While I devoured a bowl of porridge, the servants sent suspicious glances in my direction and discussed the dangers of magic.
“Do you recollect old Jonas?”
“Aye, he tangled with a fairy and she turned him into a wolf.
Spent the rest of his days in the woods pestering folks that passed by.
A mighty nuisance, that one was.”
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“And remember the tailor and his wife. They wished for a child and a fairy helped them. Their daughter was born as big as a thumb and never grew a stitch bigger.”
“Whatever became of poor Thumbelina?”
“Methinks she was blown away in a fierce wind.”
“Nay, she was drowned in a rainstorm.”
“Nay, ’twas worse than that. Something awful. A cat, perhaps.” I put down the chunk of bread I’d been eating. This was one of the stories my father read to me years ago. I knew the answer. “Thumbelina was captured by a toad but escaped on the back of a swallow and eventually fell in love with a flower-fairy prince and married him.” The servants gasped at my ending and shook their heads sadly.
The cook went back to chopping onions. “I told you ’twas awful. Married to a fairy, unlucky chit.”
One of the chicken pluckers nodded. “ ’Tis probably what the first fairy meant to happen all along—that’s why she cursed the poor child.” One of the vegetable choppers pointed an onion in my direction.
“You best not accept more help from this fairy godfather. Fairies only help themselves, and that’s the truth of it.” A dough kneader pounded on her loaf. “But who can afford to of-fend a fairy? They’ll curse you as sure as rain if you do.” Everyone mumbled in agreement and they went back to their work, perhaps considering my hopeless state.
After I finished eating, the guards took me to the chambermaid’s room. I had been hoping for a bath, but only got a basin of warm water, a gritty bar of soap, and a rag to clean myself. The maid washed the straw out of my hair in a bucket of water, and then I dressed in a long blue gown with sleeves so big I could have hidden tubas inside them.
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She braided my hair and put it up with ribbons. When she finished, she pronounced me “a marvelous beauty” and gave me a hand mirror to check her work.
I stared at myself as though if I kept watching, my reflection would revert back to the old me, the me from the twenty-first century that had come here wearing jeans and tennis shoes. Instead I saw a fairy-tale maiden with large, worried eyes. I put the mirror down.
The chambermaid left, but I stayed in the room alone, with guards keeping watch outside the door. I was used to the constant noise of the modern world: TVs, iPods, cell phones. The silence felt suffocating. I walked back and forth across the room, wondering if Kendall and my mom knew we were missing yet. I also wondered what Nick and our parents were doing now, and what they’d do if they had to stay here for an entire year like the fairy tale said.
I got to leave the room to eat lunch and dinner with servants—they regaled me with more stories of doomed mortals who’d had the misfortune to come across fairies. And I was allowed to leave the room to visit the garderobes, which were the medieval equivalent of the outhouse. Only they weren’t outside of the castle; they were smelly rooms with holes that emptied into some unfortunate place.
When evening came, I was led outside to the barn by a procession of men. Haverton was at the front of the group, carrying a black bag that jingled as he walked. King John’s wizard walked next to me. He was a short, stocky man who wore black robes and gripped his wand in front of him like he wanted to poke someone with it.
Hudson stood watch by the barn door. He opened it for us, catch-ing and holding my gaze as the wizard pulled me inside. A few guards poured in after us. Each held a torch, which made me nervous in a barn full of straw. And it was full of straw. Several stacks stood taller than me—great uneven towers staring down at us. A stool sat in the 154/356
middle of the stacks, looking small and forlorn by comparison. One of the guards set a spindle and a candle next to the stool. Its pale flickering light barely reached me. While I looked around, Haverton came up behind me, took hold of my arm, and clapped a metal band onto my wrist. I let out a startled yelp and pulled away in alarm, but it did no good. I was caught. A long, thick chain connected to the band. This is what Haverton had been carrying in his bag.
I held my hand up angrily, glaring at Haverton. “I’ve got guards,” I protested. “Why are you shackling me?” Haverton went to a nearby beam, twisted the chain around it, and slid a lock through the links. “The king’s orders, m’lady.” He bowed slightly when he finished, then slipped the key into his pocket.