Rescuing the Prince

  Rescuing the Prince

  By Meghann McVey

  Text Copyright © 2014 Meghann McVey

  All Rights Reserved

  For Mom

  Thank you as always for being my First Reader.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The Prince is Captured

  Chapter Two: The Missing Princess

  Chapter Three: Faxon and Tolliver

  Chapter Four: Lady Ariana

  Chapter Five: Dinner Preparations

  Chapter Six: The Banquet

  Chapter Seven: Valeriya

  Chapter Eight: The Practical Examination

  Chapter Nine: Ben

  Chapter Ten: Declaration of War

  Chapter Eleven: Ambush and Aftermath

  Chapter Twelve: In and Out of the Woods

  Chapter Thirteen: The Door

  Chapter Fourteen: Reunions

  Chapter Fifteen: The Intruder

  Chapter Sixteen: Princess of Autumnstead

  Chapter Seventeen: Journey to Edonai

  Chapter Eighteen: The Chosen People of Mersania

  Chapter Nineteen: On my Own

  Chapter Twenty: Rescuing the Prince

  Chapter Twenty-one: Resolutions

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  The Prince is Captured

  During the afternoon Fantasy Parade, a dragon swooped down and carried off my boyfriend.

  I am not making this up.

  We were dancing on top the float, some highly-contained waltz steps that allowed us to pause every pass and smile and wave at the crowds of Portalis Park. Then Gerry - dressed as Cinderella’s prince — and I - an unlikely Cinderella — would smile in that adoring way of fairytale couples who have just hit the happily-ever-after jackpot, and the careful dance would begin again.

  Luckily we were too far above everyone for them to notice that Prince Charming was mostly baring his teeth at Cinderella. I hadn’t thought he’d still be mad that I’d voted against him on where to hold next month’s cast member breakfast. But Gerry did have a long memory; he could name all the CEO’s and VP’s Portalis Park had ever had.

  On one hand, I could see where he was coming from. If I had his allergies, I’d probably push for healthy foods, too. Still, expecting all twenty of us in the new Fantasy Parade group to go for raw food seemed a bit much. I was just wondering how long I would have to hear about it and what I would have to do to make it up to him when the first dragon shriek sliced through the music.

  At the float ahead of ours, I saw Snow White and her prince stop in mid-dance to scan the sky for the sound. I looked too. Because the dragon was still far off, it was easy to mistake it for a bird of prey.

  By the time I was turned around and facing Portalis Castle again, the dragon had gotten bigger. It was now the size of a personal airplane, and growing. Its black body was like a hole ripped from the perfect blue of the California sky.

  “Pay attention!” Gerry hissed. “You’re supposed to be smiling and waving to the crowd.” Usually when he coached me on something I was supposed to be doing as Princess Cinderella, he included the page number and section from the Portalis character handbook. The fact that he hadn’t indicated that he, too, was aware of the dragon. Our audience had also sighted the creature and were starting to point and turn their smartphones in its direction.

  “Maybe it’s part of the parade!” some ingenuous soul suggested.

  It wasn’t. As Princess Cinderella, I had been to every practice, could recite every float and give the real names of the people on them.

  The dragon really was a magnificent creature, with flesh so black it was lustrous and shot through with violet and sky blue highlights. At less than ten feet away, it was also terrifying, with talons as long and thick as my forearm, teeth the size of Gerry’s fingers, and —

  “A rider!” someone shouted. A collective gasp rose. There was indeed, a black-clad figure standing atop the dragon’s head. Two leather lines trailed from the sides of the creature’s head like reins, ending in the powerful grasp of two chain mailed hands. An ornate horned helmet hid the face.

  The dragon’s shriek drove the parkgoers to their knees on the sidewalk. Gerry and I froze. The rider transferred the reins to one hand, extended the other in a flash of metal. The dragon opened its talons with a cracking crunch. It was headed straight for us, I realized through a dense fog of fear. The talons bit into Gerry’s shoulders, dragged him clear of the float and into the air. “No!” my boyfriend screamed as he, the rider, and dragon climbed back into the sky.

