Emelye tacked the sign above the door, then stepped back and grinned.
Schmeadling Sisters Sewing Shoppe and Magical Services.
She might be a Schmeadling sister, but she couldn't sew. But she could do magic. Besides, her sisters were thrilled that they didn't have to spend extra time picking out her bad stitches.
Emelye pushed open the door. Above her head the little bells, crafted by the best silversmith in Ciderbarrel, tinkled like fairy chimes. She paused to look at them. She'd always wanted to meet a fairy. However, fairies usually weren't of the sort to go bad and then need a human to call upon her services to exterminate or mind-mend.
"Are you all right?"
One of her sisters was staring at her. Emelye shook her head. "Hm?"
"Are you all right?" the blonde sister repeated.
"I was just daydreaming, Jeanetta," Emelye reassured her.
"I'm Julietta," her sister said, pouting in an adorable way.
"Right," Emelye said. "I was just joking with you, Julietta."
Julietta didn't look quite mollified. "Your goat is making funny noises again," she said.
Emelye slapped her forehead. "I forgot!" she hollered, running pell- mell out the door. "Sully! Sully, I'm sorry!"
The little white goat stomped its foot and snorted. "Some apology," he grunted. "You've kept me in here all morning."
"Pardon me, your highness," Emelye said, opening the gate to the goat's little shed. "Might the freedom of the yard please thee?"
"It might," Sully said.
Suddenly she heard the whinny of a horse. Emelye looked up. A horseman had paused at her gate. He dismounted and strode to her front door. She was so involved in watching that she didn't notice her disgruntled goat. Sully rammed her in the rear, sending her flying into the dirt and mud of the yard.
"Oberon's breath, you stupid goat!" Emelye cursed.
Julietta opened the door. "Can I help you, sir?" she asked politely.
The young man took off his helmet. "I'm afraid I'm lost, miss," he said, his tone lordly and his bearing noble. "Can you tell me where I might find Miss Emmalina Schmeadling?"
Julietta looked up at the sign bearing the name "Schmeadling" in big red letters, then back at the young man. "She's right there," she said, pointing at her younger sister.
Emelye frantically brushed dirt clods away from her apron. The young man raised an eyebrow. "Miss Emmalina Schmeadling?"
"Emelye, if you please," she said.
"You have...a little something on your skirt," the young man said.
Sully snorted. Emelye gave him a kick as she pulled a dandelion out of her ear. "I know," she sighed. "What d'you have? Gremlins? Goblins?"
"More than that, I'm afraid," he said. Then he did a double take. "You...are Emmalina Schmeadling?"
"That I am," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "So, what d'you have?"
Two more horsemen approached, these two considerably taller and more muscular than the first one. "Have you found her?" one of them called.
Emelye's horseman pulled a face. "She is entirely unacceptable," he said. "She's so...dirty."
"I'm not usually like this!" Emelye protested.
The other horseman laughed. "Well, she is rather attractive for an old crone," he commented.
"Old crone?"
"That's precisely it," Emelye's horseman said. "She's not an old crone. She's hardly older than I am."
"I'll be seventeen in two and a half weeks," Emelye volunteered.
"And entirely too outspoken," he continued. "I've never had a mere peasant speak to me so rudely before."
"Mere peasant?" she gasped, rolling up her sleeves. "All right, now you've gone too far." Sully bared his teeth. "See? You've even made my goat angry."
The young man backed up. "Oh, please," he pleaded. "Call off your goat. I hate farmyard animals."
Emelye grabbed Sully by his red leather collar. "I'll call him off if you explain why you're here and why you're insulting me," she said. "You have ten seconds."
"My father has need of the services of Miss Emmalina Schmeadling," the young man said, edging away from the feisty girl and her deranged goat.
"Well, who's your fa, then?" Emelye asked.
"King Gaurav the Fourteenth," he answered.
Emelye was so surprised she forgot and let go of Sully's collar. The goat, furious at the slight to his mistress, trampled the prince into the dirt. "Oh!" Emelye said. "I'm so sorry, your Highness." She yanked her wayward goat back and offered her dirty hand to help the prince up. "I truly am, Highness, I just didn't know it was you."
The prince glowered and pushed himself up without taking her offe
. His older brothers howled with laughter. "Most amusing, young miss," the oldest one finally had the breath to say. "I dare say I've never seen Leverett quite so humbled before."
"Shut up, Keefer," Leverett scowled. The older prince started laughing again, but the other brother elbowed him in the side.
