The Rat Prince

  None of this had come to pass as I’d anticipated.

  The goddess touched me again, and my frantic thoughts dispersed. “Your transformation is not a curse,” she whispered, “but a blessing.”

  “A blessing? How so?”

  “Blackie?” Rose’s voice, tentative and afraid, came from behind me.

  I turned around.

  She gasped when she saw my face.

  Alas, I must make an ugly human, I thought. I have frightened her.

  “My name is not Blackie,” I said. “It is Char.” Then I looked at her, for the very first time, through the eyes of a man.

  It was my turn to gasp. In that instant, I understood everything.

  I was in love with Rose.

  I always had been.

  “A blessing,” Ashiira repeated, then laughed. The sound was like music, peals of delight.

  CINDERELLA

  Char stood before me in his new form: tall, lean, almost willowy. His dark eyes were alight with their usual intelligence and sympathy, and a touch of humor lurked at the corners of his mouth.

  He smiled. I could not look away from him.

  My pet rat.

  No, he had never been a pet—I realized that now—nor had he ever been mine. But whatever he was before, he’d become human tonight.

  And what a human! I’d never seen a man so beautiful.

  If I had ever thought about it, I might have expected a bespelled animal to behave like an empty puppet, without a mind or soul. However, this was clearly not the case with the young man standing before me.

  Char.

  “Rose de Lancastyr,” he said, reaching a slender hand toward mine. “At last the silence between us is broken.”

  My heart heard much more than his words.

  He brushed a kiss across my fingertips as he bowed low. When he looked up, my breath caught. And as his touch lingered, I felt my courage returning.

  How did he do it? Char was always able to refresh my spirit, it seemed. Whichever form he took.

  “We are together now,” he said. “Wherever you go tonight, I shall be watching. You will come to no harm.”

  His manner was so intense, his deep voice so full of hidden meaning, I was confused. “Why, whatever could harm me at the ball?” I asked.

  He seemed as if he were about to speak, then stopped and looked disturbed. He probably thought I was a fool for speaking so inconsequentially to him—he who had become a man because of my careless wish! Could I not have made my first words to him something memorable, now that we were able to talk to each other as humans?

  “What are you thinking, my lady?” His brow narrowed with concern beneath his glossy black hair.

  “Char, this situation must seem strange to you—it certainly does to me. However, perhaps you and I can discuss—”

  “Well, now, children, that’s enough of that!” Ashiira said, laughing. “We haven’t much time, you know!”

  With a few flicks of her wrist, she had Char and Frump-Bum on the back of the coach, the rat-coachman on the driver’s perch, the mice-horses harnessed, and me inside, twisting my hands together and biting my lip so as not to scream in frustration.

  “Be sure to accomplish everything you need to do before midnight,” the goddess ordered, “for at the stroke of twelve, the spell dissolves completely.” Then she slapped the hindquarters of the first horse and called out: “To Castle Wendyn!”

  PRINCE CHAR

  As footmen, we stood on small platforms at the back of the carriage, holding on to wooden handles for support while the vehicle jostled along the cobblestone roads of Glassevale. I’d wondered if I might find it difficult to balance in my new shape, but the goddess had given us full human ability.

  Truffle clearly remembered which way to go, driving us along at a spanking pace in spite of the fact that darkness had finally fallen. There were running lamps at all four corners of the coach, oil burning in glass to light our way. The people who earlier had chased us and shouted at us when we ran through the streets as rats now cheered the gleaming vehicle and the imposing servants who flanked it.

  “This is your fault!” Swiss howled over the noise of the street. “Lady Rose didn’t read the part in the book where her ancestor explains about the use of the ring and its power, and now look what’s happened!”

  “Very well, it’s my fault for giving her the ring. Might we move beyond that now?”

  “To what?” Swiss prompted. “Are you going to let her go to the castle and fall into the clutches of the mad prince? Why are we escorting her there, of all places? We should order Truffle to drive us far, far away.”

