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Once upon a time, there was a princess who never smiled.
The king, the princess’s father, was a proud man. He was proud of his castle, and of his horses, and of his young son. He was proud of his daughter, and spread tales of her beauty. Many came from far and wide to gaze upon her for themselves. Many suitors asked for her hand in marriage, and she turned them all down.
And so the tales changed. People stopped sharing the princess’s beauty and instead shared how cold she was, how haughty she was, how she looked upon those who visited her with indifference.
The king did not like this. He grew tired of how this affected him and his reputation, and thought she ought to be married like other women her age. And so he proclaimed that whoever in the kingdom could make his daughter smile would be permitted to marry her.
Every Sunday after service, on the steps of the church, the king said for all to hear that anyone, regardless of status, title, or employment, who could make his daughter smile would become her spouse and inherit half the kingdom. The princess despised this arrangement, and she scowled at all who came to woo her, much to her father’s chagrin.
The beautiful princess refused to smile, and the king continued to remind all his subjects of the arrangement every Sunday. But try as they might, all who came before her failed. The princess grew melancholy and grim, and finally she retreated into a tower of the castle and refused to grant anyone an audience. This angered the king, who thundered that she would forfeit her title should she continue to refuse her visitors.
So one night, the princess snuck into the servants’ quarters and dressed herself in their clothing instead. She took her fine clothes she took as well, tying them up inside a blanket. She stole from the castle and went into town, where she found work as a seamstress.
This is where our story begins. Not with the princess, who still refused to smile, but with a different young woman who worked in the town’s bakery. This young woman’s name was Robin.
Robin awakes as she does most days, to the singing of birds.
It’s been this way since she was a little girl. The birds in the woods near her house perch on the branches of the tree that bends over her small home, and they sing until she wakes. Thanks to them, she has never missed a day at school or at work, and whenever she gets sick they hop onto her windowsill and peep softly at her, as if telling her to get better.
This morning is no different, as she raises her arms above her head to stretch feeling back into them, leaning from side to side and moving in time with the birdsong already flowing through her open window.
“Good morning, other birds,” she sighs. After getting up from bed, she looks out the window to see which birds have come to greet her today. Her eyes narrow at one in particular.
“Willow, we talked about this,” she scolds. “You hurt your wing and it’s too soon for you to be out with the others.”
The warbler cheeps indignantly. Robin rolls her eyes.
“Fine,” she shakes her head, “if you want to make stupid decisions, then that’s on you.”
Robin dresses simply, hiding her tan pants behind a billowing apron. She’ll change into a more practical apron later, when she gets to work. But she likes this one, likes how many pockets it has and how many small treats she can tuck into its folds. Sometimes the birds will come to rest in the fabric between her apron and her shirt, nestled into the pocket created when she ties the apron in place.
Today, it’s Willow who flies down and settles himself into this space, snuggling into the warmth of Robin’s chest.
“Okay, you stinker,” she laughs, “you can have a ride.”
A few of the other birds seem to take this as permission, as well. Another warbler dives into one of the real pockets of the apron, as does a redwing, a swallow, and a dunnock. A robin perches onto her shoulder, its tiny talons piercing the fabric of her shirt, until Willow causes such a ruckus that it moves into a pocket, as well.
“The hell is up with you all today?” Robin gives her apron a little shake, trying to dislodge them. “I’m not a carriage.”
But none of them move, and she can feel them all settling in as if to nest.
“Fine,” she huffs. “But when I change aprons, you all better not get squashed. You hear me?”
When she leaves her room, it’s with careful steps. Robin tries to keep herself balanced and steady, but what she ends up doing is making her steps even more exaggerated, bobbing up and down in a way that makes her feel like she’s wearing a bubble instead of an apron. Her brother, who’s seated at the kitchen table, spots her and laughs.
“Shut up, dingus!” she crows, which just makes him laugh harder.
“Robin and the birds have entered the room!” Steve announces, cupping both hands around his mouth so his words are even louder. He removes his hands and asks in a more normal voice, “How many are in there today?”
Robin rolls her eyes.
