursed forest of Old Metra, so there’s no telling what else might be in there.” Merlin came out of the stillroom with his own mug of tea and joined them at the table, adding a generous amount of honey to the mug before wrapping his hands around it as though soaking up the warmth. “Serena and Snow are in the baths, and there’s quite a lot of giggling going on. I think we’re going to need to make a second bathing room so no one will have to wait. And I have two guards stationed outside the door to prevent accidents.”

Hans just nodded, but Arthur looked at his friend over the rim of his mug and wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. Merlin looked tired, and worried. The mug came down with a thump. “He was tryin’ to keep a wolf hunter from Serena, Merlin,” he said quietly. “She’s a Moon Princess. And because he’d managed to get a stupid knock on the head earlier that day, it just never occurred to him that every time he’d distract the hunter and disappear, him changin’ back would put the filthy bastard right back onto him again. He didn’t do it on purpose, he did it on accident.” He picked the mug back up. “Not that I haven’t given him a hard time about tryin’ to outdo you ever since, of course.”

Merlin just looked at him. “And you?”

“Nothin’ even close,” he said. “I went back to see Gwenny.”

Understanding dawned. “I remember the terrible crush you had on her. You thought she was the most…” He stopped himself saying the rest of it. “But I thought she’d married the younger of the two du Lac boys?”

“She had,” Arthur admitted. “But I knew that if I went to her…well, she’d have known it was me. She’d have thought it was funny, me swaggerin’ around as a little green dwarf-troll, but I wouldn’t have even had to ask her to break the curse, she’d have just done it.”

Hans raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“She and her husband were both dead, and there was an awful old woman at their cottage who told me…she told me their daughter was with her uncle, and that Gwenny had named me her godfather before she died. She made it sound like the uncle was a right piece of work, and was he ever. So I went to see what was goin on, and you’ve never seen a man who needed a beatin’ so much in your life. The way he and his slattern of a wife were treatin’ Gwenny’s little girl made me so mad I wanted to burn the house down with both of ‘em in it. But, you know, I was two foot tall and green so beatin’ the crap out of him was out…but the woman at the cottage had thought I was fey, so I tricked him into believin’ it and got him to give me the girl—she was a Gwenny too, a Gwynneth—because I made him think her parents had owed me gold for a favor I’d done them, and since he’d claimed everythin’ of theirs…well, he was an idiot.” He took a drink of his tea. “I took her off and we hid in the fields just in case he changed his mind, and I fed her and put together somethin’ to cover her feet because she didn’t have shoes. I told her I was goin’ to take her to her godfather’s dad, because her godfather…wasn’t available.”

Merlin was giving him a look full of horror. “You took her to the castle? But he wouldn’t have recognized…I know you didn’t want…”

“No, I didn’t want,” Arthur said. “The thought of Dad lookin’ right at me and not knowin’ who I was made me sick, but…she was my responsibility, there was no way I could have gotten her back here safely, and I knew Dad would have taken her in a heartbeat.” He snorted into the mug. “He’d probably have handed out that beatin’ to her uncle, too, I’d have stuck around to watch that. But it was already afternoon, so instead of hittin’ the road up to the castle I decided I’d take her to the cottage instead, thank the woman and maybe see if we could spend the night there—she didn’t think much of the uncle, I figured it was worth a shot. But when we got there, the cottage was empty.” He took a deep breath. “She’d been hangin’ her laundry, but the rope was hangin’ down the wall, rotted through like it had been there for long, long time. There was nothin’ in the cottage but dust, so I figured…I figured we could spend the night there anyway, because no one would think to look there if the bastard changed his mind and came after us. So I took Little Gwenny in, and I sat her down so I could tell her what we were doin’, and she started askin’ me about her mother. She said the uncle’s wife called her troll-spawn, and I told her…I told her that her mother had been the most beautiful woman in the world and she was gonna grow up to look just like her, and…and she said that since I said so it must be true and she’d just have to do that, and then she kissed my cheek and poof.” He sniffed. “She laughed, and clapped her little hands…and then she was gone. The little foot covers I’d made were on the floor, and this was there with ‘em.” He reached into the pocket inside his vest and pulled out the slip of paper, putting it on the table.

Merlin reached for it…and then drew his hand back with a wide-eyed look at Hans, shaking his head. So Hans took it, read it, and then handed it back to Arthur with a pinched sort of look on his face. “Did you tell your father?”

Arthur nodded, tucking the paper back into his pocket. “He wouldn’t…say anything, at first. But Bors told me before I left. Lance was killed in a raid, and Gwenny died not a year later…in childbirth. Their little girl died with her. The uncle did take the house Lance had built for her and sent her back to live in the cottage after Lance died…but people blamed him for her dyin’, because he took everything and didn’t even try to see that she was taken care of. He and his wife disappeared after she and the baby died. No one’s ever moved into either place, they think they’re…well, haunted.”

“They were,” Merlin whispered. He reached out, tentatively, like he thought his friend might not react well, and touched the pocket the note had gone into, which just happened to be over Arthur’s heart. “I doubt they are any more, though. That was goodbye, they moved on. I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

Arthur shrugged, brushing his hand away. “It’s…it’s fine. At least I didn’t have to almost die, right?”

Merlin nodded. Only Hans noticed that the withdrawn hand was now clenched white-knuckled in his lap. “Right.” 

 


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