3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale by Danbert Nobacon Page A

mother, and through her I became friends with your father. You won’t remember, but I met you when you were two winters old.”
     
    Stormy didn’t remember, and even if she had, the idea that this monster, majestic as he was, had been friends with her mother was more stunning. “You knew my mother?” said Stormy dreamily. And then, like it was pushing off from the bottom of a deep pool, a more urgent thought broke the surface bursting for breath: “Do you know where my dad is?”
     
    “Yes and yes. Yes, your mother was the bravest young woman I have ever known, and I hope for no less from her daughter.” At this, the Black Bird looked sternly at Stormy, who immediately straightened her back.
     
    He gave her a look of qualified approval. “And yes, I know where your father is. I’ve come to take you to him.”
     
    “Oh oh,” The Fool whistled. But the Black Bird turned a quelling eye his way, and he was still.
     
    “First …,” the Bird went on.
     
    “But what about my dad?” bawled Stormy, stepping forward.
     
    “Stormy. Before bravery comes wisdom. And before both comes patience.”
     
    Stormy took a breath, stepped back, and the Bird nodded his approval again.
     
    “I have brought something of the greatest importance,” the Bird explained, “to leave here in safety until we can return for it in happier times. After it is safely bestowed, then we’ll go to your father.”
     
    At this, Stormy, The Witch, and Glamour looked perplexed. The bird plainly was not carrying anything with him.
     
    Stormy found herself moving sideways and looking around behind him, but still nothing. And as she did so, the huge bird squatted slightly, as if he were about to do his business. The feathers around his eyes and face formed the faintest of grimaces, as if showing the business in progress. It was a mark of his great strength of personality that all of this looked quite natural, and not funny at all, as it might have looked if you or I tried it.
     
    “My undercarriage,” said the Bird, answering an unasked question.
     
    A moment later, emerging from below his probber’s nose came a sphere, which became an ovaloid, which became an egg as it fell onto the dirt. The Bird shuffled gracefully around, scraping a shallow hole in the dirt with one talon. The Gricklegrack stood the egg upright with a deft movement of his other talon. The egg was about three feet tall and looked like a gray-blue rock. Old and pockmarked as it was, at some time it evidently had an overall sheen, a few traces of which remained.
     
    “Aaaghhhh!” The Witch hissed.
     
    “Whaaatizzit?” chorused Glamour and The Fool.
     
    “The Egg of Geddon,” cried The Witch. “It spells doom.”
     
    “Mother! Don’t be so melodramatic.”
     
    “It is in the prophecy!”
     
    “Which prophecy? If you could keep track of all the prophecies you have made, been party to, or read about, we wouldn’t be able to turn over a stone without fear of unleashing every volcanemon that ever spouted fire into the air! Honestly!”
     
    “The Egg of Geddon was in your father’s leaves,” said The Witch, turning a staring eye upon Stormy. “Tis said the creature who will be hatched is all knowing, all seeing, and wiser than the Ancient Ones. Tis said the creature within will eat the world!”
     
    Glamour looked a little more interested now, while Stormy was beginning to see The Witch as a serial harbinger of doom and gloom, in a world that could not possibly get much worse.
     
    With all attention on the egg, The Gricklegrack resumed its crouch and, from a secret hiding place, brought out a plain wooden box, which clattered on the ground. The Bird drummed his left talon rhythmically on the box while he waited for the bickering to peter out.
     
    “I have a double harness in here,” he said, still drumming on the box. “It won’t be comfortable, but it will do the job.”
     
    At this, The Fool groaned. “I knew it,” he muttered. “My fear of