The Princess Imposter Read online

  But the prince had wrapped his arms around himself, and he was shivering.

  Well, she thought, of course you’re shivering. Get up out of the cold water, you ninny.

  What she said was, “If you’re looking for me in the stream, I have to tell you: Most princesses wouldn’t be hiding underwater.”

  Fred’s head jerked up. “Princess Gabriella! Are you all right?”

  It was his combination of joy at seeing her and concern for her well-being that made Phleg look at him more closely. He was sitting at a very odd angle.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Are you stuck?”

  “Maybe a little bit,” he admitted.

  She took a step forward.

  “Don’t come in the water!” the prince warned. “You’ll get wet.”

  Phleg paused, waiting to hear why she shouldn’t get wet. Perhaps he thought there was something wrong with the water. Her fairy sense told her there was not.

  “Well, what do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “If you could go back to the castle, and … well, first let your parents know you’re unharmed—because everyone is so worried. And then—while you’re at it—if you could send someone back to fetch me, that would be very much appreciated.”

  “That would also be a very roundabout way of doing things.” Phleg stepped into the water. Cold. That was all that was wrong with it. She sat down.

  “Don’t … ,” he started, but then realized she wasn’t prepared to listen to him.

  There was a half-rotten tree submerged in the stream, evidently carried down from the hills by the winter thaw, and the prince had gotten his foot wedged in it.

  “You are stuck,” she said—rather pointlessly, she realized as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He already knew that. Any of her brothers and most of her sisters would have mocked her for a week.

  But Fred’s answer was a simple “Yes, I do believe I am.”

  She tugged and pulled at the trunk, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Don’t hurt your hands,” Fred said. “I’ve been working at it for most of the night and haven’t gotten anywhere.”

  “Ah!” Phleg said, realizing that Fred’s misstep had occurred in the dark. So maybe he wasn’t a total ninny. She was glad of that.

  “Ah, what?” Fred asked.

  “Just ah.”

  Fred accepted this. “So, now that you’ve gotten wet, you see you’ll have to go back to our original plan and head off for the castle. I just hope you don’t catch a chill.”

  “It was never our plan,” Phleg pointed out. “Just your idea. And, as far as catching a chill, I’m not the one who’s been sitting in the stream all night.”

  “Not all night,” Fred argued. “Just … ” He sighed. “… most of it. Please get out of the water at least, so the sun can dry you.”

  Phleg stayed right where she was. In fact, she braced her back against the bank of the stream and put both feet against the trunk of the tree. It wasn’t that thick; it was just a beech. But though she was able to break off a branch or two, the trunk stayed where it was. She ducked her head underwater—she could hear Fred telling her not to, even as she did—but seeing exactly what the tree looked like and where its branches were jammed against the earth only convinced her that she would not be able to move it.

  “Princess Gabriella!” Fred protested once she came back up.

  “Shhh.” She looked to the trees that grew nearby and spotted a bullfinch. She whistled for it. Then, when it hopped to a lower branch, she asked of it, “See if you can find any beavers nearby, can you?”

  Fred said, “Excuse me?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” Phleg indicated to the bullfinch, which was already flying away.

  Fred nodded as though he thought this made sense. “He understands human speech, does he?”

  “She,” Phleg corrected. “Did you see any red feathers?”

  “Um … ” Fred was taking this as a trick question. “Was I supposed to?”

  “Only the males have red. The females are gray.”

  “So … ” Fred was trying so hard to understand. “… only the females speak human?”

  Phleg sighed, since—after all—humans spoke what had originally been fairy speech. “Bullfinches only ‘speak’ bullfinch. But they can understand a lot. Still, there’s a reason many species call erratic, unreliable behavior flighty.”

  “All right, then,” Fred said, simply deciding to take her at her word.

  “So now we wait,” Phleg told him.

  “For beavers,” Fred agreed.

