The Goose Girl- from the Way of the Fae

The Goose Girl and the magical horse that saved her ass

Sometimes, you find yourself in the strangest situations. The story I’m about to tell you is all because I did a favor for that pox ridden, sly witted, shadow tongued knave called Robin Goodfellow, he who serves at Oberon’s left hand and trapped me in a sad, sad state.

Suffice to say without lingering upon the circumstance, for all know that a full day and night could be spent in speculation upon Puck’s antecedents, that I was once trapped in the body of a horse. For two… hundred… years.

It took the first hundred years to regain the power of speech, then another fifty to keep humans from trying to kill me or disenchant me. At long last, I came into a royal stable, and my situation began to look up. Eventually, I befriended a young princess who was, unfortunately, rather fond of having a talking horse that had a bit of common sense about her. She discovered how to break the curse Puck had left on me, and bound it upon me so that once her daughter was settled and happy, I could resume my own natural form and go about my business. 

Well and so, at least it was a light at the end of the tunnel. And I wasn’t completely powerless, so I made sure the girl was decently pretty, figuring she’d get married off faster. 

And sure enough, the princess got to be about that age in which girl people notice there are boy people and vice versa, and a king of the neighboring land asked for her hand in marriage. Within the month, we were packed up, bag and baggage, with the queen reminding me of her promise to me, sealed with a few drops of blood that she placed on a kerchief in the princess’s pocket. 

We set off on a beautiful spring day, the kind of day in which all is inherently right in the world, and it’s a world that you know you won’t have to go about as a horse much longer. I was daydreaming off the lovely clothes I would wear and the meals I would eat and the company I would keep once I no longer had a tail and hooves.

Of course, that’s when it happened, because that’s the kind of cursed luck I’ve had since running afoul of Robin bloody Goodfellow. The princess grew thirsty and asked her one servant she was sent with to fetch her water from the brook. 

The sly creature sniffed and tossed her hair. “Get it yourself, I’m not getting all muddy before meeting the king just because you’re too stupid to fill a water bag.”

I pinned the servant with a steady glare, and spoke to the princess, who was already sliding out of the saddle to quench her thirst. “If your mother knew of this, it would break her heart,” I muttered, for it would have been slightly uncouth to scream, “Slap this unseemly shrew this instant, you coward!”

You know, the way things ended up, I probably would have been better off trying to put some starch in that spine immediately. Ah well, hindsight.

But I didn’t, and she didn’t, and we rode on. 

By midafternoon, the princess was again thirsty and the same disgraceful mummer’s show played out. Only this time when the princess leaned out over the water, the kerchief carrying the queen’s blood (and the realization of all my dreams of being in my own form again) slipped out of the princess’s pocket and was whisked away by the river.

The servant crowed in triumph. “Now that you’ve lost your mother’s blessing, I will no longer be a servant, but a princess.” In short order, she’d stolen the spineless princess’s clothing and climbed upon my back to ride into the king’s castle as his bride. I meekly went along with this indignity, trusting that the king could see for himself who was of royal blood and who was a serving maid. 

And if somehow he did manage to miss it, I would simply take the first opportunity to enlighten him. Truth be told, I was far more concerned about the missing kerchief than any other part of this little misadventure.

Unfortunately, the false princess was brighter than I gave her credit for. No sooner had we entered the courtyard than she demanded I be put to death for offending her. And the true princess, she claimed, should be given the simplest of tasks, for she was lacking in wit. (To be fair, the way her mouth gaped open after the former servant slapped her for speaking out of turn, that part of the story wasn’t hard to carry off.)

The king must have really wanted the alliance, for he took his bride at her word. And you know, I was still pondering the chances that dying as a horse would release me into my own form and let me put things right.

But no. My princess begged the knacker to stuff and hang my head on the wall where she could pass it every morning while she went off to her new occupation of herding geese. 

I swear I’m not inventing this tale. She really just wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You know what’s worse than being a live horse? Well I’ll bloody tell you. It’s being a damned dead horse’s head who has to say nice things to hopefully bring some sense into the vast, empty, echoing wasteland that existed between the deposed princess’s ears!

So once a day, throughout the rest of the spring and summer, I got a total of about five minutes a day to give gentle, wise advice that equated to ‘stop being a moron and get me out of this mess’. And smell myself as I began to slowly decay. 

Boredom does not begin to describe how tedious this was. I started learning to imitate the voices of others to get the kitchen staff to pick fights with each other. And then I moved on to the stable hands, and though it took a little longer, I picked up the cadences from the gentry. 

That’s when I really got started.