  “Ger!” I had to save him! I gathered my blue skirts in one hand and swung my legs over the wrought iron balcony rail. My glass slippers flashed as they fell to the ground.

  Carlos, our driver hidden in a compartment under the “ballroom” floor, continued chugging along. I pictured him listening to his headphones, happily oblivious to the drama outside. So long as Snow White kept going ahead of us, Cinderella would follow. Luckily we were crawling along at 5 mph or less. From the balcony, I swung myself down to the bottom level, from which elaborate glass towers rose up all around the float. Sweat ran from inside my satin gloves down my elbows. If my dress got caught, I’d be flattened.

  Using the momentum from my leap, I hurtled into the crowd and a sea of raised cameras and I-phones.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, I thought as I charged down the Portalis Main Avenue, holding my side and gasping. Normally in a conflict, I was the first to bow out. I never had an opinion unless I was sure it wouldn’t offend anyone. You’d never see me standing up to a coworker, let alone someone like a boss. Then again, seeing a dragon on a workday was hardly a normal occurrence. And Gerry was my prince - at work and in real life! I had to save him if I could!

  “What’re you doin’ here, Cinderella?” the cashier asked as I burst into the Old Barber Shop. “The parade’s that way.” He pointed outside.

  I ignored him and made straight for the mirror at the back. A slight push opened it into the secret passage with a golf cart parked inside. In a screech of tires, I shot down the passage and leaned on the horn. My maniacal driving brought the ten minute walk to Portalis Castle — to say nothing of the delay the crowds would cause — down to five minutes. I slammed on the brakes and left the cart running, just in case.

  I stumbled out of the driver’s seat and flung open a wooden castle door that led to the courtyard. Shading my eyes, I scanned the sky for a black shape. There! But it had gotten so much smaller. I had to stop it before it flew out of reach! Despite how high the dragon was flying, if the rider kept to their direction, they’d pass right over the Wishing Well. I just needed a way to stop them.

  I looked around the manicured lawn and hedges, the immaculate cobblestones, the man-made lake with statues of Portalis wishing faeries… Great. Not even a shovel that I might launch at the dragon.

  My breathing hitched; I could feel a panic attack coming on. A desperate look at the well itself saved me. Rough-cut gray bricks comprised the exterior. On either side, two ends that jutted out in a curious way. I flung my gloves to the ground and began feeling around one of the projections. An invisible button clicked, and the rock cabinet swung open. Speakers. I could have screamed from frustration.

  I darted to the other side and felt around. It’s useless, my panicked mind moaned. It’s just the other speaker. You can’t help Ger. He’s going to disappear, and you’ll never see him again.

  Click.

  It wasn’t speakers in the secret little cave this time, but a hose with a mouth wider than my upper arm. It must be what the gardeners used to fill the pond and the well. Yes! This was my answer! I jerked the hose free and hurried back into the passage, to a brass valve shaped like a steering
wheel.

  I emerged to find the hose thrashing like an enraged snake. The courtyard was soaked already, and in seconds, so was the hem of my dress. Well, I had enough water pressure anyway. I grabbed the hose in a headlock, blasting the faerie statues as I looked up. The dragon was coming!

  I braced my feet and aimed, screaming like I was in a war movie. Direct hit! The dragon reeled, and only its rider’s skill kept it from hitting one of Portalis Castle’s smaller towers.

  I took another shot, but the rider was ready for me this time and dodged. To my horror, Ger wasn’t moving. I could only hope he hadn’t been killed.

  We went back and forth like that for what felt like hours. I got two more solid hits, but the dragon still wasn’t letting Ger go. After that third, it became annoyed and came in close, teeth clacking and snapping. Just what I’d hoped for! I shot water into its staring green eye.

