Fairy Godmother

'Wake up, your highness,' she said, prodding him in the ribs with a toe, her tone of voice making the honorific sound very sarcastic. 'I can't leave you a donkey forever, much as I would like to. If I do, you'll become more ass and less man with every passing day. Not that you weren't an ass already,' she added matter-of-factly, 'but it was a rather different sort of ass.'

He really wasn't thinking as she was speaking; he was really still waking up, right up until the moment she finished talking to him. Then, with a jolt, his mind started working.

And he didn't exactly think. Instead he reacted in the way he had fantasized he would in the first hours of his captivity.

He leaped to his feet.

He meant to lunge at her, at this vile Witch who had ruined his life. He had done it so many times in his mind, he would throw her to the ground and truss her up, then demand that she restore him his possessions and send him home —

But his balance was all wrong. His legs didn't work right. But after tripping and falling, he scrambled to his feet again, anyway.

He made a grab for her —

— and there was a sort of bang, and a flash of light —

— and he found himself flat on his back in the straw with a monumental headache.

'As I was saying,' the woman said, calmly, but with an edge to her voice, and her blue eyes flashing with suppressed anger. 'I can't leave you in the donkey-skin for more than a few days without your mind becoming more donkeylike.' She looked down at him and shook her head. 'Not that it would be a huge difference, apparently. So once a week or so, you'll get to be a man for a day and — '

He leaped to his feet for a third time, despite pain in his head that threatened to send him to his knees. This time he didn't make the mistake of trying to attack her; instead, he just shoved blindly past her and ran.

He blundered into the wall of the stable, but the clean, chill air braced him, and he staggered a few more paces, then broke into a real run, his steps growing more sure with every moment.

In the thin grey predawn light, he got his bearings by the cottage. He could get away; the Witch hadn't a prayer of catching him. After all, he knew the forest around here, now. He even knew how to get to the village. And while the villagers might not treat an enchanted donkey with any consideration, they couldn't ignore the demands of a Prince of Kohlstania!

He sprinted down the path to the cottage, then leaped the low stone wall around the garden and pelted for the road. In a moment, he'd be in the forest, under the trees, and she didn't have a horse to chase him on, nor did she have a hound to track him with. He —

— found himself pelting down the path to the stable.

He whirled, and reversed himself, running this time for the forest itself rather than the road. There must be some sort of spell on the road; fine, he'd get into the forest and get onto the road again later, he'd get to the village that way. That would be even better! She couldn't possibly find him in the forest and —

— he found himself running down the path to the stable.

'So, how many tries you going to make before you figure it out, boy?' asked a voice to his right. He stopped, and looked. The little woman called Lily stepped out from between two blackberry canes, her head, crowned by a flat straw hat, bobbing with suppressed laughter. 'You reckon we're all as big a set of fools as you are? It's you the enchantment's on, not the path, nor the forest. You can't leave here unless the Godmother lets you.'

He heard footsteps coming towards him, and saw the Witch emerging from the stable and walking towards him in a leisurely fashion, a smug smile on her face. And rage completely overcame him.

He seized a pointed stake supporting a plant and yanked it out of the ground; he hadn't intended to kill her before, but this was clearly war, and none of the laws of chivalry applied! And if he couldn't touch her, he was a prize-winner at the spear and javelin —

He pulled his arm back to impale her at the same time he caught a kind of silvery flash out of the corner of his eye.

And suddenly, he found himself looking at something very sharp, the tip of which was less than an inch from his eye.

It was the shining silver tip of a Unicorn's horn.

He clutched at his improvised spear, wondering if he could manage to duck under the threatening horn to kill it before it killed him —

There was a second flash, and a second Unicorn in his path. This one was braced to charge, and the tip of its horn was pointed somewhat lower than the first's. Very much lower.

He gulped, and his hands clenched hard on the stake.

'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' said the first Unicorn, its voice hard and angry.

'That's right. You aren't a virgin,' the second said, in a tone of accusation. Then it snickered. 'But try it, go ahead, and you'll wish you were.'

His mind raced for a moment. What did being a virgin have to do with —

Oh.

Of course. Unicorns were not only held spellbound by virgins, but they were the protectors of virgins.

He remembered the things in the night-shrouded garden, the conversation he'd overheard. So — the Witch was a virgin?