Authors: Alethea Kontis
“Long live the king,” Wednesday whispered.
The phrase sent chills through his body. Sunday squeezed his hand again. Rumbold did hope to live a long and full life, but not one terribly longer than any other mortal man. He was comforted by the fact that Sunday would remain by his side for all of it.
“Long live the king!” a voice called from the far end of the Grand Hall in a deep bass: Jolicoeur had joined them. “Long live King Rumbold and Queen Sunday!”
The cry was echoed throughout the room and then slowly, increasingly, echoed throughout the castle. Within minutes, Rumbold heard it shouted from the ramparts and parapets to the streets below. He bowed his head again to Wednesday and noticed his wife’s dainty—and yes, dirty—toes peeking from beneath her skirts again. The Frog Prince and the Barefoot Princess, now King and Queen. There had been worse rulers.
In the clamor, Rumbold saw Velius approach Wednesday. He took the hand she offered and kissed it. “To me, you will always be a queen.”
“Once in this life, again in another,” she said, “and I will always be sorry for it.”
“We bid you all farewell,” said Joy.
“Not just yet,” said Rumbold. He beckoned for the butcher. “Dearheart, may I introduce you to Mister Jolicoeur?”
Jolicoeur put a hand over his heart and bowed to Sunday, who looked up at both of them curiously.
“Mister Jolicoeur is Captain Thursday’s first mate.”
Seven gasped. Trix cheered. Sunday dissolved in a fit of laughter that filled Rumbold to the brim once again with love for her.
Jack Woodcutter crossed the room and put his arm around Rumbold, who tried his best to remain conscious through the pain of that fierce embrace. “When you’re cursed with one Woodcutter, you’re cursed with them all, eh?”
“It would seem so, sir.”
“I won the heart of Sunday’s mother with a goose of my own,” Woodcutter said. “Did I ever tell you that story?”
“No, sir,” said Rumbold, King of Arilland. “I don’t believe I’ve heard that one.”
“Have a seat,” said Woodcutter. “I’ll tell you all about it. And then you can tell me how you came to meet my daughter the Pirate Queen.”
Rumbold settled into a chair large enough for Sunday to curl up beside him, and prepared to be entertained by a lifetime’s worth of his new father’s stories.
They had a lot to catch up on.
***
I still wonder sometimes about Jack Junior. I walk the flower-lined paths through the garden—my garden—and I dance down the empty hallways of the castle—my castle—and I think back on the adventures that brought me here, all the magic and misery that led us to this place. What songs will be sung about me and my family? What tales do they already tell? Am I a silly girl who befriended a frog or a beautiful stranger in a ballroom full of pretty gowns? Am I a barefoot princess or a benevolent queen? Bean sower and gold spinner and giant slayer: I was all those things. I have lived a life full of love and pain, of Joy and Sorrow, and I live on still. I have many, many years ahead of me, each
day with the potential to be filled to the brim with trials to face and challenges to overcome.
I made Rumbold tell me again last night the story of what had happened with Jack Junior and the wolf, when he had killed the beast and retrieved the gold medallion and sent it back to Papa. I questioned everything, reached in and pulled out every detail he could remember. He went over and over it until he’d had enough of me, and I fell asleep with my mind still mulling over one incontrovertible fact: Jack’s body has never been found.
All those school chants and drinking songs about this man who slew dragons and saved worlds—now that I have slain and saved as well, I see an even better picture of what might be the truth ... and what might be a lie. New songs pop up around the countryside every so often about our legendary Jack. What if they’re really a message to us? Maybe they’re saying, in their own secret, storytelling way:
I live on still.
How better to communicate to a family of taleswappers than with a story well told?
How indeed.
The minstrels had fled with their stories after the king’s death. There were only six bards left on the castle grounds, and I called them all to me. My first official command. Sometimes it’s fun being queen.
