Princess Tyya’s Mice

© 2009 by Sarah Matanah

For four days of every week Princess Tyya lived with her Mama Terri in a stone castle that was set on a hill overlooking a tiny village. For three days of every week she lived with her Mama Jin in a tiny house at the edge of the village, with drying plants and strings of alligator teeth hanging from the rafters. Everybody except Tyya called her Mama Terri “Queen Teresa,” and everybody except Tyya called her Mama Jin “ma’am” when they were talking to her and “that witch Jinerva” when they weren’t.

At Mama Terri’s house Tyya learned how to behave like a princess. Mama Terri said that princesses had to have perfect manners, and that they always had to do and say the right things, because if they didn’t, everyone would notice, and they would talk about whether the princesses would be good queens when they grew up. That meant that even if Tyya lost sixteen croquet games in a row to Jason, the Lord Chancellor’s son, she could not hit him over the head with the croquet mallet. In fact she couldn’t even look upset. She had to smile nicely and say, “Good game! Would you like to play again?” And if afterwards she beat him in chess, she could not gloat. She had to say, “Nicely played, Jason.” She had to say it even if he knocked over the board on purpose.

She couldn’t sulk or grumble or whine or say the words that Jason’s older sister had taught him and he’d taught her. Not only that, but she had to study very, very hard because her Mama Terri said that queens needed to know everything about everything and they needed to know how it all went together to make a country work. She couldn’t whine about that either. On the other hand, at Mama Terri’s she got to eat whatever she wanted, and she could have any toys that caught her eye.

At Mama Jin’s house, things were different. She could be crabby and whiny and greedy and foul-mouthed, and if she got too bad, her Mama Jin would yell at her, but she wouldn’t tell her that she was letting the country down. She wore a disguise spell and hand-me-down clothes from the neighbor’s youngest son. She ran wild in the streets playing chasing-and-pushing games with the other village kids. Eventually her Mama Jin hunted her down, yelled at her if she happened to be pushing someone at that moment, and made her come in to learn something like how to make the mice grow to the size of buffaloes while they waited for dinner to cook. Dinner was usually something Tyya didn’t like, like seaweed with mushrooms, but while they ate it, they practiced reading each other’s minds and making different parts of each other’s bodies itch.

Sometimes at bedtime Tyya would miss whichever mom she wasn’t staying with, and she wouldn’t be able to sleep. If that happened at Mama Jin’s house, Mama Jin would let her pick out her favorite sleeping potion. There was one that made you feel like you were floating off on a warm pink cloud. If it happened at Mama Terri’s castle, Mama Terri would send Tyya’s governess to read her instructive books until she fell asleep. Sometimes, if Mama Terri didn’t have a meeting, she would read Tyya the instructive books herself.

One day Tyya walked up the hill from Mama Jin’s house to Mama Terri’s house. She was wearing a stiff plaid princess dress and shiny shoes for the first time in three days. The disguise spell was starting to drop off. People looked at her hard as she passed them.

The large wooden doors of the castle were propped wide open. She waved at the guards as she went in and ran up the stairs to Mama Terri’s office. Mama Terri sat at her desk. The desk was queenly and imposing, made of stone and bigger than Tyya’s bed. Some papers were lying on it. Mama Terri was tapping the papers with a pen, but she wasn’t looking at them. She was staring out the window with a frown on her face.

“Mama, I’m back,” Tyya said.

Mama Terri turned from the window rather slowly, but then she smiled. “It’s good to see you, honey. Did you have fun at your Mama Jin’s house?”

“Yes. She taught me how to make the mice big. And how to make people itch.”

“That’s nice, honey. Mama Jin knows some good tricks, doesn’t she?”

Tyya frowned. She wouldn’t use the word “tricks” to talk about Mama Jin’s magic.

Her Mama Terri came around the desk to give her a hug. “I’m glad you’re back. Run to your room now, and put on a nice dinner dress. We have a visitor tonight.”

