Page 59 of The Abandoned Princess

“Liam,” the mother called, in what was clearly an attempt at a calm voice. “Won’t you come down from there and come to mama? We can go back home and have a piece of cake.”

The toddler hesitated at the word cake, and I held my breath, hoping he would capitulate. He had obviously climbed onto the rock from the stretch of open ground, its rough surface providing easy climbing holds. In that direction, the layer of undergrowth at its base created a soft surface. Even if he tumbled on his way back down, he would be fine.

Behind him, however, the rock backed onto the edge of the waterfall. If he slipped in that direction, he would crash against jagged rocks before being thrown into the depths of the churn at the base of the fall.

“Cake?” The toddler took a single step forward, and I was about to cheer when the man responded by jumping over the stream, clearly preparing himself to extract the boy.

The child immediately stiffened at this sign of approach and took a step backward, his face screwing up. “No!” he screamed. “Don’t want cake! No cake!”

The man, who I assumed to be the father, froze, but the damage had already been done. The mother glared at him before speaking to the toddler in soothing tones that sounded forced.

“All right, then. No cake. We can have whatever food you want. Just climb down, and you can—”

“NO!” screamed the boy again. “Not wot-ever I want!”

The mother threw a despairing look at the father. In less serious circumstances I would have laughed. It was hard to be small with limited language and little control over your world.

One of the assistant cooks in our palace had a daughter who had gone through this stage. The head cook had always taken any outbursts in her kitchen in stride, explaining to me that it was part of growing up.

“When small children reach that point, there’s no reasoning with them,” she had said. “Specially not the fiery ones. All you can do is offer them hugs and sit with them until they calm down enough to start thinking again. If you yell at a new apprentice when they make mistakes or burn the pastries, they might eventually become competent enough, but they’ll never turn into master chefs. They need freedom to learn. It’s the same with children—it’s just that they’re learning how to manage their emotions, instead of pastries.”

She had laughed then, the deep belly laugh that I had always loved, before leaning over and whispering conspiratorially, “Pastries might not be like emotions, but they can sure have a positive effect on them.” She had accompanied the pronouncement with a wink and a sneakily delivered pastry into my lap.

The whole situation brought back such clear memories of those days that my chest hurt. But the memories also told me that we needed to take drastic action, and we needed to do it straight away.

“It’s clear from the parents’ reactions that they know how long Liam can hold onto his emotions,” I said. “In a normal situation, that wouldn’t matter. But if he takes one more step backward on that stone, he might slip into the waterfall. He’s clearly an adventurous boy to have climbed up there in the first place, but he’s too young to understand the danger. His parents can’t approach him because that will drive him backward. We can’t openly approach him either, but for now, he doesn’t know we’re here. We have to intervene.”

“Are we sure he’s even able to see us?” Lori asked. “If he’s not, it would make approaching him easier.”

I stared at her, and she shrugged. “It was your birthday yesterday, remember?”

My mouth dropped open. I was eighteen now, which meant it was possible children could no longer see or hear me. How could I have forgotten the fear that used to keep me awake at night?

But after a moment’s consideration, I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter for now. We can’t risk testing it because we don’t know what he’ll do if he can see us. We have to assume he can and proceed carefully.”

“But how?” Xander asked, clearly worried.

“We have to approach him from behind. We can try to grab him, but even if we can’t do that, we just have to get him to fall forward. The ferns there will give him a soft landing.”

“Do I need to point out that the back of that rock is a waterfall?” Lori asked.

I darted forward and picked up a coil of rope that had been discarded on the ground, turning triumphantly to the other two.

“We can use this!”

The father had been carrying it over his shoulder, obviously having brought it in case it was needed in a rescue effort. When he found the child on the rock, he must have dropped it, and the enchantment had let me pick it up because neither of the parents was noticing anything other than the child and their attempts to coax him down.

“Neither of you are strong enough to lower me down,” Xander said doubtfully. “But if we can find a tree to tie it to, it should work.”

“There’s no time for that,” I said. “I might not be able to anchor you, but you and Lori could easily anchor me.”

Xander frowned, clearly wanting to protest, but I kept talking.

“Besides, I’m the most experienced of us here when it comes to climbing up and down stone walls!”

With that triumphant pronouncement, I darted away through the trees. I headed uphill, half running, half clambering over the rocky ground beside the waterfall. When I reached the top, I saw the other end of the stream—the one that fed the waterfall.

Thankfully it was narrow enough for me to leap across it, while in the background Liam wailed strident denials to the suggestion that he come down from the rock and equally strident denials to the exasperated statement that he should just stay there then.

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