right pocket, hidden in case they should encounter anyone on the stairs, was a rat with a spoon on his head and a cloak of red around his shoulders. In the left pocket was a kitchen knife, the same knife that Miggery Sow had used to cut off the tail of a certain mouse. These were the things, a rat and a knife and a candle, that Mig carried with her as she climbed up, up, up the stairs.
“Gor!” she shouted to the rat. “It’s dark, ain’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” whispered Roscuro from her pocket. “It is quite dark, my dear.”
“When I’m princess . . .,” began Mig.
“Shhhh,” said Roscuro, “may I suggest that you keep your glorious plans for the future to yourself? And may I further suggest that you keep your voice down to a whisper? We are, after all, on a covert mission. Do you know how to whisper, my dear?”
“I do!” shouted Mig.
“Then, please,” said Roscuro, “please institute this knowledge immediately.”
“Gor,” whispered Mig, “all right.”
“Thank you,” said Roscuro. “Do I need to review with you again our plan of action?”
“I got it all straight right here in my head,” whispered Mig. And she tapped the side of her head with one finger.
“How comforting,” said Roscuro. “Perhaps, my dear, we should go over it again. One more time, just to be sure.”
“Well,” said Mig, “we go into the princess’s room and she will be sleeping and snoozing and snoring, and I will wake her up and show her the knife and say, ‘If you does not want to get hurt, Princess, you must come with me.’”
“And you will not hurt her,” said Roscuro.
“No, I won’t. Because I want her to live so that she can be my lady in waiting when I become the princess.”
“Exactly,” said Roscuro. “That will be her divine comeuppance.”
“Gor,” whispered Mig. “Yes. Her divine comeuppance.”
Mig had, of course, no idea what the phrase “divine comeuppance” meant, but she very much liked the sound of it, and she repeated it over and over to herself until Roscuro said, “And then?”
“And then,” continued Mig, “I tells her to get out of her princess bed and come with me on a little journey.”
“Ha,” said Roscuro, “a little journey. That is right. Ha. I love the understatement of that phrase. A little journey. Oh, it will be a little journey. Indeed, it will.”
“And then,” said Mig, who was now coming to her favorite part of the plan, “we take her to the deep downs and we gives her some long lessons in how to be a serving girl and we gives me some short lessons in how to be a princess and when we is all done studying up, we switch places. I gets to be the princess and she gets to be the maid. Gor!”
Reader, this is the very plan that Roscuro presented to Mig when he first met her. It was, of course, a ridiculous plan.
No one would ever, not for one blind minute, mistake Mig for the princess or the princess for Mig. But Miggery Sow, as I pointed out to you before, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And, reader, too, she wanted so desperately to become a princess. She wanted, oh, how she wanted. And it was because of this terrible wanting that she was able to believe in Roscuro’s plan with every ounce of her heart.
The rat’s real plan was, in a way, more simple and more terrible. He intended to take the princess to the deepest, darkest part of the dungeon. He intended to have Mig put chains on the princess’s hands and her feet, and he intended to keep the glittering, glowing, laughing princess there in the dark.
Forever.
37
SHE WAS ASLEEP and dreaming of her mother, the queen, who was holding out a spoon to her and saying, “Taste this, my sweet Pea, taste this, my darling, and tell me what you think.”
The princess leaned forward and sipped some soup from the spoon her mother held out to her.
“Oh, Mama,” she said, “it’s wonderful. It’s the best soup I have ever eaten.”
“Yes,” said the queen. “It is wonderful, isn’t it?”
“May I have some more?” said the Pea.
“I gave you a small taste so that you would not forget,” said her mother. “I gave you a small taste so that you would remember.”
“I want more.”
But as soon as the princess said this, her mother was gone. She disappeared and the bowl and the soupspoon disappeared along with her.
“Lost things,” said the Pea, “more lost things.” And then she heard her name. She turned, happy, thinking that her mother had come back. But the voice was not her mother’s. The voice belonged to somebody else and it was coming from someplace far away and it was telling her to wake up, wake up.
The Pea opened her eyes and saw Miggery Sow standing over her bed, a knife in one hand and a candle in the other.
“Mig?” she said.
“Gor,” said Mig softly.
“Say it,” commanded Roscuro.
Mig closed her eyes and shouted her piece. “If you does not want to get hurt, Princess, you must come with me.”
“Whatever for?” said the princess in an annoyed tone. As I have noted before, the princess was not a person who was used to being told what to do. “What are you talking about?”
Mig opened her eyes and shouted, “You got to come with me so after we take some lessons, you some long lessons and me some short ones, together way down in the deep downs, I can be you and you can be me.”
“No!” shouted Roscuro from Mig’s pocket. “No! No! You are doing it wrong.”
“Who said that?”
“Your Highness,” said Roscuro. And he crawled out of Mig’s pocket and made his way up to her shoulder and situated himself there, laying his tail across her neck to balance himself. “Your Highness,” he said again. And he raised the spoon slowly off his head and smiled, displaying his mouthful of truly hideous teeth. “I think it would be best if you do as Miggery Sow suggests. She is, as you can quite clearly see, in possession of a knife, a large knife. And she will, if pushed, use it.”
“This is ridiculous,” the princess said. “You can’t threaten me. I’m a princess.”
“We,” said Roscuro, “are all too aware of the fact of what you are. A knife, however, cares nothing for the fact that you are royalty. And you will bleed, I assume, just like any other human.”
The Pea looked at Mig. Mig smiled. The knife glinted in the light of the candle. “Mig?” she said, her voice shaking the tiniest bit.
“I really do not think,” said Roscuro, “that Mig would need much persuasion to use that knife, Princess. She is a dangerous individual, easily led.”
“But we are friends,” said the Pea, “aren’t we, Mig?”
“Eh?” said Mig.
“Trust me,” said Roscuro. “You are not friends. And I think it would be best if you addressed all your communications to me, Princess. I am the one in charge here. Look at me.”
The Pea looked right directly at the rat and at the spoon on his head. Her heart skipped one beat and then two.
“Do you know me, Princess?”
