The Unhandsome Prince Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Stay for a spell

  “Better knock first.” Hal was in no hurry to enter the wizard’s castle, which was understandable, considering what happened the last time he’d entered a sorcerer’s castle unannounced.

  Emily laughed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a test.”

  Hal said, “Mmm?”

  “You know the sort of thing. The door looks impossible to open, so no one even tries. I’ll bet we just have to give it a push and it will come right open.” She leaned on it with the palm of her hand, and sure enough, it swung back silently on massive but perfectly balanced hinges.

  Emily stepped inside and turned around. “You see, magicians love tests like these. They want to know if you’re the type who can be fooled by appearances, or if you’re persistent enough to seek out the truth. Or something like that. Kind of silly, I think. If they—”

  The door slammed shut, instantly cutting off her words. No matter how hard Hal pushed, it stubbornly remained closed.

  Ace titles by John Moore

  HEROICS FOR BEGINNERS

  THE UNHANDSOME PRINCE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE UNHANDSOME PRINCE

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass market edition / May 2005

  Copyright © 2005 by John Moore.

  All rights reserved.

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  eISBN : 978-1-436-27121-9

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  To my fellow Drone Rangers

  On a hot day in late summer, when puffy white clouds were floating in a hazy blue sky, when birds were twittering in the trees and bees were buzzing around the flowers, when a gentle breeze was puffing the dandelions and great black clouds of gnats were making themselves really, really annoying, the most beautiful girl in the Kingdom of Melinower was standing in a swamp.

  The swamp was fed by a clear and cheerful brook that ran slightly to the west of a cluster of houses and shops. Hence the village name of Ripplebrook. The brook originated in the highlands to the north of the village and vanished into the Sturgeon river some ways to the south, and for the most part flowed quickly and merrily, but slightly below the village was a shallow bowl in the surrounding countryside, a lowlands covering some several square miles. Here the brook spread out and became a swamp.

  Many centuries later it would be called a wetlands. Great and ultimately futile attempts would be made to preserve it. Its protectors would talk of the beauty of nature, of the birds that made their homes in the wetlands, of the snakes and salamanders that lived in its waters, and of the importance of pond scum to the ecosystem. But these were earlier times and this was a fairy-tale kingdom, and to the villagers of Ripplebrook, the swamp was merely a swamp.

  And it was an ordinary swamp at that. It was not one of those swamps where rare newts and butterflies are found, where exotic lichens and strangely perfumed orchids grow. It was not even one of those scary swamps, with craggy trees and twisting vines that grab at you and make you jump and send a tremor of fear down your spine. The will-o’-the-wisp did not glow at night, luring unwary travelers to their doom. It did not—and this is really pathetic—it did not even have quicksand. The Ripplebrook swamp was nothing more than a completely boring and utterly dismal bog.

  Caroline certainly did not think highly of the place. Nonetheless, there she was, barefoot and ankle deep in black mud. Murky green water rose to her knees. Her plain white dress was soaked to the waist. Her arms were muddy up to the elbows, and there were crusts of dried mud on her ears where she had swatted at mosquitoes and great splotches of mud in her hair where she had pushed it out of her face. All in all she was one tired, wet, muddy, angry, and mosquito-bitten girl, and now she glared at Prince Hal as though this were his fault.

  Not that the Prince was in any better shape. He had transformed with his old clothes back on, so at least he wasn’t naked, and that was something to be grateful for. But there was mud under his clothes, so they’d have to come off anyway. And he was soaked to the skin. He was dazed and disoriented, as only one who has spent the last seven weeks as a frog can be. He had no idea where he was or how long he had been there, or who this girl with the blue eyes, and the blond hair, and the mosquito bites could be. So he spoke the first words that came into his head.

  “Are there leeches in here?”

  “Yes,” said Caroline. “So let’s go.” She grabbed him by the wrist and started leading him out of the swamp. Hal followed along readily enough, having no better idea where to go. With his free hand he batted at the cloud of insects. Caroline led him through a patch of cattail reeds and into shallower water. Emerging from the water, incongruously, was a stack of wooden frames with netting. “What are these?”

  Caroline stopped and looked at them. “Frog traps. I’d set them up, then beat the water with a broom and herd the frogs into the nets. Sometimes I would get a dozen or more in one go. I bought the lumber in town and wove the netting myself.”

  “Very clever.”

  “The traps saved time.”

