Every Hat is a Crown
Mike Morgan
Gwen lived with her widower mother, Old Maeve, and two brothers on a small plot of land that was part of Lord Disteth’s estate. Her brothers were out in the lord’s fields that morning, helping to reap their master’s crops before being allowed to return home and attend to their own. For this reason, fair Gwen, with her crown of yellow hair, was likely left unchaperoned. This state of affairs brought a smile to Walleg’s freckled face. If he were any judge, it’d make her grin too.
It was a walk of twenty minutes or more to reach the plain cruck house where she lived, laboriously crossing the ploughed-up fields of corn. Every step of the way, he had to cajole his recalcitrant bull raptor William to follow along. The scaly, skittish saura had a bad temper and knew how to nip at Walleg’s legs. The foul-mannered reptile was especially annoyed because Walleg was making him carry two heavy bags of turnips to sell at market—the beast would much rather be sniffing around one of the in-heat raptor mares at home. But Walleg knew a thing or two as well, like how to yank sharply enough on the farm animal’s reins to make its eyes water, so their exchanges usually worked out even.
Gwen’s rectangular house with its sagging thatched roof was not as large as the smallholding where Walleg and his family lived, but it reeked just as much of livestock dung and smoke. As Walleg tied his grouchy pack animal to a fence post, the heavy sackcloth curtain across the nearest door twitched open and Gwen slipped out. A knowing smirk dashed across her face when she laid eyes on him.
“I thought that was your William’s grouchy barks and trumpets I could hear.” She kept her voice down. “Lord’s sake, there must be folk in town that heard that caterwauling. Your field-raptor has the blackest humor I’ve ever seen and no mistake.”
“Ah, Gwen, he’s as meek as a kitten when you get to know him—,” began Walleg, but the dun-colored blackheart chose that exact moment to ram his heavy snout into the small of the farmboy’s back. If the lissome Gwen hadn’t caught him mid-stumble, he would have toppled into the mud.
Walleg quickly found his footing—and then his thoughts were swept away by the heat of Gwen’s fingers resting on his arm and the closeness of her body. Without thinking, he slipped his arm around the young woman and drew her tight. The wide brim of the straw hat he always wore brushed awkwardly against the fringe of her hair, so he tipped up the front of the headgear to remove the impediment. Their mouths were almost touching, her warm breath on his lips.
She murmured huskily, “My mother’s inside, you idiot.”
In the grip of sudden horror, he tore his gaze from Gwen’s limpid eyes and glanced over her shoulder. Crooked-backed Maeve was standing in the doorway, the curtain lifted above her bowed shoulders.
“I have warned you before,” she croaked. “Get your hands off my daughter.”
His hands flew from Gwen’s dress, but the harm had been done. “It’s not what you think.” Walleg backed away, knees weak.
Maeve was having none of it. “I know what you want,” she accused in her rasping voice, “you want to poke your pizzle into my lovely Gwen. Well, that ain’t going to happen while I still have breath in my body. I will make sure you have troubles enough to keep your attention elsewhere. Oh, yes, you may rely on that!”
With a wheezing chuckle, the hunched crone shuffled toward him. The malicious glint in her eyes was more than enough cause for Walleg to grab the leather strap of his raptor’s reins and pull the beast away.
Maeve’s evil laughter chased him on the breeze as he hurried across the sodden fields to the distant roofs of Prestathwyke. The shuddersome sound was broken only by the lighter tones of Gwen remonstrating with her mother. By now, he was too far away to hear what mother and daughter were saying, but Gwen sounded distraught. No doubt she was on the receiving end of her mother’s sharp tongue. Walleg felt bad for getting Gwen in trouble. A little. But already, thoughts of the encounter were fading from his mind, crowded out by the excitement of going to town.
He pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes against the wind and concentrated on getting the heavily laden raptor to the marketplace.
