Chapter 14

Alexander bided his time during the next six days, working— well, like a donkey—waiting for the seventh day when he would be himself again. All right, so he couldn't escape because of that woman's spell. Very well, he would break the spell by breaking her wand. He had tried to remember as many nursery-tales about magic as he could, and every one of them said that when you broke a magician's wand, you broke all the spells that had been cast with it.

And if that didn't work, he had some other ideas.

Sure enough, at dawn on the seventh day, he woke up to find himself in his own shape again, and in his old clothes, with the woman standing over him as before. This time, though, he feigned sleep until his disorientation and dizziness passed, waiting for her to poke him with a toe again.

"Wake up, your highness" she said again, with that smirk in her voice that turned it into an insult. "This is no holiday—"

That was when he jumped up out of the straw, seized her wand before she or Master Hob could react, and broke it over his knee.

At the least, he expected a flash of light and a peal of thunder as all of her spells fell apart.

What he got was a peal of laughter.

In fact, that woman was so convulsed with laughter that she had to hold onto the wall of his stall to keep standing up; she bent nearly double, with one hand on her stomach, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes as she laughed. It was Master Hob who supplied the explanation, around peals of laughter of his own.

"Ye gurt fool!" he howled. "What sort of ignoramuses are they growing in your country? Ye think a magician's power is in a puny thing like her wand?"

His face must have fallen a mile, for one look at it set Master Hob off a second time, and that woman, too. And when she picked up the pieces and fitted them back together again as if the wand had never been broken at all, that just put the icing on the cake for him.

All his energy ran out of him in a single moment, like water out of a broken jug. Utterly crestfallen, he slouched his way up to the woodpile without being ordered, eager to get away from their pitiless laughter. Thank heavens, they did not follow him, and he picked up the axe waiting for him in a foul, angry state of mind.

He worked off his anger on the wood. All right. So his first ploy had failed. He still had a second string to his bow, and he'd bide his time and watch for an opportunity to try it today. It had to be today; he didn't want to spend another week as a beast.

He wanted to go home.

He had to be careful, though; the one thing he didn't want around when he tried his second plan was a Unicorn.

It wouldn't be hard to carry off, really. The wench was pretty enough; curled, golden hair that she wore without powder (surely a sign that she was base born), sparkling blue eyes, a luscious red mouth that practically begged for kisses, skin like cream. And the peasant-costume she wore most often displayed the best and most interesting of her attributes to the fullest; a pair of ripe breasts that made his groin tighten even when he was around her as a donkey. If he'd seen her working in the castle, he'd have tried for her, assuming Octavian hadn't gotten there first. Of course, his father wouldn't have liked it—he didn't like the idea of anyone trifling with the staff—but he wouldn't have been more than annoyed about it. I'd have gotten a lecture, but no worse than that.

A woman like that, still a virgin—she'd probably been mewed up here with some old stick teaching her magic, never seeing a proper man alone. A waste, that was, a damned waste. She'd be easy, so long as he could corner her somewhere without a Unicorn or one of those Brownies about to interfere. He was angry now, and it made him want to humiliate her, bring her to heel, show her who was the rightful master here. Master! That's what she needed, all right, a master!

And women needed that, needed to be shown their place. Whether or not they realized it, they wanted it, too. Especially a base-born peasant. Wooing was too subtle for them. A woman like that wanted to be conquered, wanted to be overwhelmed. That's all these peasants knew, really, they were like rutting animals, no subtlety to their lovemaking. Once she had an idea of what a real man could do, she'd quit this nonsense about "teaching him lessons" and come to heel like a proper wench.

Not before lunch, though. He had to work off his anger, and besides, he wanted the memory of his humiliation to have faded before he tried.

It was after luncheon that his opportunity came. The last of the drystone wall was laid, the woman Lily was off somewhere doing something else and didn't need his hand at watering the garden just then, and he was alone in the kitchen yard. That was when she came by, basket full of some herbage or other, without a Unicorn in tow, and not a Brownie in sight.

He stepped into her path; her thoughts were clearly elsewhere, and she practically ran into him. She stopped; looked up at him with a frown as if just now really seeing him. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, then she shrugged. He moved to block her way completely as she tried to step around him, and her frown deepened, those eyes beginning to take on the hue of storm-clouds.