  “Did you not notice?” I said bitterly. “Ashiira is in charge. Clearly, Rose’s ring-wish was to go to the ball. Any attempt to stop her from getting there will be thwarted.”

  For once, Swiss had nothing to say in reply. I listened to the clack-clack of the carriage and the snorting of the horses before coming to a decision.

  “Wait here,” I told him. Then I turned on my perch and grasped hold of the gilt trim on the side of the coach with my new, versatile fingers and thumbs.

  “Stop! You’ll fall!” Swiss shouted, but I paid him no heed.

  It was amazing. These large human hands allowed me to inch my way along the running board, then support my weight with one hand while jiggling open a door with the other. When the door swung wide, I inserted my feet through the opening and dropped inside.

  “Eeek!” said Rose, shrinking back.

  “At last you are properly frightened by a rat, my lady.” I smiled at her before turning to close the door. Then I took the velvet-cushioned seat opposite her and leaned forward. “We must talk.”

  She brightened, smiled back at me, and took my hands in hers. “Oh, Blackie—I mean, Char—look at you! Why, you are so human. Does it hurt?”

  “No.” I tried to think what to tell her first.

  She saw my hesitation and misinterpreted it as confusion. “You must be wondering how this came to pass. You also must think I rejected the beautiful gown you gave me! Not so. Wilhemina destroyed it, and left me behind when she took her daughters and my father to the castle.”

  Outrageous! I suppressed a strong desire to curse.

  She squeezed my hands. “I’m sorry the goddess, er, changed you and your friends like that. Please believe me, I did not ask it of her.”

  The tenderness in her voice gave me an odd feeling in my chest. “Thank you, Lady Rose. The change was disturbing, unsettling, yet I’m fast becoming used to it.” In fact, I was beginning to realize I may have misjudged humans my entire life, which is a hard admission for a rat to make.

  “Truly? You’re very brave. I was so worried about you,” she said with an admiring glance. “And Frump-Bum, too, of course.”

  “His name is Swiss,” I replied absently, my head full of the need to get past Ashiira’s spell and warn Rose about Prince Geoffrey. “And the coachman is Truffle. She is—or was—a female. See here, though, we have more weighty matters to discuss.” I leaned back and let go of her hands.

  Her face fell.

  “That is to say,” I amended, “I am deeply honored to make your acquaintance in this magical manner, but I must tell you most pressingly—” My tongue ceased to move. I had run up against Ashiira’s boundary of bewitchment. “My lady—” I struggled to form my thoughts in a way that could outwit the spell.

  “Please call me Rose. After all, we’re old friends, you and I.”

  The interior of the carriage was not large, and her nearness was having a disconcerting effect on my thinking. To be precise, it was most difficult to think at all. So rather than showing appreciation and elaborating upon the theme she’d raised, I said the first thing that sprang to my lips.

  “My lady, I appear to the world to be your servant. I believe it is not the done thing for a footman to call his lady by her name.”

  She sat up. “Very well,” she said in a lofty voice. “If you do not wish to be upon familiar terms with me ??
? Sir.”

  This would never do. “On the contrary, Rose. I shall use your name in private, with great joy.”

  At that she laughed, grew a bit pink, and then gave me a confused look. “You called me your lady. How do you know about proper forms of address, and … and everything? You have been a, well, a rat.”

  “We rats know your world. We watch. We listen.”

  “So every one of you understands human speech?”

  “Some of us can even read.”

  “Of course you read. I ought to have realized! You gave me my ancestor’s book and showed me the relevant passage. My goodness, Char. How could I have been so blind to the fact that you and your people are, well … people? I fear I’ve been quite foolish.”

  “No, no, my lady, do not say such things.” I reached out to touch her hair. It was fine as spun sugar. I quickly dropped my hand. “You deserve great praise. You are resourceful and persevering—like a rat.”

  She blushed and appeared pleased with my compliments.

