is it?”
“Well, you don’t have wings,” Gisela twisted. She really wanted to say something else.
“So you’re saying the knights are only fighting for the right to marry my throne, not me?” Estella looked out the window. “I’m just an unnecessary appendage to the king’s scepter and staff and ermine robe?”
Gisela had said it so many times. Even the fool had already memorized it.
Something went wrong at the tournament. The duels turned into a massive battle. The herald escaped. The bouquet the princess is supposed to present to the winner was trampled. It felt as if a demon had strayed among the knights. Some dwarf creature had indeed galloped across the ring, whispering disgusting advice to the warriors, after which they did violence to themselves and to others. Some jumped on their swords. Some toppled a torch over themselves and were burned alive. Some attacked the ladies with their swords. Well, well, well!
“I’m not the dumbest girl in the kingdom!” Estella rejoiced.
Gisela, who hadn’t been looking out the window, didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Look!”
“I don’t like tournaments,” said Gisela. “They’re not all about me.”
She wanted to put the almanac back on the King’s Library shelf, but Estella stopped her.
“No, please, read me something else from it.”
“What do you want to know? There’s too little information about your mother. And there’s no evidence that she really was a star fairy. But I’ll tell you a secret, your late father supposedly could summon moon and star spirits when he locked himself in his study at night. Suddenly he summoned a star fairy one day and they had an affair! But why he had to marry the fairy, I don’t understand. She could have just flown to him at night. So it’s more like a fairy tale with an unsightly truth hiding behind it. The queen was a witch or a madwoman who was burned or locked in a tower.”
“How creepy is it!” Estella grimaced. “I’m more for fairy tales than creepy.”
“But horror is realistic! And fairy tales are made up to please the simpletons,” Gisela commented with an admonishing tone.
“Then reality is not for me. I want to hear a fairy tale. Read me something else about Queen Raymonda and a dragon!”
Gisela began to flip through the almanac obediently.
“I don’t know where it was,” she said, her fingers tracing the pages as she stumbled over the strange symbols. Gisela frowned. “It looked like witchcraft writings.”
“What are they?”
“It is nothing!” Gisela hurriedly gave her a sweet smile. “You mustn’t worry yourself too much. You’ll make yourself even stupider. So who won the tournament?”
“It is nobody!”
“There’s no such thing. There has to be a winner.”
“Look for yourself!” Estella saw a stadium with only the maimed dead and brutally wounded people left. The royal physician was running among the injured with his medicine chest, muttering something about the intrigues of evil spirits.
“There are devils in the tournament!” The frightened voices of the maidens who had been hurt by the frenzied knights could be heard.
“Now all that’s missing is a dragon!” Gisela made her scholarly opinion.
“I’d like to see a dragon,” Estella said, for which she almost got a slap on the wrist from her tutor.
A stolen mind
So the overseas princes fled from her, believing she was too young and inexperienced to run the country? Now the care of the country had fallen on her, and Estella was no more imposing. Her coronation is coming up, and they whisper about her like she’s a child. Estella herself could hear the chatter of the courtiers as she walked through the corridors of the castle:
“The deceased king bequeathed everything to his only daughter Estella, but she is a fool. The beauty is weak-minded from birth or as a result of some spell cast as a child. That is why there are many astrologers at court who dream of breaking it. The late king was certainly a magician. The guards with their halberds also look like wizards. The princess is being guarded from something.”
Has her hearing become so acute, or are the courtiers whispering so loudly to the ambassadors that they’ve forgotten all decency?
Estella paused to question them further, but thought it unwise to ask about her. It’s better for her to know what’s going on with her, not them. She is going to her own coronation. She is about to become queen of Aluar. She is indeed vigilantly guarded.
But some cunning dwarf has sneaked right into the throne room. How did he slip past the guards? It’s as if he grew out of the floor.
“Your Highness!” He took off his red beret and bowed, touching the floor with his forehead. He bowed with his forehead on the floor, and his diminutive stature made him look ridiculous.
“Have you come to amuse me before the coronation?” Estella guessed and clapped her hands. “Bravo! What other tricks can you do? Would you like to be my jester? As the future queen, may I appoint you right now?”
“Actually,” the dwarf hesitated. “I’ve come to talk about money.”
“Is it about wages?” Estella suggested, innocently. “It’s usually discussed with the King’s Bursar, but he’s been absent recently.”
“No, it is not about salary,” the dwarf scratched his head.
“If not for money, you can serve me for food and lodging. That’s what a lot of servants work for.”
“My Lady, you’re so lovely, I’d pay for the privilege of amusing you myself,” the dwarf said pompously.
What a sweetheart! And she wanted to call the guards to turn him away. He knew how to compliment her, and was obviously eager to curry favor with his new ruler. Perhaps he wanted to ask for preferential treatment for the mines in the west of the kingdom.
Well, he first came to honor her as queen. So she’ll defer to him on everything. No one but him has yet come to the expected coronation, though it should be any minute now. Or had she got the time mixed up? Estella frowned. Could she have been an hour or a day wrong? Arithmetic had always been a problem for her. Especially when it came to dates.
“I have come to give you a gift for your coronation,” a large forged chest, suspiciously resembling those in the treasury of Aluar, appeared beside the dwarf as if from the ground. Even the emblems on the lid are Aluar’s. Probably it was an imitation.
Estella applauded the dwarf again.
“Well done! It’s a treasure! Where did you get it? And how did you get it?”
The dwarf is so small, and the chest is so huge. The dwarf instantly dispelled Estella’s suspicions
