The Princess Bride

—and I was what I most didn't want to ever be, humiliated, so I left him there, forcing myself not to run out the door, gone....

THE PLANE BACK TO New York left in three hours and I grabbed a cab, hid in Bangor 'til it was time, cabbed back to the airport.

Late. Weather problems.

I sat on a bench in the airport, leaned back, closed my eyes until King asked, 'You had to come all the way to Maine to have a nervous breakdown?' He was sitting alongside me. 'You did make one good point, and I've thought a lot about it—none of this abridgement business would have happened except your dad kept skipping stuff. So in a way you're very much right, it is your baby, you began it.'

Pause.

Then he said it.

'Try the first chapter.'

He could tell from my expression that I didn't quite understand what he meant. I guess I was like Kathy talking to Rob. 'Look, this is the twenty-fifth anniversary year of The Princess Bride, right? Your version.' It was. 'Well, probably your publisher will want to do something, maybe reprint it in hardcover.' I nodded. We'd already talked about that. 'Well, abridge the first chapter of Buttercup's Baby. Include it if you want. You probably ought to write an introduction to the chapter, explaining why you're not doing the whole book. I'll call the Shogs, tell them my decision. They won't like it but they'll go along. They've been wanting to be in business with me for years. Florinese rights to my stuff are coming due in the next couple of years.'

For a moment then he hesitated, and I wondered if he was changing his mind. I just waited, hoping not. Next he shook his head, and there was a look on his face that might have said 'Am I nuts to do this?' Then these wonderful words: 'Bill, I expect you to really try this time.'

'I'll research the hell out of it,' I told him. (And have I ever.) 'But what happens after I publish the chapter?'

'Let's go one step at a time,' he answered. 'You write it, I'll read it, Morgenstern's public will read it. I'll send a bunch of copies to all my cousins in Florin, see what they think.' He stood, looked at me. 'I guess the most important thing is really Morgenstern. He was a master and it would be nice if we could please him, don't you think?'

'That would be best of all,' I said, God's truth.

We shook hands, said good-bye, he started away, glanced back. 'You haven't read Buttercup's Baby yet, have you?'

'Not yet.'

'It's a pretty amazing story.'

'What are you saying? That even I can't screw it up?'

'You got that right,' Stephen King said, and he smiled....

***

I LEFT FOR Florin immediately. (I didn't get to Florin immediately, of course—Florin Air's scheduling geniuses saw to that. I took the Air France night flight to Brussels, where you connect with InterItalia, which lets you out in Guilder, and then just the short hop to Florin City.) I'd made out a list of places to see. Royalty School, obviously, because King put such emphasis on it, the Cliffs of Insanity—I phoned ahead and made a booking, the place is insane with visitors now—the forest where the Battle of the Trees took place, on and on. King had given me a list of friends and scholars who he thought might prove helpful. One wonderful cousin ran the best restaurant in Florin, a blessing, because Florin, as you may know, is the root vegetable capital of Europe, good for their farmers, but rutabaga is their national dish and you can get sick of it pretty fast unless a skillful cook is around.

It was odd, those first days, looking at real places that I thought were made up when I was a kid. I was worried that they might not live up to my fantasies. (Some of them didn't, most of them did.)

The Thieves Quarter where Fezzik reunited with Inigo, I saw that, and the room where Inigo finally finally killed Count Rugen—it's on the castle tour. Buttercup's farm has been kept pretty much intact, but what can I tell you, it's a farm. And of course the Fire Swamp is still as deadly as ever, no one's allowed in, but I did see the spot not that far away where local scholars believe that Buttercup and Westley held each other after she pushed him off the cliff. (It's where the reunion scene took place, and let me tell you, it was strange, me standing there, looking at that patch of ground.)

You still can't get to One Tree Island by boat because of the surrounding whirlpool, so I rented a helicopter, wandered. (One Tree is where they went to get their strength back.) It's where Buttercup and Westley first made love, where poor Waverly was born. Probably I shouldn't call her 'poor' Waverly, she had a great time for a while, parents who loved her, the world's greatest fencer as her guard, the world's strongest man as her baby-sitter. Can't ask for a whole lot more.

Of course, everything changed with the kidnapping, but I better shut up now, before I get ahead of the story....

,

BUTTERCUP'S BABY S. MORGENSTERN'S GLORIOUS EXAMINATION OF COURAGE MATCHED AGAINST THE DEATH OF THE HEART ABRIDGED BY WILLIAM GOLDMAN

One

Fezzik Dies

1. Fezzik

FEZZIK CHASED the madman up the mountain, the madman who carried the most precious thing, for Fezzik, ever to be on earth, the kid herself, Buttercup's Baby.

'Chased' was perhaps the wrong word. 'Lumbered after' might have been more accurate. However you wanted to put it, the news was not good, because Fezzik, try as he might, was falling farther and farther behind. There were two reasons. The first: size. They were fifteen thousand feet in the air, the rise was sheer, and Fezzik had terrible trouble finding footholds that might make him secure. His huge clumpy feet would touch here or there, seeking sanctuary, but it took too much time.

And the madman used that time to his advantage, increasing his lead, occasionally glancing down with his skinless face, to see how much farther Fezzik had fallen behind. Even to Fezzik, his plan was clear: get to the crest, run across the plateau, start down the far side, leave Fezzik helpless, still trying for the ascent.

The second reason for Fezzik's lack of success was this: fear. Or, to be more specific, fears. Being the biggest and strongest, no one realized he also had feelings. Just because he could uproot trees, people didn't want to know that the little squirmy bugs that lived in the roots spooked him. Just because he had defeated the wrestling champions of seventy-three countries, people didn't believe that his mother had to keep candles burning all night long when he was (comparatively speaking) little. Of course, the idea of public speaking was beyond thought. But Fezzik would rather have spent the rest of his years in constant speechmaking than face what was staring at him now. The possibility of

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