Tales of the Peculiar (illustrated)

The Fork-Tongued Princess

n the ancient kingdom of Frankenbourg there was a princess who had a peculiar secret: in her mouth hid a long, forked tongue and across her back lay shimmering, diamond-patterned scales. Because she had developed these serpentine characteristics during her teenage years and rarely opened her mouth for fear of being found out, she had been able to keep them secret from everyone but her handmaiden. Not even her father, the king, knew.

It was a lonely life for the princess, as she rarely spoke to anyone for fear they’d catch a glimpse of her forked tongue. But her real trouble was this: she was to be married to a prince from Galatia.^{4} They’d never seen each other, but her beauty was so renowned that he’d agreed to the match anyway, and they were to meet for the first time on their wedding day, which was fast approaching. Their union would cement relations between Frankenbourg and Galatia, ensure prosperity for both regions, and create a pact of defense against their hated mutual enemy, the warlike principality of Frisia. The princess knew the marriage was politically necessary, but she was terrified the prince would reject her once he discovered her secret.

“Don’t worry,” counseled her handmaiden. “He’ll see your beautiful face, come to know your beautiful heart, and forgive the rest.”

“And if he doesn’t?” the princess replied. “Our best hope for peace will be ruined, and I’ll live the rest of my days a spinster!”

The kingdom prepared for a royal wedding. The palace was hung with golden silks, and chefs from across the land came to prepare a lavish feast. Finally, the prince arrived with his royal entourage. He climbed out of his carriage and greeted the king warmly.

“And where is my bride-to-be?” he asked.

He was shown into a reception hall where the princess was waiting.

“Princess!” cried the prince. “You’re even lovelier than your reputation had me believe.”

The princess smiled and bowed, but would not open her mouth to speak.

“What’s the matter?” said the prince. “Have I struck you dumb with my good looks?”

The princess blushed and shook her head.

“Ah,” the prince replied, “then you don’t find me handsome, is that it?”

Alarmed, the princess shook her head again—that wasn’t what she’d meant at all!—but she could see she was only making things worse.

“Say something, girl, this is no time to be tongue-tied!” hissed the king.

“Pardon me, sire,” said the handmaiden, “but perhaps the princess would be more comfortable speaking with the prince for the first time in private.”

The princess nodded gratefully.

“It isn’t proper,” the king grumbled, “but I suppose under the circumstances . . .”

His guards showed the prince and princess to a room where they could be alone.

“Well?” said the prince once the guards had gone. “What do you think of me?”

Covering her mouth with her hand, the princess said, “I think you’re very handsome.”

“Why do you hide your mouth when you speak?” the prince asked.

“It’s my habit,” the princess replied. “I’m sorry if you find it strange.”

“You are strange. But I could learn to live with it, given your beauty!”

The princess’s heart soared, but then crashed back to earth just as quickly. It would only be a matter of time before the prince discovered her secret. Though she could have waited until they married to reveal it, she knew it wasn’t right to deceive him.

“I have something to confess,” she said, still speaking with her mouth covered, “and I’m afraid that when you learn what it is, you won’t want to marry me.”

“Nonsense,” said the prince. “What is it? Oh no—we’re cousins, aren’t we?”

“It isn’t that,” she said.

“Well,” the prince said confidently, “there’s nothing that could stop me wanting to marry you.”

“I hope you’re a man of your word,” said the princess, and then she took away her hand and showed him her forked tongue.

“Stars above!” cried the prince, recoiling.

“That’s not all,” said the princess, and slipping one arm out of her dress, she showed him the scales that covered her back.

The prince was flabbergasted, then furious. “I could never marry a monster like you!” he cried. “I can’t believe you and your father tried to trick me!”

“He didn’t!” she said. “My father doesn’t know anything about it!”

“Well, he’s going to!” the prince fumed. “This is an outrage!”

He stormed out of the room to go tell the king, and the princess chased after, begging him not to.

It was just then that five Frisian assassins, who had disguised themselves as chefs, pulled daggers from their cakes and ran from the kitchens toward the king’s room. The prince was just about to reveal the princess’s secret when they broke down the door. While the assassins killed his guards, the cowardly king dove into a wardrobe and hid himself beneath a pile of clothes.

The assassins turned on the prince and princess.

“Don’t kill me!” the prince cried. “I’m just an errand boy from another land!”

“Nice try,” said the lead assassin. “You’re the prince of Galatia, and you’re here to marry the princess and form an alliance against us. Prepare to die!”

The prince ran to a window and tried to force it open, leaving the princess to face the assassins by herself. As they came toward her with their bloody daggers drawn, she felt a strange pressure building behind her tongue.

One after another they lunged at her. One after another, the princess launched streams of venomous poison into their faces, and all but one fell writhing to the ground and died. The fifth assassin fled from the room, terrified, and escaped.

