1
The Moonstone Prince
The doll-princess was not having an easy labor. Not even
the palace garden offered a refuge from her screams, and
the Dark Fairy listened, and she hated how those groans
and whimpers made her feel. She hoped Amalie would
die. Of course. She’d been hoping ever since Kami’en had
said yes to the other one in her bloody wedding gown. Yet
there was more: an unreasonable longing for the infant who
was pushing those screams from Amalie’s vapid, pretty
mouth.
Through all these months, only her magic had kept the
unborn child alive. The child that could not be. “You will
save it. Promise me!” The same whispered plea, every time
after he’d made love to her. Only that had made Kami’en
return to her bed at night. The desire to meld his flesh with
human flesh—it made him so helpless.
Oh, how the Doll screamed. As though the infant were
being carved with a knife from her body, the body that only
a Fairy lily could make desirable.
Kill her already, Skinless Prince. What gives her the right
to call herself your mother?
He would have rotted inside her, like a forbidden fruit, if
it hadn’t been for the magic the Dark One had spun around
Amalie. Yes, the infant was a boy. A son. The Dark Fairy
had seen him in her dreams.
Kami’en did not come for her help himself. Not this night.
He sent his bloodhound to find her instead. His milky-eyed
jasper shadow. Hentzau stopped in front of her, and as usual
he avoided looking in her eyes.
“The midwife says she’s losing the child.”
Why did she go with him?
For the child.
It filled the Fairy with quiet satisfaction that Kami’en’s
son chose the night to come into the world. Amalie feared
the darkness so much, she always kept a dozen gaslights
burning in her bedchamber, even though their pale light
hurt her husband’s eyes.
Kami’en was standing next to Amalie’s bed. He turned as
the servants opened the door for his mistress. For an instant,
the Fairy thought she could see in his eyes a shadow of the
love she used to find there. Love. Hope. Fear. Dangerous
emotions for a King, though Kami’en’s stone skin helped
him hide them. More and more, he was starting to resemble
one of the statues his human enemies erected for their
Kings.
The startled midwife toppled a basin with bloody water
as the Fairy approached Amalie’s bed. Even the doctors
backed away from her. Goyl doctors, human doctors, Dwarf
doctors. Their black frocks made them look like a murder of
crows drawn in by the scent of death rather than anticipation
of a new life.
Amalie’s doll face was swollen with fear and pain. The
lashes around her violet-blue eyes were congealed with tears.
Fairy-lily eyes… The Dark Fairy thought she could see in
those eyes the water of the lake that had once delivered her.
“Go away!” Amalie’s voice was hoarse from screaming.
“What do you want? Who called you?”
The Dark One pictured those violet eyes being snuffed
out and that soft skin Kami’en so loved to touch turning cold
and flaccid. The temptation to make her dead was so sweet.
Too bad the Fairy couldn’t indulge it, for a dead Doll would
take Kami’en’s son with her.
“I know why you’re not letting the child out!” the Dark
One whispered in Amalie’s ear. “You’re afraid to look at
him. But I won’t allow you to kill him with your dying flesh.
Deliver him, or I will have him cut out of you.”
How the Doll stared at her. The Fairy wasn’t sure whether
the hatred in Amalie’s eyes revealed more fear or jealousy.
Maybe love bore fruit even more poisonous than fear.
Amalie squeezed the infant out. The midwife’s face turned
into a contorted mask of horror and disgust. On the streets,
they already called him the Skinless Prince. But he did have
a skin. The Fairy’s magic had given him one, as hard and
as smooth as moonstone, and just as transparent. His skin
revealed everything it covered: every sinew, every vein, the
small skull, the eyeballs. Kami’en’s son looked like Death—or
at least like his youngest spawn.
Amalie groaned and pressed her hands over her eyes.
Kami’en was the only one who looked at the baby without
dread. The Dark Fairy took the slithery body and stroked
the transparent skin with her six-fingered hand until it turned
as red as his father’s, giving such beauty to the small face
that now all the averted eyes turned back in enchantment
to admire the newborn prince. Amalie reached out for her
son, but the Fairy placed the baby in Kami’en’s arms. She
did so without looking at the King, and when she stepped
out into the dark hallway, he didn’t stop her.
The Dark Fairy had to pause halfway and struggle for
breath on a balcony. Her hands trembled as she wiped her
fingers on her dress, again and again, until she could no
longer feel the warm body they’d touched.
There was no word for child in her language. There hadn’t
been in a long time.
Copyright © 2021 by Cornelia Funke. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