He found the first out while lurking at the rear of Restwick’s Inn, next to the window where small beer was sold for half a penny a quart. He had already finished at the market, selling the turnips to the stallholder who bought most of his family’s vegetables, and had wasted no time in adjourning to the inn after offloading the bulky wares; the four shillings and a ha’penny earned from the sale were burning a hole in his pouch. The stallholder always added a discreet half-moon of a coin to the shillings intended for Walleg’s dad, so the lad could sneak off and quench the terrible thirst he’d developed during the trip. William was also in much better spirits now, knowing the routine well and looking forward to his own bowl of porridge-like booze.
There was a crowd of young ne’er-do-wells about the serving hatch, rapscallions abuzz with gossip concerning the king’s visit. With William tied up and lapping happily at the contents of a wooden bowl, Walleg listened with mounting excitement as the other youngsters boasted about every scrap of information they’d heard thus far: the king’s procession was coming down Market Lane; the king was riding in his finest saura-drawn carriage; a hundred King’s Own Guardsmen were going to be riding as escorts in armor as bright and shining as the Sun. If only half of those claims were true, it was going to be a sight worth bragging about for years to come.
Walleg downed the dregs of his tankard and passed it back through the open serving window, eager to be among the earliest faces lining Market Lane. Marge at the inn wouldn’t mind watching William for a few minutes—after drinking a bowl of beer-soaked oats, the raptor would nap for a couple of hours anyway—and Walleg would never forgive himself if he missed the sight of the royal carriage passing through town. Without pausing for thought, he dashed through the side gate and out into the narrow street.
Now, unlike most menfolk thereabouts who wore linen coifs tied under the chin, Walleg favored a hat with a large brim. It was unique on account of Walleg having designed the headgear himself, desperate to come up with something that could block out the rays of the Sun better than a coif—it wasn’t vanity that had spurred on this creativity, it was the acute sunburn incurred while laboring in the fields.
Even though his homemade hat was technically acceptable under the sumptuary law that dictated what peasants were allowed to wear, it was the subject of frequent abuse from passers-by due to its unusual shape, and did have a habit of flying off in anything stronger than a mild breeze. Such was Walleg’s hurry to take his place for the procession to come, once again his floppy straw hat caught the air and flew off.
Walleg skidded to a halt. Annoyed at losing his carefully woven creation, he bent over and retrieved the hat… then stood there, looking down at his dirt-encrusted hands and the battered object he was holding.
He could plainly see the hat.
He could feel its coarse texture between his fingers.
Yet, somehow, he could also see the dark mass of a brim at the top of his field of vision. Not only that, he sensed there was a weight still atop his head, still a feeling of constriction about his forehead, still the prickling of straw against his skin.
Fingers shaking, he reached up with one hand until his fingers brushed against the scratchy edge of a strand of straw. Had someone in the street reached out from behind and placed another hat upon Walleg’s head a split second after his own one had fallen off? The possibility seemed ridiculous—there weren’t any other hats like his—but what other explanation was there?
With his empty hand, he yanked the offending item from his scalp.
The sensation of wearing something faded for barely an instant before returning undiminished. Impossibly, the dark, out-of-focus brim obscured the topmost part of his vision anew. Clumsily, his hands full of hats, he felt again for an object sat on his pate and, again, incredibly, his hand scraped against woven straw.
In the midst of trying to stop his suddenly feeble fingers from dropping the two wide hats, he noticed that the second one was identical in every regard to the first. He could only assume the third one—the one he was wearing—was just as precise a copy.
A voice called to him, “Oi! Are you coming to watch or not? Here comes the king!” It was his third cousin, Harveldt. The morbidly obese boy was at the end of the street leading from the inn, where it met Market Lane. Harveldt was using his considerable girth to secure a prime spot in the throng where it was pressed up against the wall of the building on the side of the thoroughfare, motioning for Walleg to join him.