“Who, Mama?” Tyya asked, disappointed. She had been hoping to have her mom to herself on her first night back.

“Her name is Vylina. She’s a queen from somewhere in the mountains. I gather it’s a rather new and small kingdom. If you’d ask a lot of questions about it at dinner, I’d be grateful. I had never heard of it myself.”

Tyya smiled. Her mother didn’t ask for her help very often. “Sure, Mama.”

When Queen Vylina entered the dining hall, Tyya couldn’t help staring. She was dressed in a long green dress that shimmered as she walked. The dress got tighter as it moved toward her ankles, but Queen Vylina didn’t seem to have trouble walking. In fact, she glided into the room faster than seemed possible. She came in with a self-satisfied smirk. That smile didn’t change or flicker even for an instant as she glanced around at all the corners of the room and glided into the chair between Tyya and her mother. As she shook out her napkin, Tyya noticed a ring on her finger. It was made of thin gold and twined around her finger. In its center was set a deep red stone. It matched the red polish on her long, sharp fingernails.

Queen Vylina turned slowly to Tyya’s mother. “Thank you for your hospitality,” she said tonelessly in a long exhalation that made the words almost hiss.

Her head swiveled toward Tyya, ending up much closer to Tyya’s ear than it started. “And you must be the lovely daughter,” she hissed.

Her breath was so cold against Tyya’s ear that Tyya almost jumped back. Only the knowledge that her mother’s gaze was fixed on her, waiting to see her manners in action, made Tyya stay in her place, smiling politely.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been waiting to get a chance to ask you about your home. My mother says it is up in the mountains.”

“Yes. My country is a small and barren place compared to this gorgeous little morsel of a kingdom. We have very few resources. Here, it seems you have a great many sheep and cattle. Is that right?” she finished, turning to the queen.

The adults continued to talk about resources and the best terrain for sheep. Bored, Tyya remembered her Mama Jin’s song to bring the mice out of the walls. She was pretty sure she remembered it word for word. She wished there was some way she could sing it now without the grown-ups hearing. It would be amusing to watch the mice scampering around Vylina’s ankles.

Tyya would have been more interested in the conversation if she had liked Queen Vylina more. As it was, Tyya could hardly stand to look at her face. Listening to her talk made Tyya feel like she wanted to squirm out of her own skin. It felt as if there were something icky squirming around in her ears.

Queen Vylina had her face close to Mama Terri’s and was looking at her with an odd expression on her face. Almost without meaning to, Tyya used what she’d learned at Mama Jin’s to look into her mind. Immediately she felt a flash of stone cold greed and jealousy, so hard and painfully cold that she felt that she’d been hit in the face with a sheet of ice.

She looked up to find Mama Terri staring at her, her brow wrinkled with concern. Her mother’s hand was on her arm, and she hadn’t even felt it.

“Are you okay, honey?”

At Tyya’s mute nod her mother said, “I think you’d better go upstairs to bed now.”

Tyya nodded again and went to the door, but as she went through, she remembered that ice cold jealousy and realized that she couldn’t go upstairs and leave her mother alone with that person, not without telling her what she’d felt. Instead of going upstairs she hid behind the door, staring through the keyhole.

The serving maid came out with another dish, and the two queens continued to talk.  As soon as the maid left the room, Queen Vylina leaned closer to Tyya’s mother, stretching out her hand between them as if to show the other queen something about the ring. Then she started rubbing it with her other hand. She said something as she did this, too low for Tyya to hear, but her mother laughed politely. Then the ring seemed to grow, and Queen Vylina’s dress shifted and changed until she was enveloped by the dress and the ring. Suddenly there was no longer a woman sitting at the table with Mama Terri, but a huge snake, green on the upper side and yellow on the lower. The snake moved its head slowly from side to side just as Queen Vylina had, while its thick forked tongue flicked this way and that.

Teresa shouted and jumped back, throwing her chair at the snake, but the snake was too fast. Its mouth opened, its head jerked, and there was a lump in its neck instead of Teresa standing in front of it. The maid ran in from the kitchen holding another tray and was swallowed in turn before she could even scream.

