In the middle of the night she came into the nursery very quietly. No one else noticed that the grass was fading. It had taken her baby for its own inscrutable reasons: and it would not willingly let her go. It was alive it had, if not a mind, then at least a will of its own. The queen did not believe in the “malign sorcerer” for whom all the king’s men were hunting. But the queen thought of how you might lift and tug and tear-and have in your arms a baby bleeding from ten thousand wounds. Perhaps she was missing her last chance to free the child. It was terrible to wait, because the grass might be growing weaker just to grow stronger again in a little while. But before she could call for the servants or the king, something stopped her. Baby is so quiet.” She crept out of the room, and rushed down the stairs in a swirl of skirts, biting her fists in excitement. She said aloud, as if the grass was a human enemy and could be deceived, “I think I will call the maid, and go downstairs. The springy green coils were relaxing the brilliant sheen of life was fading from them . . . Was it possible? Was the grip of those determined tendrils getting weaker? Yes, it was true. She put out a finger to touch the baby’s hand . . . “She looks so sad,” thought the queen, and leaned closer, so that the grass blades fluttered in her breath. Her mother, who was watching, saw a change come over that small, familiar face. On the third day, the princess, who till then had kept up her usual baby cooing and babbling, grew very quiet. She smiled and slept and woke, and the grass blades twined ever closer and thicker around her tiny limbs, until only her face and one hand remained visible. The infant had a little peace then, while messages were sent out, chasing up magical practitioners from all the lands around. “You’re not so much losing a daughter, as gaining a window box.” His spells had been helpless, and his nerves were all on edge. “Look at it this way,” said the court magician. At last they decided to dig up the whole patch of grass on which she was lying, and carry it back to the nursery roots, dirt, and all. She protested that if all they wanted was to get the baby loose from the grass, a couple of pounds of high explosive, strategically placed, would probably do the trick. But when the king sent for his enchanted, diamond-bladed broadsword and started to saw away, dangerously near to the child’s throat, and the baby started to scream-the queen called a halt. They tried fire, they tried weed-killer . . . They tried steel, stone, bronze, and even a knife of sharpened shell: a ritual object, relic of the old days when a king succeeded not by inheritance but by the sacred murder of his predecessor. Every cutting edge that the royal household could think of was brought down to the orchard. But they held the child in a grip stronger than steel wire. The green tendrils that were wound around her little body seemed as soft and fragile to the touch as grass blades should. “How do we get her free again? That’s the question.” “But never mind who did it!” stormed the king, pacing up and down beside the tree while the nursemaids wept in a huddle. Or did the grasses embrace her because they had found a sister, as new and fresh and innocent as they? Perhaps, as some authorities later claimed, it was the baby herself who made the magic. Why did it happen? Was it the magic-making of a distant sorcerer, offended by some slight the royal family had forgotten? If it was, nobody ever found out. So the nursemaids put the little princess down under an apple tree, wrapped in her shawls, and ran away to play tag under the twisted apple branches, to keep themselves warm. The sky was blue and very clear, but the wind was cold. It was April, and down in the orchard the first flashing blades of the new year’s growth were pushing aside the old, worn, winter stuff.
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