You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are. -- Alice in Wonderland (2010)

"We'll cast the spell at night," Solvej announced. "About four in the morning, I think."

"Why at four?" Hjalmar wondered aloud. "Has that some magical significance?"

Solvej shook her head. "No, it's just that I'll have to go outside to establish the spell's boundaries, and at that time there aren't likely to be many people about to wonder what I'm doing."

~~~~

Rigmor's first day living in the rooms next door to Solvej was no less stressful than her move had been. With Hjalmar's help she unpacked her suitcases, dusted the furniture, and found somewhere to put her various belongings -- of which she had a surprising number, considering she was on the run. The whole time Solvej wandered around the room, muttering to herself and placing her hands on various parts of the walls.

Hjalmar suspected that none of this was truly necessary for the spell, but rather a way for her to avoid being drawn into discussions like "this wardrobe won't hold all those suitcases -- try stacking them against the wall".

"Right," Solvej said briskly, moving away from the door she'd been leaning against. "That's the interior of the rooms shielded. How about a cup of tea before we do any more?"

~~~~

Rigmor, it turned out, was hopeless at making tea. Hjalmar watched, dumbfounded, as she filled the teapot with cold water, put a teabag in, turned up the stove, and left the teapot until it boiled over. The worst part was that she honestly seemed to think that was how to make tea. Hjalmar accepted the teacup she handed him with murmured thanks, unsure of how to broach the subject without embarrassing her.

He did not grimace when he sipped the tea. Not when Rigmor could see him, anyway.

Solvej, to his astonishment, drank her entire cup without seeming to mind the taste. He gave her an amazed look when Rigmor was distracted with looking for biscuits.

"What?" Solvej asked defensively under the noise of the princess opening and closing tins rather loudly. "I've had to drink potions that taste like extra-strong vinegar mixed with the worst-tasting medicine you could find. Compared to that, this isn't bad at all."

The conversation was halted when Rigmor returned, triumphantly bearing a tin of butter cookies. They were rather stale cookies, with the sort of softness that came of being left uneaten for too long, but pointing this out would be rude.

"What do we do now?" Rigmor asked some minutes later, with her mouth full of cookie. Her words were so muffled they were almost incomprehensible, and crumbs sprayed everywhere when she spoke.

Hjalmar was horrified. He would have thought a princess would have better manners! Why, he and his sisters would never have dreamt of speaking with their mouths full!

Solvej, whatever her other faults, at least had the decency to chew and swallow her cookie before speaking. "It's quite simple. All I have to do is make you stand in the middle of the room and tell the spells I've just cast that they're in place to protect you. Then I have to go outside and tell the spells where to end, or they'd cover the entire street."

~~~~

And so it was that late that night -- or early the next morning, depending on how you looked at it -- Solvej slipped out the side door. She stood beneath Rigmor's window first, and informed her spell that it was to end at the outside wall and go no further. Then she went round the other sides of the house and did the same there. Fortunately for her, there were no humans around to ask questions. The only living things she could see were a few alley-cats sniffing around the bins, and a drunkard weaving his unsteady way home from the pub. She waited until he had stumbled past before she double-checked the spells to ensure they were secure and went back inside, congratulating herself on a job well done.

From the darkness of an alleyway, the Shadow King watched her and wondered what on earth she was doing.

~~~~

It is possible for two people who work in the same shop to spend very little time in each other's company. The same is true of two people who lodge in the same house. But it is impossible for two people who work in the same shop and lodge in the same house to avoid spending time with each other.

Now that the spells were in place, Rigmor had let the goblin go free. Where it had gone, no one knew for sure; presumably back to its master. Hjalmar spent the next few days expecting the Magician to appear on the doorstep, spells or no spells.

Days passed and nothing happened. At last Hjalmar started to relax. The Magician was not going to barge into their house, firing spells in all directions. Nothing was going to happen. Everything was going as well as it could reasonably be expected to go.

And so, when things began to change, they changed so slowly and so unobtrusively that Hjalmar didn't even notice.

It started with what Solvej privately called "Rigmor's lessons in being normal" and what Hjalmar privately called "Dear God, what am I doing?" To be more precise, it started with a question.

Hjalmar had been looking through yesterday's newspapers when on his break at work. One of the papers had an article in it about a new factory being built near his hometown of Gaubyr.

"That'll please Mother," he said aloud. "She's always wanted more people to know Gaubyr existed."

"Where's Gaubyr?" Rigmor asked.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Hjalmar had known perfectly well that his hometown was not well-known outside of its immediate area. But that the Princess, the woman who would presumably someday rule the entire kingdom and so would have been expected to know at least the general location of various towns, didn't know where it was... Well, if that didn't humble him, nothing would.

"I've said something wrong, haven't I." Rigmor's voice held the weary acceptance of someone to whom this had happened frequently. Hjalmar suddenly felt sorry for the cursed princess.

"Not wrong, exactly," he said, "just..."

"Very silly," Solvej put in from where she was sprawled out on the sofa, with a newspaper over her face for some reason known only to her.

Rigmor looked somewhere between angry and dejected. "Well then, Miss Smart-Aleck, since you're so clever, why don't you tell me where it is?"

"Better ask Hjalmar," Solvej returned. "He's from there, after all. There's something wrong if he doesn't know where it is."

"It's about sixty miles east of here," Hjalmar said in answer to Rigmor's enquiring look.

"And my home is about ninety miles north of here," Solvej said, "but I can forgive you for not knowing about it because for all I know it might not even exist any more."

"What cities are near it?" Rigmor asked, looking at Hjalmar and ignoring Solvej. "If I knew that I might have some idea of where it is."

"There aren't any cities near it at all. The nearest large town is Thurgrer, fifteen miles away."

