The Flower Crown Princess

Part 1

"Mother?"

I turn from my work, looking at her- from her long black braid to the silver ring that sparkles on her left hand. My little girl, my child, is to be married. She looks like me on my wedding day- so bright, so alive. I smile at the love that shines from her every fibre. How lucky she is, to wed a man she loves. It is a privilege many girls never had, a privilege that I most certainly took for granted. I don't want her to make the same naïve choices and childish mistakes that I did. She won't take this for granted- my Sera will know what I did not at her age. Love is the most treasured gift of all, and one that is found only in time, and it cannot be replaced once it is lost.

"Will you tell me a story?" She bats her eyelashes like a child, and I nod with a smile. She's seventeen, but now she looks eight, swinging her legs and grinning. "I want to know, Mother. Why don't you ever tell us about them?" She sits on the windowsill seat. "All I know is that your father was the king, and that you had a brother- no, two brothers. Who were they? What did they do?"

She is old enough now to know. Soon she will bring her own children into this kingdom, a corner of the earth that I rule. A world I fought so hard for.

Although the smile drops from my face, I nod, the memories overwhelming. "This will take a while."

Will my daughter be my salvation, or my undoing? I cannot deny her this. With a deep breath, I look her in the eyes and begin.

*****

I watched through the clouded sunlight as the carriage pulled up outside the castle's gates. From my window, I saw my brother, the crown prince of the Hill-People, exit through great oak doors, and a white-gloved coachman open the carriage door. There was a flash of flaming copper, redder than anger and curlier than a spring, and as I focused, I realized that it was a girl's hair. Princess Maridi had been expected in the city of Amrach, but she wasn't there by choice, and it showed. Her copper hair was tangled and, improper in the hills, uncovered. The old black dress she wore was spattered with mud and torn. As she stepped from the carriage, she defiantly refused Prince Finen's arm. Maridi was there to fulfill an arranged marriage she clearly wanted no part of, and it was as though she'd been taken from the roadside!

As the princess made her way inside, I hopped from my windowsill perch and started towards the castle entryway, with everyone else, making it there just as introductions were being made.

"Princess Maridi Mysdaughter, of the River-People," boomed the announcer as I look at her. At first glance, Maridi had looked sixteen, old to be unmarried by the Hill-People's standards, but a second glance proved more. Maridi did, indeed, look sixteen, but her amber eyes said more. They were an old crone's eyes, wise beyond their years, eyes that had seen suffering that I had never known in my fifteen and a half years, and they were piercing. She was different than the dark haired, dark eyed Hill-People, and she stood out. Maridi knew it, too, and she tried to fade in the castle foyer as she tried to fold her willowy figure as small as possible to fade into the background as everyone stared at the mud on her dress or the scratches on her face. She glances quickly towards the door as the announcer says her people, and my childhood nurse, Mortweni, gently went to her, leading her softly away. When she was gone, with a falsely jolly voice, my father clapped his hands. "Let's not tarry," he said. "Back to work."

* * * *

Later, at dinner, Maridi's hair was tied back under a scarf, and she's wearing a clean blue dress. As I eat, I watch her as she pushes the food around on her plate. Father attempts conversation. Finen is silent, and so is Maridi. After everyone but her finishes and the servants clear the plates, she leaves, trudging down the corridor and up the stairs, to the room by mine, which will be hers for the next few days. I hear racking, heartfelt sobs as I go to my room for the night. Mortweni unpins the braids in my hair and helps me into my nightgown, and I open my mouth.

"What's wrong with Princess Maridi?" I question. "She doesn't seem to want to marry Finen." The possibility of her not being taken with my brother is foreign, alien. I've seen the ladies of court compete violently for his hand in marriage.

Mortweni smiles, pulling my long raven ringlets from out of the gown and smoothing them back from my face. "She doesn't know her duty," she replies. "Princess Maridi doesn't know that marrying the prince is what a princess is supposed to do." She pulls back the covers on my bed, and I get in, settling my head on the pillows. "Goodnight," she whispers, putting out the lamp, and I fall asleep.