“Elinore, sit down,” her father said, in a tone that had quailed her since childhood. But that tone had lost its ability to frighten her. She had the earl to look at, and nothing her father could do was worse than that.
“I will rescue Prince True, or die in the effort, so I swear by my maid, mother, and crone. May the moon take me, if I lie, and the lightning of God strike any who try to prevent me from this most solemn duty.” She said the last looking directly at her father, and for the first time ever, the look of her dead grandmother was on her face, and in the set of her shoulders. Elinore the Younger had found her backbone at last.
Elinore was not brave, but she was not stupid either. She turned from the banquet table and went for the door. She knew that if she did not go now, in front of all these witnesses, her father would stop her. He did not believe in the lightning of God striking the evil. If it did, or could, the earl would have died long ago. She would go now, tonight. It was high summer; the sun was still up, and would not set for hours. She would call for her horse, and she could be there by twilight, and be dead before dark. It was a plan, and it was the only plan she had, so she stuck to it. The trick about such plans is to keep moving, and not think too hard, because if she thought too hard, she might decide that life with the horrible earl would be preferable to death.
It became a parade. Other young nobles joined her on their horses, and in carriages. Her mother tried to dissuade her once, but Elinore gave her such a look that her mother dropped her hand away. Her mother had grown up with that look, out of those eyes, and knew that when the grandmother had that look, nothing could move her from her course. Elinore mounted her white horse, with its sidesaddle, and her mother began to plan the funeral of her only daughter.
Elinore rode at the head of the parade. They sang behind her, the old songs about the other princesses and noble princes who had died trying to rescue the true prince. There was the Lament of Prince Yosphier, very dirgelike. There was the bawdy drinking song of Princess Jasmine. That one always implied she’d run away and joined a circus, Elinore thought, though as she grew older she wasn’t entirely sure that Jasmine was performing in a circus, after all. Then there was her favorite, Yellen’s hymn to the prince. Yellen was a minor noble daughter, but she had gotten the farthest and pronounced the prince handsome and still young as the day he vanished.
Elinore listened to the musicians and the singing, and hoped they wrote something pretty for her. She made sure she sat the horse well, and let her long yellow hair free of its ribbons so that it flew out behind her, with her horse’s white skin, and her pale yellow cloak that she had dyed herself. If she could not be brave, she hoped she made a pretty picture.
They came upon the bridge that crossed the first moat just as the sky was darkening, just at the beginning of twilight, as she had hoped. Elinore had always been a good judge of distances on horseback. If it had been more lady-like, she would’ve ridden more. Now she wished she had. She wished she had ridden her lovely white mare out in the sun, until her pale skin tanned like a peasant’s, and men like the earl would have seen her as headstrong and not worth looking at. Oh, she had so many regrets as she dismounted her white horse at the edge of the bridge. She did not think it possible to have accumulated so many regrets in but seventeen short years, but she had assumed there would be time, so much more time than this.
Servants began to bring up torches to sit at the edge of the drop, and she could see the skeletons far below, by the light of the dying sun, and the coming torches. She actually had turned from the sight of it, her nerve failing. Surely, life was better than this.
Then her father was there, whispering, “You have disgraced me, Elinore, before the earl. If you go to him tonight, before the wedding, then he will forgive all. He will marry you and our family will rise at court.”
“You once told me, Father, that to rescue Prince True was another way of saying you would rather die. Well I would rather rescue Prince True than go to the bed of the earl tonight.”
He struck her then, laid her low in front of them all. She tasted blood in her mouth, and the world swam for a moment. When she could see clearly again, she looked up at her father, and called out, in a loud ringing voice, “I will rescue Prince True or die in the effort.”
“You are a selfish, foolish girl,” he said.
“Yes, Father, I am all those things.” She got to her feet, a little shakily, for she had never been struck in the face. Whippings, yes, but never this. She straightened her cloak, settled her skirt, resisted the urge to touch the blood she could feel trickling from the corner of her mouth, and said, “Good-bye, father.”
She turned with no other word, and went straight for the bridge. She did not look down from the dizzying height to where her body would soon be lying. She did not look at the skeletons and their skeleton horses on the razor-sharp rocks below. She kept her eyes front, her back straight, as a well bred woman should.
Her father called, “Elinore!”
She did not answer, for she had said her good-byes. She was strangely calm, calmer than she had ever been outside of the kitchens. The bridge was wooden, and had no rails, but it was solid and wide enough to drive a large carriage across. She got halfway, when she felt the bridge move. She was already looking at the far end of the bridge, and the small watchtower that marked the end of this moat and the beginning of the second. She did not have time to look up, or look down, or be surprised. She saw the giant step out of thin air, and come striding toward her. He held a huge club the size of the great oak back home. It was just like the songs and stories. The first danger was a giant with a club, and when you fought him, he would smash you to the rocks below.
The bridge swayed and pitched, and she knelt, not out of fear of the coming giant, but because she did not want to fall off the bridge. It seemed important somehow that she should die by the giant’s club and not some silly fall. If this were to be the last thing she ever did, she would die well, and, if possible, in such a way to make her father regret his actions. Yes, seeing her fall would be horrible, but seeing her beaten to death by a giant, that well served her father right.
The giant thundered toward her, bellowing. He raised his great club, and at the last moment Elinore closed her eyes. She closed them for a long time, it seemed. She opened them, cautiously, and found herself staring at the giant’s ankles. They were very big ankles, big as barrels. She looked up from the ankles and found the giant looking down at her. His club was at his side.
They stared at each other for a moment or two, the girl and the giant. Elinore noticed that the giant’s eyes were brown, and the size of serving platters, but they were not unkind, those eyes. They were certainly kinder than the eyes of the earl.
“What is your name?” the giant asked, in a voice like thunder.
She swallowed hard, and then spoke up, so that the nobles watching could hear she’d died bravely. “I am Elinore the Younger.”
She got to her feet, carefully, making sure she did not trip on the hem of her skirt. There were still no rails on the bridge, and the giant was taking up a lot of room. She eased past him, holding her skirts up, delicately, wishing she had thought to change out of her dancing slippers and into something more serviceable. Dancing slippers were fine for quick deaths, but if it was to be slow, and there was to be a challenge, then there were other shoes she would have chosen.
When she was on the other side of the giant, and had more room to maneuver, she dropped him a perfect curtsy. “Thank you, giant.”
He pointed with a finger the size of a young tree. “Go there, Elinore the Younger. Go there and meet my cousin. Your death at my hands would have been quick. If you fail the next trial, your death will be slow and fulsome.”