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her to his desk.
    "Come forward," he said curtly.
    Odd, the princess thought, how often she had been the one to summon and command. How easy it was to do that. How hard, how demeaning, to be the one summoned! One didn't know exactly what to do, or where to look. She stood before him, her hands at her sides, and she looked at the floor and her own bare feet. Then, as an afterthought, she curtsied.
    "Yes, sir," she said.
    "I wanted to speak to you privately," he said, "about your schoolwork."
    "Sir," she replied, "I'll try harder. I'm new, and didn't know the way to go about things, and so I skipped ahead in the book. I knew I shouldn't, but the pictures of sea serpents? I never been near no sea but I was interested in them things, and I skipped ahead without permission. I won't do it again, sir, no, I won't."
    Then she curtsied once more.
    He was staring at her.
    She continued her lengthy apology. "And I know I kept leaning across to the orphan when she was working on her circles. I just thought I could help, sir! She's a pathetic orphan and has no ma nor pa what could help her at home. Also she has mosquito bites, sir, what itch her fiercely.
    "I'm a poor peasant girl, remember, sir, and I hope you won't whip me, 'cuz my pa was killed by a something—a lion? No, a wild boar, it was.
    "I'll try harder," she said again, and then fell silent.
    The schoolmaster pulled out his handkerchief and held it to his mouth. His shoulders shook for a moment. Then he folded his handkerchief and looked sternly at her, his mouth set again in a line.
    "I simply wanted to commend you, Pat," he said. "Your schoolwork is quite extraordinary. I don't know where you came from, or where you attended school before—"
    "Some other domain. I forget what."
    "Be that as it may, you were well taught. How old are you, Pat?"
    "Soon sixteen, sir." Four days, she thought.
    He frowned, thinking. "I was sixteen when I left the village school and went far distant to study at a teachers' academy. You might think about preparing to do the same. I could help you with the preparation, if you like."
    "But I'm a girl, sir," the princess pointed out. "A poor peasant one," she added. "Very humble and pathetic."
    "Yes, well, I understand that. But there were some girls at the teachers' academy. So although unusual, it is not unheard of.
    "You might like to think about it. That's all. You may go now, Pat."
    "Yes, sir, I will do that, I'll think about it, when I have time, though right now I must hurry back to my hut, I mean my hovel, to help with the..." Desperately the princess tried to remember what hard-working peasants actually did. "Pigs. That's it. I must tend the pigs, a very dirty and thankless job, and I believe I might milk a cow as well, sir, quite hard on the hands, and what's the other? Yes! Collect firewood. I must bend over and get a very achy back, collecting firewood; oh, it's a difficult life, indeed, sir."
    She looked up at last and saw that he was laughing.
    "Blimey," she said, without thinking, "you're wicked handsome when you laugh, sir!"
    Then she curtsied and fled.

9. The Prince
    Prince Percival of Pustula dressed entirely in black, always. Even his underclothing was black. His hair had once been a nondescript brown, but he kept it dyed jet black and thickly oiled. His mustache, as well.
    Black matched the darkness of his moods—he was always depressed—and, in fact, the color matched his heart. Percival was a black-hearted man who hated his subjects, the Pustulans, the populace of his domain; who hated his own family (he had sentenced his own mother to a minimum-security prison seven years before and he did not venture there on visiting days, never had, not once, and on the most recent Father's Day he had given his aged father a tarantula); and who, in truth, hated everyone but himself.
    He spent a great deal of time in front of the mirror. He had had his own bedchamber lined with mirrors so that he could view himself from every angle. He