The true princess was just never quite going to get there on her own, you see. Something about not wanting to be killed blah blah blah, yadda yadda. So I started a whisper campaign. In all sorts of voices, just barely able to be heard, I spoke of the goose girl and her beauty and kindness and how she was surely not some simple maid.

Eventually, as summer wound into fall and the flies, thankfully, died down (no pun intended), the king began to look upon the simple goose girl. I made sure her hair was as golden, her profile as nobly pure, and her skin as white as my dregs of magic could make it. 

And, you know, because fighting fair is fighting stupid, maybe I also made the false princess’s voice more like the cawing of a crow, her eyes squinty, gave her the gout, you know, just a few minor inconveniences. If the king’s affections for her had been true, he could have overlooked all of that.

But kings are the damndest people, and it was clear that even a half blind, croaking, gimping wife with an alliance was better than no wife and no allies. 

So… and I want to stress, this was a very long time ago and the reports are somewhat mixed. But it’s probably not a coincidence that right about then, one of her breasts sagged about two handspans from where it had been, and she sort of went bald.

At this point, the weight of the king’s crown was such that he liked to go for long rides with just a few retainers. Because roaming the countryside aimlessly is far better than staying home with your wife when your wife has… issues. 

On his way to the stable early one morning, he happened upon the goose girl and I speaking. “Oh,” I cried loudly, “how your poor queen mother’s heart would be broken to see you thusly, Your Highness!”

That (finally!) got the king’s attention. “Hark, what is it you say, ah, horse?”

I glared down at the goose girl and growled, “Tell. Him. NOW.”

But did she? Nooooooooo. 

Thankfully, the king was a good deal brighter than I’d initially thought. “I would hate to intrude on a private conversation,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking to his toes. He cast a canny glance at me, and I wondered just how much he’d put together of late. “Why don’t I just go along in for my mount and you carry on telling your story like I’m not even here.”

The goose girl dropped a curtsy and held it until the king was out of sight. “Well, Falada, I don’t know why I’d need to tell you the story, you were there.”

If I could have slapped my forehead in frustration, I would have. As it was, there was a long suffering sigh that refused to be contained. “But Your Highness, I would so enjoy hearing it in your sweet dulcet tones and better understand, from your point of view, what adventures we’ve had.”

Have you ever noticed that some people love to talk about themselves? Without a moment’s hesitation, she spilled out the whole sad, sorry tale (or at least the parts she knew, to be fair). 

As she went on (and on and on), I could have slapped myself a second time… if I’d just asked her the right question, she would have been spilling her guts to anyone in earshot for months. Then I had to remind myself that it also would have been a fine way to get the poor girl killed if the tale had come to the false queen’s ears.

The king, of course, took a rather dim view of his queen’s involvement and had her summoned at once. Her appearance was rather a shock even to me- she hadn’t been given leave to don a wig or any kind of underpinnings that could have evened out that whole chestal region issue. 

I almost felt a little bad. Almost.

“Good morrow, wife!” he fairly shouted. “Tell me, if you would, how you were serve justice upon a lady in waiting that betrayed her mistress?”

Peering into the company, the queen was just able to make out the goose girl, and smirked with triumph. “Why, my lord,” she said, very slowly to try and minimize the gravelly, harsh tone, “I should cause her to be put into a barrel studded with nails and dragged through the streets by a team of horses until she was quite assuredly dead.” Sweetly she smiled at my princess.

I wriggled my nose, and the queen’s smile was a little less sweet as she spat out a tooth. Maybe two, it was a little hard to tell from the angle I was forced to observe the scene from.

In a most royal fashion, the king suppressed a shudder and called for such a barrel to be created and brought forth. There was a very strained silence in the courtyard, with no one really knowing what would happen next. With extreme restraint, I managed not to wreak any further havoc upon the queen.

Once the ordered barrell was rolled out, the king ordered his wife to be loaded up and executed in the manner she had chosen. The gasps of shock from the members of the court underlaid the wails and screams from the queen as the deed was done. 

As for the king, he merely gave a curt nod of his head before turning to his chamberlain and asking that the goose girl be taken and offered hospitality fit for a princess. With the faintly disapproving look that seems to be universal to the breed, he did so, with their withdrawal, everyone went to go spread the delicious gossip.

Everyone that is, except the king. Once the courtyard had cleared, and sighed and walked over to lean against the wall I was unwillingly perched on, gazing up at me. “I’m guessing you aren’t really a horse.”

“You’d be guessing right.”

He smiled. “My old nanny told me a lot of stories when I was a child, and promised me that if I was especially observant and clever, I might get to see some real magic in the world.”

I turned my head and lifted a brow. “So how did that turn out for you?”

