Harsh and cruel was the Prince of the South. The Earl of the East, Lord of the West and the Count of the North ruled fairly and justly, but he declared them weak. The only solution, he sneered, was for him to take control.
Men whispered that he was a sorcerer, able to make himself invisible. That way, he could walk the byways of the North, the West and the East, sit at their feasts unseen, and listen in on their councils undetected. The sorcerer himself had started these rumors so he could sow uncertainty and fear before moving in to conquer.
The Earl of the East and the Lord of the West and the Count of the North exhorted their subjects to take up arms and fight the Prince of the South. But the subjects were now all on edge, distrusting their lords, ready to flee, not fight. How could they fight when they didn’t know where the enemy was?
Along the border of the East ran a mountain range. On the other side ruled an Elven Queen whose power was as great as that of the Sorcerer. Her enchantment lay over the mountains like a mist. Through the heart of this barrier ran a tunnel carved out with magic. Once at sunset and once at dawn these gates opened, and for the rest of the hours the gate locked fast. At sunset each day a large crowd of refugees pressed against it, their carts piled high with belongings.
As more and more subjects fled, the land lay untended. Fruit dropped from the trees and rotted in the grass. Church bells hung silent.
One family, however, clung to their cottage. Strongheart, the mother, said she would not be forced from her home by rumors and fears. Kindheart, the father, did not want to abandon their sow and her new litter of piglets.
Their daughter, Treasure, had not inherited her mother’s brave heart. When they still had neighbors, they called her Little Trembling. Each night, she dreamed of the Sorcerer who rode a wildcat, his face twisted with rage that one family of peasants should defy him by refusing to leave. On his head he wore a diadem of adders. On his arm he bore a hawk with furious eyes.
Every evening, Little Trembling would take the sow and piglets their vegetable peelings, and murmur her fears to the pigs. But one cold, damp night the sow suddenly bared her teeth, kicked down her sty and charged. Trembling screamed and dived behind the woodshed. Strongheart and Kindheart came running out in time to see the Sorcerer appear in the air above the sty, laughing exultantly at the carnage. With a cry of triumph he mounted his steed, the huge wildcat, and flew away.
The sow and her piglets were nowhere to be found. Strongheart and Kindheart were forced to agree that it was time for them, too, to leave the country. They packed their few belongings into a handcart and set off west. But the bridge that crossed the river into the West had been burned down by fighting knights, and so they had to travel on to the ford many miles downriver. It would add nearly a day to their journey before they would arrive at the mountain gates. Worse than that, it meant traveling through the South, the land of the Sorcerer.
Trembling began to weep.
“There is no use crying,” said Strongheart. “We must just keep going.”
Either side of the road, the wheat heads in the fields hung heavy and unharvested. The only sound was the scuff of their shoes. And yet Trembling felt eyes watching them in an invisible face ugly with hatred.
Soon they ran out of food. Trembling cried even more.
“Maybe we can catch our dinner,” said the mother. When they lived in their cottage, she had been known to return from market with not just a basket of butter and beans but also a wild hare, which she’d shot herself with her bow and arrow.
But her bow was nowhere to be found. It seemed it had fallen out of the handcart many miles back. Trembling shivered at the thought of the danger they were now in, with neither food nor defense. But she no longer felt watched. She thought the Sorcerer had grown bored of them and left, to gloat over his conquests.
Some miles on they heard screeching and yowling. Strongheart and Kindheart hurried over and discovered a wildcat, caught in a wicker trap. Trembling ran and hid while the mother and father argued about what to do. Strongheart wanted to kill it and cook it for them all, but Kindheart said the cat was as desperate as they were, and so they released it. They scolded Trembling for running off, then kissed away her tears. “You must learn to be brave,” they said.
They’d traveled on for another hour, feeling very hungry indeed, when they heard something thrashing in the undergrowth. They hurried closer but when Trembling saw it was a fox gripping a writhing adder in its teeth, she ran away. But then, ashamed of herself, she crept back to see what was happening. The fox dropped the adder and fled into the bushes, but Strongheart trapped the snake with a forked branch. She wanted to cook it for a meal for them all but Kindheart said that the snake was as exhausted as they all were, and so they released it. Then they kissed Trembling. “You must be braver,” they said.
They’d traveled on for another hour, weak and tired, when a mighty shriek startled them. From a branch above, a huge hawk glared down with furious eyes, its claws caught in a tangle of jesses. It was pecking at the leather, but when they stopped it made a stab at them with its wicked beak. Trembling whimpered but she whispered to herself, “I must be brave.”