  I would have given her more of them, but this was not the moment. We were hurtling toward potential disaster. I needed information, and I needed it now. I reasoned that although the goddess had forbidden me to prevent Rose from attending the ball, I would nonetheless be allowed to question her. “My lady, do you truly desire to marry Prince Geoffrey?” There. The spell had not stopped me from asking. I’d been right.

  The pleasure left Rose’s face and she folded her arms across her chest, while I felt the collar around my human neck getting uncomfortably tight.

  Then she replied, “Before today, I might have considered marriage with Prince Geoffrey if it turned out that we were suited, because it would solve my family’s worries. But I could not marry him now in any case.”

  My heart leapt. “Why not?”

  Her eyes widened. “Need you ask? Just look at what the goddess Ashiira has done!” She glanced down at her shimmering self. “I would be ashamed to marry someone who fell in love not with me, but with an enchantment. To ensnare a man’s heart without his free will—why, it’s the sort of thing my stepmother would do. In fact, it’s exactly what she did to my dear, confused papa.”

  “I assure you, Prince Geoffrey does not require or deserve your sympathy. Rather, urgh—”

  Canines and cattails! Ashiira had stopped my mouth again.

  Rose misinterpreted my sudden silence. “Are you in pain? Perhaps you require time to get used to your new, er, human mouth.”

  Time was just what we didn’t have. “Rose, I wish to be your champion. How might I best serve you tonight?”

  “Thank you! I am in the most desperate trouble, Char,” she said. “You are aware of how bad things have been since Wilhemina came to Lancastyr Manor.”

  “Yes, indeed,” I said with feeling.

  “At the ball, I hope to find someone to help save my father—maybe even the prince himself will come to my aid.”

  Stay away from him! I wanted to shout.

  “And there is more,” she continued. “While you were a rat—listening and watching, as you say—did you ever overhear the rumors that my stepmother might have had a hand in her first husband’s death?”

  “What?” I gasped. “No.” I wondered how on earth we’d missed this.

  She quickly explained, and suddenly a number of things made sense that had seemed mysterious before. “So that is why you hang about the kitchens!”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Did you, like everyone else, think me a coward and a cloth-head?”

  I coughed and avoided the question. “Rose, I honor you. You are most courageous and intelligent and— Wait, let us think.”

  She tilted her head to the side, causing her silky hair to dangle in fetching loops.

  I forced myself not to gaze at her openmouthed like a fool. Instead I said, “I think you cannot expect help from Prince Geoffrey if he falls in love with you, and then you reject his hand in marriage. He will likely be angry.” And I shall break his neck if he tries to take a sword to yours.

  “Hmm.” She appeared to consider this. “I’m afraid you’re right. Still, if my father’s old friends Sir Tompkin and Lord Bluehart are there, we may approach them instead of the prince.”

  I replied, “I don’t think so, my lady. We rats noticed that those ‘friends’ never even took the trouble to visit you after your father remarried. Why would they help us now? Let us instead take decisive, permanent action. You lure Lady Wilhemina out to the darkest part of the garden, where Swiss and Truffle and I will be waiting. We’ll dispatch her and leave her in the bushes. No one will suspect us. And even if they did catch us, what could they do once we turn back into rats at midnight?”

  “Char!” she shrieked. “You cannot mean to kill her?”

  I stared. “Of course.”

  “But you must not.”

  She took hold of my shoulders and brought her delicately curved face right up to mine. This had a dizzying effect.

  “Char, I understand you want to help me, and that you want to be rid of Wilhemina to protect your fellow rats. As for the latter, Wilhemina does not realize that rats have souls and personalities of their own. She doesn’t think of killing rats as murder.”

  I clamped down on my emotions. I already was cognizant of these unhappy facts and replied with bitterness, “But my people are in fear for their lives, Rose.”

  “You speak truly, and Wilhemina must be stopped. But some other way. Think of Jessamyn, and even the dreadful Eustacia. They would be orphaned,” she said.

  I hardened my heart. “Better to have no mother than a mother like that one.”

