A Questionable Quest

Chapter 3... in which I (maybe) see a hag and meet my future husband

Portsburring... a strange name for a kingdom whose capital city had no ports... or burrings. Then again, I had no idea what a burring might be, or if Portsmount happened to have any. Either way, a strange name for a rather ordinary kingdom.

As we paraded through the streets of Portsmouth, I noticed a few things.

For one, it looked very much like the capital of Harvenmor -- save the Portsburring flags hanging outside each doorway window.

Second, there were a lot of blacksmiths for a country with access to only one steel mine.

Finally, they either had several hundred more knights than Harvenmor... or their knights just really liked to window shop.

The queen noticed me watching a knight march down the street, his back held high, lance pointed towards the (clearly very dangerous-looking) clouds. She barely moved a muscle -- kept her gaze straight ahead -- but murmured under her breath, "it's a display of power."

I turned to look at her profile. Her cream-colored pegasus fluttered its wings slightly. "Power?" It made little sense to me why they needed to display power when we already wanted to be here.

My mother said nothing.

"Why do they need to show power?"

"Because," said the king from her other side, "they want us to understand what we are gaining, and compromise accordingly." He, as well, stared straight ahead when he said this.

"Oh." That made sense... if I were going to marry Prince Edvick. Which I wasn't. By any means necessary.

"And don't stare, dear." This came from the queen.

I looked straight ahead, my mouth glued shut. I certainly wasn't about to admit that my staring had nothing to do with the "display of power", and everything to do with the knight's aesthetically pleasing features.

It took a good while for us to make it to the other side of the city. I wasn't entirely certain the Portsburring royal knights hadn't taken us the long way -- as another "display of power". I'd been just about to break the ever-looming silence to ask where we were, when we (finally) turned onto a wide, dirt street. The shop windows had thinned a while back, giving way to rows of small cottages and two-family houses. Now, even those houses thinned as we trotted through the tree-lined path.

It was a windy path, and I gave up trying to see anything through the dense woods after about ten seconds. The tips of a large stone tower were just barely visible over the tops of the trees, and, after a few minutes, even that had been swallowed whole by leafy green branches.

If it weren't the middle of summer -- and if I weren't nearly sweating through my heavy travelling jacket -- I would have shivered. Something about these woods felt... old. Magical.

I felt myself grinning. Out of the corner of my eye, the queen raised an eyebrow. I bit my lip and schooled my face into an expression of polite disinterest.

Princesses, after all, did not smile at a bunch of trees.

I could picture the auto-proclamation already: "Princess Ariabelle Tatiana of Harvenmor is the perfect princess. She simpers. She dances like an angel. She walks like a cloud. She smiles when she sees trees."

I snorted (silently).

Still... I felt my gaze falling to the forest once more.

The forests around Beltana were nowhere near as old as these. In fact, the entire area surrounding Harvenmor's capital had been cut down for harvesting nearly a century ago. The royal family, of course, had passed laws prohibiting any more logging, but the trees that grew there now were young.