Princess Pampers's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Princess Pampers crouched behind a mossy log at the edge of Swillcreek and listened for hoofbeats. Three days ago she had climbed out her palace window in a rustling white diaper and run for the woods. Her father wanted her fitted for a crown and a husband by summer. She wanted a place where no one made her grow up, and Swillcreek, the forgotten village past the marsh, was where she meant to build it. The trackers were close enough now that she could smell their pipe smoke on the wind. She hugged the huge plush bear strapped to her back and tried to think. The bear was the size of a small pony, soft as bathwater, and heavy enough to bruise her shoulders. She had dragged it from the nursery because she could not sleep without something to hold. Now it was the only bed she had. Two nights in the open had left her shivering and raw. If she slept in the reeds again tonight, the trackers would find her by dawn. She crept into the village at dusk. Swillcreek was quiet, half its cottages boarded up. At the end of a lane she found a small house painted in faded pink, yellow, and blue, with a scalloped roof and a round door. A weather-bleached sign read FOR LET. The windows were dark. The latch gave under her thumb. Inside, the air smelled of dust and old milk. Someone had left a low bed frame, a rug, and a chipped washbasin. She set the bear down in the corner and pressed her forehead to its belly. It was warm from her back. It smelled like home, or the parts of home she had wanted to keep. She worked fast. She wedged the bear against the front door as a soft, silent brace. She tore a handful of bright plastic blossoms from her satchel, toys she had grabbed off her dressing table the night she fled, and lined them along the windowsill so anyone peering in would see a child's room and move on. She drew the curtains. She unlaced her boots. Hoofbeats passed the lane. She held her breath against the bear's ear. The riders slowed. One of them called a name, her name, the old one, the grown one her father had chosen. She did not answer. The horses moved on toward the marsh road. When the sound was gone she let herself cry, quietly, into the plush muzzle. Then she wiped her face and looked around the little house. Four walls. A door. A place they had ridden past. She had a roof now. She also had a problem. The sign outside said FOR LET, which meant someone owned it, and in the morning that someone would come to collect rent from a princess who had run away with no coin and a bear.