Excerpt from THE PRINCESS PLOT
by Kirsten Boie,
translated by David Henry Wilson
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Later, Jenna and the regent were driven along the main boulevard at walking pace. They sat in the open backseat of a glossy black limousine, with cheering crowds on either side and an escort of policemen on motorbikes and mounted cavalry officers in old-fashioned uniforms. Jenna could still feel her knees trembling. She didn’t think she could have stayed out on the balcony much longer, but in the car she was beginning to recover.
She was waving and smiling, like the regent beside her, when he leaned his head close to hers.
“It’s more tiring than one thinks, little Jenna, eh?” he said. “Especially at the beginning, when it’s all so new.”
Jenna nodded. She knew she must remain as “quiet as a mouse,” but surely here in the car no one could hear her.
“Why did you call me Malena up there on the balcony?” she asked, still waving to the crowd. “Why did you do that when no one could hear you?”
Norlin laughed. “There are lip-readers in Scandia!” he said. “And there may even have been hidden microphones, though of course we had the area thoroughly searched in advance. But you can be sure that there were those down in the square deciphering every word I said to you.”
As they rounded a bend, they suddenly came to a group of dark-haired people standing along the right side of the road. Policemen tried to force them away from the car and confiscate their banners before Jenna could see them, but there were too many. She was able to read a few before the police took them. Long Live Malena! Said one. Down with Discrimination Against the North! said another. Jenna tried to remember what “discrimination” meant, but she wasn’t sure. Malena, Protector of North Island! proclaimed the next banner, and Down with the Traytor! yet another. Malena had no idea what traitor they were referring to, though she did immediately notice that the word had been misspelled.
“Wave all the same,” whispered Norlin, and then Jenna wondered what that meant. “Most of them are harmless. Good, we’re out of it now.”
The regent leaned back and breathed deeply in and out. “We have to be careful,” he said, as if an explanation was necessary. “You never know if one of them might…”
At this moment, about a hundred feet ahead of them, a lone figure ducked under the arms of a policeman and dashed out of the crowd at lightning speed. “Malena!” the boy cried, waving his arms wildly. “Hey, Mali! It’s me! Mali! Yesterday, what was up with that?”
Two policemen seized him roughly by the shoulders and dragged him back behind the barricades.
“Mali!” screamed the boy. He was small and dark, and about the same age as Jenna. “Call me!”
Then, as if he’d done it a hundred times before, he stabbed his elbows into the stomachs of his two stupefied guards and disappeared into the crowd.
Jenna stiffened.
“Who was that?” she asked, startled. “What did he want?”
“Smile!” hissed the regent beside her. “Wave! That exactly what I was talking about – you always have to expect some unpleasant incident like that. There are always the crazies who think you love them, and who are in love with you. Every king has to put up with it, and every princess. People who follow you around and never leave you in peace. Now you’ve seen it for yourself. Fortunately our security usually works pretty well.” He smiled at the crowd. “But what happened there,” he said, in a tone that didn’t fit his facial expression at all, “will have its consequences. Security guards who can’t stop a single boy…”
Jenna waved. She was beginning to think that it might not always be so nice to be a princess.
From The Princess Plot. Original text copyright © 2005 by Verlag Friedrich Oetinger.
English translation copyright © 2008 by David Henry Wilson. All rights reserved.
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