“But what if I hurt them? What if I do something wrong and… and God, what if one of them dies?”
The man’s hand at this point, blacker than his face, reached up quickly and slapped her, hard.
“They won’t die. If you do it right, there is a chance that none of you will die. But if you do it wrong, or if you just don’t do it at all, then there is no hope of your survival.”
The girl- and she was a pretty girl, under all that muck, nodded earnestly, doubt in her own green eyes.
“You can’t let them have you, because if they have you they’ll win,” he said, and his eyes had melted a little bit and he was the man she fell in love with once more.
He spun her round quickly and twisted her blonde locks into a bun. They always seemed to shine, as if illuminated from within, like her skin.
All three girls were like that. Undisguisable.
Even with dirt inches thick caked on them and every last strand of long hair tucked away, one would know them at a glance.
Until this day, it had always worked out to their advantage.
When he was finished, the man’s hands rested at the base of her neck for a second, before she spun around again and wrapped him in a hug.
He caught her lips up in a last kiss, so he could remember the taste of them.
“Can’t you come with us?” she begged, breaking away.
“No, I can’t.”
She did a very bad job of suppressing a sob.
“I love you,” she choked out.
“I love you too, Luciana,” he murmured.
She tried one more time: “Are you sure you can’t-”
“I can’t. Now go, quickly. And stay aware, or they will kill you.”
And, as if to prove his point, a rebel arrow shot out from nowhere and went right through his neck.
He died so quickly his face didn’t have time to register the pain.
The girl had only time to cast a hazy image of a rose over him before she ran. She had to find her sisters.
The story could have been so different.
It should have been so different.
It should have been the story of the Princess who fell in love with the Stable Boy, and all would have gone well for them.
But something had changed and before she knew it, it was the story of the brave princess fighting to save her sisters and herself from the bloodthirsty rebels and the boy she loved had died and nothing would ever be right again.
...
She found her sisters stumbling around in an inner chamber.
They had been drugged; there was no time to wonder by whom. It made her job easier anyway.
“Sit,” Princess Luciana commanded, and they sat.
“Sleep,” she said, and her voice was a little shaky, and they slept.
She began to sleep too, letting her mind drift away and her mouth take control.
And after a while, she no longer felt herself, and then after that, she did not know that there was a self for her to feel with.
...
Their lives were safe.
They would be okay.
***
Here is a town with a gate.
It leads to a field, in which houses are often to be seen grazing.
There is nothing special about the field, unless of course you know that actually it’s a walled city surrounded by beautiful, dense and dangerous forest.
There’s nothing special about the gate either.
Excitable types would call it a portal, but it’s nothing of the sort. The most you can say about it is that it’s a portcullis, which is really just another type of gate.
In fact, the gate, the field and the walled city are classic examples of a place where there is not enough universe for everyone. It’s the cosmic equivalent of a tower block.
People never realize this because they never think, upon seeing a field with horses in it that they are going to walk through the gate and find themselves in an enclosed city. And it works the same from the other side, too.
Most people are –somehow- completely ignorant of this fact.
But the Princesses, when they walked through their city’s gates in a haze of sleep so thick that no-one outside of it could see them, they were knowing that they would end up in a small English town because that’s what Princess Luciana’s Voice had told them.
That was the last thing they ever knew, and when they woke up, as they were due to do in about three minutes time, they would not remember that they knew.
But the knowledge is there.
...
They were found slumped against the fence by a couple of boys in blue and black school uniform.
They both stopped at the same time, and shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to make looking after these girls their business, but knowing they couldn’t just leave them there.
After a minute of dithering, one of them- the one with black curly hair and brown eyes- nudged the closest girl with his foot and the reaction was instantaneous, as if the kid had touched them all.
They jolted awake as one, rising like puppets.
“Umm,” the other boy, the one with brown hair and blue eyes, said after a long pause. The girls stared up at him blankly. “Are you okay?”
He regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth. They were lying in a heap by a fence, covered in dirt, blood and burns. They were not okay.
“Umm…” he said again, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the road nervously. “Would you like us to call you an ambulance?”
There was no reply, and so he pulled out his phone and dialed 999.
The operator thought it was a prank, and hung up in disgust when he tried to explain the situation.
“I’ll call my mum,” the other boy said finally. “She can give us a lift home, too.”
....
And that’s how the three girls ended up in the back of an old Ford Picnic.
The oldest sat in the front, and the others two sat in the middle.
All attempts to find out who they were had been foiled by an insurmountable language barrier, and so they sat in silence, save for the youngest girl who talked non-stop, not caring that no one else was listening.
They were taken to a large house just five minutes from the town center.
They were cleaned up by ‘mum’; a fine-boned lady with masses of curly dark hair and olive skin, and then sat in borrowed clothes in the kitchen, their own clothes and belongings stashed away to be hand washed and dry cleaned.
“What is your name?” she asked, slowly and clearly to the oldest, Luciana.
All she got was a blank stare. She sighed, and pointed to herself.
“Caroline,” she said.
“Caroline,” the youngest repeated happily and perfectly.
Caroline smiled as well, and pointed to the youngest.
The youngest girl- possessed of black locks and eyes and a deep tan- pointed to herself and said: “Carolin…a?”
Caroline sighed. Names were clearly too vague a concept to begin with. She’d have to start elsewhere.
...
When Caroline’s eldest son, Robert, came home, he found his mother sitting in the kitchen with three beautiful complete strangers, having a deep and earnest conversation about hands.
“Middle finger- no, no, that’s rude- oh, hello Robert!”
Robert frowned. “Mum. Hi. Umm, who are these girls?”
Caroline smiled. “Well I’m not sure but as far as I can tell, this-” she pointed to Luciana, “is Anae. This-” the middle Princess- “is Juillietta and this-” the youngest- “is Aurora. Will found them.”
“William found them? What do you mean, ‘William found them’? They’re not stray cats, they’re human girls!”
“Girls,” Aurora echoed proudly, pointing and herself, then her sisters and Caroline. She pointed at Robert. “Boy.”
The middle princess- Juilietta- whispered something to the eldest, who shook her head at her giggles.
“They were sleeping- or unconscious by Topps field. They were filthy, and quite badly burnt in places, and they don’t speak a word of English. Didn’t.”
Robert was silent for a second while this information sunk in, and then he said: “Oh. Umm… do you need any help, or anything?”
“No thanks,” his mother dismissed him with a wave of her hand and the changed her mind. “Actually Robbie, can you go and set up the spare room for these girls and… oh, God, there are only two beds, we can’t let them sleep on the floor! Shit! Robbie, darling, would you mind letting one of the girls take your bed?”
“Why my bed?” He complained, frowning. “Why not William’s? He was the one who brought them here,” he grumbled, but he knew he would relent, and his mother knew he would too.
