The Princess Curse Read Online Free PDF Page A

was cleaner than a nun, even, and nuns are very clean. Marjit was a busy woman.
    “Thing is, I just don’t understand the curse,” I said, sorting out orange bergamot, rose geranium, and rue and adding them to my pile. They all smelled sharp and fresh but were also theoretically good for curse breaking, though they hadn’t worked yet in the weeks I’d used them.
    “What’s to understand about the curse, anyway?” Marjit asked.
    “Well, who placed it, for one,” I said. “What witch or Gypsy would want to do them harm?”
    “There are no Gypsies in Sylvania, by law, and no witch in Sylvania would cast that hex,” Marjit said. “No witch would want to. The witches in this country are only interested in wholesome magic.”
    I didn’t think that could be true, but I wouldn’t argue with Marjit about it. If I said, “You can’t know all the witches in Sylvania,” she’d argue that she did; if I argued that she couldn’t know the secret intentions of all the witches in Sylvania, she’d argue that she knew those, too. Marjit knew everything.
    “A witch would leave some evidence behind. You can’t do magic like that”—she gestured vaguely toward the princesses’ tower—“without complications. Think about just the little magics a witch does—”
    “I don’t know any witches,” I said.
    “Well, even to cure a man of loving plum brandy too much takes all sorts of implements. Water from three or more holy wells. A jar of honey. Clothing from the man, clothing from the wife. A hair from his mother . . . So many of your herbs I can’t keep them all straight, but at least frankincense and basil. Oh, and a Nine-Brides Knife, too.”
    “What’s a Nine-Brides Knife?”
    “It’s a knife carried by nine brides to the altar and secretly hidden in their grooms’ pocket during the wedding. Do you know how hard it is to find nine women all deft enough to hide a knife on their new-minted husbands? Not easy.”
    “I guess not.”
    “No, little Reva. The curse on Castle Sylvian is not the work of a witch. A căpcăun , maybe,” she said, naming the dogheaded ogre that liked to kidnap young women. “A zmeu , likely. Perhaps even a balaur . But not a witch.”
    I shivered, thinking of the creatures she’d just mentioned. Both zmeu and balaur were kinds of dragons, both always trying to marry young women. The balaur was frightening because it had multiple heads. But the zmeu was even more frightening, because it looked more human and could change shape in order to trick girls into loving and marrying it.
    I worked quietly, crushing the rose geranium, before I asked, “Florin says don’t bother thinking about it, since the Prince has done everything he can to break the curse, but . . . what’s been tried?”
    Marjit straightened from stoking her fire and wiped the sweat from her nose. “They split the princesses up,” she said, sounding happily authoritative, and I realized she liked being consulted—it had a mollifying effect on her temper. “They sent them away. They even tried marrying them off, or almost. Princess Maricara got all the way to Styria to marry their Duke, but the night before their wedding, the Duke succumbed to a deep sleep that he has never woken from.”
    “Like the sleepers in the western tower,” I said.
    Marjit gave me a keen look. “Yes. He’s the only sleeper who didn’t end up in that tower, as a matter of fact. His mother nurses him to this day.”
    I frowned, wrapping crushed herbs in twists of cheesecloth and tying them with a string. “And nothing anyone does makes a bit of difference?”
    “Oh, it makes a difference, by my mother’s bones!—the wind that kicks up, and the way the bowels of the castle shake, that’s all different enough. The towers all got struck by lightning once!”
    I tossed my herbs into the bathwater, watching the floating packets cast shadows over the mosaic faces of Neptune and his dolphins. The three tiles of Neptune’s right eye