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efficiency.
    “You know.” Una frowned. “Pudgy and flat-footed. Heavy. Hard to digest.”
    “Mmm-hmm.” Nurse plucked another pin from her mouth and took aim. “This Prince Aethel-whatsit. He’s stodgy, is he?”
    “Ow! Prince Aethelbald is nothing if not stodgy.”
    “Is he heavy?”
    “Well . . . no.”
    “Flat-footed?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Hard to digest?”
    “Stodginess is as much a state of mind as anything, Nurse.”
    “I see.”
    “No, you don’t see! Ouch. Are you trying to draw blood?” Una sighed as she watched Nurse in the mirror, fixing a twist of fake, honey-colored curl in place so that it dangled, as the Parumvir fashion experts put it, “fetchingly” down the side of her face. “Stodgy princes,” she said, “have no sense of romance. They sit around making practical decisions about economics and trade and things.”
    “Sounds worthy in a man who’ll one day rule a kingdom,” Nurse said, closing one eye as she inspected her work. Nurse was a practical woman to whom a romantic gesture equated picking up one’s own dirty socks and washing one’s hands before dinner. And while there was perhaps a certain romance in these, Una failed to appreciate it.
    “Stodgy princes,” Una said, pulling at the fake curl until it sprang back into place, “wouldn’t know the first thing about poetry and next to nothing about music.”
    “The poor souls.” Nurse selected a large white feather from an assortment of accessories, held it up for effect, and then tossed it aside in exchange for a larger purple one.
    “They wouldn’t recognize moonlight if it hit them between the eyes, and they never notice the stars.”
    “Blind too, eh?”
    Una slumped with her chin resting on her other hand, her eyes crossing to watch a spruff of feather gently wafting down to land on the vanity. Monster sprang into her lap, purring and flicking his tail under her nose. Absently, she ran her knuckles down his head and back. “Stodgy princes don’t stand under a lady’s window in the dusk of evening and sing songs about her virtues, comparing her beauty to summer days and their love to the high seas.”
    “I should hope not!” Nurse stuck in a final few pins, twisting them to be certain they held. “A real prince – stodgy, pudgy, or otherwise – wouldn’t be caught dead standing under a lady’s window after dark!” She sniffed. “And Aethelbald seems as good a name as any to me. Names are just as good as the folks what bear them. I had an Uncle Balbo who was teased like nothing else ’bout his name, yet he was the finest pig-keeper in all the country. Why, he had an old boar that weighed twice as much as I!”
    This was quite an accomplishment on Uncle Balbo’s part, for Nurse’s proportions were impressive. Nevertheless, her words did little to inspire Princess Una’s young mind. “Oh, Nurse! You are utterly lacking in romance!”
    “ ’Nough of that whining, Miss Princess,” Nurse said and, with surprising gentleness, patted the top of Una’s head. The gentleness was for the hairstyle rather than the girl, but Una tried to appreciate the gesture. “You’re as beautiful as Lady Gleamdren herself, and your flat-footed prince won’t fail to fall in love the moment he sets eyes on you.”
    “Meeeaaa!” Monster said.
    “Fall in love?” Una wrinkled her nose. The two feathers on either side of her head drooped like the ears of a hound dog. She pulled the fake curl one more time for good measure. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”
    “Now who’s lacking romance?”
–––––––
    The sun set, burning red as a dragon’s eye before it disappeared behind the horizon and left the world in twilight.
    One by one, the vendors on the market lawn packed up their wares. The man with acorn-cap eyes placed lids on his great jars, muffling the songs of the unicorn young, and lifted them onto the rickety cart. With a “He-hey!” to his pig, they rattled across the flattened grass and