Régine was devastated. The Yvain she had accosted for flirting with her turned out to be the eldest son of the wealthiest man in town. She didn’t say two more words to either Belle or I, but wore a frustrated red blush for the rest of the day.
Father left for Port Libor a week later with one of Gerard’s close employees.
Cosette, the girl from the sunflower field, was actually Belle’s age but she accepted my company.
Marguerite and Gerard Picoux fawned over the red-head relentlessly, but I had never met her own parents. However, there were periods when she would vanish for a day or two and return fatigued and perhaps meeker in demeanour.
Days turned into weeks and then months while my sisters and I waited for our father's return. I had only ever seen snow in the country before we had moved permanently to Beaulieu and never so much as what it snowed in Dusek.
One night while a winter tempest was battering the village, I was pressing my nose against the small pains of cold glass in the Picoux’s drawing room. I whispered prayers between the wooden grilles of the latticework and created a murky cloud on the window surface, but when it faded away, Papa did not appear.
Gerard was sitting by the fire with Marguerite who was lying comfortably on an elk skin. Cosette was blissfully humming to herself as the snow fell in thick wet flakes against the windowpane. The sudden arrival of the snowstorm had forced her to stay at the Picoux’s home along with Eilert Leopold. The village tailor had taken a liking to us and often invited my sisters and I to tea every week or so.
This evening, Herr Leopold was helping Régine because she had claimed to be having issues with her stitch work.
A moan blew over the village and rattled the roof shingles above our heads. I was so absorbed by the rhythmic howls of the snowstorm, I nearly jumped out of my skin when Herr Leopold disturbed the silence.
"Now this night reminds me of a story." His booming voice pierced the ghostly wails haunting the drawing room.
While Régine was thumbing a knot she had tied, Leopold was casting Cosette and I a secretive grin that twitched on his whiskers.
We approached cautiously as though she and I were at the lair of a sleeping beast. We were seekers of knowledge; the spools of used thread became littered bones and Régine’s needles glinted like the discarded swords of the fallen.
Herr Leopold spoke in a low, but mysterious voice that swelled against the flicker of the candles and the tailor played hungrily with the awe he had instilled in us. "It was a story my great, great mutter's mutter told that came to pass on a wailing and terrible night like this one."
"What made it so terrible?" whispered a spellbound Cosette while I counted the mothers.
"This is a story about the collapse of the kingdom of Bora. It is on these nights especially that we must stay indoors, or risk angering Den verfluchten Fürst."
His deep rumbling voice rolled off the walls of the house, our hearts fluttering and our hands clawing eagerly at the rug by the tailor’s feet. We looked up at Herr Leopold as he pawed his beard, his luminous eyes capturing flickers from the hearth.
"You may call him ′the Cursed Prinz'."
Régine's head snapped up quicker than a mother doe in a clearing. "I don't know if I like that title very much. Acel gets terrible nightmares-"
"I'm not a child anymore," I hissed. "I, for one, would greatly appreciate a story, Herr Leopold," I asked in my most sophisticated tone. Stories weren't real. At least not the ones about little goblin men who spun gold.
Eilert Leopold pitched forward with the beginning of his tale, the wind's squalling cries echoing in his words.
"Once upon a time, in the far away kingdom of Bora, there lived a Prinz who liked to destroy beautiful things. Because of this, the Prinz had never known love and was desperate to possess someone’s heart for his own. He was quite handsome, but was renowned for his heartlessness and despised by all. That was true except for the Konigin, who loved all things and tried to be kind to the Prinz."
"The queen." Régine smiled peacefully as she threaded the needle through her fabric once more and a rosy glow touched his cheeks.
"Yes, a very beautiful one with long flaxen hair, amber eyes and sun-kissed skin. A shimmering Konigin who was said to be so good even her soul shown a blinding white gold. The Prinz became mad with his obsession with love and summoned the Konigin to his chambers. He told her that she would marry him or face Death."
The window panes shook, and the shutters, which had come free, crashed violently on the outside wall.
"I'll see to it." Gerard rose despite his wife's pleading look.
I sat back down on my ankles.
"Please, go on," Cosette whispered as Gerard unlatched the front door and a wail bled into the room.
Herr Leopold looked like he was about to laugh, but refrained for the sake of preserving his audience’s solemnity.
"The Konigin was frightened, but she was also clever as she was beautiful. She told the Prinz that because she was married to the Konig, his Vater, she could only accept someone as powerful as he. She gave him three impossible tasks to complete in as many days to prove his worth. First, the Prinz would have to slay a beast more terrible than himself. Second, he would have to build a crown of white made from the wisdom of the past rulers. And lastly, before an assembly of his subjects, the Prinz would declare himself Konig over every dominion.
"For the first task, someone who was worthy would know the most terrible beasts are found inside. Instead, the Prinz captured many animals which he brought to the royal seamstresses, and he had them sewn into one chimeric beast to slay them all at once.
"To solve the second task, someone worthy would realize the only thing as wise as the past rulers, would be their written words. The Prinz could make a crown of paper scripture, but in his infinite cruelty, the Prinz stole his father's wisdom and carved it into a crown of bone.
"The day of the Prinz's coronation, before an assembly of his subjects, he claimed kingship over every dominion and he took his grieving stepmother as a wife. He donned the skin and stolen crown and declared himself king just as a horrible storm rolled over the castle spires. But the Prinz had underestimated one thing.
"Someone worthy would realize no man is ruler of every land. This title belongs solely to the spirits. And they were not impressed with what the Prinz had done.
"For his crimes, the spirits created a divine punishment. Lore whispered terrible stories so all would fear him. War sent armies so peace would abandon him. Youth twisted his handsome body so none would love him. And Death, whose punishment was most severe, cursed the Prinz with immortality so none could slay him.
"Before his subjects and bride the Prinz was changed. His flesh split and his hair thinned, turning it an inky black. His limbs stretched, likening themselves to tree branches and his eyes became bulbous and white. The Prinz was transformed into something barely living.
"He could not bear how ugly he had become and begged the Konigin to help him break the spirits' curse. She took pity on the Cursed Prinz. Because he had wanted to possess hers so badly, she carved the his tainted heart from his body and banished him to the forest. There, he would have to search for a new heart that could replace what he had lost. Only then would he become human again.
"That is why we must always be careful of journeying through Bora Les on nights like this, for the Cursed Prinz is always watching. If you meet a stranger travelling alone and you notice their arms are too long for their body, or their skin doesn't fit quite right... It could be the cursed Prinz. He uses the faces of his victims to lure unsuspecting travelers off the road so that he can add their hearts to his collection. The stories say the kingdom collapsed and its people fled, but those who remember the mother tongue call him Netvor."
Cosette giggled frantically when Herr Leopold lunged forward, pretending to be the monster but I could barely move.
"Netvor."
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