  “Do you think Jessamyn and Eustacia would agree?”

  I said nothing. She hadn’t convinced me. The more I considered it, the more I was sure that Ashiira had given me human form in order to save the house of Lancastyr as well as my fellow rats.

  How could Rose not see?

  I heard Ashiira’s voice in my memory: Become a man. I thought I’d understood what she had meant, but perhaps there was more to it.

  “As you wish,” I said at last. “I will not take Wilhemina’s life tonight, nor will Swiss or Truffle.” The words were carefully chosen, for I already had a notion of who might be maneuvered into carrying out justice this evening if I played the game with precision. “Instead, I will help you seek aid from your father’s friends to rid ourselves of Wilhemina. How do you propose to get me inside the castle?”

  She narrowed her eyes, assessing me. “Your attire is so fine, you can certainly pass as a gentleman. Remain inside the carriage here with me. When we arrive, I shall introduce you as my very distant cousin, from a far kingdom, whose ways are somewhat strange.”

  “Will being your distant relation allow me to follow you wherever you go?”

  “It depends.” She arched a brow. “Perhaps we should make you a member of the nobility for tonight. What honorary title shall we give you?”

  “I already have a title,” I answered. “A real one.”

  “You do?”

  Her surprise was somewhat insulting. “I am Prince Char, ruler of the Northern Rat Realm.”

  Her huge eyes, a far clearer green than the emeralds about her neck, grew even larger. “You are a prince?”

  “The prince. There is never a king of the rats. Or, you might say, the prince is the king. And that would be me.”

  I waited for her reaction to this news. I’d hoped at least for an Oh, Char, how marvelous! or perhaps, Well done, you!

  But after a few moments elapsed and it seemed she would make no comment, I concealed my disappointment and said, “Right, then. Is there any human kingdom called the Northern Realm of which you are aware?”

  “No,” she said in a faint voice.

  “Then we will be safe. I shall mingle with the humans and use a slight variation of my real title, Prince of the Northern Realm. Allow me to inform Swiss, my royal councillor, of our plans.”

  I made as if to return the way I’d come, but she grabbed my coat to
hold me back. “Forgive me,” she said, “but you cannot mean to climb out there again?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “It was quite enjoyable the first time.”

  “I shall ask the driver to stop,” she said.

  “If you insist.”

  She did so, and I took a moment to let Swiss, Truffle, and even the mice-horses know what we were up to. I instructed Swiss to follow me and Rose into the castle, in the guise of my personal guard. As a precaution, I had Swiss switch his tunic with Truffle, to make us look less like a matched set of footmen, and I untied the ribbon holding back my queue, letting the longish dark locks fall about my shoulders. Then I reentered the carriage with my lady, and we approached the castle at a more sedate pace.

  There was a strange quiet between us. I was sorry for it. “Have I offended you in some way, Rose?”

  “Oh, no, Your Highness.”

  “I thought we’d agreed to call each other by our first names when alone.”

  “Prince Char, why did you give me the magic ring?”

  “I wanted to comfort you and give you courage.”

  “Yes, Char, but why?”

  Had she not figured it out yet? Even though she had no real sense of smell or the aid of sensitive whiskers, I should think the truth would have been more than obvious to her by now.

  “Because you are as kind and noble as the best of rats,” I began.

  “Oh!” she cried. Her hand went to her breast.

  I hesitated. Was that a good sort of Oh, or a bad sort of Oh? Should I go on, or should I leave my deepest feelings unsaid?

  The coach came slowly to a stop. I moved aside the blue silk curtain from the window and saw looming stone towers, blazing torches, and many well-dressed people being helped from their conveyances.

  I looked over at her. I could not read her expression. “I did not know it at the time, but there was another reason I gave you the ring. I am in love with you, Rose. My heart is yours.”

  Her apple-pink lips parted and she drew in a breath.

  I added: “And may I just say, I quite admire those pretty glass slippers.”

  CINDERELLA

  He loves me.