Fairly Wicked Tales Read Free

more than the beauty of the Princess, the memory of her lips upon his forehead, the softness of her unblemished hands as they held his. My father spoke of the King’s promise of a place within the city walls for our scant number. By royal decree, he would do his utmost to ensure our fields returned to us after winter’s passing. And then he spent the last of the daylight kneeling before my mother’s grave in deep prayer, his sword thrust into the earth at her feet.
    Surprisingly enough, Pieter joined him, fascinated not by the coat of mail my father wore, but by the earnest words dropped from his lips. Later in life, when he took his vows to the Cloth, he would tell me the exact moment when God’s hand rested upon him. Never before had a prayer so beautiful, so heartfelt as the one my father said to the Virgin Mary for my sake, touched his soul.
    And I? I had set to making a crown of snow blossoms for my father, to show him he would always be a king in my eyes. I grasped the final flower, smiling …. Wind rattled the bare branches around me, spectral eddies hissing up from the depths of memory. I swallowed a scream, dipping through the trees, trying to escape the thing that haunted my dreams. Uncle appeared a short distance away, walking down the frozen road, diverging at the exact spot in which Pieter and I had discovered Old Teufel nearly a year ago. For reasons I would never speak aloud I followed him, my cloak of white ermine and rabbit camouflaging me against the snowy landscape.
    Once I crossed the tree line, their branches empty of snow and of the leaves they’d shed at Old Teufel’s death, the same chill as the last time overrode all other sensation. As if something supernatural walked these forested paths. I saw the arrowhead that Pieter had dropped when Uncle had hefted him to safety. I found the skeleton of the old yellow dog, the shafts of my father’s arrows protruding from the tree trunk, the remains of Old Teufel stuck to tree, rotting and full of puss. Maggots spawned in the empty pit where his undamaged eye should have been.
    I found the impossible, the reason why the wind hung so cold here, why my father had loosed his arrows instead of bringing the man forward for the King’s justice on the charge of witchcraft.
    I witnessed Old Teufel himself standing before my uncle, red-bathed blade in one hand and the entrails of some animal in the other. Whole and healed as if my father had never fired upon him.
    “The King of Death returns,” Old Teufel laughed, the hissing sound making me grit my teeth and clasp my hands over my ears. “Are you ready to pay my price, Death King?”
    “Name it,” my Uncle pronounced. “Anything you want, so long as I can marry the princess. I love her.”
    “Love,” the creature spoke, tilting its head side to side. “What know you of love, King of Death? You have met the Princess only once, spoken not twenty words to her. How can you know love?”
    “I know what is in my heart!” he screamed. “I have never suffered such things until I laid eyes upon her beauty. I will die if I do not have her as my bride. By your own mouth, you know the Old Ways. Incline my ear to hear what you hear and my eye to see what you see, that I may slay the beast.”
    “Anything I want … ” Old Teufel said again … and stared right into my eyes. “I want the queenling. Give her to me and I shall give you your heart’s desire.”
    I do not know what went through my Uncle’s mind. Everything inside of me quaked in stunned silence as he nodded. The arrowhead Pieter had found floated up from the forest floor, landing in Old Teufel’s hand. He sliced open my Uncle’s shirt, carving something unseen into the tender flesh just above his heart. The arrowhead seemed to grow in size, swallowing the lifeblood pouring from the wound until it was the size of a spearhead. Dark in color, blood forged into steel.
    “Take this and attach it to your spear, King of Death. Let our bargain be