That got me a laugh. “About as well as it did for you, I think. Since it would appear you’ve been on my side the whole time, and I’m getting my happily ever after, it would seem the least I could do is a few favors for you.”

My mind raced, knowing I needed to not waste any tiny bit of this goodwill but still get everything I could out of this man while he was in a good mood. And how not? As far as he was concerned, he woke up that morning next to a screeching hag and if I gauged the look in his eye right, tonight he’d be bedding down with a beautiful princess. That brought an immediate thought to mind.

“Well, could we start with an actual wedding this time? You know, it’s always interesting to me to meet the families- girls so often turn out to be just like their mothers,” I said, smiling toothily. “Think of what you could have avoided!”

The king coughed into his fist, and it was suspiciously laugh like. “Fair point, but I’m also willing to bet the servant’s mother doesn’t quite look like that.” He stared at me pointedly.

“LIkely not. Do you ever notice that sometimes what’s inside someone just overshadows what’s outside? I think it’s more a case of that,” I said, nodding as sagely as I could, mounted on a wall. “But your people have been through a lot, and a wedding is also a fresh beginning that spreads hope and goodwill!”

“Alright, alright fine! I’ll throw a wedding, and yes, I’ll invite the bride’s family. Anything else?” The king’s tone was less genial now- he really had been looking forward to bedding the goose girl.

I made my next plea as plaintive as possible. “Can you please get me the hell down off this wall? Maybe put my head on a stick or something and get someone to move me around a little? Do you have any idea how damned boring your courtyard is?”

As I’d intended, the king laughed and made it so. I decided it was fair to go ahead and like him- any testiness was kind of understandable considering the ups and downs of his day.

So it was that I was officially invited to the wedding, with the court jester riding on the stick as though it were an actual horse. Normally I would have objected to such treatment as being far beneath my dignity, but I’d seen the seating chart for the reception, and the jester happened to be seated right next to the bride’s mother. 

I think seeing me was something as a surprise, at least, her eyes bugged out rather impressively. “Falada? What in the world…?”

Jerking my nose towards the radiant bride, I growled, “Does she look happy?”

“Um.. err… yes, she does,” the queen admitted.

“Then get. Me. Off. This. Thing!” I snarled.

And that’s how, during the toasts, a dead horse head on a stick turned back into a fairy. We were as discreet as possible, of course. It just wouldn’t do to upstage the bride on her day. I seated myself demurely next to the queen and spent the service wiggling my toes.

Have you ever had the purely indescribable sensation of wiggling your toes after they’ve been hooves for nearly two hundred years?

No, of course you bloody haven’t! I’m the only idiot that managed to be stuck in horse form for that long- I know because I went and looked it the hell up!

I had to wait until I had an appropriate amount of privacy to have a good all over scratch… hands really are just the most amazing things. You can’t fully appreciate them until you’ve had to do a very long time without them.

Graciously, I accepted the king’s offer of the best suite of rooms outside of his own. While he’d been aware that he’d stumbled across some kind of magic, he had no idea that he’d cut off the head of a faery, and was most contrite.

To be fair, I had been awaiting his reaction with a certain amount of glee. If I had been less immediately impacted by how terrible and degrading a curse can be, I might have been tempted to apply one for having my head cut off and mounted on a wall. As it was, stuffed with the choicest delicacies two kingdoms had to offer and a bit giddy with my first cups of wine in I couldn’t remember how long, I chose to let bygones be bygones and accept his and the new queen’s most fulsome apologies.

Even the new queen’s mother had the grace to say that she had been overly greedy for her child and that she should have freed me as soon as she had the means to do so.

But for the evening of the wedding I was nothing but the kindest, gentlest guest one could wish for.

The next day, I sat down all the royals within ready reach and gave them a very stern demonstration of why it’s extremely impolite and unwise to hold leverage over a fae. I must have been very impressive- there was a lot of blanching, pale faces, retching, and out and out fainting at some points.

I think it was safe to say they took my point almost immediately. The reparation offers for all offenses to my person real or imagined were truly gratifying.

Mollified, I lingered in that fair kingdom for a goodly span of time. I had my little princess to think of, after all. While the king seemed like a decent enough fellow, I hadn’t quite forgotten that he’d pitched his first wife into a nail studded barrel and had her dragged through the streets. And yes, you could say that for all her painful empty headedness, I had grown to be a bit fond of the girl.

After the birth of their second child (a fine girl they named Falada that I freely gave my blessing to), I was satisfied that the king meant to mind his manners and went on my way to find that loathsome blackhearted bastard Puck. And yes, I found him.

But what happened then is another story.