The princess was as surprised as anyone. It was something she’d never known she could do; then again, she had never been threatened with death before. The prince, who was already halfway out the window, pulled himself back into the room and regarded both the dead assassins and the princess with amazement.

“Now will you marry me?” the princess said.

“Absolutely not,” he replied, “but as a token of my gratitude, I won’t tell your father why.”

He grabbed a discarded dagger and rushed from assassin to assassin, stabbing their dead bodies.

“What are you doing?” said the bewildered princess.

The king emerged from his wardrobe. “Are they dead?” he said, his voice trembling.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said the prince, holding up the dagger. “I killed them all!”

The princess was shocked by his lie, but held her tongue.

“Magnificent!” cried the king. “You’re the hero of Frankenbourg, my boy—and on your wedding day, no less!”

“Ah—about that,” the prince said. “Regretfully, there will be no wedding.”

“What!” shouted the king. “Why not?”

“I’ve just received word that the princess and I are cousins,” said the prince. “Such a shame!”

And without so much as a backward glance, the prince slipped out of the room, gathered his entourage, and took off in his carriage.

“This is preposterous!” the king fumed. “That boy is no more my daughter’s cousin than I’m this chair’s uncle. I won’t allow my family to be treated this way!”

The king was so enraged that he threatened to go to war with Galatia. The princess knew she couldn’t allow this to happen, and so one evening she requested an audience with her father alone and revealed the secret she’d been hiding so long. He called off his war plans, but he was so angry with his daughter, and so humiliated, that he locked her in the dankest cell of his dungeon.

“Not only are you a liar and a beast,” he said, spitting through the bars of her cell, “you’re not marriageable!”

He said it as if that were the greatest sin of all.

“But, Father,” said the princess, “I’m still your daughter, aren’t I?”

“Not anymore,” the king replied, and turned his back on her.

The princess knew she could use her acidic venom to burn through the lock of her cell door and escape, but instead she waited, hoping her father might come to his senses and forgive her.^{5} For months she subsisted on gruel and shivered through the nights on a stone slab, but her father did not come. The princess’s only visitor was her handmaiden.

One day, the handmaiden arrived with news.

“Has my father forgiven me?” the princess asked eagerly.

“I’m afraid not,” the handmaiden replied. “He’s told the kingdom you’re dead. Your funeral is tomorrow.”

The princess was heartbroken. She broke out of the dungeon that very night, escaped the palace, and with her handmaiden she left the kingdom and her old life behind. They traveled incognito for months, wandering the land, taking domestic work where they could find it. The princess smeared her face with dirt so she would not be recognized and never opened her mouth to anyone but the handmaiden, who told people that the dirty-faced girl she traveled with was mute.

Then one day they heard a story about a prince in the faraway kingdom of Thrace whose body sometimes assumed a form so peculiar that it had become a national scandal.

“Could it possibly be true?” said the princess. “Could he be like me?”

“I say it’s worth finding out,” the handmaiden replied.

So they set out on a long journey. It took two weeks to cross the Pitiless Waste on horseback, and two weeks more to cross the Great Cataract by ship. When they finally arrived in the kingdom of Thrace they were sunburned, windburned, and nearly broke.

“I couldn’t possibly meet the prince looking like this!” the princess said, so they spent the last of the money they’d earned and went to a bathhouse, where they were washed and perfumed and anointed with oils. When they emerged, the princess looked so beautiful that she turned the heads of everyone who saw her, male or female.

“I’ll show my father I’m marriageable!” the princess said. “Let’s go meet this peculiar prince.”

So they went to the palace and asked for him, but the answer they got was disappointing indeed.

“I’m sorry,” a palace guard told them, “but the prince is dead.”

“What happened?” asked the handmaiden.

“He fell ill with a mysterious disease and died in the night,” said the guard. “It was all very sudden.”

“That’s exactly what the king said happened to you,” the handmaiden whispered to the princess.

That night they snuck into the palace dungeon, and in the darkest, dankest cell, they found a giant garden slug with the head of a rather handsome young man.

“Are you the prince?” the handmaiden asked him.

“I am,” the repulsive thing answered. “When I’m feeling dejected, my body turns into a gelatinous, quivering mass. My mother finally found out and locked me down here, and now, as you can see, I’ve become a slug almost head to toe.” The prince wriggled toward the bars of his cell, his body leaving a dark stain on the floor behind him. “I’m sure she’ll come to her senses any day now, though, and let me out.”

The princess and the handmaiden exchanged an awkward glance.

“Well, I have good news and bad news,” said the handmaiden. “The bad news is your mother’s told everyone you’re dead.”

The prince began to wail and moan, and immediately a pair of gelatinous antennae began to grow from his forehead. Now even his head was turning slug.

“Wait!” the handmaiden said. “There’s still the good news!”

“Oh yes, I forgot,” the prince sniffled, and the antennae stopped growing. “What is it?”

