How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world. – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

The sun drifted down towards the horizon. A few birds, unwilling to admit the day was almost over, chirped amidst the trees, which were only just beginning to regain their leaves after the winter. Some impatient flowers pushed their way through the grass in the sunnier spots of the path, and between the roots of some of the older, more gnarled trees, stubborn patches of snow lingered.

Down the overgrown path wandered a young man in travelling clothes, whistling the tune of a nursery rhyme. A hat that was respectable but clearly not new was set firmly on his head. He carried a suitcase in his hand and a bag slung over his shoulder. He stayed in the well-lit parts of the path as much as possible. The nearest town was a mile back; a fall or a twisted ankle would be disastrous at best.

The light was fading and he was searching for a place to spend the night when he saw it. It was a church, with a tall tower and a graveyard of crooked headstones around it. As he got closer he saw it was abandoned. The windows were smashed, ivy clambered around the tower, and the door had long since collapsed, leaving the doorway empty. It would be an ideal place to sleep.

Hjalmar Dalsgaard hesitated. On the one hand, it was deserted, and had been so for years by the look of it. On the other, it was a church, and he felt slightly uneasy about spending the night in it.

At last, he decided it was safer to spend the night in the church than outside, and approached it slowly.

If there had been a path through the cemetery at one point, it was impossible to find it now. The headstones were crooked and covered with moss, the names and dates on them long since faded, the graves themselves overgrown with grass, nettles and weeds and indistinguishable from the rest of the ground. Hjalmar picked his steps as carefully as possible, afraid he might be unwittingly treading on someone's final resting place.

It doesn't really matter if I do, he told himself. They're dead. The dead don't know if anyone's near their graves.

But all the same, he tried not to stand on anything that might be a grave.

Once through the graveyard, he stepped over the half-rotten fallen door and into the church. The sun had set entirely now, and all he could tell of his surroundings was that the pews had been knocked over and there was some sort of box in front of the altar. If you looked more closely, you might think that the pews looked like they had been toppled by a crowd of people in a great hurry to leave, and that the box ahead looked ominously like a coffin.

But Hjalmar didn't look closely. He chose a corner mostly devoid of dust and cobwebs, set down the bag containing his money and food, lay down, and draped his coat over him like a quilt. He was asleep within minutes.

~~~~

Hjalmar awoke with a start. What was that noise? Was that a voice? He stayed perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. There was a lantern placed on the altar, and two shadowy figures moved about in front of it.

"Here it is," one of them whispered from where they were crouched over the box in front of the altar. There was a slight slur to their voice, as if they were under the influence of alcohol. "This must be it; it's the only coffin here."

"But you heard what the story said!" their accomplice protested. "Besides, I don't fancy robbing someone when they're in their coffin. It's not right."

The first person scoffed. "They're dead, it's not like they know what's happening." Despite their bravado, their voice wavered.

"You heard that story too," the second person said.

Hjalmar listened, and as he listened an idea came to mind. These people had obviously come here to rob a coffin, but they'd heard a story – probably a ghost story – that scared them. They were both frightened, and they thought they were alone, so if he spoke...

"Leave the coffin alone!" he shouted at the top of his voice.

The two would-be thieves shrieked and leapt almost out of their skins. They didn't even check to see who had spoken. They simply fled as if an army of ghosts was after them, leaving the lantern behind. Its wan light shone down on the coffin, still undisturbed despite their best efforts, and cast weird shadows across the walls.

"Rest in peace, whoever you were," Hjalmar said softly, and went back to sleep.

~~~~

Being dead while under a curse was a strange business. The best way she could describe it was like lying at the bottom of a lake. She could hear and sense what was happening around her, but the world outside her coffin was blurred and unreal. If she focused her power enough, she could tell what was happening around her. For the past hundred years nothing more interesting had happened than generations of birds building nests in the church's crumbling rafters.

It wasn't an unpleasant state. There was a dream-like quality to her existence that was far more peaceful than anything she'd felt while alive.

Then, for the first time in years, something interesting happened. She heard a voice shouting. The voice was as distorted as all sounds were to her ears, but the minute she heard it something changed.

If she had been at the bottom of a lake before, she had now swum closer to the surface. And she knew, as certainly as she knew her own name, that her one of her spells to counteract the curse had just activated.

Though her body remained still and lifeless in its coffin, she reached down into the depths of her soul and found her magic. It was less powerful than it had once been, but she could use it.

She gathered all her magic and pushed against the barrier holding her still.

~~~~

The next day dawned bright and sunny. Hjalmar left the church and continued along the pathway. As the day went on it grew hotter and hotter and he became more and more tired. At last he sat down under the shelter of a tall oak tree. Deciding he might as well have dinner while he rested, he opened his bag and took out one of the sandwiches his mother had made him.

He finished the sandwich and rubbed his eyes.

I should keep walking, he thought sleepily. I should reach the next village by evening if I just... keep... walking...

His eyes slid closed against his will. Seconds later he was sound asleep under the tree.

The sun arched overhead. The wind whispered in the tree's budding leaves and ruffled the daisies. Hjalmar slept on, undisturbed even when a fieldfare sang on a branch overhead and when a rabbit hopped cautiously out of its burrow to sniff inquiringly at the crumbs of his sandwich.

It was late afternoon, and Hjalmar was still asleep, when a cheerful whistle drifted down the path. The whistling drew closer and closer. At last a curious figure appeared through the trees. It was a young woman. This was unusual enough on its own. Young women rarely ventured so far from their homes on their own. Even more unusual was her appearance. She wore a long blue dress in a style at least a century out of date. Her face was strangely pale, as if she had been ill very lately. She wore her long brown hair in a braid tied with blue ribbons, and perched precariously on top of her hair, at an angle that suggested she had to hold onto it to prevent it falling off, was a tricorne hat bedecked with swan feathers. In one hand she carried a stout stick, which she tapped against the ground in time with the tune she whistled.

She stopped and stared at Hjalmar, who was now snoring quietly, his mouth half open. She shook her head.

"Lazy fellow!" she exclaimed. "Sleeping in broad daylight? There must be some mistake!" She paused, her head on one side, as if listening to an answer only she could hear. "What do you mean, my perspective is warped?"

If she received an answer or not, only she knew. Whether she did or didn't, she looked at Hjalmar again and shook her head, then had to grab her hat as it nearly fell.

"Here's hoping he at least knows how to follow orders," she said aloud, sitting down on the grass opposite Hjalmar. "How much sleep do mortals require, anyway? I've forgotten. What if he's still asleep an hour from now? Should I assume he's under a spell?"

