The Flower Crown Princess

Part 3

I follow Maridi down the long stone corridor to the stairs. Midway up the long flight of steps, she sees me at the bottom. "Go away," she sobs. The copper curls that were left down this morning as she put her hair up are tangled now. For the first time in my life, I talk back.

"No," I say. "I want to help."

"You're nothing but a spoiled brat," she retorted as she continued climbing. "Go away."

Hurt by her words, I throw some back. "How could a princess say that?" I exclaim. Maridi is at the top of the stairs and I hurry up the marble steps. "Are you not better than a commoner?" She pauses, and I realize what I told her. I clap my hand over my mouth and then remove it. "No- that's not what I meant, I'm-"

"No," she interrupts in a quiet voice. "I'm not. I really am no better than a commoner." Her sobs creep into her words. "I should have done it while I had the chance. I never should have paused." She sits on the top step. "Eann," she wails. I'm confused, and open my mouth to tell her so, when she looks at me through the tears flowing freely on her cheeks and dripping from her chin. Ruefully, she smiles. "All you need to know at present is that I was not always a princess and that I had a... well.. a beau named Eann."

She runs, and her words go in one ear and out the other. I hear the pipes and the fiddle, and forget her to go into the bright ballroom. The party went on that day. Almost no one had noticed Maridi's and my brief escapade into the hallway an hour earlier, I was sure, and if they had, they didn't say anything about it. She had gone up to her room and told me to go back to the great hall. Being my normal, demure self, I had. Now my earlier impudence shocked me. I had always been an obedient girl, one who was taught to be neither seen nor heard, and that her only worth was in produced sons and who she married. In how much property she gained for her father. I'd never spoken to anyone louder than a whisper or a breath, and nothing but compliments were ever to come from my mouth- especially when addressing royalty. I had told a princess that she was no better than a commoner- or implied it anyway. If anyone found out, I would be ruined. I was to be married as a perfect alliance, to cement a peace treaty, and upsetting that could mean war. It would mean death.

All day my pathetic dilemma bothered me like a fly in the stables. All day I swatted it away, but all day it kept persisting. Finally that night, as the clock struck nine, I saw my father standing alone in the ballroom corner, watching the women's brightly colored skirts twirl by and the handsome men spinning them to the light- hearted dance with a large goblet of wine in his hand and the alcohol's telltale blush on his cheeks, contrasting from the pale skin of the hills. I slowly skirted around the dancers, but by the time I made it to my father in his kingly green velvet robes, I had forgotten what I was going to say to him. So I stood quietly by his side, soon dizzied by the fast paced spins and steps of the dance, entranced by how fast the fiddlers could move their fingers, caught up totally in the happy, cheerful, jaunty tune. I forgot my thoughts of not being marriageable.

I forgot them until Maridi came in through the oak door at half past nine, anyways.

Picture at the top is how I imagine Maridi (but with brighter hair and brown eyes).