"Shouldn't you be doing something?" she asked, irritably.

"Yes," he replied, and seized her, crushing his mouth down on hers, ruthlessly, left hand around her waist, right hand thrust into the top of her bodice. For one glorious moment he felt her warm breast under his hand, the nipple hardening against his palm, tasted the faint, sweet taste of her mouth as he thrust his tongue past unresisting lips.

There was a flash of light, and a sound like a church bell booming right in his ear.

Then nothing.

And he woke up, flat on his back, in the straw in his stall, his head aching as if from a dozen blows. And when he tried to move, he realized that every headache he'd ever had, including the other ones her magic had left him with, was nothing compared with this one.

"What's the matter?" cried Robin in alarm, as Elena stormed into the kitchen and threw the basket of herbs at the table. It skidded across the tabletop and landed on the floor.

"That—that—that man!" she shouted, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand to get the taste of him out of it. "He tried to—to seduce me!"

"I warned you," Rose said, dourly, coming into the kitchen and rescuing the basket and its contents. "I told you he was going to be trouble. I'll just take these to the stillroom, shall I?"

"Well, he's trouble with an aching head now," she replied savagely. "And if he tries that again, I'll—I'll geld him!"

"I doubt that'll be necessary," Hob put in his bit, coming in through the door from the yard himself. "But I think I'll just go threaten him with it. After he wakes up from your spell that is. I saw you knock him down just now, and I just dragged him off and put him in the stall, by the way."

"He'll be unconscious for an hour at least." That much gave her some satisfaction; he was going to lose some of his precious time as a man, and serve him right. "I'm going upstairs; leave me alone until dinner, please."

The House-Elves exchanged significant looks, but she pretended not to see them. At the moment, she wanted to be alone to get herself under control again, and not because she was angry.

Or to be completely accurate, not just because she was angry, and not just because she was angry at him.

She ran up the stairs and through the sitting room to fling herself into a chair at the window.

Fortunately, the curtains over Randolf's mirror were closed. Not that he couldn't have seen what happened for himself, of course, but at least she wouldn't have to talk to him about it.

Once again she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand in a very unladylike fashion; her lips felt bruised.

Well, he'd be feeling a bit bruised himself when he woke up. She didn't actually know how hard her magic had hit him when she'd finally gotten over her shock; she was so angry that she had lashed out without thinking. He was lucky she hadn't used a killing-stroke instead of the disabling one.

Brute. Beast. How dare he try to overpower her like that? Did he think she was some idiot milkmaid in a bawdy song, ready to spread her legs for the first good-looking man who came her way?

Actually, that was probably exactly what he'd thought.

And The Tradition had done its best to make his thought a reality. Evidently, bawdy songs created as many paths as the Traditional tales did. She would have to remember that from now on.

She'd felt it, when he kissed her; felt it hit her nearly as hard as her spell had hit him. Felt the weight of it crashing down on both of them, making her knees go weak, parting her lips for him, making her secret places feel tight and hot with a rush of longing as she—

She realized what was happening and slashed at the thought with venom.

Damn it! It was doing it again!

Furious now, she got up and splashed cold water on her hot face. No, she thought at it, summoning up images of ice and snow, of frozen rivers and chill grey skies. No, damn you! You will not do that to me!

Half of her wanted to send him away, now, this instant. Sending him away, perhaps to a Wizard, would be so much safer! She would never have to see him again, and surely there was someone she could trust with his education!

Half of her refused to even consider the idea of giving up.

It wasn't only that she hated to concede that she had failed— which she hadn't, not yet! It wasn't only that now that she was looking into his past with Randolf, she had an idea that if she could just get past the arrogance and the assumption of superiority, there was something there that could be worked with. Well, look at Octavian! She would have been willing to bet that it was going to take until winter set in before he humbled himself to appear at Arachnia's castle to offer himself as a kitchen-boy! But there he was, scrubbing pots, submitting himself to the insults of her cook—

" I think it was the Mirrormede, " Arachnia had said in her letter, brought by bat just last night. "He managed to find his way to the Mirrormede— you know, that naiad pool I have that shows people what they most need to see. About half the time it shows people the present, about a quarter of the time it shows them what other people think of them, and about a quarter of the time it shows them their future as it will be if they go on as they are. I don't know what he saw in it, but whatever it was, it's shaken him to the core."

