Heartless

Fidel looked at Una and Felix. The prince was already scrambling from his horse, and Una was no less excited. “Very well – ” he said, and the two were off like a shot.

All fear overwhelmed by curiosity, Una followed her brother deep into the gathered throng. The people of Sondhold were at first too enchanted with the strangeness surrounding them to take notice, but by and by they recognized the faces of their prince and princess and edged away so that Una and Felix had a circle of distance around them everywhere they went. As she trailed behind her lanky younger brother, inspecting the wares presented before her eyes, Una could not believe that only a short hour before she had been locked away in that den of a schoolroom. The world had taken on a sudden romance and adventure, and anything was possible.

A woman with feathers in her hair – whether she had put them there or they grew right from her head, Una could not guess – beckoned her near to look at fine cloth. “Woven from all the scents of summer,” she whispered in a voice like wind-stirred trees. Una reached out to touch it, but the woman snatched it back. “For a price,” she said. “Only for a price.”

“The lady is not interested in such nonsense as yours!” said the vendor of the next stall over. He was a dwarf with a red face and slanting eyes that disappeared behind the folds of the most enormous grin Una had ever seen. “Step this way, damsel fair. Step this way and see what Malgril has to offer!”

She obeyed, and he pulled back a cloth to reveal silver statues of intricate work – little animals set with jewels for eyes. “Lovely,” she said.

“But wait,” said the dwarf. “Watch closely.”

She smiled and looked again. The animal statues were of the most exquisite workmanship, the bodies engraved all over with delicate scrollwork. They were of creatures she did not know or beings she recognized only from stories: a cat with a woman’s head, a snake with wings, a centaur, and a gryphon.

She blinked. Then she gasped.

The little figures had moved. Or had she imagined it? She blinked again, and sure enough, the woman-cat’s tail twitched, the gryphon’s mouth opened, the centaur turned his head.

“The scrollwork,” said the dwarf, “was wrought by my brother, the great Julnril himself. These are powerful charms, like those of the ancient golems. Do they please your ladyship? Would she hold one in her hand?” The dwarf picked up the winged snake and held it out to her, but when Una looked at it, blinking fast, it seemed to writhe in his fingers. She stepped back, smiling again but shaking her head.

Felix’s voice caught her attention. “Are you sure these are my size?”

“Standard size, my lord,” someone replied, and Una turned to see Felix sitting before a cobbler’s bench, shoving his foot into a boot made of old leather. It was a tough fit, and Felix made faces in his efforts to pull it on. The cobbler, rubbing his hands together, nodded and smiled and spoke encouragingly. With a final tug, Felix’s heel slid into place, and the prince stood up. “And these are seven-league boots, are they? They kind of pinch – ”

“Don’t stamp your feet!” the cobbler cried, but too late.

Una yelped. Her brother had vanished.

Immediately the cobbler began ringing a bell and shouting at the top of his lungs, “Thief! Thief! Stop, thief!”

The next instant, huge Sir Oeric appeared, shaking a fist at the cobbler. “You shouldn’t insist your customers try them on if you don’t want them to run off!”

“He must pay! He must pay!” the cobbler insisted.

“Give me a pair, and I’ll fetch him back.”

“But, sir – ”

“At once!”

King Fidel was there by now with the guardsmen, along with a great hustle of people, all shouting. “Which way did he go?” “He’ll be halfway to the Red Desert by now!” “You certain he didn’t step toward the sea?” “Fool boy, won’t know enough to turn around and come back!”

“I’ll get him for you, Your Majesty,” Sir Oeric declared, pulling on another pair of the cobbler’s special boots. Amazingly, they seemed to grow to fit his enormous feet. The next moment he vanished as well, and the yells of the market-goers doubled. The cobbler, grinning from ear to ear, was suddenly blessed with the best business he’d managed that day.

Una watched it all, laughing to herself and feeling a bit jealous of the fun Felix was having. She turned back to the silver statues but found herself instead looking into a pair of huge white eyes in a face like gray stone.

“My lady, would you have your fortune told?”

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