Spurred on by his cousin’s cry, Walleg raced over. Harveldt remarked curiously, “Why have you got three hats? Are you trying to sell some?” He sniffed. “They’ll never catch on, you know.”
The man standing next to Harveldt shushed him, declaring, “The king approaches!”
Walleg craned his head and saw the guardsmen at the head of the procession closing rapidly. His cousin untied his coif and removed the linen covering, baring his head respectfully. All about Walleg, townsfolk were doing the same. In the presence of the king, even barons were obliged to doff their headgear.
There were too many people gathered next to him now to simply run away. From beneath the brim that had sheltered him so well, Walleg looked from one of his spare hats to the other, and gulped.
Walleg could only whimper, “But Sire, I did.”
“Then what,” replied the king archly, “am I looking at on top of your head?”
“Each time I remove my hat, another appears in its place,” Walleg stammered. “I’ve taken off twelve whilst your carriage pulled near.” He could feel the disbelieving eyes of the other townspeople boring into him—they had been too busy gazing at the approaching royal splendor to notice the miracle occurring right under their noses.
“A likely story!” scoffed Amaranthis, but he glanced down in confusion at the pile of straw hats at Walleg’s feet. “I don’t care why you forgot, you infinite cretin, simply take the wretched thing off now!”
Walleg did as he was told. His fears were fulfilled: the feeling of weight and constriction around his scalp did not pass.
The king gazed wonderingly at him. “My good man, I must confess that is a very good trick.” The barrel-chested monarch leaned farther out of the carriage’s window and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Tell me how it is done.”
In the narrow confines of the street, hot sun beating down on him, Walleg felt dizzy. The king was expecting an answer. The only sounds were the snorts and foot-stamping of the procession’s stolid three-horned riding-saura and the distant sound of a high window being flung open and a chamber pot being emptied.
“I don’t know how it’s done,” he admitted. “I’d tell you if I knew, m’lord.”
“I see.” Amaranthis snapped his fingers and roared, “Captain of the Guard! Arrest this youth. Bring him with us to the manor house! I shall extract the secret of this trick from him, or I shall extract the marrow from his bones.” He smiled a reptilian smile at Walleg. “I would prefer the former, but I am perfectly willing to settle for the latter.”
“Indeed, my liege,” purred the Lord High Chancellor Urquhart, the Most Reverend Bishop of Dunheved-by-Launceston. “Most likely the blackest of magic.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered the king as he slouched in the great chair at the end of the long table. Amaranthis was a short, stocky man, endowed with great physical strength despite his squat frame. He tapped at his chin with a ring-encrusted finger. “Still, it could be terribly useful. Send for my personal warlock.”
Walleg was more scared than he’d ever been in his life. This was his first time inside Lord Disteth’s manor house. The closest he normally got was the communal mill, set some distance away on the bank of the river. It was probably going to be his last time here as well.
The king had ordered him brought into the house’s great hall, and there he stood, shivering in fear and awe as his lords and masters discussed his odd affliction. And there were so many of his masters in attendance: the king and chancellor, of course, but also an entire group of grandly dressed nobles traveling with the royal party. In addition, Lord Disteth and his lady wife stood close by, both of whom looked as nervous as Walleg.
The last time he’d been anywhere near as afraid as this was when he’d been caught cuddling Gwen by that old crone, Maeve.
A thought struck him. Gwen’s mother was steeped in witchcraft. It must be her behind this unholy magic! “M’lord!” he wailed. “A curse has been placed upon me!”
“I have no doubt of it. You hardly seem the sort to muster any magic of your own. So, tell me boy, who has cursed you?” Amaranthis sounded amused. “Who should I seek out for another of these plagues, albeit one with a more profitable target for the endless reproduction?”
The chancellor started as if jabbed by a hot poker and then looked admiringly at the enterprising king. Walleg was about to offer up Maeve’s name; then he hesitated. If he enraged her further, there was no telling what she might do. “I know not,” he said quickly.
