The Princess and the Firedrake Read online

  With all her many virtues, her fatal problem was that she always thought she knew better than other people; and what was worse, she always did. Despite all her genius, she could not master the skill of advising people without offending them - to her they remained a closed book. Down at the bottom of Palace Hill, the Gdinkers loved her anyway because they took her as she was, but inside the royal palace, the king’s dislike infected the whole court and all the servants, except for loyal Hildegard. Of course, everything Alix did annoyed the king, and the more she tried to help the less he liked her.

  After just a few years, things came to a head when Grogelbert learned that the princess was taking fencing lessons. Fencing lessons! What kind of nonsense was that for a 14 year-old girl? Fencing was not for ladylike females and the king’s male sense of the proprieties was offended.

  If he had ordered her to stop, Alix would have dutifully obeyed him, but the king thought he had a smarter plan. As it happened, he had been captain of the fencing team at dear old Heidelberg U, and he guessed he could still swish a foil with the best of them - certainly better than a mere girl. So instead of prohibiting fencing, he would trounce his smartAlix daughter so soundly that she would see the folly of attempting a man’s sport. Pleased with his clever idea, the king joined the princess in the royal gym and proposed a friendly match.

  Like most of the king's schemes, this one was ill-advised. The princess quickly bested her father six times in a row, and she didn't improve matters by cheerfully crying "Touché!" after every hit. By the sixth touché! the former Heidelberg champion looked helpless and foolish.

  Hidden by his fencing mask, his furious look was invisible. “Again!” he, grunted, saluting. The fencing foils flashed and clashed, CLICKETY-CLICKETY-CLACK-CLICKETY-THOCK! The button on the end of Alix's foil pressed into the king's chest pad.

  “Touché, Papa!

  “I know; I know!” the king barked, “again!!”

  Ten rounds of CLICKETY-THOCK later, the king ripped off his mask and wiped the sweat from his face. He was puffing and blowing and his look was murderous. “How… how are you doing that?” he gasped.

  Princess Alix removed her own mask, but she hadn’t broken a sweat. “Simple, Poppa,” she said cheerfully, “you keep lunging in tierce when you’re vulnerable to my attack.” As the king’s eyes started to bulge, the princess added, “I could help you improve your defense.”

  “You could… you could…!” The king was so infuriated that he slashed at his daughter with his sword, screaming “Improve this, you smartAlix!!”

  Princess Alix was shocked by her father’s eruption, but far too good a swordsperson to fear his clumsy hacking. This time, the CLICKETIES ended with a WISH-WISH-WISH-WISH-WIZZZT! as she spun her father’s foil out of his grip. It sailed through the air and clattered onto the stone floor.

  Shaking with rage, the king stripped off his protective mask and vest and turned on his first-born child. At first he was too mad to speak, and when he finally found his voice, his tone was murderous. “You know what?” he whispered, “I don’t like you - don’t like anything about you.” He turned away, then swung back. “I especially don’t like your knowitall attitude and your… and your…” Throwing his vest on the floor, the king jumped up and down on it several times and then stomped out of the gym.

  Princess Alix had never cried, not even once, after being afflicted with brilliance. Now for the very first time in 14 years, tears leaked out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Poppa didn’t like her. Alix could endure the cool looks and tolerant sighs of the palace staff, but she needed her poppa to love her and he didn’t, just plain didn’t!

  Anyway, what was so wrong with “knowing it all,” when knowing things and learning more was so useful and, and... fun? Alix had a vague, unsettling feeling that she was missing something here. But she could spin her mental wheels until smoke poured out of her ears, and still not discover the missing secret.

  From that day on, she redoubled her efforts to please her father. She replenished the royal treasury through fiscally sound accounting; she wrote letters for him in elegant Latin to impress his fellow monarchs with his learning; she improved the administration of the kingdom so dramatically that within just a few years Grogelbert became the most loved and admired monarch in Sulphronia’s history.

  But the king knew that all this was her doing, not his, knew that all his achievements were lies; and Alix’s brilliance gnawed at him - gnawed at his very soul, until Grogelbert no longer disliked his first-born child. He hated her!

  There was no other word for it.

