Iron Hearted Violet (2 page)

“Ah!” the assembled crowd cried out. “Poor dragon! Poor princess!” They pressed against one another, shoulder to shoulder, laughing all the while.

Violet raised her eyebrows and continued. “The princess lived in a faraway country, and they had never met. Dragons, you see, can spy halfway across the world if they choose to, and can fly from one end of the mirrored sky and back again in less than a day. But they usually don’t.” She pursed her lips. “Dragons are terribly lazy.”

The listeners chuckled and sighed.
That child!
they thought.
That magic child!

“But
this
dragon,” Violet continued, “was not lazy at all. It was in love. It didn’t eat or sleep. It just sat on top of a mountain, its shiny tail curled around the peak, its black eyes searching the world for its love.”

“All the time?” I asked incredulously. “Surely it must have had other hobbies!”

“Well,” Violet allowed, “sometimes it enjoyed throwing snowballs at the head of the Mountain King.” The crowd laughed. She cocked her head conspiratorially and raised one eyebrow. “It had perfect aim. And when the dragon passed gas, it made sure to point its rump right toward the Mountain King’s gardens.” The crowd roared. Violet leaned in. “They say the stink can last for a hundred years!” she whispered.

“Tell us about the dragon’s lady love!” a young man said.

“Oh, she was an ugly thing,” the Princess assured us. “She had moles in the shape of horny toads across her cheeks, and a crooked nose, and even crookeder teeth. Her smile was too big, and her eyes were too small, and her feet were of differing sizes. But the dragon loved her anyway. It loved her and loved her and loved her some more. The dragon loved her crooked teeth and loved her hairy wrists and loved her frizzy, frizzy hair.”

No one laughed. An embarrassed silence pressed onto the crowd. They couldn’t look at Violet.

(
Not a pretty child
, they thought.
And, alas, growing uglier by the day.
)

Violet waited for the praise that didn’t come.

I tried to intervene. “Beloved Violet,” I said, my voice tumbling from my mouth in a rush. “You have made a beginner’s mistake! You have forgotten the beauty! A princess is never ugly. Everyone knows that a
real
princess is always beautiful.” Violet didn’t move. It was as though I had turned her to stone. Finally she fixed her large eyes on me. And oh! The hurt! The betrayal! I swallowed. “In a story, I mean,” I added hastily, but it was too late. “Of course I mean in a story. Stories have their own
rules
, their own…
expectations
. It’s the job of the teller to give the people what they want.”

The crowd nodded. Violet said nothing. And oh, my dears! How I wanted to catch that child in my arms and tell her I didn’t mean it! But the damage was done.

Finally: “You are right, beloved Cassian,” she said quietly, tilting her eyes to the ground. “What was I thinking? The dragon, of course, was in love with a
beautiful
princess. The most beautiful in the world, with amber skin and tiny feet and eyes as green as spring grass and honeyed hair so thick it fell in great ropes down to her knees.”

It was a line she’d stolen from one of
my
stories. I let it
slide. But as she continued and finished her tale, I could feel that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night.

After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always.

When Violet was seven years old, she made her first friend. Indeed, her only friend.

Normally, the children of kings and queens were limited in their play to their siblings or their cousins or the children of courtiers. However, in Violet’s case, she had no siblings, and as both her father and mother were without siblings, she had no cousins. Additionally, while the courtiers certainly had children of their own, they were all either quite a bit older or quite a bit younger, and therefore unsuitable playmates for a vigorous girl.

Still, Violet needed a friend. And as it turned out, a friend was waiting for her.

This is how they met:

Violet, being a terribly bright girl, had been placed under the intellectual care of tutors since the age of three and a half. By seven, she could read, do sums, recite historical facts, analyze, and debate. And what’s more, she memorized everything she read, and most of the things that she heard, too. Unfortunately, the child detested her studies, so when she wasn’t hatching schemes to play tricks on the sour-faced men and women who taught her, she slipped away from her tutors whenever she could.

One day, when the mirrored sky was particularly brilliant and when both the Greater and Lesser Suns gleamed to their best effect, Violet decided that she had no interest in staying indoors. So, using her very best imitation of her mother’s handwriting, she wrote a note to her tutor that his advisory skills were needed in the throne room.
Urgently.
The old man flushed and tittered and told the child to work very hard on her translation until he returned. He left muttering, “At last, at last,” and shut the door behind him. Once he was safely away, Violet slipped out the window, shimmied down the drain, and skirted into the fields west of the castle.

The day was so fine that the child decided to run. And jump. And climb. And after she had climbed over six different fences and sprinted across five and a half different fields, she found herself standing right in the middle of a grazing meadow, exactly opposite a very large bull. Its coat was brown and white and shining. It rippled and bulged over the bull’s broad shoulders and back. The bull’s damp nostrils flared and snorted.

Violet froze.

