Nadine Gets Her Wish

Princess Hwawan had never seen her brother fly into a rage – not like this. Prince Sado was angry, certainly – angry, petty, cruel. But the behavior being described by the servants, the roaring coming from his suite, was a new thing entirely. She hoped, desperately, that he hadn’t hurt Nadine. It was only for Nadine that she braved his suite now, only for Nadine that she made herself fearless.

“Where is she?”

It was obvious immediately that something was wrong. Prince Sado did not let his hair down. Prince Sado did not have hair the color of straw. Prince Sado did not wear clothes in disarray. Prince Sado did not have eyes of gold.

And yet, this could not be anyone but Prince Sado, tossing aside the furniture with strength he’d never had and baring teeth with fangs unfamiliar.

“Brother?” she ventured, hesitant. His wife was nowhere to be found – perhaps this had upset him? It certainly did not explain how he had come to be dipped in gold.

Those yellow eyes turned to her, both familiar and not, brows heavy and nostrils flared. “Who are you?” he demanded, in a voice booming instead of shrill, and she might have asked the same.

“Do you not recognize your sister, Sado?”

“Sado! Sado the criminal! Sado the prisoner! There is no Sado, here!”

Hwawan took a step back, her hand tightening on the doorknob. “Who are you, then?”

“What do you think of Maahes?” the girl asked, as if he would answer, as if he could. “Not that I want to be givin’ you ideas above your station, name of a god, an’ all. But it’s a pretty obscure god, I think. Not using it anymore. It’s better’n Aslan, anyway.”

“I am Maahes! Where is the girl? Where is Nadine?”

Princess Hwawan, at a lack of better options, retreated into the hall and locked the Crown Prince into his suite. “Something is very wrong here,” she murmured to no one, straightening her skirts. She walked more urgently than was seemly, paused only to gaze out the nearest window. “The blue moons are in the sky, and Sado has turned bright as the sun. This has the feel of magic.”

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The Witch of the Wild Wood did not bow before the royal family, because Witches bowed only when it suited them. Princess Hwawan found her unsettling and intriguing all at once, with her white skin and hair, her lavender eyes. She was a heathen, the way Nadine was a heathen, and their freedom gave Hwawan heretical thoughts.

“Explain, if you would,” King Yeongjo Atahualpa of Ala Ma asked, with more patience than one might expect, “what heresy you have done to the Crown Prince.” It was not a command, because even the king could not command a Witch, but it was as close as he could get.

“I have committed no heresy,” the Witch explained loftily, “for I have not changed his blood nor flesh. I have simply granted a Wish, for a very powerful Debt.”

“And whose Wish could be so powerful, to touch a Prince?” Queen Jeongsun asked, eyes narrowed, calculating.

“Why – that of his wife, of course.” The Witch inclined her head to the empty seat, where the missing Princess did not deign to sit. Hwawan did not know if it was the sign of respect that made her twin gasp, or only Prince Jeong’s fear of his sister-in-law’s propensity for heretical acts.

“What was this Wish that the Princess made?” the King pressed, and the Witch smiled a very small smile.

“Perhaps I should start at the beginning,” she suggested, and she did not wait for agreement. Hwawan wondered if it was wonderful, to be a Witch. “When Crown Prince Sado Atahualpa came to me, those years ago, with the Debt allowed to the royal family of Ala Ma – the Debt most of you are too clever to spend.” The Witch smiled here, at her flattery and her slight, because she knew that Sado would not be defended against it – heresy or no. “His Wish was for a woman without fear – for what reason, I cannot say.” Another jab, because they all knew why Sado wanted a wife who would not scream.

“I decided, then, that the best way to do this was to transform Sado’s body, to twist it into the body of a lion, that it might return to the body of a man only with the kiss of a woman. For surely, any woman brave enough to kiss a lion ought to be fearless enough for Sado to take for a wife. And I let him into the Wild Wood, for no self-respecting fearless woman could stay away.”

All lies, they knew, but no one disputed it. It ought to have been a prison of Sado’s own making, trapped in an inescapable wood in the body of a lowly animal. Even the King and Queen, who ought to have loved their son, who ought to have punished the Witch as a heretic, had looked the other way. It had been his Wish, after all, even if the Witch had twisted it. It would have been so convenient – for the family, for the kingdom – if he had only stayed gone. If he had stayed trapped until his end of days. If there had not been, against all reason, a heathen from another world who would kiss a lion and set him free.