  She let go of his arm and just let him follow her. They came to a small island in the swamp, where a grove of mossy trees gave some shade. Under one tree were two bushel baskets with woven tops. Caroline lifted one of the lids. From inside the Prince could hear croaking.

  “A lot of frogs,” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said the girl. She lugged the basket to the water’s edge and tipped it over. The frogs spilled out across the water and disappeared grateful
ly into its murky depths. “After I kissed the frogs I’d put them in these baskets, then take them to the outlet of the swamp and let the stream carry them away. That way I didn’t waste effort catching the same frog twice.”

  “Clever,” said the Prince again. He helped her carry the second basket to the water’s edge and empty it. Back at the tree he saw her staring at a sheet of paper. It had been tacked to the bark with tuppenny nails. She tore it off and crumpled it. “What was that? May I see it?”

  She tossed it to him, and he unfolded it. It seemed to be a strange design with small squares and check marks. He looked at her questioningly.

  “It’s a map of the swamp,” Caroline said. “When I started this, I drew a map of the swamp and marked it with a grid. As I cleared out the frogs in one sector, I’d mark it on the map and move over to the next square in the grid. Of course, some frogs migrated back into the empty areas, but not so many as you’d think. I also netted the tadpoles and dumped them in the stream, to keep them from filling a sector with new frogs.”

  This was clever enough that the Prince didn’t even bother to say so. “How long have I been here?”

  “Seven weeks.” Caroline took the map from his hand, tore it in half, and let the wind carry the pieces away. “Water under the bridge, now.”

  “Seven weeks,” murmured the Prince. Aloud, he said, “And you are . . . ?”

  “Caroline,” said Caroline. She lifted the hem of her muddy dress and made a solemn curtsey. This was so unexpected, given the context, that Prince Hal could think of no other response than to give an equally solemn bow.

  “Hal,” he said. “I’m afraid we haven’t been properly introduced . . .”

  “But we’ve already kissed,” said Caroline. “So let’s get on with it.” And she trudged back into the swamp.

  By this time Hal’s head was starting to clear. He had tumbled to the fact that she was angry with him for some reason, and that conversation was not going to be cheerful. So he remained largely silent. And it was only a short, but buggy, walk to the edge of the swamp from the island. “I cleared this area of frogs last month,” said Caroline. “That’s why the mosquitoes are so bad.”

  “Of course,” said Hal.

  She pointed to some shallow ditches. “I dug those to drain that section. The frogs just moved to deeper water, but the higher concentration made them easier to net.”

  “Good Lord! You did all this yourself? It must have been an enormous amount of work.”

  “It was.” She led him up a rise to a small cottage. The mists that rose from the swamp were considered unhealthy by the villagers, and the rents for cottages that lay on the swampy side of the village were correspondingly low. Caroline’s was the lowest rent of the lot. The thatch on the roof was wearing thin, and the door sagged on worn hinges. The cottage was nothing more than a single room, with a dirt floor and a small fireplace. There were no windows, nor a bed, merely a bundle of ticking on the floor, with a blanket. There was a single stool for sitting. And just inside the door were two oaken buckets of water.

  Early on Caroline had realized that each day, as she returned from the swamp, she would be too tired to fetch fresh water to clean up. And so each day she would set aside a bucket of water before leaving for the swamp. And each day she would set aside a second bucket of water for the Prince.

  It became a ritual. Optimistic at first, she was certain each day that she would be returning before evening with a handsome prince, and so every morning she set aside water, soap, and a towel for him. As the days went by, and each successive frog turned out merely to be a frog, she clung to the ritual with grim determination. Not setting out the second bucket would be conceding that she wasn’t going to find her prince today. And if she wasn’t going to find her prince in that swamp, then what was she doing out there?

  Now she set one of the buckets outside the door and handed Prince Hal a robe, a bar of soap, and a towel. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but a girl needs her privacy. You’ll have to wash outside. Then we’ll go to the village, and I’ll call for a meeting of the town council.”

  “What’s this?” said Hal. He was looking at the towel—soft, fluffy, cotton, and new—and the bar of fancy, milled soap. Caroline had a threadbare piece of linen and a small chunk of brown tallow soap.

  Caroline suddenly realized how tired she was. She sat down on the stool, pulled her dress up slightly, and inspected her feet and ankles for leeches. Not finding any, she let the hem fall back down. “Well, Your Highness, there were a lot of girls looking for you at first. I think every girl in the village came down at least once to try her hand at catching and kissing a frog. Amanda told us that a maiden’s kiss would break the spell and whoever kissed the right frog would marry a handsome prince.”