  “Or someone from the castle guard. Or for a woodsman with an ax.” She didn’t like to think of the castle guard coming, as they would make her return with them. But even more than that, she didn’t like the way Fred’s lips were turning blue, which she suspected meant exactly the same in a human as it would for a fairy.

  Phleg put her arm around the prince to help support him and to keep him warm. “Tell me a story,” she said, hoping that would keep him occupied. “Like you did for your brother.”

  Fred considered for a moment, which she thought meant he was trying to settle on which story to tell. But what he said was, “Only if you get out of the water.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

  Fred sighed. “You’re a lot more bossy and stubborn than I remember.”

  “Get used to it,” Phleg told him.

  The fairy family had no sooner finished eating when a visitor arrived in the kitchen, materializing from a puff of sparkly dust, accompanied by the sound of tiny silver bells. Her clothing—fuchsia and gold and frilly even by royal court standards—was much finer than what Gabriella had seen so far. If the dress and shoes had started as vegetation, their ancestry was skillfully disguised.

  Any chance of getting anyone to cooperate in bringing their own dishes to the sink—much less cleaning them—vanished in squeals of “Aunt Sylvimit!” as the children clustered around the newcomer.

  “Who is she?” Gabriella whispered to Parf, the only one who held back.

  “Aunt Vimit,” Parf said. “Think vomit.”

  “I will not,” Gabriella told him firmly. “I meant: your mother’s sister or your father’s?”

  “Mumsy’s.”

  This was not the answer Gabriella would have expected, now that she saw the coolness of the fairy women’s greeting, which was all quick air kisses and little more than air hugs.

  Aunt Sylvimit was slightly more enthusiastic about greeting the children, though she did seem more anxious about her hair and clothing getting mussed than Gabriella felt a favorite aunt should be. Gabriella was just thinking that the children’s excitement might be for any change in routine, rather than for Sylvimit herself, when the fairy woman glanced in her direction.

  “What,” she demanded, in a tone that would have been harsh even had she used the more socially acceptable who, “is this?”

  “Gabby,” several of the children shouted, each trying to be the first—or the loudest, or the bounciest—to provide the information.

  Gabriella inclined her head and curtseyed in polite greeting, holding out the skirt of her increasingly ragged and decreasingly white nightgown. “Princess Gabriella of—”

  Before Gabriella could finish, Mumsy cut in, “She’s our changeling.” She seemed eager to provide even more details, starting, “There’s a long tradition—”

  “Changeling?” Sylvimit took her own turn at interrupting. “Isn’t she rather old?” She said old as though the word hurt her mouth, in the same tone someone might say dirty. “And … ” Gabriella braced herself to once again be called big. “… bulky?”

  Bulky? That was even worse than big. For someone who—until meeting the fairies—had most often been described as petite, the word stung. Gabriella resolved to think of the fairy woman as Vimit rather than Sylvimit from now on. She couldn’t bring herself to manage Vomit.

  “Most irregular,” Vimit muttered disapprovingly. She cast a sour
look over her nieces and nephews, clearly counting. She must not have been able to place who was missing. “Who’s she been changed for?”

  “Phleg,” the chorus of eager young fairy voices informed her.

  Vimit’s brows creased in concentration or criticism. “Renphlegena,” she corrected, snapping her wings in disapproval. “Your sister has a beautiful and distinguished name she shares with her beautiful and distinguished great-grandmother. It should not be shortened to something so … ” She sniffed—she actually sniffed. “… so … unattractive … and … unrefined.” These words, too, seemed to hurt her mouth. “I don’t know what’s the matter with this family of yours, Luna,” she told Mumsy. “First that worthless husband of yours, now this.”

  Gabriella had heard Mumsy call her husband “no account” and “useless” on several occasions, but apparently she reserved that right for herself.

  “First,” Mumsy said, “the institution of changelings is a time-honored practice. And second, if Benlos and I are interested in humans and their customs, that’s really no concern of yours.” Several of the children nodded emphatically, though Gabriella doubted Mumsy had ever shown the slightest interest in humans until that very moment.