“This is the story that everyone knows, of course, of the Prince who was a lion. But – for reasons of my own – I did not trust Sado with his new form.” Who would?, Hwawan wondered, as she imagined her cruel brother with sharp teeth and deadly claws. “And so I gave the keeping of this body to a Spirit. It was this Spirit, in the changed body of the Prince, that was the Fearless One’s companion. It was this Spirit, in truth, who earned her kiss – and having tricked her so, though it was not my intent, I incurred a great Debt. This Debt is how the Princess Nadine made her Wish – that the body of Sado be forfeit, and given as prize to the Spirit that had been her companion.”

There was a long silence as the family considered this, the implications both religious and practical. Hwawan thought Jeong might have a panic attack.

“And Sado?” the King asked finally, and there was a wry twist to the Witch’s mouth.

“He is a Spirit, now,” the Witch confirmed, “and shall be so for so long as he is able to hold himself together, until he collapses into the aether. I can, if you Wish it, find him another body.” There was silence again, as the Witch knew there would be. Familial loyalty had its limits, and Sado was that limit.

“So our kingdom is to be ruled by a dumb beast,” Queen Jeongsun accused, but the Witch was not dismayed.

“He said his name was Maahes,” Princess Hwawan ventured, and she colored as the attention of the room turned to her.

“A Spirit without a body to hold it,” the Witch began slowly, “cannot hold itself together. It can only lose itself, piece by piece, until only its most essential quality is left. When it cannot hold even that, this is when it collapses. But a strong man makes a strong Spirit, and such was the Spirit I chose to keep Sado. Honor, was this Spirit, and it glowed brightly with it long after it should have collapsed. Given a body, it would have been able to grow again – and it is possible, without knowing it, that the Fearless One shaped him as a gardener does a tree.”

“Shaped him?” Hwawan asked, growing bolder.

“A Spirit in body becomes what it thinks it ought to be. She called him Maahes, and so he was Maahes. Treated as kind, he would have become kind. Treated as a buffoon, he would be a buffoon.” The Witch shrugged, as if the future ruler’s personality was of no consequence. “There is no knowing what she made of him until we see what he is.”

“He’s blonde, now,” Hwawan offered, as if this might give insight. “He looks… different. The same, but… different.” She was gratified when the Witch’s eyebrows raised, at this.

“She must have given him a very strong sense of who he was, then.”

“A beast cannot be Prince,” the King declared with a forbidding sense of finality.

“Can he not?” the Witch countered, as only a Witch could. “There is precedent, after all, in King Sunjo who lost his mind. No one denied that he was a different man, after the spear passed through his brain – but his blood was still royal blood, his flesh still royal flesh, and so his was still the body of a God and of a King. The Crown Prince may be Maahes where once there was Sado – but his blood is your blood, and his flesh is your flesh. Maahes has as much claim to the crown as did Sado.”

“I’m going to get him,” Hwawan declared, before anyone else could respond to this statement. “If N – Princess Nadine made him, then I ought to be the one to speak to him, until the Princess can be found. I am closest to the Princess, after all, and we cannot make judgment until we know on whom we pass it.”

“I am close to the Princess, as well,” Jeong muttered defensively, and Hwawan glowered at her twin.

“There is close, and then there is close,” she declared, before turning and moving with unseemly haste once more.

 ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

When Hwawan opened the door to Sado’s suite, the yelling and throwing had stopped. Sado – Maahes – was crouched in front of Sado’s many mirrors, staring at himself.

“Crown Prince Maahes?” she ventured, and he looked at her, flared his nostrils again.

“This is me,” he stated more than asked, pointing to his reflection. She noticed that his nails resembled claws, and tried not to feel nervous.

“Yes,” she confirmed, and he stood, cocked his head to the side.

“I have been without form for a long time.” This again was not a question, and Hwawan realized that there were scars across his chest – scars that were not there, when he was Sado. “I failed in my duty. I could not keep the girl safe. I let Sado escape. Why have I been given a body once more, when I have already proven myself a failure?”

His voice was deep, mournful, and for the first time in her life Hwawan felt stirrings of sympathy for her older brother. “She – Nadine. She missed you. She wanted you back.” Yellow eyes turned to her, and he was so obviously a lion she wondered that she didn’t realize it immediately.