Whatever it was—and Elena had to wonder if it wasn't a glimpse of the future—the image of him that Randolf showed her was a far cry from the arrogant Prince that had passed her by without a word. He was working as Arachnia's lowest stablehand. He took the abuse that her coachman heaped on him without a word of complaint.

And he had begun to take notice of the timid little tweenie who served as the cook's scullery-maid. If he was moved to protect her rather than abuse her himself, that would signal the moment when the ruse would be dropped and Arachnia would send him home.

So; it was clear that Julian was already a decent fellow. It appeared that Octavian was good enough stock to have an unexpectedly swift redemption. So there was plenty of hope for Alexander.

Plenty of hope for such a handsome fellow, with such fine, broad shoulders and hard, strong body, with a face like a young god and hands that knew how to caress a—

STOP THAT!

Furious all over again, she stood up out of her chair and gazed up at the ceiling. Without really thinking about it, she gathered her power around her, like storm clouds filled with the lightning of her anger. And she confronted The Tradition in her mind as if she was a Sorceress facing off against a Great Enemy of her own. "Now you can just listen to me right now," she told The Tradition—and Anything or Anyone else that might overhear. "I will not go play the greensick goose-girl to suit your tales and your plans! You cannot seduce me with a pretty face.

I am Godmother Elena, by all that's holy, and I was Elena Klovis before that, me, myself, and no puppet to be danced about on a path you choose! I did not lie down for my stepmother to be Ella Cinders, and I will not lie down for a Prince with a handsome face! I refuse to be any man's doxy, to be flung aside and forgotten! I will be me, on my own terms, by my own rules, with my own plans and my own decisions!"

Everything went very still, then. Very, very still. Once again, Elena had the feeling of great power looming over her—but this time, it was waiting. Waiting for something. Some direction, perhaps?

Whatever it was—it was certainly listening to her now.

Not even a breath of breeze stirred in the room. She realized that she could not hear anything outside the room—not the cackling of the chickens in the garden, not the House-Elves working inside or outside, not the birds in the sky nor the wind in the birches. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. Her back was to the window, but she wondered—if she dared to turn around and look, would she see the world going on as usual out there? Or would she see nothing at all?

Something very odd, perhaps even unprecedented, was happening here. Godmother Bella had never, ever told her about anything like this—

She needed to say something. She knew that, as certain as the blood flowed in her veins. She felt it in her bones. Something wanted—shaping.

Words are power in a magician's mouth. Choose them carefully.

And yet—she always got her best results when she wasn't too specific, when she let the power choose its own shape.

She took a deep breath. One by one, the words fell, carefully, from her lips. "A playfellow I'll be, but no man's toy. A partner, helper, but no one's servant nor slave. I will be captain of my fate, and commander of my destiny, though the path I may share and the course I chart be followed by others. What I have, I'll share, but I'll not give it over. What I am, I am, and I'll not change it. What I will be, I will be, by my own will and no other. Now. Take that and make something of it!"

There was something like a great intaking of breath. Something like a sigh.

Then the world gave a shake, like a dog, and dropped back to normal.

She wondered what she had bound—or what she had unleashed.

Alexander was getting used to waking up to find people standing over him, wearing unpleasant expressions. What he was not used to was finding people standing over him holding a crude metal instrument in one hand that he happened to recognize.

Master Hob must have seen his eyes track immediately to that hand and what it held, because he smiled, grimly. "I assume ye know what this is, ye cream-faced loon?" he asked. "Happens I'm practiced in the use of it. Never seen any reason to keep jack or stallion around here, when a gelding's so much steadier."

A great shudder of horror convulsed Alexander as he stared at the hideous thing.

"And it'd be wise for ye to remember, my lad," Master Hob continued, softly, but with great menace, "what happens to the ass happens to you."

It felt as if a cold hand closed around his throat, and he nodded, slowly.