  Vimit gave an I-know-something-you-don’t smile. “You might not feel that way once the Fairy Council has its say.”

  Mumsy was struggling to rise above this goading, Gabriella could tell by her tight lips, but in the end she could not. “Go on and tell me, then,” she snapped.

  “Benlos has gone and gotten himself in trouble.” Vimit sounded quite pleased to be the bearer of bad news.

  Little Miss-mot seemed to take in the unease of her older siblings. She either threw herself to the ground or fell, and she began to howl. Gabriella picked her up, since with Mumsy distracted no one else seemed inclined to, and tried to jiggle her into a better mood.

  “Trouble,” Mumsy said to Vimit, “which your husband, being on the Council, could probably get him out of.”

  “Oh no,” Vimit hastened to say. “No, no, no. Not without the risk of tarnishing his own reputation.”

  Parf snorted. “And Uncle Ardforgel would never do that for this side of the family.”

  “Priorities,” Vimit said, by which Gabriella took her to mean, You’re right about that. “Nonetheless, I just thought you would want to know.” Vimit’s smile was more sincere this time. Sincere—and, Gabriella felt, perhaps a bit unduly cheerful, given the situation. “Toodles.” She fluttered her wings so that she hovered, hummingbird style, a foot or two above the ground. Once again, Gabriella could hear diminutive bells.

  “Wait!” Mumsy said. “What sort of trouble?”

  “What do you think? Besides, I already said: Trouble because of his interest in humans. Not only that, but—as you should be able to guess—with thieving. Thinking he can get by on good looks and charm alone, even though that mostly seems to work on you.” She disappeared in a flash of pinkish-purple shimmer. Gabriella took this to be a mode of fairy transportation, rather than assuming Vimit had exploded. Unpleasant as Mumsy’s sister was, surely exploding in front of the family would have brought some reaction beyond Mumsy’s, “Oooh, that woman!”

  Several of the children echoed her, eager to show their support.

  Mumsy turned to Gabriella. “You’re going to have to stay here and watch the children,” she said, “while Parhenoloff and I go sort this out.”

  It took Gabriella a moment to decipher that Parhenoloff was Parf’s full name, his real name. She was just nodding and beginning to say, “It would be my honor—”

  —When Parf told Mumsy, “You should stay with the little ones, and I should go with Gabby.”

  “What?” Mumsy asked. “Why?”

  Gabriella would have asked the same questions, except she was momentarily stunned into silence.

  Parf rubbed his nose and scuffed his feet on the kitchen floor, and finally said, “She’s smart.”

  “And I’m not?” Mumsy demanded.

  Most of the children sensibly chose this moment to tiptoe into other parts of the house.

  Without looking at either Mumsy or Gabriella, Parf said, “She’s smart in the way of the Council.”

  “I doubt it,” Mumsy snapped. “She’s never even stood before the Council.”

  “Any more than you have,” Parf agreed. “But she has a way with words. Of … I don’t know … of making nice. Like Uncle Ardforgel.” Now he did look up at Gabriella. “I don’t mean that as a compliment.”

  “Then I shall not take it as one,” Gabriella said. But it was still a surprise to have him acknowledge her as having a skill.

  “You know you’ll get all upset and start yelling,” Parf told Mumsy, “and that won’t help. Gabby wouldn’t yell if her hair was on fire. She’s a princess. She knows about these things. Not about hair being on fire,” he hastened to add, misinterpreting the quizzical look Gabriella was giving him, “but about talking people into and out of things. She knows these things. Even if”—he again hastened to add, because Mumsy looked ready to interrupt—“she doesn’t know about these things from a fairy standpoint.”

  Mumsy was considering. “You’re certainly making your point about you being inarticulate,” she told Parf. She looked at Gabriella. “You’re a princess … ?”

  Gabriella nodded.

  “… And as such are used to speaking in public?”

  “I’ve had lessons from earliest childhood in elocution, law, and logic.” But, still, Gabriella thought, even as she tried to squelch the little voice of doubt and worry, not fairy law and logic.