“Come now, you must have crossed someone recently. Think on it. Who has reason to make you look foolish?” Walleg shook his head. “Gadsbudlikins, we’ll get to the bottom of this!” shouted the king. He was a man who shouted a lot. “If magic can make a perpetual procession of hats, it can just as easily make an unceasing supply of gold!”
“Or weapons, or armor, or castles, or silver, or…” added Chancellor Urquhart, a calculating expression spreading across his flabby face.
“We are certain that his supply of hats is without surcease?” asked Amaranthis. “We should make very sure of it whilst we await the arrival of our warlock.” With a gesture, he summoned the local lord’s seneschal. “Tip off the boy’s hat, and when a new one appears, knock that off too.” To his chancellor, he instructed, “Keep a count. And measure each hat as it is removed, to determine whether they change size or shape.”
Rubbing his hands, he announced gleefully, “We will put this curse to the test.”
Everyone looked at Walleg.
His mouth dry, he stammered, “I lost fourteen before I was arrested, and then six more fell off as I was dragged here.” He clutched a hat to his chest. “I kept hold of the real one, the one I wove.”
Parchment and ink were brought to the chancellor and he carefully recorded the number thus far. “Twenty, plus the one still on your head. That makes twenty-one hat-like apparitions!” Without even looking at the seneschal, Urquhart motioned for him to proceed.
The seneschal was out of his depth, used as he was to organizing the lord’s household. But he rose to the occasion, flamboyantly flipping the hat off the boy’s head. As expected, another identical hat formed out of the ether.
King Amaranthis roared jocularly, “Sard! I never thought to have such merriment visiting a dreary lord’s estate. Keep on, I say! There is no reason to stop!”
So the seneschal, his livery-patterned sleeves flapping, continued to knock off hats. Each time a wide-brimmed sunhat went spinning to the floor, another shimmered into existence.
“Thirty,” counted the chancellor, “forty, fifty, sixty…”
Walleg stood stock-still, petrified with nerves, throughout. When they reached seventy, Amaranthis called, “Enough!” He stalked across to Chancellor Urquhart. “Are there any differences between the oldest and the newest of these creations?” he demanded, irritated by the seeming lack of progress.
After evaluating the objects, the chancellor answered, “At most, my lord, it seems the weave is more precise and the straw a more uniform length and color.”
Amaranthis frowned. “Are you saying the hats are getting better made as we go on?”
Urquhart looked uncertain. “Perhaps, or perhaps my eyes are not as good as they once were.”
“It seems we will learn nothing until my pet warlock heeds his summons,” said the king surlily. “While we wait, throw the simpleton in whatever passes for a dungeon in these parts. And bring me wine.”
Walleg wondered briefly who the simpleton was, until a guard grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and the answer became abundantly clear. In some ways, Walleg was relieved—a nice dungeon sounded less fraught than standing before his masters in the great hall.
His good cheer evaporated at the king’s next utterance. “And in case the boy is lying about the profound state of his ignorance, let him have mnemosynes for company. Three of them. Yes, let him share his quarters with a travesty of memory eaters.” Amaranthis smirked in an unpleasant fashion. “Travesty is the collective noun for mnemosynes, you know. Or is it a ‘murder’?”
“I think that’s crows,” said Urquhart.
“In any case,” continued the king, staring at Walleg, “you should give serious consideration to confessing everything you know, whilst you can still remember it.”
As the echoing thud faded, Walleg gazed about the shadowy interior of the small, cluttered chamber, then sank to the tiled floor and put his back to a storage barrel. In his sixteen years of life, he had heard many tales of the mnemosynes and their grotesque memory-feasting. The apparitions would gorge themselves on every morsel of his past, every recollection that gave his life meaning. Already he could imagine the clammy touch of half-intangible talons caressing his skin. Escape seemed impossible. He would be left a gibbering, hollow shell.