“I have more birds than you have friends, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So, twenty?” Steve snarks right back. “Thirty? I’m very popular.”
They bicker over breakfast, Robin passing breadcrumbs to Willow and only Willow because he is her favorite. The other warbler nips at her fingers with its beak, which just makes her scowl down at it. Steve attempts to draw one of the birds out to perch on his finger, and Robin laughs as they all refuse.
They head into town together, and despite Steve’s teasing he’s careful not to walk too close to her so they don’t bump into each other and potentially injure one of the birds. They keep swaying into each other’s space, anyway, teasing each other relentlessly as they do every morning.
When they pass the clothing shop, both of them grow quiet. The shop is still closed, as it’s very early in the day, but through the window they can both see the sullen young woman who recently began working there. Her golden hair is tied back with a plain piece of cloth, frayed at the edges. It does nothing to dim the way the sun glints off the yellow curls, as if they are made of real gold.
All of Robin’s movements still, and watches the young woman. She’s already hard at work, hunched over the piece of clothing she’s working on, her needle moving so quickly and assuredly it’s little more than a flash of silver.
“Talk to her,” Steve says in Robin’s ear, suddenly, which makes her yelp and jump.
The sound and sudden motion alerts the young woman to their presence, and Robin turns away before she can be spotted and recognized. Not that the young woman knows who she is, but she doesn’t want her to see the red flush already creeping across her cheeks.
“Shut up,” Robin says through gritted teeth, seizing Steve’s arm and pulling him along with her as she stomps down the road.
“Talk to her,” Steve persists.
“And say what?” Robin challenges. “She’s always so grumpy, and I would just be bothering her, so I don’t know why–”
“You’ll never know until you try,” Steve insists. “I mean, you stare at her every morning so unless you’re going to do something about it–”
“I’m appreciating,” Robin interrupts him right back, “not staring. And doing something about it is what you’re good at. I turn into a blabbing mess any time a pretty girl so much as looks at me, so excuse me if I’d rather just look from afar and never do anything about it, ever.”
Steve just shakes his head.
“One of these days, you’re gonna fall in love and have no idea what to do,” he warns. “You’ve gotta practice.”
“Nope,” Robin shakes her head emphatically. “The very idea of using a human being as practice for anything is deplorable. How dare you!”
“You know what I mean,” Steve groans. “And oh, look, the bakery!” He points at the building they both know is there. “Goodbye, Robin, and may you find someone else to terrorize while we’re apart.”
“You know I won’t,” she promises, reaching out to pinch Steve’s cheek in the way their grandmother used to. Then she quickly ducks into the bakery before he can retaliate.
“Robin!”
She’s immediately accosted by Joyce, the owner of the bakery. Joyce’s clothes are covered with spills and smears of flour. Robin notes the distinct lack of an apron immediately.
“Joyce, what happened?” she asks, gesturing at the other woman’s appearance.
“The aprons’ straps broke,” Joyce moans, plucking at her dirty clothing. “Both of them, and I’ve been meaning to get extras but I just haven’t had time and now this!” She twirls in a circle to show off just how far the stains go. “I can’t open the shop like this. Please, please can you run to the clothier’s and ask if they have anything we can use?”
“The… the clothier’s?” Robin repeats, her cheeks immediately aflame.
“Yes,” Joyce nods. “I would go, now that you’re here, but…” She lifts her skirts to show off the stains again. “I cannot be seen like this.”
“Sure,” Robin agrees, her voice coming out squeaky. “Yeah, sure, I’ll… go do that.”
All of her breath leaves her as she exits the bakery and walks back towards the clothing store. The shop still isn’t open, and so she knocks on the door, feeling sheepish as the young woman looks up from her sewing. Robin waves through the window, putting on what she hopes is a winning smile.
The woman unlocks and opens the door, but doesn’t let Robin in.
“Can I help you?” she asks, and her voice is as beautiful as she is, sounding like ringing bells and birdsong and a gentle breeze blowing through the leaves.
“Y-yes,” Robin stammers. “Yes, I, uh, I mean my boss, Joyce, needs help.”