"Good. Now we understand each other." Master Hob turned, but only to stow the dreadful object in the pocket of a leather apron hanging on a hook next to his stall. "She might be put out if she found I'd been altering ye, but it'd be too late by that time. She'd rather just keep you in the ass's skin for longer; I take a more direct approach to the problem."

He shuddered again. He had no doubt that the little man would follow through on the threat if it suited him.

"Now then, up with ye," Master Hob continued. "And I doubt not ye've an aching head, and too bad. Mistress Lily needs help with her watering again."

So, aching head or no aching head, he got up and followed the little man back up to the cottage garden. It had been a long day; it was getting longer by the moment.

It took two days before his fear wore itself out and his anger came back to the surface.

He wanted to kill her. She had ruined his life; and that assumed he was ever going to have a life again, at least, a "life" as he had known it.

No, he didn't want to kill her, he wanted to humiliate her. He wanted to see her crawl, wanted to see her humbled, wanted to see her made lower than the lowest whore in the cheapest tavern in the scummiest city in the Five Hundred Kingdoms.

And he didn't dare touch her.

He might be many things, but "stupid" wasn't one of them. The Unicorns never left her side anymore, two of them at a time. If he touched her, they'd kill him. If they didn't kill him, her magic would knock him arse over end again. He didn't care to repeat that experience.

The days were bad enough, slaving away in harness, sunup to sundown, angry thoughts buzzing around in his head like bees in a disturbed hive. The nights were worse.

He dreamed, at night. He dreamed of Julian, and nearly went mad with envy, seeing him ruling his new Kingdom, with his exquisite young bride at his side. It nearly made him sick, and yet he couldn't hate Julian—that woman had made it quite clear that Julian had won his prize fairly, and if he was honest with himself (and in dreams, he had to be) he had to admit that given the nature of the trials, he would have lost. But bloody Hell! How it grated on him! It was only made worse when in those dreams, Julian proved himself to be a fairly good ruler. Not perfect; it was clear enough from one or two of the decisions that Alexander saw that Julian had a lot to learn. But he was respected and admired by his underlings, and loved by his bride and his people.

He dreamed of Octavian, too, dreamed of him humbled as badly as Alexander was, slaving away in a stable in some grim, dark keep, eating whatever he could beg from the kitchen, cleaning filthy stalls. It shocked him, to see Octavian brought so low. It shocked him even more when he realized that (in his dreams, at least) Octavian believed that he deserved this terrible punishment.

And he dreamed of his father—seeing King Henrick as he had never seen him before; not a broken man, but a severely battered and lonely man, pale, silent, and grieving. Two of his sons gone, the only one left being not at all the favored one. And in his way, Henrick feared to approach the only son that he knew he had left, fearing what that son would say to him, the father who had held him in scorn. No, the third son was not lost, but certainly out of reach, so far as Henrick was concerned. It cut Alexander to the heart to see his father in such a state, and in his dreams, he tried to reach out to the King, to tell him what had happened to all of his sons.

But he was like a phantom; he could hear and see all, but no one could hear or see him.

He would awaken from these dreams in the middle of the night, sweating. If he had been a man, he could have wept, but he was a donkey, and beasts couldn't cry. The best he could manage was a fit of dry, wheezing sobs that shook his bones and made him ache all over, and finally tired him out until he could sleep again.

He hated everything at that point, including himself.

But most of all, he hated her.

He watched her as she went about her business, as she came and went from the cottage, sometimes garbed as richly as any queen, sometimes in the dress of the merely wealthy, but mostly in her peasant guise. He never knew where she was going, or what she was going to do when she got there, but at least twice she went out in a strange, colorful cart pulled by the oddest looking excuse for a horse he had ever seen. Even when she was gone, the work did not stop; her House-Elf minions acted exactly as they did when she was there to supervise them, and so, perforce, did he.

Finally, the seventh day arrived again, and he was back to being himself. For whatever good it did him. He couldn't think of any new plans to get himself free, and the moment he was a man again, the Unicorns doubled their guard on her.

What was more, he discovered by making the attempt that the cottage wouldn't allow him inside it. Literally. There was a barrier at the doors and windows that he not only could not cross, but could not see past. So trying to sneak in and catch her unawares (and de-unicorned) was not going to do him any good, either.