"Prince Keefer, Prince Calix," Julietta smiled sweetly. She'd had the presence of mind to run upstairs and change into her best gown. "If you'd care to come inside, my sister Julietta and I might offered you some refreshments."
"I thought you were Julietta," Emelye said.
"I'm Jeanetta," the sister said. The two older princes dismounted and followed the pretty blonde eagerly.
"I suppose you'll have to come inside too," Emelye said to Leverett. "If you'd care to come inside...well, whatever my sister said." The prince followed his brothers, muttering violently under his breath.
"That wasn't very nice, Sully," Emelye rebuked as she let the goat into the yard.
"He deserved it," Sully said, defensive. His mistress latched the gate and gave him a loving yank on the horns.
Emelye used the back door to get into the little apartment above the store where she and her sisters lived. Her own room was in the loft above that, with a steeply sloped ceiling and two circular windows that she had never really gotten around to cleaning. Emelye poured some of the lukewarm water, heated from the sunlight streaming into the loft, into a bowl and splashed it on her dirty face. The mud oozed off of her skin, leaving behind her too-pale skin with its tiny scar beneath her right eye. Emelye pulled a face at her pallid and bookish mirror image. She grabbed a clean dress out of her little wardrobe and changed quickly. In the process, she hooked one of her shoes in the hem, tripped over herself, and smacked her chin on the floor.
"Oops," she groaned. For the second time that day, she picked herself off the ground. Emelye made her way downstairs, tying her hair ribbons as she went, and slapped her head against the ceiling. That she was used to; she had done it every time she walked down that ladder since they had moved into the shop apartment.
She skittered into the receiving parlor on the shop floor, rubbing her forehead. The three princes were sitting at the tea table with Jeanetta and Julietta. Keefer and Calix looked like giants at a child's tea party, with their massive legs stuffed under the table and their big hands cradling the delicate porcelain cups. Leverett, however, looked like a skinny bird compared to his brothers.
Keefer looked up. "So this is what our fair giant-killer looks like," he said in approval.
Leverett elbowed him hard. "You weren't supposed to say anything about that yet!" he hissed.
"Oops," Keefer said, smiling sheepishly.
"Giant-killer?" Emelye said, plunking into a seat and biting into a little teacake. "Doesn't sound too bad."
The princes stared at her, open-mouthed. "You're not running away screaming?" Calix asked.
"Or wetting yourself in fear?" Keefer asked.
"She has the goat from hell; I doubt she'd be afraid of anything," Leverett grumbled.
Emelye poked him in the arm with her teacake. "I'll take that as a compliment, thank you very much," she said. Leverett sunk lower in his seat. "And, no, I'm not afraid. Why should I?"
"These giants are people eaters," Leverett said. "They've been rampaging through some of the northern villages."
"Hm," Emelye said thoughtfully. "I haven't heard of them. I'll have to go check my books."
She got up to peruse her little library, but Jeanetta put a hand on her arm. "You don't need to look at your own books, Emmalina," she said. "The princes have said we're to go to with them to the palace. You can study there."
"Wait, Jeanetta-" Emelye interrupted.
"You can tell them apart?" Keefer said.
"Only if they call me by name. Jeanetta calls me Emmalina, Julietta calls me Emelye," she explained. She turned to Jeanetta. "What is all this ballyhoo about going to the palace?"
"'Ballyhoo'," Leverett snickered. "What a quaint turn of phrase."
Emelye kicked his shin under the table.
"'Our father, King Gaurav the Fourteenth, requires the magical workings of Emmalina Schmeadling, who doth offer her services in the western village of Ciderbarrel, so that she might destroy the race of flesh- devouring giants that doth plague the northernmost regions, and shalt offer unto this Emmalina Schmeadling the uses of his library, treasury, and armory, to thus rid us of this fearsome plague'," Calix recited. "It's all here in this messenger packet. I didn't feel like memorizing all of it."
Emeleye snatched up the message and skimmed it quickly. "I don't want to go to the palace," she said, handing Calix the letter. "It's very nice of His Majesty to think of me, but I have no desire to go. Find someone else."
"But Emelye," Julietta protested. "Whyever not?"
"I don't want to live in the palace," Emelye said flatly. "Not in a thousand years."
"You won't be there for long," Leverett said, tipping back in his chair and staring at the wood grain in the ceiling. "It's only for you to gather research, armies, things like that. Honestly, you peasants-"
He didn't get to finish because Emelye planted her hand on his knee and brought his chair down to the ground with a firm thwack. "Oh, and that's so royal of you," she said. "Tipping back in your chair. I'm sure that your royal family members all tip back in their thrones."