“The girl was safe? I did not fail her? Where is she?” He stepped closer to her, though not by much, and he seemed to fill the room.

“I – we don’t know, right now. She… leaves, sometimes.” Hwawan turned red, thinking of her sister-in-law in the arms of a stableboy as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“She wanted me back, but did not wait for me?” Maahes’ eyes narrowed, suspicious, and Hwawan offered her palms in supplication.

“I don’t think she knew you were coming,” Hwawan offered helplessly, wishing Nadine were here to be… well, fearless. “She didn’t like to be around him – around Sado. If she’d known it would be you, I’m sure she’d not have wandered.”

Maahes looked down at his hands, back the mirror. “This was the body of Sado.”

“Yes.”

“Do I look like him?”

“Not… quite?” Hwawan pointed to one of Sado’s many portraits, and Maahes squinted at it, looked in the mirror to compare himself.

“I am much more handsome,” he decided, and Hwawan swallowed a laugh, “but it is still his face. She will see him, when she looks at me. I do not like it. What did he do, when he escaped?”

“… married her?”

“He made her his mate?” he roared, incredulous, and she recoiled instinctively from his teeth, from his approach. “She was a child!”

“She was a woman grown,” Hwawan assured him, “and she’s your mate, now.”

This stopped him short, and he appeared briefly dazed. “She is my…? Oh. Oh. My. Hmn.” He retreated back to the mirror, looked at himself, looked at Hwawan, moved his hands as if measuring something. Hwawan realized that he was trying to figure out how large she was, now that he was not a lion.

“She’s about here on you,” she suggested helpfully, holding her hand right above her breasts, Sado – and therefore Maahes – being only a few fingers taller than she. Maahes frowned, held a hand out at chest height as if resting it atop Nadine’s head, furrowed his brow.

“This presents logistical problems,” he said seriously, and Hwawan swallowed another laugh.

“It really doesn’t,” she promised, though she colored again at the memory of Nadine, of how she fit herself to a person. Maahes regarded her suspiciously, and she hoped he couldn’t tell what she was thinking about.

“You called me ‘brother’,” he observed.

“Your blood is my blood and your flesh is my flesh,” she confirmed. “You are Crown Prince Maahes Atahualpa, son of King Yeongjo Atahualpa and Queen Jeongsun Atahualpa, brother to the royal twins Hwawan and Jeong.”

“It makes sense that you’re selfish,” the girl explained, her fish on the fire as he ate his raw. “Same reason I am. I mean, one of ’em. We’re only children, yeah? Being an only child’s awesome. So’s not having parents, really, but that’s controversial for some fuckin’ reason.” She waited, as she always did, as if listening to a response he could not make, that he made only in her own mind. He did not mind, as he was a lion, and he enjoyed who she imagined him to be. He enjoyed that he made her happy. “You would say that,” she snorted, “ya dingus. Haven’t you heard the grass is always greener? Having a family seems great, right up until you realize you’re stuck with ’em.” She paused as she examined her catch, decided it was edible. “Then again, you are the sappy, loyal type. Maybe you’d be into that. You’re still here, after all.” She grinned at him, that half-mad grin, and when he roared it turned into a genuine smile of delight. She enjoyed it, when he pretended he could speak, and he enjoyed the way it chased the shadows from her eyes.

“I have a family,” he said slowly, a smile creeping to his face. “I have always wanted a family!” Hwawan cringed as Maahes moved to embrace her, and was surprised when he did so as gently as possible, as if fearing she might break. She had simply assumed he would sweep her up into a rib-crushing embrace, as boisterous as he seemed to be, but it appeared he was more careful than that. What a strange thing, that Nadine had made him cautious, that Nadine had made him gentle. That the Fearless Princess had made him safe. “I must see them, then! My family! My wife!”

“You probably ought to get some clothes first,” Hwawan suggested, disentangling herself from him. He looked down at his bare chest, at the loose trousers that he had torn when he had first became acquainted with his body. He looked at her, with her bell-shaped skirt and tunic, her red hair all in braids, the gold in her hair and at her neck and wrists and ears.

“Yes!” he agreed enthusiastically, that booming voice of his. “There is much I need to learn, about this body! What does a Prince do? What is our kingdom? I think I am a communist! What is that? Why are there rocks in my ears? What are clothes?”