The silence was short lived. First, there came a low hiss, like the timid exhalation of a dying man’s last breath. Walleg’s eyes darted to the doorway. A gray mist was coiling under the door. Hardly able to credit the evidence of his own senses, Walleg watched aghast as the mist coalesced, growing in size and solidity until it formed the most terrifying sight he had ever seen: a trio of eyeless, hungering wraiths, each one reaching out toward him with long, cruelly clawed fingers.
He kicked violently, pushing himself back as far as he could from the spectral sight. But the room was small and there was nowhere to hide. He wanted to be brave in these, his last moments, but was disappointed to find he had no skills in that area at all.
A scream choked up from the depths of Walleg’s chest, reverberating throughout the narrow chamber, sending ripples through the mnemosynes’ misty flesh. “We’ll eat the memory of your mother’s love first,” whispered the closest of the smiling horrors. “You won’t miss it, will you?”
Another hissed wetly in his ear, “What else can we strip from you? What do you treasure most?”
“You should tell the king everything you know, before we gnaw too deeply,” advised the third, and in a mockery of compassion stretched out its deathly cold fingers and stroked Walleg’s face. “We are so very hungry. Once we start to tear at the meat of your history, I’m not sure we’ll be able to stop.”
Seized with revulsion at the abhorrent contact, Walleg almost missed his name being called. For a second, he hoped against hope that his prison contained another victim of the life eaters, one that might distract them for a few precious moments. Desperate, he cast about the confines of the storeroom for any sign of a fellow prisoner. There was none.
There would be no respite, he realized. He could not, would not talk, and the life eaters would consume him one joyous moment at a time until all he would remember would be the pain and unending misery of a lifetime stripped of everything that made it bearable. The only outcome he could imagine was the utter destruction of his soul.
Still, his name was called. Had the taskmaster of these fiends, the very Devil himself, tired of this game and come for him, intent on bringing this confrontation to a hideous conclusion?
Panic-stricken, he cried, “Beelzebub, is that you?”
“You are an utter idiot,” the voice replied.
Walleg wasn’t taking that, even from the lord of hell. “Kill me if you must, Satan, but don’t mock me aforehand!”
“Are those life eaters in there with you?” asked the disembodied voice. “Give me a moment. I’ll re-cork them in their storage flasks. While I’m doing that, try not to think of anything you’ll miss not remembering.”
The voice said other things then, but the words were slippery in Walleg’s ears. He found it impossible to focus on any of their syllables. But he saw the effect of the skittering phrases well enough: the mnemosynes melted back into thin tendrils of roiling fog and flowed out of the room, under the door again, returning to their homes of enchantment-saturated crystal.
“I never dared hope to see another day when I was myself,” he breathed.
“Are you yourself?” The voice sounded nervous now.
“How would I know?” asked Walleg despondently. “I cannot remember that which I have forgotten.”
“Oddly, you’re making sense. Terror must spur intelligence in boys. How to tell if you’re half-eaten up? I know. Be honest, do you still like me?”
Now that he thought on it, the voice was familiar. Walleg stood on his tiptoes and peered through the slit-like window of the storeroom, the brim of his hat angled high.
Through the thick leaded panes of the window, he could make out the distant, overgrown ruins of the Old Towers where a vast city of glass and metal had once stood, with carriages that moved by themselves, or so the town elders claimed, remnants of an age before saura had hatched anew, fossils of a time without magic. Carriages moving by themselves sounded magical to Walleg, though, so he doubted the official accounts.
Well, he remembered that much, it seemed. More importantly, he had a notion who the voice on the other side of the window belonged to. He could see a familiar sight below the windowsill—certain blonde tresses he knew and adored.
“Gwen!” he exclaimed happily.
“Are you sure I’m not Beelzebub?” she teased.