~~~~

Miles away from Hjalmar and the strange girl, in the capital city, the Princess had disappeared.

"She did what?" King Severin roared.

The Princess's ladies-in-waiting exchanged worried looks. Several wrung their hands or fiddled worriedly with the lace trims on their dresses.

"She left this note," one of the braver ladies said, holding out the note as gingerly as if it would bite her.

The King snatched the note and nearly tore it in his haste to open it. Queen Maibrit reached over and plucked it from his hands.

"We will be none the wiser if this is in pieces," she told her husband in a disapproving tone.

She carefully opened the envelope and took out the letter. The King waited in an agony of impatience as she read it. When she finished reading it, she folded it up and placed it back in the envelope, as calmly as if it was nothing more important than today's dinner menu.

"What does it say?" the King demanded. His patience had finally run out.

"We will discuss this in private." The Queen's voice allowed no argument. "Come, my dear."

She got up and swept out of the room. The King trotted after her, muttering under his breath about people who withheld important information about times like this. The ladies-in-waiting, left alone in the morning room, waited only until the King and Queen were out of earshot before they began gossiping eagerly amongst themselves about Princess Rigmor's disappearance.

"Do you think she's eloped?" one of the ladies asked.

Another scoffed. "Her, eloped? Who'd want to elope with her? He'd just end up dead!"

The chief lady-in-waiting hurriedly shushed her. "We do not talk about that matter," she said firmly.

Silence reigned for a moment, as they thought about what it was they did not talk about.

At last one of the younger ladies chirped, "I think she's been kidnapped!", and they forgot about royal secrets in favour of debating the likelihood of this surmise.

~~~~

Queen Maibrit went directly from the morning room, which was open to the servants, to one of the private sitting rooms, which were reserved solely for the use of the royal family. She sat down in a horsehair armchair, smoothed down her purple gown and arranged her once-brown, now-greying hair as she waited for her husband to catch up with her.

King Severin arrived in his typical fashion when he was unhappy. He stormed in looking like a short, fat thundercloud and stalked across the room to glare out the the window, with all the offended dignity that could be summoned by an overweight middle-aged man wearing a powdered wig, a bright yellow waistcoat, and purple trousers.

A more unlikely couple than the King and Queen of Vardiholm would be hard to find. The Queen always wore colours that complemented each other, while the King's inability to perceive colours resulted in garish outfits -- like the one he wore now -- every time he picked out his own clothes for the day. The Queen was tall and thin; the King was the exact opposite. The Queen rarely raised her voice; the King shouted when angry, happy, alarmed, or when no one was listening to him.

For all their differences, they were usually happy with each other, except for the times when one did something the other disapproved of. This was one of those times.

"What does she say?" King Severin roared, pacing back and forth before the window. "Has she been kidnapped? Is it a ransom note? Should I call out the army? Why won't you let me read the damned note?"

"Do be quiet," Queen Maibrit said wearily. "You're giving me a headache. And try not to be so ridiculous. She hasn't been kidnapped and you are certainly not going to call out the army. Here, you can read it now."

She handed him the note. He took it and read it aloud.

"Dear Mother and Father, by the time this letter is found I will be gone. I think you know why I have left. I'll spell it out for you anyway, and perhaps you will understand better. All my life I have lived under a curse. Against my will I have been forced to set impossible tasks for every man who asks for my hand, and often I have been the cause of their deaths. If this curse is not broken in a year, I will be forced to marry the magician who cursed me. All your attempts to break this curse have failed.

"I have fled in hopes of finding a way to break the curse. I will read every magic book and consult every witch or wizard I can find. I will, if necessary, go to the Fair Folk or the Hidden Ones and ask their help.

"Goodbye.

"Your daughter, Rigmor."

King Severin stood frozen in place. His mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.

"Go to the Fair Folk?" he gasped when he could force words past the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat. "Is she mad?"

Queen Maibrit frowned. "Is that the only thing you're worried about?"

"Of course not! But -- she can't -- where will she -- what do we do?"

Scarcely aware of what he was doing, the King set the letter on a table and paced back and forth across the room. Queen Maibrit picked up the letter and read it again.

"I think," she said slowly, "that we should keep this as quiet as possible. We will announce that Rigmor is ill and cannot leave her room. I will have a few words with her ladies and ensure they know not to reveal the truth with their gossiping. Then you will have the Spymaster send out his spies to find her.

"However," she added sharply. The King, who had been about to go in search of the Spymaster immediately, halted to hear what else she had to say. "However, I believe it would be unwise to demand her immediate return when she is found. She gives her reasons for her actions, and while I wish she had chosen a less dramatic way of leaving, I cannot disagree with them."

"Are you saying," said the King slowly, "that even if we find her we should let her stay out there, alone, with no protection if he comes looking for her?"

"What I am saying," said the Queen patiently, "is that she has made her own decision. It may prove an unwise one or it may not. But I believe we should let her make it."