  Hated.

  Chapter 3

  A Badminton Game and a Heat Wave

  Six whole years slogged by, and every year the king's dislike deepened. The princess never left off trying to please him, but she no longer expected approval.

  On one unusually warm march day, the royal family was out in a big palace courtyard, covered with grass and bordered by flower beds lovingly tended by Nurse Hildegard. Princess Alix was lying on the grass, speed-reading an oversize book titled “Q” - which made sense when you noticed that the books piled around her were named A, B, C, and so-on. Nearby, the queen was looking for sunspots through a pane of smoked glass, and the rest of the clan were all playing badminton. The royal family was grown up now: Princess Alix was 20, Prince Hubert was 19 and Prince Filbert 18.

  Two maidens were permanent guests at the palace: tall, fair Gwendolyn and short, dark Mandolyn - nice quiet girls who were more or less scheduled to marry Hubert and Filbert. Although Crown Princess Alexandra was now 20, the king had not bothered to find her a husband, which was perfectly fine with Alix.

  King Grogelbert was playing his older son Hubert, who was short, thick, and strong like his father. It wasn’t a real badminton court, so the net was held up on one side by a broomstick stuck in the lawn, and on the other side by the Major Domo, who was sweating in the broiling sun and whose arms were by now very tired. Father and son battled back and forth, back and forth, until the Major Domo decided he’d had enough of this nonsense. Catching Hubert’s eye, he nodded meaningfully and the prince nodded back. Though the king’s next serve sailed over the net in a piece-of-cake arc, Hubert purposely swung at it wildly and missed.

  “Game, set, and match!” the king crowed. Ever the sportsman, he rushed at the net to jump over it, forgetting that it was twice as high as a tennis net. He blundered into it, tore it out of the Major Domo’s hands, spun around desperately, cocooned himself in the mesh, and crashed to the ground.

  Prince Hubert stood uncertainly over the messy sack full of king that was thrashing about on the grass. “You played a great game, Poppa!” he called.

  “Thanks, Hubert,” came the muffled reply, “you’re always a grand sport, m’boy. Now get that smartAlix sister of yours to come play Filbert.”

  “Ah…” Truth to tell, Hubert was somewhat frightened of Alix. His big sister was, you know, so smart and all.

  Alix had heard all this and came to her brother’s rescue, calling out, “Just let me finish this article, Poppa. It’s about an Aztec god named Quezalcoatl.”

  The Major Domo picked up one end of the net and jerked hard to unroll his sovereign. Grogelbert staggered up, already angry, and stomped over to his daughter. “Kesta… Coastal… what?? he shouted, “can’t you ever be normal? I mean, look at your brothers: playing sports, chasing girls, looking for nice wars to fight. That’s the right stuff; that’s the manly way!”

  Alix stood up, smiling. “So you want me to follow the manly way, Poppa?”

  “Of course not! Who said I did?” Grogelbert glared at his daughter. “You always have to win, don’t you; always have to know better.”

  “The problem is,” she said with fatal innocence, “I do know better.”

  For once the king didn’t bellow and rant, and that was a very bad sign. When he started one of his quiet rages, people melted away and the Major Domo removed the best vases. He just stood there like a boiler with its
metal pressure disk jiggling on top and releasing small spurts of steam. Finally, he barked, “Hubert! Filbert! Get those silly girls over here!” The young people approached him cautiously and stood in defensive pairs.

  The king looked them over like a general inspecting troops, then nodded and turned back to Alix. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Missy Knowitall. You’ll never prove that you know better than us because you’ll never reign over Sulphronia. As of this minute, I’m making Hubert my heir and Filbert next. An heir and a spare, right?”

  Before she could answer, Grogelbert turned back to the others. “Boys, do you want to marry Gwendolyn and Mandolyn?”

  “Sure,” Hubert shouted.

  “Well, just one apiece, Poppa,” said tall skinny Filbert, who had somehow acquired a sense of humor.

  The ladies chorused, Yes your majesty; yes Sire; thank you Sire.

  “Even better!” crowed Grogelbert, “an heir and a spare and a spare pair of heirs and… what was I saying?”