“You’re not, but your mum might be!” Less angrily, he added, “The king wanted me to confess the name of the witch responsible for the curse. I said nothing, not even when those wretches threatened to suck away the best reaches of my mind. Even though your mum is powerful fierce and no friend of mine, I don’t want her burnt at the stake.” He didn’t need to add that the scope of any inquisition would quickly spread to the witch’s daughter and, after what he’d just witnessed, he doubted she’d survive close scrutiny from a witch-finder.
Gwen coughed. “Staying silent can be the bravest act of all. Thank you.”
Unable to lie to her, he blurted out, “And I didn’t want her to change me into a toad.”
“My mum would never transform you into a toad,” said Gwen. “She’s always thought of you as a salamander. The instant word reached us of your arrest, I made mum do a second incantation to cancel the curse. She never wanted you to get in any trouble. It was just a bit of fun to stop you chasing after me.”
Walleg shook his head, annoyed. “What’re you blathering about? The curse isn’t lifted. I’ve only been in here a few minutes, and up until then hats were still popping out of nowhere.”
“Ah,” said Gwen. “The thing about curses, you see, is they can be a little unpredictable.” In a much quieter voice, she said, “That’s why mum never dares use magic to benefit herself. It’d most likely go awry.”
“That’s just great! The king won’t ever let me go—he wants to unravel the magic and get at its very bones.”
“Why does he want to go and do that?”
“So he can cast a similar spell to make infinite copies of gold coins and suchlike!”
Gwen’s laughter carried up to the window. “If witches could do that, there’d be no such thing as a poor spell-caster. Tell him it can’t be done.”
“He’s not going to believe that!”
There wasn’t time to talk further. The storeroom door was flung wide to reveal a trio of guards. The soldier in charge snapped “On your feet, boy! The king’s warlock is here!” A sneer spread across his face. “It’s time to tear that magic clean out of what’s left of your soul!”
Another guard holding a scrap of paper peered around his superior, looking confused. Walleg assumed the paper held a containment-code similar to the one Gwen had used. “Where are the memory eaters?” he asked. “Are they loose in the manor house?”
The first guard glared furiously at Walleg. “What have you been up to, boy?”
Walleg wordlessly removed the article and placed it on the teetering heap of already discarded headpieces. Again, the brim darkened into solidity at the top of his field of vision. Again, he felt the itchiness of straw against his brow.
“Tremendous,” opined the warlock. “That’s the seventy-first facsimile, I believe?” He nodded, answering his own question.
“Well?” inquired Amaranthis heavily. They were all back in the great hall, standing in their previous places, the only difference being that the seneschal had gratefully ceded his role of hat remover to the garrulous wizard.
Theodor nodded again. “You were right to call me in, my lord. This duplication curse is really quite elegantly constructed. Probably the work of a talented amateur. A local witch, perhaps, or a self-taught sorceress. Someone without knowledge of the correct forms, but for whom a grasp of thaumaturgical processes comes naturally.”
“I didn’t ask you to critique the spell,” the king snapped, “I asked you to reverse engineer it and make a better one of your own. With a functioning incantation of limitless duplication, this kingdom will become the most powerful on earth. No nation will be able to oppose us! Now get on with your job. Every second you delay is a second my glorious conquest is postponed.” He slumped in the lord’s chair, rubbing his forehead.
Seemingly unaffected by the king’s ire, the warlock said, “As you wish, my lord. I shall proceed immediately with a detailed cabalistic analysis of the elements employed in this occult phrasing.” A sharp clap from the warlock prompted the seneschal into action, who rushed to order several pages to haul in and position a large wooden contraption in front of Walleg.
“My camera-invisibilis,” said the warlock proudly.
Walleg stared at the large upright casket warily as the warlock explained its operation. There was a small lens on the surface facing Walleg and a larger one on the back. As the hat-making spell worked its wonders the details of the incantation would travel through the box and be displayed on the thick glass on the far side.
Walleg wasn’t convinced letting the king have access to the spell was a good idea, but he couldn’t think of a way of stopping him. Maybe protecting Gwen was all he could achieve this day—that would be enough.
