The Tale of the Princess with the Wild Magic

Princess Jaleel was born with the wild magic in such a degree that no one dared to contradict her wishes. Her mother died at her birth, and her father indulged her in her magic until his death several years later. Thus she became ruler of the kingdom of The Three Mountains and had still not learned temperance with her magic. She transformed whomever she wished into whatever creature would amuse her and she threatened and teased and terrorized the palace so that no one considered her a friend.

Then at the age of seventeen, she fell in love with a man whose station in life was far beneath from her own. Her counselors warned her against him, but she would not listen. She spent every waking moment with him that she could, and she lavished him with gifts that were worth more than the man’s life. Her counselors saw the man’s eye for other women, and said nothing. But the day that he disappeared, they were relieved and hoped that the princess would at last learn self-control.

Instead, the princess became even more prone to rages. The only creature who willingly spent time with her was the black horse she had found wandering in the plains one day. It was as tall as any man at its withers and its hair was a jet black as dark as the princess’s. Also like the princess, its mood was often dangerous. It would rear up and bite any groom in the stable that tried to touch it. Only the princess could ride and care for it safely. The hours she spent riding and brushing the horse were a blessing of peace to the rest of the royal household.

Yet one day she came home from a ride and left the horse untouched. She stalked out of the stable and went directly to the blacksmith.

“You will brand my horse today,” she told him sharply.

The blacksmith looked up at her in surprise and then, when he saw the set of her jaw, fear. “Has it done something to harm you, Princess?” he asked, though privately he thought that the horse had only wounded her pride in some way.

The princess tossed her hair. “I will have the branding done. Will you do it or will you leave your place and let another do as I command?” she demanded.

The blacksmith had two sons and a daughter to care for, and no wife, for she had died the previous year. He bowed his head. “I will do it,” he said sadly.

The horse was brought to the smithy and tied with thick ropes to hold it in place. The sound of its breath was heavy and wet as it stood with muscles taut and jaws tightly closed.

But when the moment came, and the blacksmith brought the red-hot brand out of the furnace, he looked into the large, black eyes of the horse and could not touch it. There was such intelligence there, and such courage. He was convinced that the horse would be lesser for such treatment, and that the princess would regret it in time.

He set down the brand and faced the princess bravely. “It would be a crime to do it, a crime against nature and against the horse,” he declared.

“I have commanded it,” insisted the princess.

The blacksmith shrugged. “If you will have it done, then do it yourself.” He meant it as a challenge to shame the princess into relenting.

But the princess stepped forward and pulled the horse’s head to her own. She stared into its eyes and spoke to it as if it were a man.

“You are mine,” she said fiercely.

The horse nickered and tossed its head, but it did not buck or try to escape. The princess picked up the brand from the fire.

The blacksmith opened his mouth to give her a warning to be careful, but it was too late.

She had already pressed the brand into the left hind quarters of the horse. In her heedless temper, she burned herself as well. The blacksmith saw the mark that matched the horse’s on her fingers, but the princess did not seem to notice it at all. She showed as little sign of pain as the horse, until she threw the brand back toward the fire and bit her lip as she put her hand behind her back.

The blacksmith did not dare even to suggest that the princess put her hand in the cold water he had drawn from the well to cool his tools. Who was he to offer to tend to a princess? She had ladies and attendants and servants and doctors by the score to look to her.

He turned to the horse. Its head was raised its head to look at the princess. There was a hint of pity in the soft, black eyes and lowered lids, the blacksmith thought. It was an unusual thing to see in an animal. Such an intelligent creature should be prized, surely.

“Mine,” said the princess again, and stalked out.

The horse was taken back to the stables, head bowed as if the intelligence had gone out of it. The blacksmith shook his head. “She’s ruined it, she has. Serve her right if it will never come out to the light again, let alone allow her to mount it. Perhaps she’ll learn something from it.”

The smell of burned horse flesh lingered through the night and the blacksmith slept fitfully, but the princess did not come to tell him he was dismissed. When he woke in the morning, he went to the stables to find the princess’s black horse was gone.

The stall that it had been held in was smashed to bits of wood suitable for kindling, and the locked stable gate was torn apart as if it were made of butter.

The horse had gone mad, thought the blacksmith, and he mourned its loss.

The princess was informed of the truth in the course of the morning. Furious, she accused the blacksmith of calling in others to take the horse and destroying the stall himself. But she did not dismiss him, and in a moment, she begged him to tell her where the horse had gone, promising him anything he asked for, including her own crown.

He told her the truth, that he knew nothing, but that he would help her if he could. In the days following, he and many other servants went out from the palace and the outlying villages into the fields. Each night, the princess waited eagerly for news, but the blacksmith had to tell her that he was sorry, for no trace of the horse was ever found.

A villager in the next week brought the princess a gray colt that his mare had just weaned. The colt had a black muzzle and it looked likely to grow very tall. It had an upright carriage and slender legs, and would one day be a beautiful black horse.

But the princess would not try to ride it, nor touch its soft, silky hair or smell the sweet scent of hay and oats on its breath. She put a hand to her throat and walked away from it, trembling.

The blacksmith explained to the villager that the princess only wanted her own black horse returned, not one to replace it.

“Her own horse? But it is surely dead. Or long gone. She will never see it again.”

“Yes, so it seems,” said the blacksmith.

“She must learn to find a place in her heart for another,” said the villager.

“I think the princess’s heart is not a large space,” said the blacksmith.

The villager departed.

Some months later a man arrived at the palace and claimed that he had found the princess’s horse. He was well-dressed, with jewels in his hair, and he walked in his bare feet in the princess’s court as if he were used to shoes. He called himself Lord Dashto and demanded that he should speak to the princess directly.