Strongheart argued that this was their last chance of a meal. Kindheart looked worried, but he was about to relent when Trembling said, “It’s as frightened as we are, Mother. We should let it go.” So Strongheart put on her leather gloves and Kindheart put on his leather apron and together they held the bird while the girl unravelled the tangle of jesses. With a scream, the bird flew away.
They traveled on for another hour, hungry and thirsty and exhausted. The sun sank in the sky and they saw they would not make it to the border by night.
“We have to find somewhere to stay,” said Kindheart.
But everywhere the land was desolate, laid waste by the wars between the lords of the East and the West and the South and the North. Cottages stood with burned roofs open to the sky. Ravens pecked at corpses in a battlefield littered with broken pikes.
At last they came to a lone castle. The gates hung off their hinges, but inside they found a storeroom with a door that closed. From the halls they dragged in tapestries and cushions to sleep on. Now it was too dark for them to be able to see anything.
In the shadows things scurried and squeaked. Trembling whispered to herself, “I must be brave,” but she couldn’t sleep.
They say it’s darkest just before dawn. And that was the favorite time of the Sorcerer.
A faint jingling made the girl open her eyes in alarm. In the space between the makeshift beds and the door a figure glowed. His nose was haughty and his magnificent cloak swirled with crescent moons. His crown was made of live adders and on his wrist he carried a hawk with furious eyes, and he rode a huge wildcat. Trembling knew him from her nightmares. She was so frightened she couldn’t move.
The Sorcerer did not seem to have seen she was awake. His eyes drifted across the room and focussed on Strongheart and Kindheart as they slept.
“What is this, my hawk?” he hissed to his bird. “People in the castle? I thought I killed all my rebellious subjects who lived here.”
“They are trespassers, my lord,” said the hawk.
“And thieves, too,” the Sorcerer snarled. “Sleeping in tapestries that should now belong to me. What do we do with trespassers and thieves, my wildcat?”
“We sink our fangs into them,” cried the wildcat.
“What say you, my adders?” asked the Sorcerer.
The snakes all hissed that the trespassers should be poisoned. At once they unraveled themselves from the crown and slid down the Sorcerer’s arms. Before the girl could blink, they’d wrapped themselves around Kindheart and Strongheart. As the last four slithered towards Trembling she sprang away and shouted, “No!”
The Sorcerer laughed. “What a brave midget. But tell me why I should spare you? It will be amusing to hear you plead for your pathetic family.”
Trembling trembled so much she thought she would fall down. But she whispered to herself, “I must be brave.” Then she locked eyes with the nearest adder. “We saved your brother when we found him caught by a fox.” She looked at the wildcat next. “We let your brother out of the trap on our journey.” Finally she looked at the hawk’s bright, furious eye. “We untied the jesses that tangled your brother. If it were not for us, he’d still be trapped in them now.”
“Is this true, my hawk, my wildcat, my adders?” said the Sorcerer.
“It is true, my lord,” said the wildcat.
“It is true, my lord,” said the adders.
The hawk ruffled its feathers, then let out a cry. “It is true, my lord.”
The Sorcerer was silent. The girl began to think he would let them go. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “A brave try, little girl. But what does that have to do with me? My hawk, my wildcat, my adders–kill them all!”
The hawk flew up, the wildcat sprang forward, the adders swarmed off Strongheart and Braveheart–and flung themselves on the sorcerer. The adders held his wrists and ankles, the hawk flew round and round his head and the wildcat ran round and round his legs. “Run!” shouted the hawk.
Trembling, Strongheart and Kindheart fled into the night. But a faint red smudge on the horizon told them dawn was on its way.
The Sorcerer howled with rage. They ran until the gates of the mountain tunnel stood before them. As the sun burst over the horizon the gates swung open. Kindheart, Strongheart, and Trembling staggered through them into the tunnel and ran into the darkness. Behind them the iron barrier clanged shut.
Gasping now for breath, they felt their way along the passageway. At last a pale circle appeared before them and grew. Exhausted and hungry but exultant, they staggered forward into the safety of the land of the Elven Queen.
Lynden Wade neglects the housework to spend time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She’s had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. She is still hoping for a house elf. Find her on Instagram @lwadewrites.
Image: W. Heath Robinson, “I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through” from “The Real Princess” for Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, 1913
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