The woman just blinks at her, not offering any expression of recognition or lack thereof at the name. She isn’t smiling, even now that they’re having a conversation, her mouth remaining pointedly still and straight. Robin should find that off-putting, and yet she can’t think ill of this woman in the slightest.
“Aprons!” she blurts out, a little louder than she meant to. “We need aprons. If you have any?”
The woman nods, stepping away from the door and gesturing for Robin to follow. After pointing out the aprons, she backs away, wrapping her arms around herself protectively.
“Thanks,” Robin grabs two without really looking. “Did you make these?” she asks.
The woman nods.
“They’re nice,” Robin compliments. “My name’s Robin, by the way. I haven’t met you. Obviously, I haven’t, or I wouldn’t be telling you my name right now.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” the woman says, her kind tone and her words not matching her blank expression at all. “I’m Chrissy.”
Robin thinks about saying, ‘that’s a pretty name,’ or, ‘a pretty name for a pretty girl,’ or any number of the corny one-liners Steve likes to toss out. He makes them work, somehow, and yet even though her own tongue moves faster than her brain, she still can’t picture herself saying something like that.
So all she does is ask, “How much for the aprons?”
She pays Chrissy, and their fingers touch as she passes the coins to the other woman. Robin notices little pricks on Chrissy’s fingers, probably from sewing.
“Thank you,” Robin calls, clutching the aprons in her hands. “This is seriously saving us. And the bakery!”
“Happy to help,” Chrissy says, but she’s not smiling and she doesn’t look happy. But Robin thinks that maybe she is, that maybe she’s telling the truth even as her face tells something else.
Robin dashes back to the bakery, the birds in her apron twittering away.
“Hush, all of you,” she scolds them.
When she returns to the bakery, she changes her bird-laden apron for one of the new ones, and Joyce runs home to change her clothes. Robin opens the store on her own, and the day is busy enough that she and Joyce don’t have a chance to talk amongst themselves until a few hours later.
“These are good aprons,” Joyce comments, when they do begin talking together in the space between customers.
“I guess they are,” Robin agrees, looking down at the one she’s wearing for the first time. It’s made out of a plain, thick fabric and has flat pockets stitched into its front. Atop the stitches that were used to attach the pockets are tiny flowers, embroidered with pink and gold thread. “I didn’t even notice,” she starts saying, brushing her fingers across the delicate flowers.
“This one’s the same,” Joyce says, drawing Robin’s attention to her. Joyce is holding up the skirt of her own apron, which has the same tiny flowers around its bottom hem.
“They’re so pretty,” Robin smiles at the flowers. She knows how much embroidery costs, and Chrissy hadn’t asked for more than she would charge for a plain apron.
Their day passes the same as any other, with her and Joyce conversing easily with each other between customers. When it’s time to close the shop, Joyce leaves first so she can pick up her children from school. Robin locks up alone, and when she walks past the clothing shop she spots Chrissy in the same spot she was earlier that morning, still sewing.
This time Robin frowns, because Chrissy should have gone home by now. Why is she still there, if her day started so early? Robin thinks about how Chrissy never smiles, and wonders if she’s been cursed to work endlessly, if she traded her happiness away for something, or even, god forbid, if she’s being held against her will.
But she doesn’t go in to ask, because Robin would never barge in on a lady with accusations of that nature.
Instead, over dinner she tells Steve all of her theories, the bird friends who’d accompanied her to work that day perched on the windowsill, as if they’re listening, too.
“I think the answer’s staring you in the face,” Steve tells her, when she’s done ranting.
“What do you mean?” Robin frowns.
“Chrissy is obviously the missing princess.”
Robin laughs, and it’s a harsh, loud noise. She laughs until she’s crying, tears of mirth running down her cheeks and soaking the collar of her shirt.
When she’s done laughing and has caught her breath, she realizes that Steve is looking at her without a hint of humor.
“Oh, you’re serious?” Robin chuckles again in disbelief.
“Well, why not?” Steve crosses his arms. “The princess never smiled, and Chrissy doesn’t smile. She disappeared a month ago, and Chrissy started working at the clothier’s a month ago.” He shrugs. “It makes sense.”