He was brought to her throne room, where the smell of the burned wooden carvings of horses still lingered from the days directly after the black horse’s loss.

“I have found your horse, Princess,” declared Lord Dashto.

She looked up immediately. “Where is he?” she demanded, as if she expected to see the horse right there.

“I have come to negotiate the terms of his return,” said the man slyly.

“Negotiate? I demand that you return him at once.” The princess snapped her fingers and her guards immediately lifted spears to Lord Dashto’s side, touching but not piercing his skin.

Lord Dashto showed not the least sign of fear. “Your demands will have no effect on me.”

“I will turn you into a beast and then I will have your fingernails torn off and your eyes gouged out and I will cut off your arms and legs before I burn you alive! Do you have any doubt that I can do this with my magic?” The princess was white with fury.

Lord Dashto was strangely unaffected by this threat.

The blacksmith who watched from a window near the stable did not know if he should cheer the man or run him through with a stoking iron. No one who had heard the stories of the princess’s magic and her rages would dare challenge her like this.

“I do not doubt your power, Princess,” said Lord Dashto calmly. “All men agree that it is great and terrible. But if you transform me into a dumb beast, dead or not, then I will never be able to tell you where your horse is. He will die of thirst and all because of you.”

The princess thought for a moment. “He must be nearby if you have come here. I will send out search parties for him and we will find him in time.”

Lord Dashto tilted his head to one side. “Will you? Your search parties so far have had little success in finding him. It is reasonable to assume that he is perhaps hidden somewhere, a cave or a hollow. Caged or roped and unable to return to you at the sound of your voice. He would return for you if he heard your voice, would he not?”

The princess did not answer his question. “You stole him!” she accused. “And for that alone you should die.”

“But again, if you kill me, you will not get what you want.”

The princess pouted for a moment. Then she said, “I will give you the reward if you will tell me where he is.”

“And will you kill me while I am still counting the coins?”

The princess looked chagrined and the blacksmith suspected that this had been her plan precisely. “What do you wish, then?” she asked.

“I wish to be your husband. King of all the land,” said Lord Dashto. “That is the reward I expect for returning your horse to you.”

“Never!” shouted the princess, and she flung herself out of the throne room with a shrieking wail that was heard many miles away.

Lord Dashto shrugged, but he returned the next day and the next until at last the princess promised to take him as her husband if only he returned the horse to her.

“You must marry me first,” he said. “And then give me the secret of your magic. For I must have some power over you.”

“Done,” said the princess. And she whispered in his ear until he raised a hand and transformed a beetle into a mosquito that buzzed and stung him and flew away. It was not as much magic as the princess had, but it was something.

Or so he believed.

But the blacksmith heard of the spies she set on Lord Dashto, and after several days, he at last returned to the cave where the horse was held. Then he was taken by surprise, bound tightly, and brought before the princess.

“I will use my magic against you,” he said, and repeated the words she had whispered to him.

But his words did nothing and the princess laughed. Then with a wave of her hand, she transformed the lord into a hyena and then she set her dogs to chase him out of the court and into the desert, where she doubted that he would survive long.

Finally, she went to wait in the stables for her horse to be returned to her.

Her servants brought the animal they had found. They bowed low. They looked very pleased with themselves. They expected to be rewarded, or at least praised.

The blacksmith waited as well, wondering how the horse would have changed. But when it was brought in, the blacksmith knew as soon as the princess did that this black horse was not hers.

This horse was black and tall and there was a little of the sharp look in its eyes of the horse the princess had lost. But it had the wrong shape to its shoulders and its legs were too finely shaped. Its back end was not as strong or as wide and it seemed eager to please the princess as her true horse had never been.

The disappointed princess put a hand to the horse’s haunches and transformed it into a spider. It skittered away on four legs rather than eight, as the blacksmith stared in horror.

Then the princess flung herself to the floor and let out a long cry. She ordered the servants out, and they stood outside her chambers as she broke every item of value in the room through the night.

In the morning, the princess rose and commanded ten of her best guards to follow her. She had the royal steward begin to gather supplies for a long journey, and coin to purchase more supplies if the journey lasted even longer than that.

Her chamberlain tried to stop her. The blacksmith heard the conversation between them, for the princess would hear nothing in her throne room, but was busy outside with her supplies.

“If you do not intend to remain and rule the kingdom,” the chamberlain said, “then you should not take the resources of your people. You strip them to enrich yourself and you plan to do nothing in return for them.”

“That is my right,” she said. “So long as I remain princess.”

He could not argue with that, so he said, “Let someone else go for you, to find your horse.”

“And who could I send? Who will be as vigilant as I will? Who will refuse to stop searching, even when all reasonable hope is hope? Who will know for certain that my horse is found, by looking into his eyes?”

“But, Princess, it is only a horse,” said the chamberlain.

She whirled on him. “If I told you that I had sent out a command for your wife and son to be killed as you stood before me with such arrogance, would you let me give you another wife and son as a gift? Would you put aside all mourning and let their bodies lie in the dirt simply because you had replacements already?”

“No, of course not. But they are—they are human. Not horses.”

It was the wrong thing to say, for the princess transformed him in that instant into a zebra, and put on him one of the heaviest packs that she had loaded with supplies for her journey. She did the same with many of the servants, including the blacksmith, who she made into a pelorovis, with two curved horns.

“You will thank me for this, for the magic will help you to live long,” the princess told him.

And also to serve her for longer, thought the blacksmith, as he took his last look of the palace in the south, and of the life he had lived there. He never saw his children again, but he saw much of the north and of the princess’s magic as she added to her entourage and continued her search in years past any normal human lifespan.

“We will return,” she said. “When I have found my horse.”