  “I know how the spell works,” said Hal, a little tightly.

  “We were all in it together, Lisa and Tiffany and Christine and, well, everyone. We’d have parties here in the evening, because my place was closest to the swamp. Two of my girlfriends—Ashley and Brenna—brought the towels and stuff, so you’d be able to clean up after we found you.”

  The Prince looked around. “Where are they all?”

  “They all dropped out a month ago. After Amanda died, there was no one to keep goading them on.”

  “The sorceress is dead? That was her name, Amanda?”

  Caroline nodded. “Took a fever and died a couple weeks after your unfortunate encounter with her. Oh, she teased us all with stories of how we could marry a handsome prince and help rule over the kingdom. But after she died, most of the girls stopped believing the story. Or decided that even if it was true, it was impossible to find one frog in all that swamp. I kept at it, so they left the towel, soap, and robe with me. And here you are.”

  “Well,” said Hal. “Thank you.” He put the fluffy towel and perfumed soap in her hand and took the old towel and homemade soap. “These will be fine for me.” Caroline accepted the exchange wordlessly and shut the door behind Hal.

  The Prince banged on the door, and she immediately opened it. “I have just one more question for now. It seems to me that you’re angry for some reason. What is it?”

  “You’re not handsome,” said Caroline, and shut the door.

  Ripplebrook was not a very large, nor a very rich village by any means, but it was big enough and prosperous enough to have a Town Hall with two stories. A very nice one, too, all done in local stone, with a slate roof and blue-painted trim. Upstairs housed the tax records, the birth and death records, the surveyors’ records, and the deeds and titles to the surrounding farms. Downstairs was where the town council had its meetings, when it was deemed necessary to have meetings, which was not all that often. On Thursday nights it had bingo.

  But today the council had called a special session. Old Twigham was leading the proceedings. He was thin and white-haired and kept bees. He was always elected to the council, and the other members deferred to him, by virtue of the fact that he was the oldest resident of the village. The remaining councillors were from the village’s more successful merchants, for few others had the spare time to serve on committees. The council members were all seated on one side of a long, narrow table. Twigham sat at the center of the other side. To his left was Caroline, now freshly scrubbed, in a clean dress (her only other dress), with her long hair tied back. She looked very pretty, except for the welts caused by mosquito bites. And she looked very determined.

  At Twigham’s right arm was Emily. She was the daughter of Amanda, the recently deceased sorceress. She was pretty, petite, and a year younger than Caroline. And she was not happy.

  “Handsome,” Caroline was saying again.

  “What’s wrong with Prince Hal?” said Emily. “I think he’s sort of cute.”

  “Cute is not handsome. The deal was to marry a handsome prince.”

  “I think he looks fine.”

  “He’s short. To be handsome you have to be tall. Tall and handsome are synonymous, practically.”


  Emily looked out the window. The Prince was waiting, out of earshot, in the courtyard of the Town Hall. He was talking with a gaggle of curious girls, and more were arriving by the minute. “He’s not that short. He’s almost average height.”

  “Below average is not tall. He’s skinny, and he has zits.”

  “Lots of teenage boys are skinny. And we all have some zits!”

  “Not that sort of skinny. He has no build at all. His chin recedes. And his ears stick out.”

  “Oh come now! His chin recedes but a little. Make him grow a beard if it bothers you. And he can grow his hair long to cover his ears. Guys with long hair are sexy anyway.”

  “And look at his nose.”

  “His nose is just . . . his nose is . . . lots of teenage boys are skinny!”

  Councilman Durley interrupted at this point. “Emily, you’re dissembling. If a young man is handsome, he’s handsome even without a beard or long hair. Yes, I’m sure we all recognize that handsome is to some degree a matter of personal taste.” Durley, in his salad days, had fancied himself something of a ladies man. He now had two rather good-looking boys of his own, and thus felt himself qualified to speak on the subject. “But still, I am equally sure that we’d agree that our honored guest would not be attracting much attention from the girls were he not a prince. If he were but a common lad, well, I expect that the word to describe him would be more along the line of . . . um . . .”

  “Dweeb,” said Councilwoman Tailor.

  “Yes. Quite so. And then there’s the question of inheritance.”

  “What?”

  “Prince Hal is not the heir apparent. He is the third son and not in line for the throne.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” said Emily. “The deal was to marry a prince. There was nothing about ascending the throne.”

  “Yes, there was,” said Caroline.