  Alix murmured submissively, “That you were disinheriting me, Poppa.”

  “Right; you better believe it! Another thing, Ex-princess SmartAlix, don’t call me ‘Poppa.’” As the king stomped away across the grass, he added over his shoulder, “I’m ‘Father’ to you!” The king reached a doorway and turned. “Or better yet, Your Majesty!!” Satisfied with this exit line, he stormed into the palace.

  No one spoke for a long moment, and then Prince Hubert approached his big sister. “I don’t think I want to be king,” he said.

  “Me either,” said Filbert. Do you girls care?”

  Gwendolyn and Mandolyn shook their heads. Brought up to play lutes and do needlepoint, they were just not equipped to be Royals.

  “Thank you all; that was nice of you.” Princess Alix smiled at them, then looked away toward the door where the king had left. However she felt about ruling the kingdom, her father’s outburst had finally broken her heart.

  She watched her brothers walk off with their ladies. Hubert and Filbert were shoving each other playfully, while Gwendolyn and Mandolyn were pretending that this behavior wasn’t juvenile. All four of them appeared happy. Alix desperately wanted to be like them - wanted friends to talk to and laugh with. Nurse Hildegard loved her, but couldn’t understand Alix’s interest in science and history and art. Her mother…? Who ever knew what the queen felt? The princess sat alone on the grass, hugging volume Q to her chest and wondering what was so wrong with her? It was the thousandth time she’d wondered that, but she still wasn’t a finger-width closer to an answer.

  * * * *

  The ill-fated badminton game was the last they would play that spring. By April the weather was hotter than August and by June it was so scorching that the royal family never ventured out of the relatively cool stone palace and into the punishing heat.

  This heat wave was caused by the firedrake Griddle, who by now was an endangered species. Europe was rapidly hounding these immense creatures to extinction, simply by refusing to believe in them any longer. Monsters were unscientific, and the Renaissance was having none of that! But, like the faeries, the horrible, dragon-like firedrake refused to abandon Sulphronia. Every day of the year, Griddle still swam laps in the boiling lava lake at the top of Mt. Sulfur, keeping in shape for the day when the next noble knight came to challenge him. The trouble was that no knight ever came - and none had come in over two hundred years - and Griddle was losing his temper. He was normally cheerful, as firedrakes go, but after two centuries of being ignored, this fearsome beast, who gargled boiling lava and spat fireball loogies into the stratosphere, was becoming enraged; and as his anger increased, the temperature rose for many leagues around the volcano he lived in.

  So began the Great Sulphronia Heat Wave of Ought-17 - Sulphronians were unclear on the concept of year naming - as the angry firedrake launched ton after ton of hot lava skyward. Though no one had heard the term greenhouse gasses, they nonetheless covered the sky and kept in both the heat of the sun and the blast furnace air that belched out of Mount Sulfur. Nobody knew exactly how hot it was, for only the Queen possessed a thermometer - supplied by her mentor Galileo of course - so people just said it was plenty hot or used other, more impolite words. It didn’t take a Galileo to note that the crops were blasted, the livestock were dying, and the citizens, stripped to their skivvies, were wheezing and fainting all over Sulphronia.

  The people expected the king to do something - anything - to end their misery; and when he didn’t come through they were noisy about it. They discussed storming the palace or at least throwing rocks through the windows or something, but it was far too hot to storm up that hill or even collect rocks for throwing. So they loafed around the town square instead, complaining and hunting the shade as the brutal sun crossed the sky.

  Up at the palace, the eminent Signor Galileo was explaining the heat wave to the queen and retired crown princess Alix. Queen Athena had invited her favorite scientist for a visit and the great man had promptly accepted. Suspecting that the Church might soon make things hot for him, Galileo had fled Florence, only to find Sulphronia much hotter already. The maestro was not in good humor.

  Queen Athena cared only for the technical side of the problem, although Alix kept insisting that cattle were dying and folks keeling over with heat stroke. Athena admitted that those were unfortunate side effects of an otherwise fascinating phenomenon, but science was not always convenient, now was it?