  The dragon’s shriek drove me, whimpering, to my knees. As I crouched, clawing for my next breath, the dragon passed over my head, ascending. I thought the rider had ordered the dragon to abandon the battle. Instead, its sinuous black tail closed around my waist. Barbs dug into my arms and torso, and water sprayed everywhere. I glimpsed Ger bleeding from the iron grip of the dragon’s talons. Then an unstoppable force flung me out of the sky, and the ground, no, the well, was rushing up to meet me. I threw my arms over my face. Water exploded around me like a universe of glass shattering, and everything went black.

  Chapter Two

  The Missing Princess

  I awoke on the grassy bank of a pond unlike any I had ever seen in Southern California: one of clear water, with no pump or pennies in sight. Then a silvery fish leaped out of the sparkling surface, energetic, even joyful. I sat for a minute running my fingers over the dry, golden grass and trying to think of how I had come here.

  “Oh!” Suddenly I remembered the dragon’s tail around me. I looked down and gasped. My Cinderella costume had several tears around the waist, given extra definition by my bloodstains, to say nothing of the muddy skirts.

  The costume coordinator was going to kill me. I’d have to pay for the dress. Who knew how much that would be. More than I could afford, after bills and rent. I just couldn’t let my roommates down or I’d have to go back to my parents’. I wasn’t sure about Mom anymore; she’d mellowed since the divorce, but Dad might enroll me in college, which I totally wasn’t ready for. I’d barely gotten through that that torture camp known as high school.

  Somewhere, birdsong cut through the crisp air. I distracted myself momentarily by trying to find the source. The woods around the pond blazed with red, orange, and yellow like leaves in a craft store. In the distance, snow crowned the mountains, more distinct than the Santa Ana’s on the clearest days in Orange County.

  Wherever I was, no one would ever find me here.

  Was this a dream I’d been cast into? I got the bright idea that instead of pinching myself, I was going to touch the wounds the dragon had left. Doing so sent new barbs of pain lancing through me.

  Well, that settled it. I was here, and home was somewhere else. How was I going to get back? It’d be comforting to know, not that I had to act on that knowledge. The place seemed safe enough, and I did need time to think of how I was going to deal with the dress issue.

  Then it occurred to me. No matter how beautiful these woods were, what if the dragon had come out of this world, too? A chill shot down the back of my neck. Maybe I better find some people. The solitude was just so delicious, though! I’d never known anything like it back home, where there were people everywhere you looked, judging, whispering behind your back.

  I got to my feet and dusted off my pale blue skirts. “I wonder which way I ought to go…” I felt more like Alice in Wonderland than Cinderella. Everyone at work had said she was the better character for me; I was kind of short for Cindy. The thing was, my uncle was kind of clueless about the Portalis characters; politics were his concern. The girl who did play Alice was in love with herself in the role. Between her rich Newport Beach family and the friends she had bought at the park, the only thing likely to force her out were age or marriage.

  As I scanned the area, I noticed no signs or other clues of which direction to take. That gave me what my therapist and I had called ‘flights of butterflies’ in my stomach. What if there were bears, or wolves, or coyotes in these woods. Or worse?! Murderers! What if I just wandered for weeks, growing weaker and thinner til I finally collapsed, with only my bones to —

  I fought panic attack feelings. When I’d been left behind by my group on the class field trip, there had been people at the train station to help. There was no one here. I just couldn’t fall apart!

  Finally I decided to follow the pond. I concentrated on my breathing and tuning out all the terrible possibilities. And most importantly, one foot in front of the other. As I rounded the corner, the grip of my panic subsided, and I began to enjoy the sights a little, especially the golden sun glinting around the trees.

  Since I had lost my “glass” slippers back at the float, I had been walking barefooted this entire time. A few missteps brought my filthy, muddy foot down on the long train of my dress. That’s O.K., I told myself. The stupid dress was a lost cause, anyway.

  Eventually I spotted a rough-cut wooden fence. Drawing closer, I discovered something else: the crude dirt road that ran alongside it. A road meant…people! I smiled and unleashed a huge sigh of relief.

  I hadn’t traveled long on the leaf-carpeted path before I encountered three men in matching leather armor and armed with swords. They must be guardsmen or some equivalent to the police. Although they could help me if anyone could, I had to work up the courage to talk to them, the way I did with any new people.