Tyya stared at all this through the keyhole, thinking frantically. The snake’s head turned from side to side, the tongue testing the air. She needed to do something—anything—that would slow it down, to stop it from eating everyone in the castle. Then she would get her mother out, somehow. She started singing, very softly, the tune that Mama Jin had sung to bring the mice. They came quickly, dozens of them, far more than had come out of the walls in Mama Jin’s little house.  

When there was a crowd of mice running back and forth on the floor, Tyya muttered the mouse-expanding spell and pointed at the one closest to the snake. It only grew to the size of a greyhound before it went down the snake’s throat. The next one didn’t last much longer.

On the third mouse the snake was slower. The mouse grew as big as a horse before the snake snatched it up. The snake had to unhinge her mouth to force it inside, and even then she had to spend some time working the mouse all the way into her mouth.

While the snake was busy with the mice, Tyya muttered the itching spell. She spoke it over and over, aiming it at every part of the snake’s long body. Soon the snake began to writhe and twist around the five lumps in its body. It rubbed itself on the walls and on the stones of the floor. Layers of skin began to peel off.

Tyya ran around the snake, speaking the spell over and over, keeping every part of the snake’s body itchy no matter how much skin it rubbed off. The snake began to get smaller and smaller. Each time it rubbed off a layer of skin, it shrank a little more. Tyya kept speaking the itching spell, the snake kept writhing and rubbing off its skin, and it kept shrinking.

And then, all of a sudden, there was no snake left. On the dining room floor there were only three oversized mice, a kitchen maid, Tyya’s Mama Terri, and Queen Vylina, scratching all over her body with her long red nails. Tyya leapt on her and grabbed at the finger with the ring. Vylina tried to throw her off, but she couldn’t stop scratching long enough. Tyya hung on to the ring until she pulled it off and had it clenched in her fist. Then she danced out of Queen Vylina’s reach, ready to mutter the itching spell again if she needed to.

Queen Teresa smiled at Tyya. She looked healthier than seemed possible after spending time in a snake’s belly. “Well, Vylina,” she said, “it looks as if my daughter can use her magic to better effect than you can use yours.” Queen Vylina was too busy scratching to look at her.

“I’m going to ask that you enter a small closet that we have at the back of our kitchen. After we lock the door, my talented daughter will remove your itches. You can make it stop, can’t you, Tyya?”

“Sure,” said Tyya.

“Where?” Vylina asked frantically.

“Right this way,” said Mama Terri. She led the way to the kitchen, and Tyya followed behind her, keeping a sharp eye on Queen Vylina.

After Queen Vylina had been locked up, Tyya had stopped the itching, and Mama Terri had called for some guards to come and take Vylina to a better place than the kitchen closet, Tyya and her mother sat down to eat their dessert: chocolate cheesecake with cherry syrup. Mama Terri appeared to have forgotten that she had sent Tyya up to bed.

“Tyya, I guess I owe you an apology about your Mama Jin’s little tricks. It seems like they might make just as good tools for a queen as everything you’ve been learning here. Please tell your Mama Jinerva thank you for me, won’t you?”

“All right, Mama,” Tyya said, snagging a cherry off the top of Mama Terri’s cake. Outside the window she could hear shouts and squeaks as children ran around on the castle lawn trying to catch the oversized mice.

“Tyya, manners!” Mama Terri said sharply, but in the next moment she plucked another cherry off her cake and plopped it onto Tyya’s. “Here, take that one too, you little witch, you.”

Tyya smiled happily and put the cherries and most of the cake into her mouth at once. She would be a good queen, and a good witch, too.

Sarah Matanah likes to write fantasy and science fiction. She is learning how to play the guitar, but so far she can only pick and not strum. She works in day care and lives in Minneapolis with her wife, children, and adorable Houdini-like mutt. She has told many stories about Flo and Mo, but she can’t remember most of them.