I gathered these craftsmen together to tell them my story, the whole story, the complete truth of everything that had happened in the past few weeks. Thus armed, I planned to send these songwriters and storytellers on their way with purses filled with silver and a mission to spread the tales of my adventurous family far and wide.
If Jack’s tales can reach us here in Arilland, perhaps our tales will find him someday, wherever he may be. He will laugh to discover how,
even in his absence, he brought the oncoming storm as a stone brings an avalanche. He will know we are safe and well, and he will know that it’s blood and booty and business as usual around the Woodcutter household. And maybe one day, when one of his new tales comes back to us, he will, too.
This novel could not have been possible without four unlikely muses: a frustrated mother, a South American president, a North Korean dictator, and an Internet celebrity author.
I am sure that Marcy Kontis had no idea when her eldest teenage daughter sat at her feet in the dining room and whined, “Mom, tell me what to write,” that her daughter would take it quite this far.
I am sure that Eric James Stone had no idea that when he raised the bar in the Codex Writers group by including
every single
story trigger in “By the Hands of Juan Perón” (instead of just one from each column) for the Get the Creative Juices Flowing Contest that I would then take every single one of the Fairy Tale Contest suggestions and jump over that bar. (He beat me in both contests, but I got published first, so we both win.)
I am sure that Kim Jong-Il never heard a word I said when Ken Scholes made me scream a promise to him out over the Pacific Ocean that I would finally finish my manuscript once and for all. (The roses I received on Mr. Kim’s behalf upon completion were gorgeous, though.)
I do know for a fact, however, that John Scalzi had no idea that seeing him at Millennicon was the reward I had planned to give myself if I finished the manuscript and sent it off to my agent before the weekend of the convention. I’m so glad I did. I believe Cincinnati still speaks of us all in hushed tones.
I would also like to thank, in some particular order:
Casey Cothran-Muldrew and Margo Appenzeller, who penned the original Princess Stories with me. Orson Scott Card, for being the teacher in the back of my head constantly telling me to “just write the novel.” Andre Norton, for being my guardian angel. Fellow Codexian and Orson Scott Card Bootcamper Christine Amsden, for suggesting the Fairy Tale Contest in the first place. Brian Keene, who was with me in the first dance. (I am happy that our forbidden friendship has lasted far longer than my relationship to the pillock who forbade it in the first place). Luc Reid, founder of the Codex Writers group, who sat me down the day after my birthday party and told me to submit “Sunday” to
Realms of Fantasy.
Shawna McCarthy (with help from Doug Cohen), who accepted my ten-thousand-word “short” story for publication in
Realms of Fantasy.
Scott Grimando, for the most amazing centerfold illustration a girl could ever dream of, and the fantastic story of the bicycling adventure that went along with it.
Deborah Warren, my agent of sunshine and delight, a kindred spirit from that moment in that little café in Pasadena when she peered at me over her rhinestone-studded sunglasses and told me she liked my aura. Reka Simonsen, fairy godmother and dream editor, a kindred spirit from the moment when, out of the blue, she quoted my favorite Diana Wynne Jones character in an e-mail. The Starbucks on Old Fort Parkway in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for making that last homestretch of writing physically possible.
Mary Robinette Kowal and her parents, Ken and Marilyn Harrison; Lillie and Chuck Rainey; Ken and Sherrilyn Kenyon (and the boys); Janet and Mike Lee; J.T. and Randy Ellison; Eddie Coulter, Edmund Schubert, and Leanna Renee Hieber for their love, support, inspiration, motivation, and solace.
Joe Branson, a.k.a. “The Fairy God Boyfriend,” who knew exactly what it would take to win the heart of a princess but went and did it anyway.
And, finally, to Adam, Josh, Turtle, Rob, and Chappy of the Adam Ezra Group, because I wrote most of these acknowledgments on a scrap of notebook paper while waiting for their show to start at the 8 × 10 club in Baltimore.
May we
all
be doomed to a happy life.