  As I approached, all of them stared at me. I fought the urge to turn away and hide my face like I were five. Instead I covered the rip on my stomach. What had I done wrong? I wondered. I hadn’t even said anything yet.

  They were coming toward me! Now I had something different to worry about. What if they weren’t guards, but like, highwaymen, who had stolen uniforms? Or wayward guards who never got fired because the kingdom always needed men? My every instinct screamed for me to run, but I stayed frozen.

  A few feet from me, they stopped and knelt.

  “Your Highness,” one guard with a ginger beard addressed me, his head and eyes averted.

  “Queen Arencaster has been looking for you for months,” his companion, who looked younger than a high school freshmen, said. “Where have you been all this time?”

  This conversation, as short as it had been, had gotten overwhelming. I wasn’t their princess! I was a cast member for Portalis Park! But they wouldn’t know what that was! And how was I to answer for things I hadn’t done? I couldn’t think of where to begin, so I just shook my head.

  “Could she be enchanted?” the third guard, stocky and bald, asked. To test his theory, he got right in my face and said, “Tell me your name. Do you know where you are?” Again with the head shaking. The guard drew back, looking as frustrated as I felt.

  “Maybe Queen Arencaster can help her,” the boy guard suggested. “We have to return her to the palace anyway.”

  “Quite right,” Ginger Beard said. “I shall be part of the escort. One of you must come with me.”

  “I’ll go,” the boy guard said after a moment of silence when it became apparent that neither he nor baldy were thrilled to go. I wondered if it were a long way to the palace.

  As it turned out, the pond where I had materialized was near a darling little village. The cottages were like elaborate dollhouses, made of stone or wood, with yellow thatched roofs. We followed a short path of perfect white stone to the village square, where the remnants of the day’s market were just packing up.

  “Aeron,” Ginger Beard addressed an old man in a homespun shirt and breeches. “Are you going to Castle Autumnstead tonight?”

  Without looking up from loading his vegetables in the wagon, Aeron grunted.


  “Would you have room for the princess and her escorts?”

  Now he had Aeron’s undivided attention. “You found the princess?”

  “Here she is, plain as day.” The boy guard puffed up his chest a little.

  “Would you mention it to Queen Arencaster?” Aeron said in a low voice. “My family is growing again. We need all the help we can get. ‘Farmers always worry,’ you know.” The guards nodded as if it were a proverb they knew well.

  I took another look at Aeron. He wasn’t as old as he had first seemed. Rather, it seemed his hard life had aged him.

  “I’m sure she will,” Ginger Beard said with a pointed look at me, “once she gets her voice back.”

  “Was it stolen?” Aeron asked. Ginger Beard and the boy guard nodded. “Wonder what kind of trouble our Fiona was getting into this time.” He spoke gruffly, but an unmistakable smile touched his weathered cheeks.

  “It’s always a story,” Ginger Beard agreed. “Corwin, fetch Aeron’s horse.”

  “Yes sir,” the boy guard said.

  In the conversation that followed, I gathered that Princess Fiona was a total tomboy, always sneaking off to have adventures. Most people in Autumnstead, it seemed, welcomed stories of her exploits. I wondered what she was like as a person and where she really was now.

  On the ride to Castle Autumnstead, I tried to think of a way to explain my problem. I didn’t want to get thrown into prison for impersonating the princess. What if she’d come home while I was out here? Well, it would be interesting to see her in person. Just how alike did we look?

  Although I’d begun to feel somewhat comfortable around Ginger Beard, the boy guard Corwin, and Aeron the farmer, I couldn’t bring myself to break into their conversation, not knowing what I wanted. It had been so much simpler before the Fiona thing had been thrown into the mix. But if I had known exactly what I wanted out of the conversation, it would have been almost impossible for me to interrupt to tell them. I just couldn’t jump in with my own topic. It was something my therapist and I were working on. Along with the general social anxiety.