He wanted, with a physical ache, to go home.

He was reduced to throwing insults at her, but although Master Hob bristled and the Unicorns glowered, all she did was laugh. "In a contest of wit, your highness, I fear you are but half-armed," she said, mockingly. "And you can call me whatever you like, if it makes you feel any better. Being called a whore does not make me one, any more than calling Master Hob a giant makes him thirty feet tall."

And she sailed off on some errand or other, leaving him seething and speechless.

It was almost a relief when night fell and he became a donkey again.

Another week began in anger, but something odd was happening to him as the days passed.

There was nothing wrong with his physical energy, but—but he felt drained anyway. The moment he was left alone without anything to do, he found himself sinking into a dull lethargy. It took nearly three days before he realized what was wrong, and when he did, the realization of what was happening took him by surprise.

It was getting harder and harder to sustain his anger. It was as if he was blunting it against the rock of that woman's indifference; she clearly did not care if he was angry, or in despair, or indeed, in any emotional state. She did not even care if he hated her.

For the first time in his life he was below someone's notice. It did not matter to anyone here what he thought, of her or anything else. What his opinions were was of no more consequence to her than the price of corn in some far distant land. How could anyone sustain any emotion in the face of that?

He was never going home.

He was certain of that, now.

And no one would really miss him, either. To whom had he really endeared himself? Not to Octavian. Julian—well, perhaps, but Julian knew what had become of him, and if Julian had really cared, wouldn't he have sent someone to come looking for him?

His father? But his father didn't really know him; he was a cipher, the "spare," useful if something happened to Octavian. He recalled the day he had graduated and come home, home to a room that looked like every other guest chamber in the Palace, to a father whose presents on any occasion had always been the same thing; books on military history with money tucked inside. His instructors at the Academy knew him better than his own father did. He had not had a good friend since Robert had died. In a month, he'd been given up on. In a year, people might remember him with the words, "poor Alexander." In ten, you would not find one person in a hundred in Kohlstania who would remember he had even existed.

His bulwark of anger collapsed like a fortress of snow in the spring at that point.

Without it, he had nothing to sustain him. And he sank into a kind of insensate despair, saying nothing to Hob, doing what he was told, eating what was placed in his manger, more and more lost in a grey fog of apathy. He just could not muster the mental energy even to decide to go out in the meadow and eat grass instead of the hay that was in front of him.

When he woke as a man for the fourth time, he was still sunk in that state of despair, and even Hob noticed it when he came to fetch him for the morning's work.

The little man looked at him sharply. For his part, Alexander just looked back at him, dully, without getting out of a sitting position.

"What ails you?" the Brownie asked. "Sickening over something?"

He shook his head. And why should you care? he thought. Except that you would be able to go buy a beast that's less trouble if I were to die. It occurred to him that perhaps he ought to ask that woman to leave him as a donkey from now on. Surely getting lost in the beast would be better than this.

Hob gave him another look. "Even the lowest scut gets a half-day a month," he said gruffly.

"No working for you today."

That penetrated his fug, and he raised his head a little. "What?"

"Take it, ye green-goose, afore I change my mind," the Brownie growled, and promptly turned on his heel and stomped off, leaving Alexander alone in the stable again.

No work? Then what was he supposed to do with himself?

He sat there for a long moment in the gloom—but the straw prickled him, and there were little rustlings of mice and insects that didn't bother him as a beast, but made his skin crawl as a man.

With a sigh, he got to his feet and wandered outside.

He looked around, for the first time, really looked around, at the cottage and its grounds lying quietly in the predawn. There was a light mist lying along the ground, just at knee-height, giving the place an air of mystery. To his right lay the stone cottage, grey-walled and thickly thatched.

The only signs of life were the birds twittering in the thatch around the windows. He knew from experience that it would not be until the sun actually rose that anyone would be stirring there.

In front of him was the bare, hard dirt of the stableyard, though "yard" was a bit of a misnomer, as there was not a great deal of space there, just enough to turn a small cart around.

To his left were the kitchen-gardens and beyond that, the drystone wall he had been working on.