"She touched me!" Leverett wailed. "She touched me! The peasant touched me!"
"Emmalina, you really should apologize to His Highness," Jeanetta said, but Emelye had already stomped outside.
"What's wrong with you?" Sully asked around a mouthful of grass.
Emelye thunked to the ground beside him and flopped her arm around his neck. "The king wants me to destroy a swarm of man-eating giants," she said.
"That's good news," Sully said. "Well, not about the man-eating part, but the king would most likely pay you very well."
"But I would have to go the palace for a while," Emelye said. "I don't want to. All those snobs. Like that prince."
"Well, the likelihood of an entire royal family being snobbish is about twenty to one," Sully offered.
"Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"It can be."
"You're dumber than Oxnard the blacksmith."
"You're uglier than Wisnawa the innkeeper."
"You're fatter than Begabry the baker."
"Are you talking to your goat?"
Emelye jumped to her feet in surprise. Prince Leverett gave her a funny look. "I like my goat," she said.
"I'm sure," Leverett said. "I came to apologize. It was not very princely of me to insult you so rapaciously. After all, you are only a peasant, and I suppose I should learn to level with your kind, so to speak, since after all I am going to rule over you-" He broke off. "Your goat is snarling at me."
"Believe me, the feeling is mutual," Emelye said, clenching her fists. "That's your idea of an apology?"
Leverett blinked. "Yes," he said. "I believe I apologized to you quite admirably, in fact."
Emelye snorted. "An admirable apology! Points on alliteration, highness, but you fail in social skills." She spun on her heel and started towards the house. The prince made no attempt to follow her. Author's Note: Yay! My first original fic posted on the site. Well, not quite original. The basis comes from an old Irish fairy tale called "Molly Whuppie." Maybe I should have kept the name, ne? By the way, the girl's name is pronounced Emily Shmeed-ling. Just spelled funny. This story is dedicated to my three bestest editors in the whole big wide world- Jessica Reaguer, Jennie Calhoun, and April Price (especially April, who is figuring out as we speak about the reason Leverett hates goats...). Oh, and dedicated to Amanda Loomis too, as soon as she, erm, reads the story... I love fairy tales, and this one is very close to my heart. I write at least three pages a day on this one, so it should be updated regularly. Lots of love and huggles from Keitorin Asthore!!!
Schmeadling Sisters Sewing Shoppe and Magical Services.
She might be a Schmeadling sister, but she couldn't sew. But she could do magic. Besides, her sisters were thrilled that they didn't have to spend extra time picking out her bad stitches.
Emelye pushed open the door. Above her head the little bells, crafted by the best silversmith in Ciderbarrel, tinkled like fairy chimes. She paused to look at them. She'd always wanted to meet a fairy. However, fairies usually weren't of the sort to go bad and then need a human to call upon her services to exterminate or mind-mend.
"Are you all right?"
One of her sisters was staring at her. Emelye shook her head. "Hm?"
"Are you all right?" the blonde sister repeated.
"I was just daydreaming, Jeanetta," Emelye reassured her.
"I'm Julietta," her sister said, pouting in an adorable way.
"Right," Emelye said. "I was just joking with you, Julietta."
Julietta didn't look quite mollified. "Your goat is making funny noises again," she said.
Emelye slapped her forehead. "I forgot!" she hollered, running pell- mell out the door. "Sully! Sully, I'm sorry!"
The little white goat stomped its foot and snorted. "Some apology," he grunted. "You've kept me in here all morning."
"Pardon me, your highness," Emelye said, opening the gate to the goat's little shed. "Might the freedom of the yard please thee?"
"It might," Sully said.
Suddenly she heard the whinny of a horse. Emelye looked up. A horseman had paused at her gate. He dismounted and strode to her front door. She was so involved in watching that she didn't notice her disgruntled goat. Sully rammed her in the rear, sending her flying into the dirt and mud of the yard.
"Oberon's breath, you stupid goat!" Emelye cursed.
Julietta opened the door. "Can I help you, sir?" she asked politely.
The young man took off his helmet. "I'm afraid I'm lost, miss," he said, his tone lordly and his bearing noble. "Can you tell me where I might find Miss Emmalina Schmeadling?"
Julietta looked up at the sign bearing the name "Schmeadling" in big red letters, then back at the young man. "She's right there," she said, pointing at her younger sister.
Emelye frantically brushed dirt clods away from her apron. The young man raised an eyebrow. "Miss Emmalina Schmeadling?"
"Emelye, if you please," she said.
"You have...a little something on your skirt," the young man said.
