Free Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near Page B

blessed with her.
    â€˜The first brother-prince, the bravest, told the King and Queen: “I will save our kingdom’s greatest treasure. I need nothing but your blessing.” The second brother-prince, loving, stepped forward and said, “You’ll also need us.” Following him was the third brother, strong-willed and calm; the fourth brother, honest and kind; the fifth brother, thoughtful and trusting; and the sixth brother, musical and talkative.
    â€˜The King and Queen quietly despaired, but gave their sons their blessing – without it, they feared the royal children would not return. The sons had pledged to find their sister-princess, who was infinitely more precious than gold, trapped in the scaly clutches of the dragons, and rescue her with their swords and their combined skills, altogether more useful than treasure.’
    Already Isola’s eyelids were sliding over her dewy baby-blues. Her fingers tangled in her hair, curls as fine as a seahorse fringe.
    â€˜Goodnight, Isola. We’ll read more tomorrow.’
    Isola managed to keep herself awake for the few minutes it took to direct her inquiry to the secret friend she’d known only for a few weeks.
    â€˜Hey, Ale?’
    A ripple in the dark, a pebble plummeting to the bottom of a pool. The sudden warmth of sharing a space with another person, of no longer being alone.
    â€˜Yes, Miss Wilde?’ She wasn’t querida in those days – he didn’t even yet dare call her Isola.
    â€˜Alehan-doh –’ she, in turn, had mispronounced his name ‘– what’s a brother? Is it the same as a prince?’
    â€˜In a way, yes. A brother is someone who protects,’ said Alejandro, sitting at the end of her bed.
    â€˜And a sister?’
    â€˜A little princess who needs protecting. A girl like you.’
    She rolled over and jutted out her chin. ‘I don’t need protecting!’
    â€˜No.’ Alejandro shook his head then smoothed her blankets like Mother had done. ‘But you deserve it.’
    Before the Wildes had moved in, Alejandro had long been there, haunting the addicts who’d lived in Number Thirty-six. The Sid-and-Nancy lovers were the most recent in a long line of people he’d decided to scare away from the same thing that had killed him. When Sid overdosed and Nancy ran screaming into the pitch-black woods, Alejandro had taken it as a sign and had hidden in the attic, curled up like a foetus in a dusty womb, waiting for sleep or rot to set in, for heaven or hell, for judgement.
    For Isola.
    For that was the purpose of his (after)life, he had decided later – to protect his sister-princess from all the dragons in the world. He had performed his self-imposed duty admirably for over twelve years. Isola had hair and sand and sun and flowers.
    But Alejandro couldn’t protect her from the kingdom itself.
    Next, there came Ruslana. She had been dragged around the globe by the anguish of women, strangers’ emotions catching her lips like fish-hooks, bruising them forever black. And now she had slunk her way to the Wilde house under the cover of a particularly inky night. She had sensed the uneasiness about Mother, who was even then wearying of the daily trek across the battlefield raging in her mind.
    Upon spying her at the window, Isola, ever-trusting to Alejandro’s brotherly despair, had invited the strange woman to stay for Mother’s bedtime instalment of The Seventh Princess . Ruslana, stunned at being noticed, had not come into the room, but instead listened invisibly from the windowsill as Mother had described the brothers six valiantly traversing harsh crags of land, swamps and jungles as they searched for their golden-haired treasure.
    And what a strange woman she was. Ruslana was more solid than Alejandro, could be seen when she wanted, unlike the ghosts that drifted through the walls of most people’s perceptions. Sometimes her great cloak, alive