“She’s not a princess, dingus,” Robin rolls her eyes. “Princesses are snooty and annoying, and Chrissy’s… she’s nice.”
“But she doesn’t smile,” Steve points out. “How can someone be nice if they never smile?”
“She just is,” Robin defends.
“Fine,” Steve raises his arms in defeat. “You’re the expert, now that you’ve actually talked to her. Congratulations on that, by the way.”
“Shut up.”
But she thinks about Steve’s theory, nonetheless. She wonders if Chrissy could actually be a princess. She’s certainly beautiful enough to be one, because all princesses are beautiful and Chrissy is the most beautiful woman Robin has ever seen. She worries that maybe other people have the same thoughts as Steve, and maybe that’s why Chrissy is so sad. Princesses don’t just leave their castles for no reason; their princess had left to escape her father’s demand that she marry. So if Chrissy is the princess, then she must be afraid that someone will discover her, and that they’ll bring her back to the castle.
Robin swears to the moon and the stars above her that she will never breathe a word of these suspicions to anyone, and that she will deny what anyone else has to say, no matter what she decides she believes.
Chrissy is back in the clothing store the next day, up early working on something, and she continues to be there every day that follows. Robin sees her every morning on her way to work and every evening on her way home. Chrissy never seems to stop working, and she barely looks up when Robin knocks on the window and waves to her.
Robin also starts noticing small pieces of embroidery on other people’s clothing. There are flowers and stars on hemlines, hearts stitched into pockets, and even some patterns that don’t make shapes at all. She watches everyone else notice these small details, too, hears it in the surprise in their voices when she asks about it.
And so Robin goes back to the clothing store. She knocks on the door one day after she’s done at work, after the store is closed. Chrissy opens the door, but she doesn’t stand in the way this time.
“Hello Robin,” she says, and Robin can hear the smile in her voice even as her face remains expressionless.
“Hi, Chrissy,” Robin smiles large enough for both of them. “Can I come in?”
“Are you looking for something?” Chrissy asks.
“Yes,” Robin says.
Chrissy lets her in. “Anything I can help with?”
“I need a new shirt,” Robin lies.
“Well, we have plenty of those,” Chrissy leads her over to where they are. “Do you need help choosing, or shall I get back to work while you look?”
“Why are you always working?” Robin blurts out. “You’re… you’re always here! Sorry, I know it’s probably none of my business but do you take breaks? Do you go home at all? I just, I know it’s not my place but I’m worried about you.”
Chrissy shakes her head. “No, I’m okay. I like working. I really do!” She sighs, running her fingers along the fabric of the shirts. “It’s so satisfying to make things. I never… I never got to do that, before. And so I don’t mind working. I get to make things for people, things that they’ll use and love. And that’s nice.”
The way she says it is so earnest that Robin instantly believes her.
“Thank you for caring about me,” Chrissy adds, and Robin swears that she spots the tiniest upward tug at Chrissy’s lips. But she blinks, and Chrissy’s expression is even again.
“I didn’t need a shirt,” Robin confesses, the words tumbling out of her before she can stop them.
Chrissy’s eyes sparkle, and her cheeks tinge pink, and Robin can see the smile even as her mouth stubbornly doesn’t move.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” These words come out in a rush, as well, and Robin’s own face heats up.
“I’m okay,” Chrissy promises. “Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” Robin nods. “Yes, but… but I think I’d believe it more if I saw you outside of this store. Do you, I dunno, eat?”
Chrissy covers her mouth with a hand, stifling a choked little noise that might have been a laugh.
“Do I eat?” she repeats.
“I mean, duh, of course you do. Everybody does, so you have to. You wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t! So that is definitely not what I meant, I just meant that, y’know, I have to eat and you have to eat because we’re both people who have to eat so we should, I guess, eat something together sometime.”
Robin forgets how to breathe, somewhere during that run-on sentence. When she remembers that she also needs air to live, not just food, the breath she sucks in is painful.
“I would love to eat something together sometime,” Chrissy says, which Robin thinks is very gracious of her.
