“I’m afraid not.” He was beginning to catch on, and he hoped fervently that she wouldn’t think of asking whether he was a king. It was a good thing he wasn’t wearing his crown. Ambitious princesses were even worse than the usual variety, and he didn’t want to deal with either one right now.

The princess’s dainty eyebrows drew together for a moment while she considered his answer. Finally, her expression cleared. “Then you must be a virtuous woodcutter’s son, whose deeds of valor and goodwill shall earn you lands and title in some glorious future,” she said positively.

“A woodcutter? In the Enchanted Forest?” Mendanbar said, appalled. Didn’t the girl have any sense? “No, thank you!”

“But how came you here to find me, if you are neither prince nor knight nor deserving youth?” the princess asked in wide-eyed confusion.

“Oh . . . sometimes these things happen,” Mendanbar said vaguely. “Were you expecting someone in particular?”

“Not exactly,” said the princess. She studied him, frowning, as if she were trying to decide whether it would be all right to ask him for help even if he wasn’t a prince or a lord or a virtuous woodcutter.

“How did you get here, by the way?” Mendanbar asked quickly. He hated to refuse princesses pointblank, because they cried and pouted and carried on, but they always asked him to do such silly things. Bring them a white rose from the Garden of the Moon, for instance, or kill a giant or a dragon in single combat. It would be better for both of them if he could distract this princess so that she never asked.

“Alas! It is a tale of great woe,” the princess said. “Out of jealousy, my stepmother cast me from my father’s castle while he was away at war. Since then I have wandered many days, lost and alone and friendless, until I knew not where I was.”

She sounded as if she had rehearsed her entire speech, and what little sympathy Mendanbar had had for her vanished. She and her stepmother had probably talked the whole thing out, he decided, and come to the conclusion that the quickest and surest way for her to make a suitable marriage was to go adventuring. He was amazed that she’d actually gotten into the Enchanted Forest. Usually, the woods kept out the obviously selfish.

“At last I found myself in a great waste,” the princess continued complacently. “Then I came near giving myself up for lost, for it was dry and terrible. But I saw this wood upon the farther side, and so I gathered my last strength to cross. Fortune was with me, and I achieved my goal. Fatigued with my efforts, I sat down beneath this tree to rest, and—”

“Wait a minute,” Mendanbar said, frowning. “You crossed some sort of wasteland and arrived here? That can’t be right. There aren’t any wastelands bordering the Enchanted Forest.”