“How creepy is it!” Estella grimaced. “I’m more for fairy tales than creepy.”
“But horror is realistic! And fairy tales are made up to please the simpletons,” Gisela commented with an admonishing tone.
“Then reality is not for me. I want to hear a fairy tale. Read me something else about Queen Raymonda and a dragon!”
Gisela began to flip through the almanac obediently.
“I don’t know where it was,” she said, her fingers tracing the pages as she stumbled over the strange symbols. Gisela frowned. “It looked like witchcraft writings.”
“What are they?”
“It is nothing!” Gisela hurriedly gave her a sweet smile. “You mustn’t worry yourself too much. You’ll make yourself even stupider. So who won the tournament?”
“It is nobody!”
“There’s no such thing. There has to be a winner.”
“Look for yourself!” Estella saw a stadium with only the maimed dead and brutally wounded people left. The royal physician was running among the injured with his medicine chest, muttering something about the intrigues of evil spirits.
“There are devils in the tournament!” The frightened voices of the maidens who had been hurt by the frenzied knights could be heard.
“Now all that’s missing is a dragon!” Gisela made her scholarly opinion.
“I’d like to see a dragon,” Estella said, for which she almost got a slap on the wrist from her tutor.
A stolen mind
So the overseas princes fled from her, believing she was too young and inexperienced to run the country? Now the care of the country had fallen on her, and Estella was no more imposing. Her coronation is coming up, and they whisper about her like she’s a child. Estella herself could hear the chatter of the courtiers as she walked through the corridors of the castle:
“The deceased king bequeathed everything to his only daughter Estella, but she is a fool. The beauty is weak-minded from birth or as a result of some spell cast as a child. That is why there are many astrologers at court who dream of breaking it. The late king was certainly a magician. The guards with their halberds also look like wizards. The princess is being guarded from something.”
Has her hearing become so acute, or are the courtiers whispering so loudly to the ambassadors that they’ve forgotten all decency?
Estella paused to question them further, but thought it unwise to ask about her. It’s better for her to know what’s going on with her, not them. She is going to her own coronation. She is about to become queen of Aluar. She is indeed vigilantly guarded.
But some cunning dwarf has sneaked right into the throne room. How did he slip past the guards? It’s as if he grew out of the floor.
“Your Highness!” He took off his red beret and bowed, touching the floor with his forehead. He bowed with his forehead on the floor, and his diminutive stature made him look ridiculous.
“Have you come to amuse me before the coronation?” Estella guessed and clapped her hands. “Bravo! What other tricks can you do? Would you like to be my jester? As the future queen, may I appoint you right now?”
“Actually,” the dwarf hesitated. “I’ve come to talk about money.”
“Is it about wages?” Estella suggested, innocently. “It’s usually discussed with the King’s Bursar, but he’s been absent recently.”
“No, it is not about salary,” the dwarf scratched his head.
“If not for money, you can serve me for food and lodging. That’s what a lot of servants work for.”
“My Lady, you’re so lovely, I’d pay for the privilege of amusing you myself,” the dwarf said pompously.
What a sweetheart! And she wanted to call the guards to turn him away. He knew how to compliment her, and was obviously eager to curry favor with his new ruler. Perhaps he wanted to ask for preferential treatment for the mines in the west of the kingdom.
Well, he first came to honor her as queen. So she’ll defer to him on everything. No one but him has yet come to the expected coronation, though it should be any minute now. Or had she got the time mixed up? Estella frowned. Could she have been an hour or a day wrong? Arithmetic had always been a problem for her. Especially when it came to dates.
“I have come to give you a gift for your coronation,” a large forged chest, suspiciously resembling those in the treasury of Aluar, appeared beside the dwarf as if from the ground. Even the emblems on the lid are Aluar’s. Probably it was an imitation.
Estella applauded the dwarf again.
“Well done! It’s a treasure! Where did you get it? And how did you get it?”
The dwarf is so small, and the chest is so huge. The dwarf instantly dispelled Estella’s suspicions by easily lifting the huge chest onto his shoulder. Underneath the chest, the tiny bearer wasn’t even noticeable.
“That’s it!” The dwarf finished his show of strength and set the chest back on the floor. No matter how its wrought iron edges damaged the polished parquet. Gisela would scold if Estella stained or ruined anything again on Coronation Day. And she won’t accept explanations that some dwarf has caused trouble, either. She’ll blame it on Estella herself.
“What was it you wanted to ask?” Estella prodded him.
The dwarf hesitated again. He’s shy when it comes to business. But he can carry heavy things like a big man.
“Where did that trunk come from and what’s in it?” Estella became suspicious.
“The chest is from your own treasure,” the dwarf admitted, “but I am by no means a thief. I have not taken a single penny from the treasure. Everything was left inside the chest.”
“Why did you take it without asking?”
“I wanted to do you a favor. I saw how dreamily you looked at the locked treasury, and I thought I should fulfill your whim. Pity I could only get one chest, and even that I had to beat off the occupants of the keep. They nearly sounded the alarm, but in the end we came to an agreement.”
“It’s curious!” Estella drummed her nails on the armrest of her throne.
It was funny that the dwarf had stolen the treasure chest from her only to present it to her. After all, the chest is locked. Perhaps it contains cursed gold which has caused the dwarf so much trouble that he has decided to give it back to its owner. It’s a pity he didn’t come with a confession, but an urgently concocted lie. Gisela would have called the guards to put the thief in prison. But Estella was not called a simpleton for nothing. She decided to take the dwarf at his word. The dwarf was still flirting and wailing:
“You are very beautiful, but I, alas, was driven here by an unpaid debt. I owe so much to your father, that hundreds of years of hard work in the mines will not pay it off. But I can give you a treasure that alone is worth more than all the riches of the world.”
“And what is that?”
“It is your best advisor.”
“What is it? Is it instead of jewels?” Estela was instantly disappointed and was about to call the guards. It sounds too much like fraud. She may be stupid, but she’s not that stupid.
“Think about it. Everyone says you lack wisdom.”
It is right,” she said nervously, remembering a conversation