So far, there didn't seem to be anywhere to go.

Behind the cottage were some little sheds, the ricks of curing firewood, and the chopping block, where he would have been if Hob hadn't ordered him to take a rest. That was no help.

In front of the cottage was a flower and herb garden, but he was hardly the sort to putter in a garden, even if it had been his.

But all around the cottage grounds, separating it from the forest, was a meadow left to grow as it would, where he was allowed to graze when he was a donkey.

He already knew that his "boundary" was the edge of the wood; that was where he was turned back any time he tried to pass on his own. But the meadow was wide and irregularly shaped. He hadn't seen most of it yet, and there were probably places where he could be alone for as long as Hob didn't actually come looking for him.

For lack of anything better, he wandered out through the kitchen-gardens, over the stile, and into the bottom meadow. He thought there was a pond out there.

Sure enough, he found, when he'd waded through mist and grass for a bit, that there was a pond fed by a lively little stream, rimmed with willow and birch. Someone—Hob, perhaps—had tied a little boat up to the bank. It was far too small to take someone of Alexander's size and weight, or he might have gone for a row, just because the boat was there. But if he sat down on the bank, he couldn't see the cottage from here; maybe he was no good at pretending that he wasn't held in this bizarre captivity, but at least, he wouldn't have it thrust in his nose.

Blackbirds sang a few experimental notes in the reeds, and off in the woods, he heard a cuckoo. It was peaceful here, and somehow soothing to the aches in his soul. He sank down on the bank and watched the sun come up, the clear, thin light streaking across the hazy blue of the sky, as the birds began their morning carol.

He let his mind empty of everything. He had never done that before. But then, he'd never been at a place in his life where he could. In Kohlstania, he'd been Prince Alexander, one day to be Commander in Chief of the Army, currently standing duty under the present Commander, and second in line for the throne. In the Academy, he'd been Cadet Alexander, Squad Leader and Prefect, responsible for the behavior of all of the Cadets subordinate to himself. He'd always had things to remember, duties to perform.

Here he was no one and nothing. His rank mattered not at all, his titles were meaningless, his value only so much as paid for the food he ate. And for today at least, he had no responsibilities at all.

There was a curious freedom in that. Perhaps that was all that freedom really was, in the end, the knowledge that you had nothing and were nothing, and thus, had nothing to lose or gain.

"Free as a bird" was synonymous with "tied to nothing" after all.

So he sat and watched the new day unfold as he had never quite watched a dawn before.

And for an hour, at least, he stopped being "Prince," stopped even being "Alexander," and just was.

The sun swiftly burned off the mist, the sun dried the dew off the grass, and he lay back on the soft grass and stared up at the sky. He thought about going up to the cottage for breakfast, but since he hadn't been working like a dog, he wasn't particularly hungry. I'll just lie here a little, he decided. After everyone else has gotten food, I'll slip up there and get what's left.

If I get hungry. If...

And somehow, he slipped into a drowse without ever noticing that he had done so.

He dreamed—or thought he dreamed—and in his dream, he opened his eyes at a little sound, and looked into a pair of extraordinary eyes. They were an intense violet color, and belonged to a creature that was about the size of Hob, but nothing like him. This was a girl, a very young child, wraith-thin but bright with health, clothed, so far as he could tell, in nothing but water-weeds. There were water-lilies in her streaming wet hair, and she gazed down at him with all the solemnity of a judge.

"Why are you so unhappy, son of Adam?" she asked, in a voice that reminded him of the sound of a brook flowing over stones.

"Because—I want to be free," he replied without thinking. "I want to go home, before people forget I ever existed."

"Ah," the child said, looking wise. "Are you sure that is what you want?"

"Of course I'm sure!" he replied. "I'd do anything to figure out how to get out of here!"

"Oh, that is a dangerous thing to pledge, anything, son of Adam," said the child. "You are lucky I am a small Fae, and have so little power. I could do you a mischief with that pledge, if I were minded." She gurgled a laugh. "But it is a lovely day, and I am a lazy Fae, as well as small.

