One day, the handmaiden arrived with news.
“Has my father forgiven me?” the princess asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid not,” the handmaiden replied. “He’s told the kingdom you’re dead. Your funeral is tomorrow.”
The princess was heartbroken. She broke out of the dungeon that very night, escaped the palace, and with her handmaiden she left the kingdom and her old life behind. They traveled incognito for months, wandering the land, taking domestic work where they could find it. The princess smeared her face with dirt so she would not be recognized and never opened her mouth to anyone but the handmaiden, who told people that the dirty-faced girl she traveled with was mute.
Then one day they heard a story about a prince in the faraway kingdom of Thrace whose body sometimes assumed a form so peculiar that it had become a national scandal.
“Could it possibly be true?” said the princess. “Could he be like me?”
“I say it’s worth finding out,” the handmaiden replied.
So they set out on a long journey. It took two weeks to cross the Pitiless Waste on horseback, and two weeks more to cross the Great Cataract by ship. When they finally arrived in the kingdom of Thrace they were sunburned, windburned, and nearly broke.
“I couldn’t possibly meet the prince looking like this!” the princess said, so they spent the last of the money they’d earned and went to a bathhouse, where they were washed and perfumed and anointed with oils. When they emerged, the princess looked so beautiful that she turned the heads of everyone who saw her, male or female.
“I’ll show my father I’m marriageable!” the princess said. “Let’s go meet this peculiar prince.”
So they went to the palace and asked for him, but the answer they got was disappointing indeed.
“I’m sorry,” a palace guard told them, “but the prince is dead.”
“What happened?” asked the handmaiden.
“He fell ill with a mysterious disease and died in the night,” said the guard. “It was all very sudden.”
“That’s exactly what the king said happened to you,” the handmaiden whispered to the princess.
That night they snuck into the palace dungeon, and in the darkest, dankest cell, they found a giant garden slug with the head of a rather handsome young man.
“Are you the prince?” the handmaiden asked him.
“I am,” the repulsive thing answered. “When I’m feeling dejected, my body turns into a gelatinous, quivering mass. My mother finally found out and locked me down here, and now, as you can see, I’ve become a slug almost head to toe.” The prince wriggled toward the bars of his cell, his body leaving a dark stain on the floor behind him. “I’m sure she’ll come to her senses any day now, though, and let me out.”
The princess and the handmaiden exchanged an awkward glance.
“Well, I have good news and bad news,” said the handmaiden. “The bad news is your mother’s told everyone you’re dead.”
The prince began to wail and moan, and immediately a pair of gelatinous antennae began to grow from his forehead. Now even his head was turning slug.
“Wait!” the handmaiden said. “There’s still the good news!”
“Oh yes, I forgot,” the prince sniffled, and the antennae stopped growing. “What is it?”
“This is the princess of Frankenbourg,” said the handmaiden.
The princess stepped forward into a pool of light, and for the first time the prince saw her fantastic beauty.
“You’re a princess?” the prince stuttered, his eyes going wide.
“That’s right,” said the handmaiden. “And she’s here to rescue you.”
The prince was thrilled. “I don’t believe it!” he said. “How?”
His antennae were shrinking back into his head and the tubelike mass of his upper body was already beginning to separate into arms and a torso. Just like that, he was turning human again.
“Like this!” said the princess, and she spat a stream of venomous acid into the lock of the prince’s cell door. It began to hiss and smoke as the lock melted.
The prince recoiled in alarm. “What are you?” he said.
“I’m peculiar, like you!” the princess replied. “When my father found out my secret, he disowned me and locked me up, too. I know just how you’re feeling!”
As she spoke, her forked tongue flicked from her mouth.
“And your tongue,” the prince said. “That’s part of what’s . . . wrong with you?”
“And this,” the princess said, and she slipped an arm from her dress and showed him the scales across her back.
“I see,” said the prince, his voice sorrowful again. “I should’ve known this was too good to be true.”
As a tear rolled down his cheek, his arms began to disappear, joining again with his torso in a wobbly mass of slug flesh.
“Why are you sad?” the princess said. “We’re a perfect match! Together we could show our parents that we’re not unmarriageable, and we’re not trash. We can unite our kingdoms, and one day, perhaps, take
our rightful place on the throne!”
“You must be mad!” the prince shouted. “How could I ever love you? You’re a disgusting freak!”
The princess was speechless. She couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Oh, this is so humiliating!” the slug prince bawled, and then antennae sprung from his forehead, his face disappeared, and he became a slug from head to toe, quivering and moaning as he struggled to cry without a mouth.
The princess and the handmaiden turned away, stomachs heaving, and left the ungrateful prince to rot in his dungeon.
“I believe I’m done with princes forever,” the princess said, “peculiar or otherwise.”
They crossed the Great Cataract and the Pitiless Waste once again, and returned to Frankenbourg to find it at war with both Galatia and Frisia, which had united against it. The king had been overthrown and jailed, and the Frisians had installed a duke to govern Frankenbourg. The duke was a bachelor, and once his rule had been established and the country pacified, he began searching for a bride. The duke’s emissary discovered the princess working in an inn.
“You there!” he shouted, calling her away from a table she was cleaning. “The duke is looking for a bride.”
“Good luck to him,” she replied. “I’m not interested.”
“Your opinion doesn’t matter,” the emissary replied. “Come with me at once.”
“But I’m not royal!” she lied.
“That doesn’t matter, either. The duke merely wants to find the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and that may well be you.”
The princess was beginning to regard her beauty as something of a curse.
She was given a nice dress to wear and brought before the duke. When she saw his face, a cold chill spread through her. This Frisian duke had been one of the assassins who had come to kill her; he was the lone assassin who had fled.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” the duke said. “You look familiar.”
The princess was tired of hiding and tired of lying, so she told the truth. “You tried to kill me once, and my father. I was once the princess of Frankenbourg.”