“Great!” she exclaims, a little too loudly. “Great, um, maybe at the end of the week? I could make something for us, on my day off, I mean. For dinner?”
“That sounds nice,” Chrissy nods.
“So, Saturday. Dinner on Saturday,” Robin confirms.
“Dinner on Saturday,” Chrissy repeats. “I’ll see you then?”
“Yes,” Robin agrees, and before her mouth runs away with her again, she starts walking backwards towards the door. “Saturday. See you on Saturday. And tomorrow, because I have to walk past your shop to get to the bakery.”
So much for her mouth not running away with her again.
But Chrissy doesn’t say anything more, she just watches Robin go with the closest thing to fondness she can manage as someone who doesn’t smile.
Robin screams at Steve that night over dinner, screams about how nervous and awkward she’d been but Chrissy hadn’t been put off by it at all. Screams about how she thinks she finally got the other woman to smile, maybe, even if it had lasted for less than a second.
Steve just shakes his head and listens, letting her ramble on and on.
The next morning, when Robin leaves for work (with six birds in tow, again), there is a wrapped package on their doorstep. When she unwraps it, she finds a shirt with six birds embroidered on the collar. The colors used match the colors of the six very real birds currently tucked into her apron.
“What did you guys do?” Robin asks them, holding the shirt out before her.
She wonders, wildly, if she’d gone sleepwalking last night, told Chrissy about the six birds in her sleep. Because who else but Chrissy would have embroidered these birds?
Robin tucks the shirt away, because she doesn’t want to wear it to work and get it dirty. She’ll wear it on Saturday, when Chrissy comes over for dinner.
Each day on her way to work, Robin stops in front of the clothing shop to wave through the window to Chrissy. And each day, Chrissy looks up from her work, her eyes twinkling, and waves back. Robin no longer sees the sullen woman she’d seen before, because even though Chrissy still doesn’t smile, Robin can see her happiness elsewhere.
When the Big Day comes (as Steve has started calling it), Robin makes sure everything is perfect. She forces Steve to help her cook, but makes him promise to leave before they come back. One day, maybe, Chrissy can come over for a family dinner and spend time with both of them. But she really doesn’t want Steve around for whatever this is.
Steve sets the table for her, and promises to have the food on the table waiting for them. Robin had already decided that she would walk Chrissy back here, because she is a lady who isn’t going to force her to walk all the way here by herself.
Robin knows something is awry as soon as she gets to town. She’s wearing her new shirt and her apron with the flowers embroidered on it, so she doesn’t have as many pockets for her bird friends to hide in today. Willow is perched on her shoulder, with the other five all crowded together in the pockets she does have. The five of them start rustling the closer she gets, and Willow starts tugging at the ends of her hair with his beak.
“Calm down, all of you,” Robin orders, but none of them listen to her.
The streets are quiet, which doesn’t make sense for this time of day. Robin spots the castle guards long before she hears them, their uniforms a conspicuous dot of color in the distance.
“Are you worried about them?” she asks the birds, reaching up to cover Willow with a hand, forcing the small bird to stop tugging at her hair. “They’re people, and you’re birds. You can just fly away.”
But the birds continue rustling, making indignant noises. Willow actually jumps up and begins to climb into Robin’s hair, seemingly unbothered by the way she swats at him to try to dislodge him.
Heaving a sigh, Robin keeps going. She still has to pick Chrissy up, and she wants to know what’s going on in town. Once she’s within earshot, she picks out some choice words: “Princess,” “Missing,” and the sentence: “Bring her back.”
Panic floods Robin, as she remembers Steve’s suspicions. She starts walking faster, and all of the birds fly out of her apron and flit around her head, their tiny talons finding purchase in her hair as well. All six of them hold on, and Robin doesn’t care enough to attempt to remove them and just keeps going, birds and all.
“...will not be pleased,” one of the guards is saying. “I’d be willing to bet he forces her into a political marriage now.”
“And good riddance,” another guard nods, seeming to agree. “After all the trouble she caused? It’s the least she can do now.”
The townsfolk who are out and about are gathered in the town square. Robin heads in that direction, her heart hammering and the panic beginning to set in.