The bull stared at the child—her wild hair, her filthy cheeks, her red, red dress. It scraped one hoof against the ground and lowered its horns.

“Help,” Violet called, her voice a tight squeak. “Help me!”

The bull bellowed and lunged forward, the weight of it shaking the ground as it thundered toward the Princess. Violet turned on her heels and raced for the closest fence.

“
Stop
,” a voice said. Her own? Violet didn’t know. She looked up and, through her fear, she saw a figure launch itself over the fence and run straight toward her.

“No!” Violet said, panic making her vision go bright and jagged. “I can’t stop.” But just as she said this, her left foot hooked into a small hole. She pitched forward, fell
head over knees, and sprawled onto the ground. She covered her head with her arms.

A boy leaped lightly over the cowering Princess and put his body between the bull and the girl. Violet shut her eyes, waiting to hear the boy’s bones splintering under the hooves of the great beast, waiting to feel her own body trampled into the dirt, leaving nothing behind.

Instead, she heard this: “Stop screaming, will you? You’re scaring him.”

Violet tried to say
I’m not screaming
, but her mouth was wide and round, a scream tearing unbidden from her chest. For a brief flash, embarrassment eclipsed her fear. She shut her jaw with a snap and pulled herself to her knees.

A boy with a mop of black, curly hair stood between her and the bull. He was shorter than Violet, and scrawny, but with lean, ropy muscles twisting from his neck into his shoulders and down his arms.

Is he going to wrestle it?
Violet wondered.

The bull, on the other hand, stood still, its eyes on the black-haired boy.

His hands were raised, palms out, and he made a noise over and over—something midway between a mother’s cooing and a father’s shushing. A sweet, soft, whispery sort of sound. The beast was motionless, but its head remained lowered, its muscles bulged, and its eyes were bloodshot and angry and wild. They rolled and quivered as though about to burst. Still, Violet was incredulous.

“How could
I
scare
him
?” she asked. “He was the one—”

“Your dress,” the boy said quietly, without turning around. His voice was infuriatingly calm. “Your dress is scaring him. It’s not his fault. Stand up and walk slowly toward the fence. But walk backward. He needs to
feel
you watching him. You must not look away.”

Violet’s mouth dropped open. “But—” She paused, gaping. No one had ever spoken to her in this way before. And despite her terror, she was mystified. “I am the
Princess
. You’re not supposed—”

“Do you
want
to be dead?” the boy asked. If he had any emotion at all, he certainly didn’t show it. He said this as casually as if he were asking the Princess if she wanted a spot of cream or a spoonful of sugar.

“No,” Violet admitted.

“Well then?”

Violet sniffed but got to her feet all the same and started walking backward toward the fence, maintaining her gaze on the bull in the middle of the field. It grunted
and wheezed and whined. And the great muscles on the beast’s shoulders and flanks trembled piteously.
He really is frightened
, Violet realized. And despite the terror twisting her insides into a knot, she felt a stab of compassion for the creature.

The boy kept pace with her, his hands still raised, his eyes on the bull, his mouth continuing its quieting sounds until both he and Violet were safely on the other side of the fence. Finally he slumped forward, rested his hands on his thighs, and sighed deeply.

Violet fidgeted, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I—” she stammered. “Or, I mean to say—” She paused. “Thank you.”

The boy gave her a savage look. “
What were you thinking?
” he hissed, stepping aggressively forward. “Didn’t you see the signs?”

“No,” she said. “I was running.”

“Don’t you look on the other side of fences to see if it’s safe?”

“No,” Violet said, aghast. “I never have.”

“Well, you’re an idiot.” The boy stepped away, jamming his fingers into his curly hair and hanging on tight. He looked as if he had more to say. He bit his lower lip hard.

“You are
not supposed—”
Violet said hotly.

“That bull would have
killed
you,” the boy said. “And then they would have killed him, too, even though it was an accident and it was just because he was scared. So that would be two lives lost—for
nothing
. Just because you couldn’t bother yourself to look.” He kicked a loose stone on the ground.
“Stupid.”

The boy’s eyes welled up. He turned his back toward her and quickly wiped his tears away. But it did him no good to hide it. Violet
saw
. She pressed her lips together and took a step closer. She was not used to talking to children her own age, and she wasn’t sure how to begin.

“What’s your name?” she said at last.

He wouldn’t look at her, and he wouldn’t answer.

“Please,” Violet whispered, putting her hand on the boy’s arm. “Tell me your name.”

“Demetrius,” he said at last. “Am I in trouble?”

Violet shook her head. “Of course not.” And for an awful moment, she could see how easy—how
terribly
easy—it would be to get him, or anyone, into trouble. A hint. An accusation. A moment of manufactured tears. She would never need any proof. The very thought—
just the thought
—made her sick inside. She shook it away. “How did you do
that?” she said, changing the subject. “With the bull, I mean?”