“Now, let’s see the magic in action,” laughed the warlock. He waggled a finger and Walleg’s hat leaped off, as if struck. It was instantly replaced. Theodor repeated the motion time and time again, his half-smile never faltering. The chancellor had to scramble to resume the count.
It took only moments to reach a hundred hats. A short time later, they passed two hundred. The curse showed no sign of abating. Pages were instructed to cart away the enormous heap of straw headgear that had amassed, and they stacked them neatly in piles along the side of the hall. Still, the warlock wiggled his digit and, still, hats formed out of thin air.
At the two-hundred-fifty mark, Amaranthis growled, “Surely you have enough data now? What does your box say?”
The warlock’s smirk finally slipped. “I don’t understand it, sire,” he begrudged. “There seem to be two incantations at war with one another.”
With a howl of unbridled frustration, the king launched himself from the chair and grabbed Walleg by the throat. “I would think that, in the one hundred and forty-seventh year of the Age of Asmodeus, we would be better able to solve such a simple riddle of thaumaturgy.” Spittle flew from his mouth.
He dragged the smallholder’s son bodily across the room to where Lord Disteth stood shaking. “Dutiful Disteth, tell me your graceless house is equipped with a tower, for I am possessed of a powerful urge to fling this useless baggage from its very top.”
Lord Disteth confirmed that the manor house did, indeed, have a tower, and almost fell in his haste to guide the king to its staircase.
The king roared in Walleg’s face, “Did you hear that, serf? Give me the source of this magic, or I will murder you and laugh over your stinking, broken corpse!”
As the chancellor maintained the count, soon passing three hundred, the king bellowed, “I am the man who oversaw the final eradication of the supernatural kingdoms and ushered in the new dominion of Man! I have overseen genocides—I will not be thwarted by the likes of you! You will give me the secret of creating objects from nothingness or you will die!”
Such was his rage, and such was Walleg’s panic, that neither of them noticed what was happening to the hats. Chancellor Urquhart began to say “Three hundred and fifty” when he paused and shouted excitedly, “Your highness! They’re different!”
Climbing ahead of the king, Lord Disteth heaved the top hatch wide. Sunlight streamed onto their faces. Panting from exertion, the king stood at the top of the high tower, still clutching at Walleg’s throat.
“See?” breathed the equally exhausted chancellor. They all looked at the newest hat on Walleg’s head. “It is made of some sort of felt now, and there are jewels studded in it!”
“The magic is breaking down!” said the warlock. “The reproductions are no longer exact.”
In the quiet that followed this pronouncement, the king released Walleg’s throat. The farmboy sagged onto the slate roof of the crenellated turret and gently rubbed his tender neck.
“That looks like a ruby,” observed Disteth. “And I think that’s an emerald.”.
“Let’s see what appears next.” Amaranthis batted away the latest article from Walleg’s head. He kept at it for some time, growing increasingly pleased with the steadily more ornate and gem-encrusted headgear that were revealed.
As the chancellor’s count reached four hundred and ninety-nine, the warlock concluded, “The spell is definitely destabilizing.” This latest hat was an amazing collection of gemstones mounted on a platinum band. It was so heavy it hurt Walleg’s head just to wear it for a few seconds. The king lifting it away came as a blessing.
The next headpiece was a sparkling circlet of gold, inlaid with diamonds as big as hens’ eggs. Reverently, the king took it from Walleg, hardly able to credit the sight of such wealth.
For the first time in a long time, Walleg’s head felt unconstrained. There was no weight upon it, no sensation of material pressing against his skin. He checked with a shaking hand. It was true. There was nothing up there.
At last, he was hatless.
The curse was broken!
“Five hundred was the limit,” concluded the warlock. “Whatever the spell was, it’s worn off now.”
The king turned and started to descend. “I am satisfied. A haul of a hundred and fifty hats laden with precious stones is enough to purchase an army. And this last one… it is stunning. It shall be my new crown.” He put the circle of gold on his tangle of brown hair, remarking casually, “The boy is no more use to us. Let him go.”
