I am not afraid to fall
You can watch me lose it all
I'll get it wrong till I get it right
At least I'm making scenes in the meantime
-- Icon for Hire, Watch Me

"WHAT?"

This appeared to be "Give Hjalmar a Heart Attack" Day. He wished someone had thought to warn him beforehand.

"Well, naturally." Solvej had the audacity to look surprised. "Didn't you know? These magicians are all alike. The most reliable way to break a curse they cast is to fall in love with the victim. It was the same with that unpleasantness with the princess turned into a snake, and of course there was the prince who had his hands cut off."

Hjalmar hadn't a clue what she was chattering about, and he didn't feel up to questioning her. "I can't fall in love with Rigmor. I don't know anything about her!"

"You know who she is, and you know she's cursed."

"Neither of which is likely to make me fall in love with her! Besides, I can't get married yet. I couldn't support a wife."

Solvej's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. "Aren't you forgetting your future wife is the princess? She'll be the one supporting you, not the other way round."

"Stop talking as if we're already engaged! You can't just... plan out our lives like this! Rigmor deserves a say in it, and if she's any sense she'll be as against it as I am."

"Unfortunately, the majority of princesses do not have any sense, or so it seems to me. If they had sense they wouldn't go around kissing toads or taking apples from strangers. I think Rigmor will be so happy to have a chance of breaking her curse she won't mind marrying you."

Hjalmar wasn't sure if he should be offended or not at the implication that if there was no curse, Rigmor would mind marrying him.

"You," he said instead, jabbing a finger in Solvej's direction, "have no right to decide who I marry. Or who Rigmor marries, for that matter. I will do my best to forget we ever had this conversation, and I won't even mention the curse and the goblin unless she brings it up."

~~~~

Circumstances have a nasty way of making a mess of even the best plans. Hjalmar's plan was not one of the best plans. It should not be surprising, then, that the next day Rigmor was waiting outside the shop when he arrived.

Before he could say a word, she grabbed his arm, pulled him down the side of the shop, and said with no preamble, "Will you help me kill a goblin?"

It said a great deal for what Hjalmar's life had become that his immediate reaction was to sigh wearily.

"Why me?" he asked the world in general.

Rigmor's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Because you're the only person who knows the truth about me?"

Hmm. There was that.

"Why do you want to kill it?" he said.

"Because I can't trust it not to run to the Magician and tell him where I am."

"I suppose that's true," he said doubtfully, "but killing it seems very... drastic."

Rigmor did an uncanny impression of Solvej's raised-eyebrow, "are you serious?" look. "It could get me killed. I just want to protect myself, and this seems the best way."

Hjalmar tried to collect his thoughts. Rigmor was holding a goblin prisoner. Rigmor wanted to kill said goblin. Rigmor wanted him to help her kill said goblin. Now, what should he do?

"Can I think about it?" he asked. "I can't just decide something like this so quickly. And I'd like to get out of this alley; I feel like a criminal hiding from the law here."

Rigmor made a face that, had she been younger, would have suggested she was about to stamp her feet and throw a tantrum until she got what she wanted.

"Fine," she muttered, sounding like a sulky child.

~~~~

In his nineteen years of life, Hjalmar had been called upon to do several odd things. He had helped remove a sheep from the village bakery, had hidden a nest of owlets in the attic, and had accepted a ghost as his travelling companion -- though he had had very little choice about that last one. He could, however, honestly say that never before had anyone asked him to help kill a goblin.

He mulled over the question all day. When Rigmor accosted him again as they were closing up the shop, he was no closer to an answer than he had been that morning.

"Can you wait until tomorrow? I'd like to ask a friend's advice before deciding."

Rigmor pouted in a very childish way.

And this is what Solvej expects me to fall in love with, Hjalmar thought dryly. A possibly psychopathic spoilt brat planning to commit a murder! Er, that is, if goblins can be murdered. Are goblins even people?

He stopped that train of thought right there before it derailed.

"If you must," Rigmor grumbled, completing her resemblance to a spoilt child by crossing her arms and scowling mutinously at the ground.