  How different could it be?

  There was a crash from another part of the house, and one or more of the children started howling.

  Mumsy looked at Parf levelly. “This is your father’s life we’re talking about.”

  “Understood.”

  Clearly, Mumsy was still undecided, weighing things in her head. “You don’t much like your father.”

  Parf shrugged. “Neither do you.” Before she could protest, he continued, “But he is my father. And if he’s in some sort of trouble because of humans, who better than a human—?”

  “Muuummmmsyyyy,” several of the children bawled, though they sounded more annoyed with one another than in need of medical assistance.

  Mumsy waved a dismissal. “Go,” she told Parf and Gabriella. “This is such a nuisance. Simply getting you there will take just about all the magic I’ve managed to save up.”

  “You save up magic?” Gabriella asked. There was so much she didn’t know about fairies.

  But at the same moment, she realized there had been more to Mumsy’s gesture than just a wave of dismissal. Gabriella and Parf were—as Aunt Vimit had been only moments earlier—floating free of the ground.

  And then Gabriella felt herself dissolve—which was not a pleasant sensation, despite the sparkles.

  “Tell me a story,” Phleg said to Prince Fred as they waited for the beavers to come to the rescue.

  Fred looked confused. Phleg had already noticed that he often looked confused. But she didn’t hold this against him. “What kind of story?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s just to pass the time.” She didn’t add, And to keep you from worrying.

  Of course, she was worrying, too. She wished she had asked the bullfinch to fly back with a report. It would be nice to know when the looking-for-beavers stage was over and the help-was-on-its-way part of the waiting had started. Then all she’d need to be concerned about was if help was likely to come sooner (should the beavers live in this particular stream) or later (if they lived on another body of water and had to travel overland, rather than being able to swim all the way).

  “I don’t really know any stories,” Fred said.

  “Of course you do,” Phleg insisted. “I heard you tell your brother a story.”

  Fred blushed. “Oh. That was just something I made up.” He looked as though this was a bad thing. “I’m terrible at telling real stories
. I keep forgetting bits—important bits—and then I have to go back and say, ‘Oh, did I mention the monster only had one eye?’ When I’m making up stories, it’s easier.”

  Phleg shook her head. “Seems to me it would be harder.”

  Fred thought for a moment, trying to work out if she could be right. Then he said, “No, easier. I have to admit, Gabriella: I’m not the smartest prince in the royal family.”

  “That’s a sad thing to say, considering Telmund is less than half your age.”

  Fred laughed as though she were joking. “Well, but there’s my three older brothers, too. Don’t forget them.”

  Phleg hadn’t seen any older brothers. She’d assumed there was only Fred and Telmund. Not that she could admit that, since Gabriella probably knew. She was about to say that of course she hadn’t forgotten them, but Fred’s solemn face convinced her not to try bluffing about what she knew and didn’t know. “I forget things, too,” she admitted.

  “Everybody does,” Fred assured her.

  Phleg poked his arm with her finger. “See? So you can’t go around saying that forgetting makes you not-the-smartest-prince-in-the-royal-family.”

  Fred shook his head and opened his mouth to argue, then let the subject drop.

  “So,” Phleg said, “that story you told your brother: It was good. It had action, and adventure, and I really liked the main character. And I liked that things worked out, even when another adventure was starting. When my brother tells stories, he intentionally tries to upset us: to scare us, or to make us cry.”

  Fred blinked. Twice. He said, “But you’re an only child.”

  Nitwit! Phleg chided herself. You’re as slow as pudding! “Well,” she said, “but sometimes I imagine I have a brother and he torments me.”

  “That is inventive of you.” Fred sounded caught between admiration and not-sure-whether-he-was-being-made-fun-of. “Most people make up an imaginary friend to keep them company.”

  “Well, Parf does do that. It’s just bad company.”

  Fred laughed again. “Sometimes my brothers are bad company, too. They tell me making up stories is for dreamers who can’t do anything else.”