Walleg let out a long breath, hardly daring to believe his luck.
“Actually,” said the king. “I’ve changed my mind. He’s a dullard. Have the guards hack him to bits. But do it in the grounds, I don’t want blood splashing on my exquisite diadem.”
“I brought William,” she announced, smiling at the guards in a way that caused them to stumble to a halt.
Walleg was lost. “Who’s William?” His only answer was a feathered, scaly, hissing blur of motion. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but the guards weren’t holding him anymore.
“William woke up from his nap and you weren’t there,” said Gwen. “He didn’t like that.”
Hearing a strange whimpering, Walleg turned. The guards were sprawled in disarray on the grass with a bull raptor baring its teeth at them. He started in shock.
Gwen squeezed his hand tenderly. “It was the mnemosynes, wasn’t it? They took the memory of your animal. Well, I did tell you to think of something you’d not mind losing.”
What was she saying? “He’s mine?” She nodded reassuringly. “And is he loyal? Is he friendly?”
Gwen started to say something and then coughed. After a couple of seconds, she managed, “William is accustomed to you.”
“Sard, he’s not going to eat the soldiers, is he? I’m in enough trouble.”
That made Gwen squint at Walleg. “It seemed to me they were planning to murder you.”
“They were,” he averred. “The king thought me too stupid to live.”
“The king is an unfeeling monster and you should pay his words no heed.” Gwen looked at the guards. “I know what you mean, though. We cannot revenge ourselves on them and continue to live in these parts. But these stout men in uniform will not willingly forget their orders. They will hound our heels if we leave them as they are.” She raised a hand to stop Walleg interrupting. “Fortunately, I know someone who’s very good at brewing draughts of forgetfulness, and I like to be prepared.”
The golden-haired girl tossed a wineskin at the guards’ feet. “Sip deeply, good sirs, or we shall discover how voracious William is today.”
After the skin was drained, Gwen turned back to Walleg. “Who needs mnemosynes, eh? In a few seconds, they will no longer remember who you are. But you might want to stay clear of the manor for a while, lest others see your happy face and recall what fate was ordered for you.”
She held his hand as they began the long dung-strewn walk back across the fields toward her cruck house. Pterosaurs wheeled distantly overhead, searching for scraps.
“Thank you,” she said, “for not letting the king start an inquisition.”
Then she kissed him.
Whistling jauntily, Walleg reached into his tunic and pulled out his original, hand-woven straw hat—the one he’d started the day wearing, the one he’d so carefully kept hold of through thick and thin. He smoothed out the crumpled brim and put it on with a smile. “I don’t care what anyone says. I like my sunhat.”
Gwen slipped an arm around his waist. “Don’t take on, but I hate it. I always have.”
“Every man is a king,” he replied, “and this is my crown.”
Shaking her head, Gwen could only say, “Not every hat is a crown. Some are dunces’ caps.”
When night finally fell, Amaranthis thanked Lord and Lady Disteth for their hospitality and retired to his guest chamber. The royal attendants removed his fur-trimmed outer vestments as normal, and the chief Esquire of the Household approached from behind to take off the king’s new regalia, so it could be stored in a secure cabinet.
“Get on with it, man,” snorted the king. “Resplendent though it is, this crown grows heavier by the second. I am in pain, I tell you! My vertebrae feel like they’re being pulverized under the load.”
Startled, the esquire replied, “I have taken it off, my lord. I’m holding it in my hands… but a new one…” He hardly needed to finish.
Horrified, the king reached up.
His fingers brushed against a solid mass of gold, much larger than the previous circlet. The curse had not dissipated—it had restarted, with a new victim.
“Five hundred,” he croaked, his voice disintegrating into a terrified whisper. “Five hundred crowns. How much will they weigh by the end, and how strong is my neck?”
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