When she gets there, she sees Chrissy. She is flanked by two guards, who are each holding onto one of her arms. Even from this far away, Robin can sense the sadness in her. She sees it in the way Chrissy is holding herself, the resigned way in which she’s looking down at the ground. Someone is talking to her, but Robin doesn’t have a line of sight to that person through the crowd. She starts pushing through, needing to know what’s going on.
“I don’t know how we can confirm you are who we suspect you are,” the person is saying, their voice a sneer that Robin already detests. “I would hate to bother the king with something so trivial.”
Chrissy looks up from the ground, then, her mouth set in a grim line and her brow creased with a determined frown.
“Correctly identifying a princess is trivial to you, then?” she challenges. “Then what is of import?”
The person Robin can’t see snorts with laughter.
“Only a princess who caused this much trouble. If you are the princess, then tell me where to find the dresses you stole.”
“How can a princess steal something that belongs to her?” Chrissy asks next.
“Nothing belongs to you,” the person spits back. “Princesses are property, and the fine clothing that you stole was meant to show the kingdom’s wealth to suitors.”
Robin understands, without knowing anything more, exactly why the princess refused to smile. She understands why she refused to give in to the king’s demands, and why she kept control of this one thing she could. And she understands why she ran away.
The only thing she doesn’t understand is why Chrissy didn’t run further away, if she really is the princess.
“Prove to us you’re her,” the person continues. “Prove it, or we’ll tear the town apart and find the dresses ourselves. And when we do, you’ll be brought back and married to a neighboring prince, one your father has chosen for you.”
Robin bursts through to the front of the crowd, finally. She trips as she shoves her way through the last row of bystanders, falling spectacularly onto her face. The birds still in her hair tweet madly, pulling at her head as if they’re trying to help her up. When Robin pushes herself up off the ground, she immediately looks to Chrissy.
Chrissy spots her, and Robin watches the recognition cross her face. And then, hysterically, Chrissy laughs.
It’s a maniacal, hysterical sound. But once she starts, she can’t seem to stop. Chrissy laughs and laughs until she’s tugging at the guards who are holding her so she can lift her arms to wipe tears from her eyes. She loses all of her breath and all but collapses, only held up by the guards still holding onto her arms.
And when she regains her composure, she fixes Robin with the most dazzling smile she’s ever seen. All of Robin’s breath leaves her at the sight.
“You won’t find them,” Chrissy says, still looking at Robin but speaking to someone else. “The dresses are gone. I unraveled them thread by thread and turned them into something else. Into something meaningful.” Chrissy looks away from Robin then, and she follows the other’s gaze to look at the man who’s been speaking to her with such detestation. “My father once said that only royalty wears the finest clothing. If that’s true, then everyone in this town is royalty now. They all wear my dresses, in bits and pieces.”
Robin reaches up and tugs at the collar of her shirt, feeling the embroidered birds there.
“And my father once declared that the princess of this realm would marry whoever could make her smile,” Chrissy continues. “You all are my witnesses that Robin was the first to make me smile. So by royal decree, Robin is to be my spouse and inherit half the kingdom.”
Robin’s vision blurs, and she knows no more because she collapses to the ground as she faints.
When Robin wakes from her faint, she is in the clothing shop. She sits bolt upright, which makes her head ache. She moans, clutching at it with both hands.
“Here,” Chrissy materializes at her side, handing her a cup of water.
Robin drinks it, momentarily forgetting everything that had led to her passing out. She remembers mid-sip, and she chokes on the water and spills it down her shirt. Down the shirt Chrissy had embroidered for her out of threads of her own fine dresses, nonetheless.
“Chrissy?” The woman’s name is a question itself, and Chrissy immediately reaches out to take Robin’s hands into her own.
“I have a confession to make,” she breathes out. “It’s me. I’m the princess. And my name is, technically, Christine, but I like Chrissy better.”
“How are we here?” Robin asks, looking around at the shop.
“Once they realized who I was and that I was telling the truth, they let me go,” Chrissy explains. “Well, they didn’t really let me go. They’re outside. And I’m going back to the castle. I just made them wait until you were okay.”