  Princess Alix grew so frustrated by her mother’s obtuseness that she finally walked out of the meeting. Without relief, the whole country would soon be broiled to cinders, but Alix couldn’t think of a thing to do. Though she was full of facts about differential equations and the melting point of lead, all her facts, all her brains, all her reading, were quite useless. She had never felt this helpless before.

  * * * *

  The summer throne room was supposedly cool because it was on the north side of the palace, but in this punishing heat wave it was just as hot as the rest of the place. The king had a large wooden tubful of water in front of his throne and was paddling his bare feet in it. The queen and the rest of the court simply stood around, dripping sweat.

  The center of the room was filled with a long table covered with maps, charts, diagrams, globes, parchment, quills, and other academic debris. Behind the table sat four frail graybeards, nearly blind, almost deaf, and impossibly old. These were the royal philosophers. They had been disgraced and banished after their inept examination of an elephant sent to the king by an African colleague; but Grogelbert now was so desperate that he’d called them back from their old folks’ home in the suburbs.

  They had mumbled and dithered and fumbled with papers until the king’s meager patience was more than exhausted. “So,” he said loudly, “you think this heat wave is caused by a firedrake.”

  “Indubitably, your majesty,” said the first philosopher.

  “What’s a firedrake?” the second philosopher whispered aside to the third.

  “Hot,” said the third.

  “What’s ‘indubitably’?” asked the fourth.

  “And where is this firedrake monster?” the king pursued.

  The first philosopher creaked to his feet. “The violent eructations of Mount Sulfur would suggest that the beast is in residence…” he dramatically pointed a skinny arm, “there!”

  This puzzled the court because the old man’s trembling finger was aimed square at the king. The Major Domo rotated the royal philosopher on his axis until he was pointing at an open window that framed the distant cone of Mount Sulfur. As if on cue, a mushroom cloud erupted above it with a FOOM! that could be heard all these 25 leagues away. The courtiers oohed and awwed listlessly.

  “Well, finally we’re getting someplace,” said the king. He turned to the Major Domo, “Right: clear them out.”

  This took time because the venerable sages moved barely faster than a garden snail with a limp. As they glaciated out the throne room door, the fourth one whispered to the
second one, “I still think an elephant’s warm and squishy.”

  When the philosophers had tottered out the king said, “There it is then: someone will have to kill the blasted thing.” He turned to his older son. “Hubert, my boy, suit up and get out on the field.”

  Alix was horrified. “Poppa!” she cried, “I mean, your majesty, there’s no such thing as a firedrake.” The king turned a cold eye on his daughter as she continued, “The firedrake is a mythical beast - you know, like a unicorn. It’s simply Mount Sulfur erupting.”

  King Grogelbert sneered. “I suppose I should send you instead. You could lecture it to death.” He smiled sourly at what was, for him, a major witticism. “And if that didn’t work, you’re expendable anyway. Hubert here’s got a kingdom to run someday.”

  Alix winced at her father’s sarcasm, but plowed on, “When the sub-surface magma is pressurized, the resulting force…”

  “Oh, shut up!” the king roared.

  Alix said bravely, “If you send Hubert up into that heat he will die!”

  “I’ve had more than enough from you, missy.” The king stomped his foot, splashing water on Hildegard, who was standing nearby. “Get out; get out now!”

  Bowing her head obediently, Princess Alix walked sorrowfully out of the throne room. She wandered disconsolately along the endless palace corridors, wondering why she could not come up with a solution and mopping her neck with a hankie.

  In the baking throne room, Queen Athena said, “She’s right, you know.”

  The king rounded on the queen, splashing more water. “Oh, so you think there’s no firedrake either.”

  The queen was at her best with hard logic. “Whether the heat is caused by a firedrake or a volcano, it will be equally fatal to Hubert.”

  “He’ll have armor,” the king answered.

  “Oh, good; armor’s good! Instead of being flame-broiled, he’ll merely roast to death!”

  The king stepped out of the water tub and started pacing the dais, leaving wet footprints all over it. “There must be some kind of protection.” A rare idea occurred: “How about that Galileo fella?” The visiting scientist had boycotted this meeting of pre-scientific fuddy-duddies. “He’s been freeloading here for weeks now. The man’s some kind of big shot scientist. Have him invent something.”