I’m wearing something halfway between pants and tights, a red jacket, a ruffly shirt, and boots, all too small. At least they don’t wear kilts in this country.
I crack the door (which is ten feet tall) open and look into the hallway.
A guard rushes toward me. “May I help you, sir?”
“Um, is there any food around here?”
The guy looks down. “I shall check, sir.”
He doesn’t move.
I close the door, my stomach growling like an ATV pulling through mud. It’s been four hours since I kissed the princess. I know that from checking my cell phone, which is now useful only as a clock. I turn it off again to save the battery. It’s not like there’s any place to recharge it.
Of course, Travis took the sandwiches with him when he ditched me to go to the hotel. Bet he doesn’t come back. I kept the beer, but it’s probably not a good idea to drink it on an empty stomach. I wonder if this is just a really fancy dungeon.
I go to the window for about the tenth time. There’s no chance of escaping out the door. The hallway is crowded with people waiting to do my bidding. But no one wants to help me escape (and, really, where could I go in these pants?). The window’s not much better. It’s at least four stories up and made of this thick glass like in churches. No, my best bet is to have dinner, then sneak out when they all go back to sleep.
Of course, after three hundred years, they’re probably pretty well rested.
I should have stayed with the tour group. Sure, the museums were boring, but at least the people were from this century.
Someone knocks at the door.
“Come in!”
They knock again. The door’s so thick they can’t even hear through it. I walk across the room and open it. “What?”
“Begging your pardon, sir.” It’s some servant guy in an outfit that is—I need to mention—way less froufrou than what they gave me to wear. “His Majesty apologizes for the delay in getting supper. There have been…difficulties.”
My stomach growls loudly.
I’m scared to find out what these people eat. My mom’s a real freak about germs and salmonella, and this doesn’t seem like the type of place that has sanitary cooking facilities or even a decent oven. Didn’t people used to die at, like, age thirty-five in the 1700s, or even younger? And didn’t they have plagues with rats and stuff?
If I have to die, I hope I don’t die in tights.
What we’re having for dinner is meat. Lots of meat and mushrooms and strawberries.
Talia’s parents are there. Her father—the king—is a skinny guy with red hair, and he actually looks sort of like the Burger King, only the Burger King looks a lot friendlier and happy about burgers and stuff.
“I apologize for the fare,” he’s telling the group. Besides Talia and me, there’s Pudding Face, the queen (an older version of Talia), and a bunch of other people introduced as lords and ladies. There are also two women Talia says are fairies, but I must have heard her wrong. “But, you see, all our crops died when my daughter put us to sleep for three hundred years, and the food we had has long since spoiled.”
Talia looks away, but I can see her hands are trembling.
She looks great, though, especially in that dress she’s wearing, a green one you can see down. She’s stopped crying. She sits beside me and keeps staring at me with those eyes of hers.
“I am sorry, Father,” she says. When the king doesn’t answer, I see her glance toward the door.
I decide to change the subject. “So where’d you get the mushrooms…um, Your Highness?”
“Your Majesty,” Talia whispers.
One of the fairy women turns to the other, and when she does, I see that there are wings sprouting from her back. She whispers, “Him? He’s her destiny?”
“Shush,” whispers the other.
“That is quite all right, Talia,” the king says. “I am certain this young man is unused to dining with royalty in…Florida, is it?”
I nod.
“A Spanish colony, if I recall, and rather a wasteland. Has it changed much in three hundred years?”
“Um, a little.”
“The hunters found the mushrooms in the forest,” the king continues.
“Are they okay to eat?” I ask. It’s probably a rude question, and actually a hallucinogenic mushroom could hit the spot right about now.
The king shrugs. “Does it truly matter at this point?” Talia flinches when he says that. The king takes a large forkful of the mushrooms, chews, and swallows them. We all watch. He doesn’t fall over or barf or anything.
“They are acceptable,” he says finally.
I don’t ask what the meat is, but Talia says, “Is not the peacock excellent?”
“A bit tough after it has been drowsing three hundred years.” The king glares at Talia. “But it will have to do.”
Hoo-boy. And I thought my parents were rough. This guy’s acting kind of like a spoiled brat. But then, that’s how his daughter is, too.
Again, I try to change the subject.
“This is peacock?”
“Certainly,” the queen says.
“Wow.” I’ve tried it now, and it’s sort of gamy and tough, like duck in a really bad Chinese restaurant. I move it around on my plate.
“Do you not have peacocks where you are from?” Talia seems even more eager to change the subject than I am.
“We have peacocks. We don’t eat them, though.”
“What do you eat, then?” Talia asks.
I think about it. “Lots of stuff. People in America are from all over the place, so we eat pizza from Italy…”
Talia sighs loudly. “I have never been to Italy.”
“…hamburgers…”
“I have not been to Germany, either.”
“…French fries…”
“I have not been to France.”
“…tacos from Mexico…”
“I do not even know where that is. Would it not be grand, Jack, to go off and see the world?” She gazes at me, smiling.
“Talia…” The king seems to be having some trouble with the chewy peacock and the chewier mushrooms. Still, he opens his mouth to speak to her. “That will be enough.”
“Enough of what? All my life, you have made me stay in this castle, doing nothing, all for the fear of spindles.”
“Obviously, we did not do enough for fear of spindles. Perhaps we should have locked you in a cage.”