Sully snorted. Emelye gave him a kick as she pulled a dandelion out of her ear. "I know," she sighed. "What d'you have? Gremlins? Goblins?"
"More than that, I'm afraid," he said. Then he did a double take. "You...are Emmalina Schmeadling?"
"That I am," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "So, what d'you have?"
Two more horsemen approached, these two considerably taller and more muscular than the first one. "Have you found her?" one of them called.
Emelye's horseman pulled a face. "She is entirely unacceptable," he said. "She's so...dirty."
"I'm not usually like this!" Emelye protested.
The other horseman laughed. "Well, she is rather attractive for an old crone," he commented.
"Old crone?"
"That's precisely it," Emelye's horseman said. "She's not an old crone. She's hardly older than I am."
"I'll be seventeen in two and a half weeks," Emelye volunteered.
"And entirely too outspoken," he continued. "I've never had a mere peasant speak to me so rudely before."
"Mere peasant?" she gasped, rolling up her sleeves. "All right, now you've gone too far." Sully bared his teeth. "See? You've even made my goat angry."
The young man backed up. "Oh, please," he pleaded. "Call off your goat. I hate farmyard animals."
Emelye grabbed Sully by his red leather collar. "I'll call him off if you explain why you're here and why you're insulting me," she said. "You have ten seconds."
"My father has need of the services of Miss Emmalina Schmeadling," the young man said, edging away from the feisty girl and her deranged goat.
"Well, who's your fa, then?" Emelye asked.
"King Gaurav the Fourteenth," he answered.
Emelye was so surprised she forgot and let go of Sully's collar. The goat, furious at the slight to his mistress, trampled the prince into the dirt. "Oh!" Emelye said. "I'm so sorry, your Highness." She yanked her wayward goat back and offered her dirty hand to help the prince up. "I truly am, Highness, I just didn't know it was you."
The prince glowered and pushed himself up without taking her offe
. His older brothers howled with laughter. "Most amusing, young miss," the oldest one finally had the breath to say. "I dare say I've never seen Leverett quite so humbled before."
"Shut up, Keefer," Leverett scowled. The older prince started laughing again, but the other brother elbowed him in the side.
"Prince Keefer, Prince Calix," Julietta smiled sweetly. She'd had the presence of mind to run upstairs and change into her best gown. "If you'd care to come inside, my sister Julietta and I might offered you some refreshments."
"I thought you were Julietta," Emelye said.
"I'm Jeanetta," the sister said. The two older princes dismounted and followed the pretty blonde eagerly.
"I suppose you'll have to come inside too," Emelye said to Leverett. "If you'd care to come inside...well, whatever my sister said." The prince followed his brothers, muttering violently under his breath.
"That wasn't very nice, Sully," Emelye rebuked as she let the goat into the yard.
"He deserved it," Sully said, defensive. His mistress latched the gate and gave him a loving yank on the horns.
Emelye used the back door to get into the little apartment above the store where she and her sisters lived. Her own room was in the loft above that, with a steeply sloped ceiling and two circular windows that she had never really gotten around to cleaning. Emelye poured some of the lukewarm water, heated from the sunlight streaming into the loft, into a bowl and splashed it on her dirty face. The mud oozed off of her skin, leaving behind her too-pale skin with its tiny scar beneath her right eye. Emelye pulled a face at her pallid and bookish mirror image. She grabbed a clean dress out of her little wardrobe and changed quickly. In the process, she hooked one of her shoes in the hem, tripped over herself, and smacked her chin on the floor.
"Oops," she groaned. For the second time that day, she picked herself off the ground. Emelye made her way downstairs, tying her hair ribbons as she went, and slapped her head against the ceiling. That she was used to; she had done it every time she walked down that ladder since they had moved into the shop apartment.
She skittered into the receiving parlor on the shop floor, rubbing her forehead. The three princes were sitting at the tea table with Jeanetta and Julietta. Keefer and Calix looked like giants at a child's tea party, with their massive legs stuffed under the table and their big hands cradling the delicate porcelain cups. Leverett, however, looked like a skinny bird compared to his brothers.
Keefer looked up. "So this is what our fair giant-killer looks like," he said in approval.
Leverett elbowed him hard. "You weren't supposed to say anything about that yet!" he hissed.
"Oops," Keefer said, smiling sheepishly.
"Giant-killer?" Emelye said, plunking into a seat and biting into a little teacake. "Doesn't sound too bad."
The princes stared at her, open-mouthed. "You're not running away screaming?" Calix asked.
