Into the Wild(53)

Was she? She didn’t know. If she wasn’t a princess, what was she? This time, when Princess reached back for a memory, it felt as if she slammed into a wall inside her head.

The prince clasped Princess’s hand to his heart. “Surely she is a princess from some faraway land. Look at her grace, her beauty, her poise!”

“We shall see,” the queen said. “She shall be tested.”





Leaving the prince behind, the queen shepherded Princess down a tapestry-lined hall. Questions tumbled inside her: What test? Why? Who was this queen? Where was this castle? The queen pulled her faster and faster down the hall until the tapestries blurred into a mosaic of colors, and the glass slippers echoed and clinked like a dozen champagne flutes toasting.

Abruptly, the queen halted and flung open a door. The scent of roses flowed out like a wave, and Princess saw a blond woman in a pink ball gown sleeping peacefully on a canopied bed. Roses climbed up the posts and over the canopy. “Who is she?” Princess asked.

“Occupied,” the queen said. “Not your story. Come. We must find your story.” She took Princess by the wrist again and hurried down the hall. What did she mean? Princess wondered. Her story?

Again without warning, the queen halted. Sliding on her glass slippers, Princess narrowly avoided crashing into the queen. The queen threw open another door. Princess peeked inside. In front of a mountain of straw, a girl was crying. “Is she all right? Why is she crying?” Princess started to ask, but the queen slammed the door shut and pulled Princess onward. “There must be a role for you,” the queen muttered. “You must fit one of them.”

Princess didn’t know what she meant. Her feet ached in the hard shoes, and her skin itched from the feathers. Who were these people? What was she doing here? “Please, can’t we rest?” she asked, but the queen ignored her.

The queen tried a third door, where an older woman studied herself in a mirror and chanted: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . .” The next room had another bed, but this time, it housed a woman and a fat, green frog. “Who are they?” Princess asked.

“You should not be asking,” the queen said flatly. “The trumpeter will be punished for this.”

“But I . . .”

The queen opened another door. “Ah,” the queen said. “Here we are, and in you go.” She shooed Princess through the doorway.

Princess faced a wall of cloth. She craned her neck. Mattresses, she realized. It was a pile of mattresses. Lots of mattresses. Why were there so many? The stack peaked near the top of the vaulted ceiling, twenty feet overhead. A ladder leaned against it. Princess heard a bolt slide into a lock behind her. She heard the queen’s voice through the shut door: “Sleep well.”

Sleep? The queen was leaving her here? “Wait, please.” Princess tried the door handle. It didn’t budge. She knocked. “I don’t understand! You said there would be a test.”

Behind her, within the room, a voice said, “This is the test.”

She turned and saw only the mattresses. “Who said that?”

“I did,” the voice said.

She looked up. Poking its head over the top mattress was a cat. “Hello,” she said. “What do you mean, it’s the test?”

“The queen has placed a pea under the mattresses that a true princess would feel while she slept,” he said.

She didn’t think that sounded very likely. The ladder to the top was so long that it bowed in the middle. “A pea?”

“It’s an unusually large pea,” he said.

What did a pea have to do with being a princess? How could a vegetable confirm an identity?

The cat disappeared for a moment and then reappeared to climb, humanlike, down the ladder. He wore boots on his hind paws, and he had a tan-colored cloak tied around his neck in place of a collar. A stick poked out of one of his boots. She wondered if it was normal for a cat to talk and wear clothes. It felt odd and familiar at the same time, as if a memory should be there, but of course it wasn’t. He landed neatly on the ground and stood upright on his booted hind paws. “Why does a cat need boots?” she asked. “And why wear them only on your back feet?”

His whiskers twitched. “You’re too aware,” he said. “You shouldn’t be asking so many questions.”

“Why not?” What was wrong with being aware? She didn’t feel particularly aware. She felt as if she were swimming in murk. She tried again to push at her memories, and she hit the wall in her head. Her head throbbed.

“You must have found a reminder,” he said. “Something or someone must have sparked this.” He hesitated and then asked, “Do you know who I am?”