And—" She tilted her head to the side, considering. " It is in my mind that you are the thing, maybe, that our King called for, on a day not unlike this one, on a spring morning, when a girl old in pain but young in power came to be weighed and judged and gifted. So I will give you what you ask, the thing that will help you, though it may not seem that way at first to you." She stood up, and held out her hands, which seemed to fill with light.

And then she spilled the light over him. It floated down on him in incandescent motes that filled him with warmth as they touched him.

"Mortal, here's the key to free you," she half-sung, and half-chanted. "See yourself as others see you!"

Then she suddenly lifted up on one toe, spun in place, and vanished with a tinkling laugh and a glow that blinded him.

There was nothing standing above him, and no sign there ever had been anything but dream.

He blinked, and raised a hand to rub his eyes. "Maybe I am sickening for something," he muttered to himself. What kind of a daft dream had that been?

His stomach growled, and he sat up; and maybe some of the leaden lethargy had lifted. He was hungry, anyway.

Breakfast first. Then—see what would happen, on a day when nothing was happening as he had come to expect.

He got to his feet and brushed himself off, and really saw the clothing he was wearing.

Each day that he had spent as himself, he had awakened in it, and despite all the heavy labor he did while working in it, the clothing looked exactly as it had the moment he had been transformed into a donkey. The first day, after he had washed, Lily had taken it from him and given him coarse, common laborer's clothing; he'd taken back his own and put it on damp when she'd washed it. After that first day, he had refused to surrender it. But now, as he brushed grass and bits of leaf and twig from the tight military-style breeches and tunic, he paused in dismay.

Not because it was filthy, because it wasn't—it was no dirtier than it had been when he'd been so unceremoniously transfigured. But—he realized at that moment how utterly ridiculous it was.

It was completely unsuitable for doing the sort of work he'd been put to; too tight, too ornamented, too ostentatious, too impractical, too hot. There was a reason why that woman swanned about in her peasant garb; this was a farm, and she was working just as hard as the rest of them. He'd seen her; milking the cows, tending the garden, and presumably, doing things in the cottage as well. You couldn't do any of those jobs trussed up in a Court Gown, teetering on high-heeled slippers.

And apparently the rule of "if you don't work, you don't eat" applied to her as well.

He wasn't proving anything by clinging to this ridiculous suit of clothing except that he was stubborn. And, possibly, stupid as well. Yes; well, look what she turned you into, after all, commented that voice in the back of his mind. Making the outside match the inside?

He would have had a hard time denying it at that moment, so he didn't even bother to try.

Instead, he made his way slowly up to the cottage, with another request besides food on his mind.

To his intense relief, there was no sign of the Unicorns or that woman, but the Brownie Lily was already at work in her garden. She straightened as he came up the path and gave him a measuring look.

"Robin says he thinks your sickening for something," she said abruptly. "Well?"

"Not that I know of, Mistress Lily," he said. "But I would like something to eat—and—" he hesitated, then blundered on "—if you still have the shirt and breeches you gave me to work in, I would like to get rid of these. For now, anyway."

Her expression didn't change, except that her eyes narrowed a little. In speculation? Perhaps.

He wondered what she saw when she looked at him, then got a kind of flash of what it might be. Sullen, rude, restless, stubborn. Foolish, insisting on working in his stupid quasi-uniform, as if anyone around here, where magic flowed and your dress could change in a wink, would be impressed! Pigheaded, too. And very, very young. Of course, he'd seem young to one of the Fair Folk; however not? He had no idea how old Lily was, but she'd mentioned serving several of this Godmother's predecessors, so he must seem like an infant to her.

He flushed. And added, belatedly. "If you please?"

"If I—ah, right. Come along with you, then," she said, and got to her feet.

She led him to the kitchen door, left him there, and came out with the clothing and a basket.

"Here," she said, thrusting both at him. "You can't go far, but—well, breaking your fast by the pond is—and a book—ah, here!"

Startled, he took the clothing and basket, remembered at the last minute to thank her, and decided to leave while she was still treating him nicely. What had gotten into these people? First Master Hob, thinking he was ill and giving him no work for the day, and now Mistress Lily!