“Louis…” The queen’s voice is whispery.
“It is the truth.”
“No, it is not!” Talia bursts out. “There was nothing you or I could have done to prevent it. The curse said, ‘shall prick her finger.’ It was preordained—my destiny. You would have been better off had you pricked my finger yourself, making certain a prince was on hand to kiss me. This is all your fault! Your fault!”
Wow, it’s weird hearing her quoting me, like I’m a lawyer or something.
Nah. I’d never be a lawyer.
“If that is the case,” the king says, “you would have been awakened by your true love. Where is he, then?”
Talia points to me. “Here! Jack. He loves me. He has to love me.”
There is silence. The lords and ladies stop in midchew. The king is obviously not used to being yelled at. From the fairies, I hear a small voice say, “He could not be her true love. But how could my spell have gone so wrong?” With a small sigh, she turns into a small, birdlike creature and flies off. The other follows.
“Hey,” I say to King Louis, “you want to listen to my iPod?”
The king looks shocked. “What—or who—is an iPod?”
“It’s something from the twenty-first century. You can listen to music on it. Do you like music?”
“I adore music,” Talia says.
The king sighs. “I used to—three hundred years ago.” He glares at Talia once again.
“Here.” I take it out. I’m glad this getup they put me in has pockets and that I thought to put the iPod in one of them. I wish I had something classical, maybe Gregorian chant. The closest I have is classic rock, some Beatles songs my sister likes. I find “Yesterday.” “You put in these earbuds.”
“In my ears?”
“Sure. That way, you can listen to music without anyone else hearing it.”
The king looks like he still doesn’t get it, but he sticks the earbuds in. “Now what?”
“You push that. Here. I’ll do it for you.” I lean over and push it for him. Obviously, these people are button-challenged.
“Can he hear us?” Talia whispers. When I say no, she turns to the queen. “Mother, please make him stop being so cruel. This is not my fault.”
The queen shakes her head. “Oh, Talia.”
“Then you are against me, too? I hate this! I wish I could simply run away.” She turns to me. “How did you get here? To Euphrasia?”
“I already told you, I came through the hedge.”
“No. Before that. How did you get to Europe from…Florida?”
King Louis takes out the earbuds. He sighs. “How I long for yesterday.”
Which is a line from the Beatles song.
“You mean to say, young man,” he continues, “that in your century, they have found a way to preserve this man’s singing and put it into a minuscule box, all so that one can listen to music without the bother of having it performed, without having to dress and gather and dance, that in your time—which, by unfortunate accident, is now my time as well—each man can live entirely in his own world?”
I nod. “Cool, isn’t it?”
The king hands me back the iPod. The lord across from me looks like he might want to have a listen, but he doesn’t dare ask. “I should have been dead three hundred years ago,” the king continues. “I should have…” He glares at Talia again. “…and I would have, had you merely kept away from spindles as you were told.”
“By all the saints!” Talia cries.
“Talia,” her mother cautions. “Do not swear.”
“I will swear, Mother. I am done being obedient. Obedience has done me no good. Father may be peevish to me, but I will not stand to see him being so to our guest. We are very much in Jack’s debt. Had he not kissed me—”
“He what?!” the king roars.
Uh-oh. Did he not know that?
“K-kissed me. That is how I happened to awaken. Surely you must—”
“You!” The king points a trembling finger toward me. “You, a commoner, dared to take advantage of my daughter’s sleeping state to…”
“I didn’t know she was a princess, Your Highness…Majesty…sir!” I push my chair aside. “I’m sorry. I should get going.” I take a few steps backward and stumble into a servant holding a tray of mushrooms. I’d better get out of here before they come up with the idea of—oh, I don’t know—stoning me to death.
“No! You will go nowhere. You have defiled my daughter.”
“I didn’t! It was a kiss. A little one.”
“Yes, you are right, Father,” Talia says. “He defiled me.”
“What?” I yell. “I didn’t…I barely touched you!” I want to scream at her, but I try to keep in control. Hurling insults would probably get me in more trouble than I’m in already. “Tell the truth, you…brat!” Oops. That slipped out.
She glares at me, then continues. “It is true. I am quite sullied. There is nothing for me to do but marry this young man and go to Florida with him immediately.”
“Marry you? Ma—”
“Impossible!” the king declares.
“Why not?” Talia says. “All the princes I might have married are long dead. You do not wish me in your presence.”
The king nods at the guards behind me, and I feel hands on my arms. “This young man is an offender of the most contemptible kind, a rogue who would take advantage of a young lady’s—a princess’s—sleeping state to…desecrate her. Death is too good for such an offender.”
There it is. Death.
“But I didn’t…I wouldn’t touch her if you paid me!”
“He must be brought to the royal dungeon to await a suitable punishment.”
I plead with Talia, even though I can barely look at her, I’m so mad. “Can you say something to him? Please.”
She shrugs. “I do not know what to say.”
“How about, ‘he didn’t sully me’? That would be a good start.”
“He will not listen to me. He thinks me a fool.” She begins to pout.
“You are a fool!” the king roars. “To think that we hoped and prayed and protected you, only to have you stupidly ruin the kingdom! I wish we had remained childless!” To the guards, he says, “Take him away!”
And the next thing I know, three guys who look like they could work for the WWE are dragging me down a very long, dark flight of stairs.
To the dungeon.