Fairly Wicked Tales Read Free Page B

darker things tiptoeing across my thoughts. My hands trembled, and I dropped the jeweled crown my stepmother was trying to show me. It sparkled as it fell, the gems refracting the sunlight, spilling it around us like the falling leaves at the moment of Teufel’s death.
    Its tumbling caught the Sheppard’s eye, and his face lit up with excitement. “Your Highnesses, Princess Ilsa and Lady Magdaline, I bring a special gift to you. Behold the horn that sings!”
    He brought the instrument to his lips and blew upon the mouthpiece. Hissing, grating laughter exited the tube rather than the melodious notes to call the flock home. Shortly after came a voice, one I had known since childhood. The sound of Uncle’s tone.
    “Ah friend, thou blowest upon my bone!
    Long have I lain beside the water;
    My brother slew me for the boar,
    And took for his wife the King’s young daughter.”
    No sooner had the words died from the thrice damned horn my father fell to his knees and wept, clinging to the hem of Pieter’s newly sewn priestly raiment. He sought confession instantly, declaring before the whole world the weight of his sin. All true, what this wicked horn had blurted forth. Uncle Kristoph had slain the boar, but he had done so with witchcraft and trickery. My father had fought with his brother upon the bridge in the Black Forest, refusing to let him sully the land with a kingship born of curses and black magic. He offered my uncle a choice: toss the head of the boar and the wicked spear into the water, and take compassion from the church with the rest of the village, or die.
    In the end, my father had slain his brother. In his pride, his desire to protect the village he loved, he cast the cursed spear and Uncle’s body into the river, claiming the boar’s head as his own. The King in his wisdom, for he had come to love my father and I as his own, pardoned my father and named him a true hero. For my father had not used his title for personal gain, but had provided well for the people of the kingdom. Princess Ilsa had truly fallen in love with him, and the King proclaimed no greater man to rule in his stead.
    The celebration continued as planned, the Sheppard confessing he found a bone along the river on his way to the castle. It had been the perfect size to make a mouthpiece for his horn and so he helped himself, thinking the piece from an animal’s remains. He was asked to stay as a guest of honor for bearing the truth to the King’s ear.
    And no one noticed how Princess Ilsa cut her hand when I dropped the crown. When she asked later that night to examine the miraculous horn that had revealed the depth of her husband’s piety and courage, the wound opened as if of its own accord, deepened greatly. The bone the Sheppard carved for the mouthpiece, the bone bearing my Uncle’s sins, from the very hand which slay the beast with a demonic spearhead, drank deeply of her royal life.
    No one noticed, save for Pieter and me.
     
    ***
     
    We ghosted like shadows between the narrow alleyways of the castle grounds, two cloaked figures silently running for the servant’s gate. The feasting had continued, the minstrels playing loudly, and the guards on duty dozed, thick-witted and slow from too much wine. The King proclaimed a great holy day in honor of my father’s confessed bravery, challenging any in the kingdom to claim they would have acted differently in such a situation. As such, every man and woman in the castle was afforded drink and food.
    We slipped out unnoticed.
    The parish in which Pieter studied rested half a mile from the city gates, allowing its practitioners and students an easier time of ministering to the poor and uneducated. Horses were stabled nearby, older beasts better suited to pulling the plow than carrying passengers. However, they were the best we could acquire at the late hour, and their feet were sure on the road back towards our village. We promised to return before too long.
    A promise we would not be