Rigmor scowled, but her bad temper seemed to be at herself rather than at him.

"You've never heard of that either." Hjalmar resisted the urge to sigh. After this, he would never think he was from anywhere particularly important ever again.

"Everyone expects me to be killed by a vengeful parent or dragged off by the Magician before I get anywhere near the throne. No one bothered to teach me any of the things normal heirs know." Angry though Rigmor looked, she sounded more resigned than upset.

"Don't feel too bad," Solvej said encouragingly. "Plenty of normal heirs, as you call them, are prize idiots. You won't stand out too much."

That did it. As of now, Solvej was officially forbidden from opening her mouth unless she had something helpful to say.

"What do you not know, other than geography?" Hjalmar asked in a bid to distract Rigmor from what the ghost had just said. He promptly winced. Of all the things he could have said, he had to bring them back to such a frankly embarrassing subject?

Rigmor shrugged. "Mathematics, science, grammar... everything people normally learn in school. I know more history and politics than most people ever learn, and four languages, and I know off by heart my entire family tree going back eight centuries and all its branches and sub-branches."

Hjalmar stared. "Four languages?" Then another part of that statement sank in and he exclaimed, "Eight centuries?"

The princess blinked owlishly at him. "Of course. That's as far back as reliable documentation goes. I've heard that the royal family of Telmar can trace their ancestry back for over a thousand years, but our records don't go back that far."

Hjalmar thought of his own family tree, which as far as he could tell went back only to his great-grandparents before being lost in the mists of history. For the look on her face, Solvej was thinking along the same lines.

"Hjalmar could teach you geography, and maybe maths too," Solvej said. "I could teach you the basics of science."

Wait, what?

"What did you just say?" Hjalmar asked, unable to believe his ears. Had the ghost just volunteered him as Rigmor's tutor?

"There are plenty of schoolbooks here if you want to learn other subjects," Solvej continued as if he hadn't spoken. "We'll call it your lessons in being normal."

"I can't be a teacher! Don't I get a say in this?" Hjalmar cried plaintively.

"No."

And that was that.

~~~~

"Our first lesson," Hjalmar said with an utter lack of enthusiasm, "is Geography of Vardiholm. If you look at this map, you'll see that Therlund is in the south-west of the kingdom, about a mile from the sea. I'm sure you know more about why that is than I do."

Rigmor nodded. "It's because when Queen Lærke was deciding where the capital should be, she wanted to be near the sea so she could keep an eye on trade, but her husband hated the sea and wanted to be inland, so they compromised. That's what Father says happened, anyway."

"Anyway," Hjalmar continued after a brief pause, "Vardiholm is divided into eight counties, which you probably know, and borders Athyen and Trauneheim, which you also probably know. And I have no idea what else to tell you, so... You could ask Mr. Ovesen for a geography textbook? Or memorise the map?"

"You don't know much about being a teacher, do you?" A half-smile curved Rigmor's lips.

"No," Hjalmar said emphatically.  "And I wouldn't be a teacher at all if it wasn't for ghosts who don't ask before volunteering people for jobs they're not suited for."

Solvej giggled from where she was doodling something on a mysteriously-acquired blackboard.

"How about a trade?" Rigmor said.

Hjalmar raised an eyebrow. "Trade of what?"

"Knowledge. You at least make an effort to teach me Geography, and in return I'll teach you History and Etiquette. Then if you ever meet my parents, they won't automatically dismiss you as a peasant."

"Peasant?!"

In the background, Solvej roared with laughter.

~~~~

"No, no! You're supposed to hold the cup like this, and the saucer like this." Rigmor demonstrated by holding her teacup delicately with only two fingers while holding her saucer in the palm of her other hand.

"Seems a silly way to hold a cup," Hjalmar grumbled as he adjusted his hold to something approximating what Rigmor was doing. "What if you drop it?"

"That," said Rigmor wearily, "is why you hold the saucer beneath the cup."

~~~~

"How, by all that's holy, did you divide thirty by eight and get fifty-seven?"

Hjalmar knew he must look foolish, standing gaping at Rigmor with his mouth opening and closing like a fish, but never before had he heard such idiocy. For once, Solvej had no smart comments to add. Rigmor shuffled her feet and gave him a half-embarrassed, half-defiant look.

"Well, how about explaining how to divide instead of handing me a page of sums and telling me to answer them?"

"You don't know how to divide?"

"Of course not! What use has a princess for any arithmetic beyond adding and subtracting?"

"That's aristocrats and royals for you," Solvej muttered. "Not a live brain-cell in any of their heads."

Hjalmar sighed and sat down across the table from Rigmor. He picked up a pen and a piece of paper and began to scribble numbers on it. "Look, you start with this number, and then you put this number here, and then..."

~~~~

"This," Solvej announced dramatically, waving her hand at the drawing on the blackboard, "is an atom."

"I thought it was Saturn," Rigmor said, squinting at the sloppily-drawn circles surrounding a dot. "Those look like its rings."

"Of course it's not Saturn! Saturn looks like this," Solvej drew a large circle with a ring around it, "while an atom looks like this." She pointed at the first drawing.

"I see," Rigmor said doubtfully. As soon as Solvej had turned back to the blackboard, she leaned over and whispered to Hjalmar, "I don't see any difference. Do you?"

~~~~

"I think everything's going quite well," Solvej said with an air of being very pleased with herself.

She might as well have shaken her fist in Fate's face and shouted, "Come and get me!" It would have had the same result.

That same day, there was a knock at Hjalmar's door. He opened it to come face to face with a policeman.

"Hjalmar Dalsgaard?" the policeman said in an official tone. "You're under arrest."