Feeling unwontedly modest, he got out of sight around a shed and changed into the commoner's clothing. And knew in an instant that he had been a fool to refuse it before this. It wasn't coarse; on the contrary, the loose shirt was of linen as fine as anything he owned. For the first time he felt comfortable, not hot and sweaty, with a collar and waistband that were both too tight.

That left the boots—

He looked at them, looked at his bare feet, and wriggled his toes in the grass, experimentally.

Riding boots, especially cavalry boots, were not made for walking. He hadn't gone barefoot since he was a child....

He left the boots on top of the clothing on the kitchen step, and took the basket back down to the pond.

There was a book on top of the napkin that covered the food. He picked it up, curiously.

The Five Hundred Kingdoms: A History of Godmothers, said the faintly luminous letters on the cover. He hesitated a moment, then chose a piece of fruit and began to read while he ate.

"Hmm," Elena said, when Lily had finished explaining why the pile of clothing was beside the kitchen door and the Prince was nowhere in sight. "You don't suppose—"

"He did say 'if you please,'" Lily pointed out. "And 'Thank you.' It's possible he's finally turned the corner."

"And it's possible that pigs will fly, but I'm not running out to buy any manure-proof umbrellas just yet," Rose replied dourly, before Elena could say anything.

"His brother is just about to earn his freedom," Elena felt moved to counter. "And I'd have given that lower odds than this."

"Hmph. I'd have said it would take magic to get that one to see what faults brought him here," said Rose, and gathered up the quasi-military uniform to clean and put in storage. From now on, Elena's spell would transform Alexander's current gear, rather than his original clothing.

"Maybe. Maybe not," Lily said to Rose's retreating back.

"I don't know that it would matter," Elena replied, picking up a bread roll dripping with melted butter, and biting into it thoughtfully. "Once the blinders are off, it's rather hard to go back to seeing things the way you used to."

Lily's glance was startled. "You don't suppose—" Then she stopped.

"I don't suppose anything," Elena told her. "But I do know this much. Some of the other Fae have been very interested in him. There have been a great many of them flitting about on the edges of the forest, far more than usual, and I don't think it's entirely because of the presence of all the Unicorns here. Some of them have even come to me directly to ask about him."

"Welladay." Lily's eyes widened a little, as Elena helped herself to another roll. "The Wild Fae don't talk much to us; we've not much in common with them. Like a fish trying to talk to a bird, I suppose, or a rock to a star. I hadn't noticed them about, but then, I wouldn't. But interfering—"

"Just tell me this—what would one of them do if—just speculating, mind you—he happened to wish aloud to know how to get himself out of here?" Elena raised an eyebrow at Lily, who clapped her hand to her mouth.

"By Huon's horn! That would appeal to the mischiefs!" Lily exclaimed. "Because—the only way for him to get out of here without even bending your magic is—"

"To change his ways," they said together, and Elena smiled.

"And it has to be sincere and permanent, just like what his brother's going through," she added. "So—maybe. The Wild Fae don't, won't bind if they can help it. But they'll change, oh, yes, or else, they'll midwife change along. We'll see. I'm not entirely agreeing with Rose, either, but it doesn't take much to backslide."

"And The Tradition?" Lily asked cautiously. Elena shook her head. The truth was, that since that odd day in her room, when she had confronted the faceless force that was The Tradition with her own will, although she had still felt its power circling around her to the extent that she felt like one of the Great Sorceresses, with enough magic at her command to move the world, she had not felt that terrible pressure of it on her, forcing her to walk a path she was not at all willing to take.

"This doesn't feel like The Tradition," she said only. "This is—new."

Lily blinked. Then said, "Well—good."

"It will be, if he can hold to this course," Elena replied. "If."

"'If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers,'" quoted Lily briskly.

"And my garden is not getting weeded by me sitting here."

"Nor those harvest-potions getting brewed by themselves," Elena agreed, finishing the last of her breakfast. "Still—" She took a long thought. "Let's make a point of rewarding virtue, shall we?"

She and Lily exchanged a smile that might have been called "conspiratorial."

"Good idea," said Lily. "A very good idea. 'Catching more flies with honey,' eh?"

"There's truth in old saws," Elena agreed. And maybe in a Wild Fae's help as well.