Perhaps the magician had done the kingdom of Vardiholm a favour when he cursed her. If she became queen, the whole kingdom would be doomed unless she grew up.

~~~~

"So that's the whole story," Hjalmar finished. "Now what am I supposed to do? If I help her, I'll be an accomplice to murder! Or, well, to killing something. If a goblin is killed, can it be considered a murder?"

Solvej tilted her head to the side. "...I have no idea. The official way to determine if a life-form was sapient was if it could think and talk, so using that standard, yes, killing a goblin would be murder. As for what you should do, what do you want to do?"

Hjalmar groaned. "How is that supposed to help me? I don't want to have anything to do with this whole mess!"

"Unfortunately for you, you're in this mess, as you call it. Now you have to decide what you're going to do."

Hjalmar got up and wandered into the small room that served as kitchen, dining room and larder. Solvej looked after him, eyebrows raised.

"What are you doing?"

"Making tea."

He mechanically filled the teapot and put it on the stove, not even realising that he'd forgotten to put a teabag in it.

"I won't help commit murder," he thought aloud, "and I suppose it would be hard to keep the goblin prisoner, so I think the best thing Rigmor can do is let it go then move somewhere else."

"That would be a good idea," Solvej agreed, "except that she would have to leave the city entirely. Once the magician has a general idea of where she is, he'll be able to find her with a spell."

"Couldn't you hide her?"

Sometimes, a person can say something that affects their entire future. This was one of those times.

"I could," Solvej said doubtfully, "but it would mean her moving into this house and never leaving it unless I went with her everywhere she went."

"So much for that idea." Hjalmar sighed and poured himself a cup of what he thought was tea. He took a sip and promptly spat it out. "What the--!" He peered into the teapot. "I don't believe it. How could I forget the teabag?"

Solvej carefully did not smile. Not when Hjalmar could see her, anyway.

As a disgruntled Hjalmar dropped a teabag into the teapot and boiled it up again, Solvej thought over his suggestion again. It had at first seemed an awkward, impractical sort of business, but the more she considered it the more perfect it appeared. What better way to get Rigmor and Hjalmar to fall in love than to have them live in the same house? That would spare her the trouble of finding ways to send Hjalmar to Rigmor's house, and they could thwart the magician at the same time.

"I think I should at least suggest it to Rigmor," she said as Hjalmar poured himself a cup of tea -- actual tea, this time, not water boiled in a teapot.

"Suggest what?"

"Your idea."

"Didn't you say--?"

"I did, but now I've thought better of it."

Hjalmar eyed her dubiously. "So... you're going to walk up to Rigmor out of the blue and tell her you can protect her but you'll have to follow her around everywhere?"

"Certainly not!" Solvej felt rather offended at the suggestion. "You're going to introduce me to her before I tell her I can protect her, but at the cost of some inconvenience to both of us."

~~~~

There comes a time in every person's life when they want nothing more than to hit their head against a wall (or a desk, or a door, or whatever happens to be to hand). Hjalmar was going through one of those times now. It was Sunday, he and Solvej were on their way to visit Rigmor at her lodgings (Hjalmar had to confess to some alarm at the fact Solvej apparently knew where Rigmor lived)... and they were already half an hour later than he had expected them to be, because Solvej kept stopping to stare at dresses in shop windows.

"Do you see what I see?" Solvej exclaimed in a horrified voice.

"That you're holding us up yet again? Yes, I do." Hjalmar hadn't realised he was capable of putting so much exasperation in two sentences.

Solvej shook her head, almost sending her hat flying. "That's not what I meant and you know it. That dress has no sleeves!"

Hjalmar looked at the dress in question. It was a bright pink and beige monstrosity that had as many frills and ruffles as was humanly possible to put on one dress. And sure enough, it had no sleeves.

"Who would ever wear something so... coarse?" Solvej sounded appalled.

"I think we have more important things to worry about than some fashion designer's latest ideas," Hjalmar pointed out.

Solvej sighed. "Men. They can never understand how important something is."

Hjalmar bit his tongue to keep himself from saying something unwise.

~~~~

Another half an hour and an unbelievable number of delays later, they finally reached Rigmor's lodgings. Hjalmar stopped on the doorstep, his hand raised to knock.

"How will I explain us just... appearing like this?" he wondered.

"Well, she's expecting you, isn't she? You told her you wanted to think about it, so she'll think you've come to tell her what you've decided. And you have. So why are you worrying?"

Hjalmar took a deep breath, tried to forget Solvej was there, and knocked.

The door opened to reveal a short, elderly woman wearing a dress of no colour known to man and an extraordinary bonnet festooned with ribbons of every colour imaginable.

"Was there something you wanted?" the woman asked, tilting her head to the side and disturbing the ribbons so they floated around her face like her personal, multi-coloured halo.

"Good afternoon," Hjalmar managed to splutter after a moment of gaping at this apparition. "Is Ri-- Merethe at home?"

"She's in her rooms. Third floor, the door at the end of the hall."

"Thank you," Hjalmar said, recoiling slightly as a draught blew a mauve ribbon into his face.

He squeezed past the woman and found himself in a dark, dusty hall pervaded by a faint smell of mutton. The staircase was steep and narrow, covered with worn, once-blue carpet. He traipsed up it, Solvej following.

The first floor landing was as dusty as the hall downstairs. So was the second floor. The third floor was both dusty and cold, with half-open windows at both ends of the hall and a floor that was solid in some places and sagged in others, so it resembled nothing so much as a series of miniature hills and valleys. A damp smell hung in the air, and mildew stained the wallpaper.

"I wonder how she can cope with living in such a shabby place after growing up in a palace," Solvej remarked, her eyes wide as she surveyed the hallway.

She had a point, Hjalmar had to admit. He couldn't think of anywhere less like a palace than this place. But he was somewhat more preoccupied with the fact they would have to go all the way to the door at the end of the hall. That floor looked like it might give way at any minute if you put a foot wrong.

Crossing the hall was rather like playing hopscotch. They hopped from one piece of solid floor to the next, trying to avoid the parts that looked like they would collapse at the slightest touch. Once Solvej put her foot on a place where the floorboards were slowly mouldering away, and a worrying, drawn-out creeeeak knifed through the air.

Hjalmar and Solvej froze, holding their breath and half-expecting to fall through the floor and into the room below at any minute. Luckily, it stayed in place -- for now.

That hair-raising experience behind them, they were immediately confronted by another.

Well, Hjalmar considered it hair-raising, even if Solvej didn't. He had faced many unpleasant situations lately, but to stand in front of a cursed princess's lodgings, with an extremely awkward and uncomfortable discussion ahead of him, and somehow work up the courage to knock, was tied with "learning Merethe was really Rigmor" for the most unpleasant situation of his life.

He took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and knocked.