"Or wetting yourself in fear?" Keefer asked.
"She has the goat from hell; I doubt she'd be afraid of anything," Leverett grumbled.
Emelye poked him in the arm with her teacake. "I'll take that as a compliment, thank you very much," she said. Leverett sunk lower in his seat. "And, no, I'm not afraid. Why should I?"
"These giants are people eaters," Leverett said. "They've been rampaging through some of the northern villages."
"Hm," Emelye said thoughtfully. "I haven't heard of them. I'll have to go check my books."
She got up to peruse her little library, but Jeanetta put a hand on her arm. "You don't need to look at your own books, Emmalina," she said. "The princes have said we're to go to with them to the palace. You can study there."
"Wait, Jeanetta-" Emelye interrupted.
"You can tell them apart?" Keefer said.
"Only if they call me by name. Jeanetta calls me Emmalina, Julietta calls me Emelye," she explained. She turned to Jeanetta. "What is all this ballyhoo about going to the palace?"
"'Ballyhoo'," Leverett snickered. "What a quaint turn of phrase."
Emelye kicked his shin under the table.
"'Our father, King Gaurav the Fourteenth, requires the magical workings of Emmalina Schmeadling, who doth offer her services in the western village of Ciderbarrel, so that she might destroy the race of flesh- devouring giants that doth plague the northernmost regions, and shalt offer unto this Emmalina Schmeadling the uses of his library, treasury, and armory, to thus rid us of this fearsome plague'," Calix recited. "It's all here in this messenger packet. I didn't feel like memorizing all of it."
Emeleye snatched up the message and skimmed it quickly. "I don't want to go to the palace," she said, handing Calix the letter. "It's very nice of His Majesty to think of me, but I have no desire to go. Find someone else."
"But Emelye," Julietta protested. "Whyever not?"
"I don't want to live in the palace," Emelye said flatly. "Not in a thousand years."
"You won't be there for long," Leverett said, tipping back in his chair and staring at the wood grain in the ceiling. "It's only for you to gather research, armies, things like that. Honestly, you peasants-"
He didn't get to finish because Emelye planted her hand on his knee and brought his chair down to the ground with a firm thwack. "Oh, and that's so royal of you," she said. "Tipping back in your chair. I'm sure that your royal family members all tip back in their thrones."
"She touched me!" Leverett wailed. "She touched me! The peasant touched me!"
"Emmalina, you really should apologize to His Highness," Jeanetta said, but Emelye had already stomped outside.
"What's wrong with you?" Sully asked around a mouthful of grass.
Emelye thunked to the ground beside him and flopped her arm around his neck. "The king wants me to destroy a swarm of man-eating giants," she said.
"That's good news," Sully said. "Well, not about the man-eating part, but the king would most likely pay you very well."
"But I would have to go the palace for a while," Emelye said. "I don't want to. All those snobs. Like that prince."
"Well, the likelihood of an entire royal family being snobbish is about twenty to one," Sully offered.
"Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"It can be."
"You're dumber than Oxnard the blacksmith."
"You're uglier than Wisnawa the innkeeper."
"You're fatter than Begabry the baker."
"Are you talking to your goat?"
Emelye jumped to her feet in surprise. Prince Leverett gave her a funny look. "I like my goat," she said.
"I'm sure," Leverett said. "I came to apologize. It was not very princely of me to insult you so rapaciously. After all, you are only a peasant, and I suppose I should learn to level with your kind, so to speak, since after all I am going to rule over you-" He broke off. "Your goat is snarling at me."
"Believe me, the feeling is mutual," Emelye said, clenching her fists. "That's your idea of an apology?"
Leverett blinked. "Yes," he said. "I believe I apologized to you quite admirably, in fact."
Emelye snorted. "An admirable apology! Points on alliteration, highness, but you fail in social skills." She spun on her heel and started towards the house. The prince made no attempt to follow her. Author's Note: Yay! My first original fic posted on the site. Well, not quite original. The basis comes from an old Irish fairy tale called "Molly Whuppie." Maybe I should have kept the name, ne? By the way, the girl's name is pronounced Emily Shmeed-ling. Just spelled funny. This story is dedicated to my three bestest editors in the whole big wide world- Jessica Reaguer, Jennie Calhoun, and April Price (especially April, who is figuring out as we speak about the reason Leverett hates goats...). Oh, and dedicated to Amanda Loomis too, as soon as she, erm, reads the story... I love fairy tales, and this one is very close to my heart. I write at least three pages a day on this one, so it should be updated regularly. Lots of love and huggles from Keitorin Asthore!!!