Robin just stares at her, stares at the beautiful woman with the golden hair who isn’t smiling right now, but not because she never smiles. This time, it’s because she’s worried. Robin can see that in the way Chrissy’s teeth are worrying her bottom lip, in the way her hands are trembling even as she keeps a tight hold on Robin’s.
“Are you okay?” Robin asks.
“I’m fine,” Chrissy says, but Robin knows it’s a lie.
“They’re going to force you to marry that prince,” she guesses, and if the way Chrissy’s face falls is any indication, she’s found the truth.
“It’s my duty as a princess,” Chrissy sighs.
“But you’re not in trouble, are you?” Robin presses. “For reappropriating your fancy clothing, or whatever that was?”
“No,” Chrissy shakes her head. “No, my father is… very proud. And he was always saying things about how wearing the finest clothes meant you were the most important. Things like that. So I made everyone important, in his eyes.” She sighs again. “I didn’t realize that the dresses were meant to be my dowry, or anything like that.”
“A dowry, that’s the gift you give to the family you marry into?” Robin frowns, but not because she’s angry. Because she’s thinking.
“Yes,” Chrissy nods.
“Then that solves it!” Robin exclaims, getting up from where she’s sitting. This movement hauls Chrissy up, too, because Chrissy refuses to let go of her hands. “You gave your dowry away to the town!”
Chrissy just blinks at her, lost.
“If the town has your dowry, then you can’t go back to the castle,” Robin continues, gesturing wildly and moving both of their hands all over the place. “Because you belong – blech, I hate that we have to say it like that – to the town. And, technically, I think, if you belong to the town and not the king, he can’t force you to marry anyone.” She giggles nervously. “So it doesn’t matter that I made you laugh first, or, uh… whatever. You don’t have to marry me to get out of marrying the prince, anymore.”
Chrissy’s eyes soften, and she smiles. She shakes her hands free of Robin’s and reaches up to cup her cheek.
“You are a genius,” she breathes. “But I wouldn’t marry you just to get out of marrying a prince.”
“Then let’s get married,” Robin blurts out, and her face immediately turns beet red, the color coming so quickly she thinks that maybe she’s going to faint again.
“Okay,” Chrissy agrees, her smile brightening. “Okay, let’s get married. And you can inherit half of the kingdom.”
“Oh my god,” Robin can barely hear for how hard her heart is hammering.
“Which means you’ll be the princess, instead of me,” Chrissy’s smile turns into more of a smirk at that.
“Oh my god,” Robin repeats.
“What do you say, princess?”
Once upon a time, there was a princess who could talk to birds.
She had six birds, in total: a redwing, a swallow, a dunnock, a robin, and two warblers. They enjoyed making a nest for themselves in her hair, which made the princess laugh and laugh until her eyes streamed with tears of mirth. The birds would do this at their own discretion, caring not if the princess was in an important meeting or if she was sitting down to dinner with her wife.
The princess’s wife, who had golden hair and a smile that dazzled like diamonds, would adopt a fond smile whenever the birds behaved in this manner, as if she was remembering a secret from her past.
The princess and her wife cared for these six birds as if they were their children, for they had no children of their own. And the princess would tell the birds what to do and where to go, and she would scold them when they misbehaved. She would make sure they had enough to eat and that they were never in danger.
The princess was well-loved by all of her subjects, for she was fair and just. She was also mischievous and silly, and so she spent just as much of her time frolicking through the woods with her six birds, using them to communicate with the other animals who lived there.
One day, the princess told her subjects that she had to leave, because her birds had a quest for her. Her subjects thought that this was very silly, but since they loved their princess they did not persuade her otherwise. The princess brought her wife with her, leaving her brother in charge while she was away. They found an enchanted pool guarded by an ogre, and when they charmed the ogre into letting them in and the birds bathed in the pool, they were no longer birds at all but children.
The princess spent the rest of her days threatening to turn the children back into birds whenever they misbehaved. This made her wife laugh, to which she would simply say, “You try keeping your head up with six kids in your hair.”
And that is the story of Robin, the princess who made Chrissy laugh.