Page 47 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

“I could send for your parents,” the Bear Princess suggested. “And your friend?”

To say Miss Penworthy had mixed emotions would be redundant. Mortals always have mixed emotions. It’s a weakness of your kind. Right now, her sense of isolation and desire for community was very much at war with her sense that if she was going to be a not-exactly-prisoner in a quasi-real palace over an otherworldly ocean, not having to see her father ever again was actually a pretty major perk.

In the end, isolation and community won.

“Yes,” she replied, “I would like that.”

The Bear Princess nodded her great head, and said, “But be warned. If your friend Miss Bickle comes, she will try to draw you aside and speak with you privately. You must not let her.”

“I don’t suppose,” said Miss Penworthy with a sigh, “you’re allowed to tell me why?”

* * *

To, I’m sure, your tremendous unsurprise, the Bear Princess was not allowed to tell her why.

Which made it very awkward when the day of her family’s visit came and Mr Penworthy, Mrs Penworthy, and Miss Bickle were all sitting around in an uncomfortable silence in a parlour hung with golden tapestries and furnished with golden chairs upholstered in golden cloth.

“Well,” said Miss Bickle very loudly, “isn’t this nice?”

Mr Penworthy, who had never liked Miss Bickle and, since he had no son he wished to marry to her, didn’t mind showing it, shot her a venomous look. “Is it, Lysistrata? Although I will confess, Erica, that your match was advantageous financially, it has been socially detrimental.”

“We had to tell the Arbuthnotts that you’d died,” added her mother. “It seemed simplest.”

It would have been impossible for the mortals, so accustomed to having only one physiology (your species is so strangely reticent about shapeshifting), to tell, but the Bear Princess gave Mrs Penworthy an extremely dirty look. “You liked my riches well enough.”

Mr Penworthy stiffened. “That’s a very vulgar observation to make. Really Erica, though I am glad you have at last consented to marry, I cannot congratulate you on your choice of husband.”

To which Miss Penworthy replied simply, “Wife.”

The parlour echoed with the rattle of china-on-china as Mrs Penworthy set down her teacup and I nobly resisted the urge to spill it in her lap. “I beg your pardon.”

“Wife,” Miss Penworthy said again.

“Are you telling me,” said Mrs Penworthy, her voice thick with outrage, “that thing is a female?”

“I’m telling you that she’s a woman.”

The Bear Princess nodded at this.

“Erica.” Mrs Penworthy’s tone was growing more vicious by the moment. “You clearly do not know what a woman is.”

At this stage, Miss Penworthy was notably quivering, and the Bear Princess looked none best pleased either. So Miss Bickle, ever sensitive to the needs of others, rose, crossed the room to where Miss Penworthy was sitting and hoisted her up by the arm. “I think she might,” she pointed out, “what with her being one and everything. Come, Erica, let us take a walk together. I believe the air would do me good.”

This came as such a relief to Miss Penworthy that it wasn’t until the two of them were in the long gallery that she remembered her wife’s admonition against doing the thing she’d just done. And it wasn’t until they were halfway out the long gallery (which was, it must be said, extremely long) that she plucked up the courage to tell Miss Bickle about it.

“Oh, but this is perfect,” Miss Bickle said, to the surprise of neither Miss Penworthy nor myself. “This is exactly what one must do in the castle of an enchanted lover.”

Miss Penworthy eyed her friend warily. “What is?”

“Disobey their instructions. Especially if they give you exactly one instruction, and that instruction is simul taneously vague and highly specific. Like don’t go into the west wing or don’t ask me my name or don’t look at me after midnight.” She stopped a moment. “Unless of course the instruction is don’t go into this one locked room in the tower, because then you’re quite likely to get murdered.”

“But her only instruction to me was that I wasn’t to speak to you alone,” Miss Penworthy pointed out, “and I’ve done that now.”

Miss Bickle nodded like her neck was on springs. “So you must listen very carefully to everything I say. Your princess is clearly under a curse. Equally clearly, it is your job to break the curse. Now of course technically the curse will probably break by itself if you just carry on being terribly quiet and incurious for another year or so—”

Another year or so seemed like an awfully long time to Miss Penworthy, and she said as much.

“Exactly. Nobody ever breaks a curse by just waiting it out. I mean then it would hardly even be a curse. No, what you have to do is violate her trust in some terrible way—”