“This is the princess of Frankenbourg,” said the handmaiden.

The princess stepped forward into a pool of light, and for the first time the prince saw her fantastic beauty.

“You’re a princess?” the prince stuttered, his eyes going wide.

“That’s right,” said the handmaiden. “And she’s here to rescue you.”

The prince was thrilled. “I don’t believe it!” he said. “How?”

His antennae were shrinking back into his head and the tubelike mass of his upper body was already beginning to separate into arms and a torso. Just like that, he was turning human again.

“Like this!” said the princess, and she spat a stream of venomous acid into the lock of the prince’s cell door. It began to hiss and smoke as the lock melted.

The prince recoiled in alarm. “What are you?” he said.

“I’m peculiar, like you!” the princess replied. “When my father found out my secret, he disowned me and locked me up, too. I know just how you’re feeling!”

As she spoke, her forked tongue flicked from her mouth.

“And your tongue,” the prince said. “That’s part of what’s . . . wrong with you?”

“And this,” the princess said, and she slipped an arm from her dress and showed him the scales across her back.

“I see,” said the prince, his voice sorrowful again. “I should’ve known this was too good to be true.”

As a tear rolled down his cheek, his arms began to disappear, joining again with his torso in a wobbly mass of slug flesh.

“Why are you sad?” the princess said. “We’re a perfect match! Together we could show our parents that we’re not unmarriageable, and we’re not trash. We can unite our kingdoms, and one day, perhaps, take our rightful place on the throne!”

“You must be mad!” the prince shouted. “How could I ever love you? You’re a disgusting freak!”

The princess was speechless. She couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“Oh, this is so humiliating!” the slug prince bawled, and then antennae sprung from his forehead, his face disappeared, and he became a slug from head to toe, quivering and moaning as he struggled to cry without a mouth.

The princess and the handmaiden turned away, stomachs heaving, and left the ungrateful prince to rot in his dungeon.

“I believe I’m done with princes forever,” the princess said, “peculiar or otherwise.”

They crossed the Great Cataract and the Pitiless Waste once again, and returned to Frankenbourg to find it at war with both Galatia and Frisia, which had united against it. The king had been overthrown and jailed, and the Frisians had installed a duke to govern Frankenbourg. The duke was a bachelor, and once his rule had been established and the country pacified, he began searching for a bride. The duke’s emissary discovered the princess working in an inn.

“You there!” he shouted, calling her away from a table she was cleaning. “The duke is looking for a bride.”

“Good luck to him,” she replied. “I’m not interested.”

“Your opinion doesn’t matter,” the emissary replied. “Come with me at once.”

“But I’m not royal!” she lied.

“That doesn’t matter, either. The duke merely wants to find the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and that may well be you.”

The princess was beginning to regard her beauty as something of a curse.

She was given a nice dress to wear and brought before the duke. When she saw his face, a cold chill spread through her. This Frisian duke had been one of the assassins who had come to kill her; he was the lone assassin who had fled.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” the duke said. “You look familiar.”

The princess was tired of hiding and tired of lying, so she told the truth. “You tried to kill me once, and my father. I was once the princess of Frankenbourg.”

“I thought you were dead!” said the duke.

“No,” she replied, “that was a lie my father made up.”

“Then I’m not the only one who tried to kill you,” he said, and smiled.

“I suppose not.”

“I like your honesty,” said the duke, “as well as your fortitude. You’re made of strong stuff, and we Frisians admire that. I can’t make you my wife because you might murder me in my sleep, but if you’ll accept the position, I’d like to appoint you as my adviser. Your unique perspective would be valuable indeed.”

The princess happily accepted. She moved back into the palace with her handmaiden, took a position of prominence in the duke’s government, and never again covered her mouth when she spoke, as she no longer had to hide who she was.

After some time had passed, she paid her father a visit in the dungeons. He was wearing grimy sackcloth and not looking very kingly at all.

“Get out of here,” he growled at her. “You’re a traitor and I have nothing to say to you.”

“Well, I have something to say to you,” the princess replied. “Though I’m still angry at you, I want you to know you are forgiven. I understand now that what you did to me wasn’t the action of an evil man, but a common one.”

“Fine, thank you for the wonderful speech,” said the king. “Now go away.”

“As you wish,” said the princess. She started to go, then stopped at the doorway. “By the way, they’re planning to hang you in the morning.”

At this news the king curled into a ball and began to snivel and cry. It was such a pathetic sight that the princess was moved to pity. Despite all her father had done, she felt her bitterness toward him melting away. She used her venom to melt the lock from his cell, secreted him out of the jailhouse, disguised him as a beggar, and sent him running in the same direction she had once fled the kingdom. He did not thank her, nor even look back at her. And then he was gone, and she was gripped by a sudden, wild happiness—for her act of kindness had freed them both.