Page 49 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

* * *

Once you get beyond those parts of England that appear on conventional maps, navigation becomes less a matter of distance and bearing, and more a matter of plot beats. Which was a trifle inconvenient for our heroines but extremely convenient for me, because as we’ve established, I’m working to a tight wordcount.

“Excuse me,” said Miss Penworthy to an elderly woman holding a golden apple, “my friend and I are looking for a princess who is also a bear, and a palace that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.”

In London, asking a question like that could get you stabbed. In the Elsewhere, it got her a horse, and a free golden apple.

“Do you think,” Miss Penworthy asked her friend, weighing the bauble in her hand, “that we actually need this?”

The springs in Miss Bickle’s neck were retuned once more. “Oh yes. Undoubtedly. Providence never offers you unnecessary golden apples.”

Over the years of their acquaintance, Miss Penworthy had learned not to ask too many questions of Miss Bickle, so she took the golden apple in hand and accepted that they would no doubt find a use for it in time.

As they would no doubt find a use for the golden comb they got from the second old woman. And when they came to the third…

“You must be the one she was meant to wed,” the old woman said. I wish to stress that none of these old women were actually me in disguise. That would be a violation of my oaths as a storyteller, and I always keep my oaths to the letter. “Here, take my horse and—”

“No—” insisted Miss Penworthy. “I’m sorry Lizzie, but a spinning wheel made of gold is simply too impractical. It must weigh a ton. An actual ton. Also, I already have a horse. I already have two horses. Why do you people keep trying to give me horses?”

But neither the old woman nor Miss Bickle would take nothat’s-manifestly-impractical for an answer, and so the spinning wheel joined the comb and the apple on the back of an extremely indignant horse, and together the four of them (seven if you count the inanimate objects, and really isn’t it rather reductive not to) set off down a road that, all Miss Penworthy’s life, had only ever really led her one way.

It led her to the palace that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

* * *

The witch who ruled that palace was not actually a witch at all. She was a troll. This made things rather awkward for me since trolls are a subset of fairy-kind and that meant she could actually see me.

“Fair lady,” I said to her. I got no further.

“I’m not fair,” she pointed out. “I’m a troll. My nose is three ells long and my hands are talons.”

“Fairness,” I replied, “is very much subjective. Regardless, I come to say that you are to be visited by the suitor of your captive princess, and that I am here to collect the story for my master, in accordance with the ancient laws.”

The Troll Queen lowered her head in understanding.

“Also I’m on a bit of a clock, so if you could make sure this part was… y’know… pacy, it would really help me out.”

The Troll Queen raised her head again and glared at me down her three-ell nose.

“Or not.”

At, as happenstance and narrative convention would have it, that exact moment, Miss Penworthy and Miss Bickle arrived at the gates of the palace, and the Troll Queen’s troll servants showed them up to her troll throne where she waited for them, trollishly.

It took a while. Because the ladies were still dragging a solid-gold spinning wheel.

Miss Penworthy prostrated herself before the Troll Queen. “Dread queen,” – it was a slightly outdated term of address, and I suspected Miss Bickle had been behind it – “I have come many miles through… moderate hardship to this, the palace that lies east of the sun and west of the moon. You have taken my wife, and I would have her returned to me.”

The Troll Queen sneered. “She’s my wife now.”

From just behind the prone form of Miss Penworthy, Miss Bickle made a gentle coughing sound. “Shouldn’t that be her choice?” she asked. “The bear’s, I mean, not Erica’s.”

“You really don’t know how this works, do you?” replied the Troll Queen.

It had been a rhetorical question, but Lysistrata Bickle was immune to rhetorical questions. She was also, and this was a quality of hers about which I had very mixed feelings, an enthusiast. “I think I might know how it works quite well, in fact. You see, on the way here we were given three golden objects by three mysterious elderly women, and I feel certain that Erica is expected to trade each one in turn for a night with the princess. Only you’ll obviously have played some trick so that she doesn’t actually get what she thinks she’s bargained for. Like maybe the princess is drugged or maybe she’s you in disguise or maybe there’s some other condition that we have to agree to that is very difficult.”

Surreptitiously, the Troll Queen slid a little green phial out of sight behind the throne. “You seem very well informed.”

Miss Bickle smiled. “I’ve had experience with this sort of thing. Even though it always seems complicated it’s usually just a matter of being good and true-hearted and persistent.”