“So one day we came home and seen her lying there on the floor. We picked her up and seen her bodice was laced up tight. It was a new lace.”
One of the brothers interrupted, and Eskavaria nodded to him.
“That’s right, a silk lace, one we hadn’t seen before. So we unlaced her, and she caught her breath, all of a sudden. We asked her what happened. She told us a peddler woman come by. Well, we knew then what happened. The witch knew she was here.”
The little men nodded, agreeing this is the way it had been.
“Gaily wasn’t real quick,” Esky went on. “All of us knew that. Even so, we thought since it happened once, she’d know next time. We told her no more peddler women …”
Another interruption, discussion, nodding of heads.
Eskavaria nodded. “That’s right. No more visitors, no one. We said stay in the house until we come home. We said then we’d walk with her if she wanted to pick flowers or something.
“Well, wasn’t a whole week passed before we come home and there she is again. All limp on the floor. We thought she was dead. We picked her up, and then a comb fell out of her hair, and she woke up. It was another peddler woman. Talked her way around the child, like the first time.
“So we knew we couldn’t trust her alone. Right then we should have took her over the mountains, fast. We didn’t do that. We decided that one of us would stay with her, to protect her. Then that didn’t seem decent, so we said two would stay, to keep an eye on each other along with her. And that went along for quite a long while.…”
He turned to his brothers and asked them a question in their own language. They argued for a moment, then responded. “Almost a year,” he went on. “It was almost a year. Then one day Euskaby found a big gem deposit back in the mine with a rock in front of it. Big rock. All of us had to move it. Maybe an hour we left her, but when we got back she was on the floor again. This time was no lace, no comb. We undressed her, took everything off, looked at everything, put everything back. We combed her hair. We cleaned her fingernails and toenails. We looked in her mouth, in her nose and ears. Nothing.”
“The witch said it was an apple,” I said. “I overheard her.” It hadn’t been the witch who had said it, but I wasn’t about to explain about Fenoderee and Puck.
“If it was an apple, it’s inside her belly,” said Esky. “There’s no way to get it out of her with her living.”
And he was perfectly right, of course, in the fifteenth. In the twentieth, it would be minor surgery. But if I took her to the twentieth, I might not be able to get back. Or, if I got back, too much time might have passed, and I might never see Giles again. I sighed and bit my lip and decided not to decide, not just yet.
“We’re still within the borders of Ponte Marvella, right?” I asked.
They talked it over and decided that we probably were right on the border, not really in, not really out.
“Then we need to get her out,” I said. “Once we’re outside Marvella, maybe the witch won’t bother us, and we can decide what to do. I don’t think my granddaughter’s dead. Not really. Perhaps there’s a way to remove the enchantment.” In the story it was a prince’s kiss, wasn’t it? Or was that only my own story? Or was it Disney? I simply couldn’t remember!
More argument. They weren’t sure they believed me. I wasn’t sure it was true. Esky waved his hands and shouted. Eventually they agreed. Two or three of them were crying. One thing they did agree upon. Daytime was the time to move. Nights were dangerous.
So we started out. Galantha’s coffin was bound about with ropes and slung between the two packhorses. Our supplies went on Esky’s horse. All seven of the little men came along, to be sure we got out safely, Esky said, but I think they simply were unwilling to let her go. She had become something more to them than a sleeping little girl. They decided the safest thing to do was to go down the south side of the mountains into Spain, since we were nearest the southern border of Marvella. Also, we had to avoid the toll bridge the baron had told me about. If the Princess wanted to stop our leaving, that bridge would be watched.
The idea was good, but the trails were simply not wide enough for the two horses with the coffin between. This became obvious very quickly, and a shouting match broke out among the little men. Two of them kept pointing to the ropes and screaming at two others. I could read their faces if not their words. “You didn’t tie it right. It’s all your fault.” And the others: “You don’t know a damned thing about knots. What do you mean it wasn’t tied right?” It went on far too long, and Giles stopped it by bellowing at them, dismounting, untying the coffin, opening it, wrapping the girl in the satin coverlet, and taking her up in his arms. She was as stiff as an image carved from wood. In a way that was a relief. I had worried myself over what the little men might have been doing with her in that mine, all those years. They had done nothing, obviously, that they could not have done as well with an image carved from stone.
The little men muttered at Giles’s picking her up, but decided to allow it. Still, they insisted on bringing the coffin along, the bottom and top tied separately onto the backs of
