Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming

Chapter 8

Any eyes would have sufficed to see her beauty. But Prince Charming's dragon's eyes saw something more. They saw through Azzie's scheme and under­stood the snare that the demon had planned. The dragon's eyes saw that he, Charming, wore the hated face of Scarlet's seducer. What would she do when she saw that face? The dragon's eyes could see the shadow of disaster here. But Charming ignored the warning, bending low over the Princess.

This was the moment Azzie had been working toward since he had thought up the plan in the first place.

The kiss! The fatal kiss!

Azzie had already positioned the poisoned dagger on the little bedstand, close to Scarlet's hand. This was what Scarlet would use when she opened her eyes and recognized who had kissed her-the despised seducer!

Azzie, from behind the curtain where he had stationed himself, addressed the great unseen audience watching the drama unfold.

"Ladies and gentlemen, beings of Light and Darkness, fellow demons, rival angels! I bring you now the conclusion of the most ancient and edifying drama of Prince Charming and Princess Scarlet. Behold, the awakening kiss and its outcome!"

Even while his words died away, Prince Charming, with his dragon's eyes, continued to regard Azzie's scheme, and he spoke of it, thus:

"A-ha," he soliloquized, "it's obvious to me I am a nothing, a mere congeries of disparate parts, and that my so-called uncle Azzie, a demon indeed despite his ingratiating ways, gave me the face of Scarlet's seducer when putting me together, for the purpose of being sacrificed by Scarlet when I awaken her. Well then, if that's so, let it be. Kill me, pretty Princess, if that's what will content you. But though I am a nothing man, constructed of odds and ends and brought to life by a fiend, yet a true heart beats in my breast, and I can only say, I am yours, Princess, do with me what you will."

Scarlet felt the touch of a man's lips. Her eyes opened, but at first she saw nothing due to the nearness of the young man kissing her. Her first thought was, What bliss to be so awak­ened!

Then she saw his face. That face! O Gods! She recognized it instantly. This was the face of the man who had seduced her and abandoned her.

Her eyes widened. One white hand fluttered to her breast like one of the lost doves of Hera. He! It is he! Her hand groped behind her and encountered the haft of the dagger lying on the little nightstand. She lifted it. ...

Azzie had calculated this part with precision. He knew how the dagger would slide into her hand as if of its own volition. The audience, invisible but present, would lean for­ward. The members of the Awards Committee would see Scar­let's hand pull back, then plunge the dagger into his back, through to the heart! And then, with Charming expiring on the floor of her chamber, Azzie himself would step forward. "Alas, little princess," he would say (the speech long rehearsed), "you've killed the only man you could ever love, the man in whom was bound your salvation!" And after that, Azzie thought it would make a pretty ending if Scarlet turned the dagger on herself, thus ensuring herself an eternity of pain in the Pits of deepest Hell. He had even considered bringing Charming back to life long enough to watch Scarlet die, in order to tempt him into uttering blasphemies so great as to ensure his own eternal damnation. A good ending for one who likes to tie up loose ends.

So sure of all this was Azzie that he appeared before Scarlet now, saying, with heavy irony, "Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love; but the world is not thy friend nor thy world's law."

People argued for a long while afterward as to why this plan was not successful. In Azzie's opinion, simple reciprocity should have guided Scarlet's fingers to the dagger, and the dagger to the unprotected back of the young Prince. But life, with its healthy habit of indeterminacy, would not have it so.

Azzie had miscalculated the effect of Scarlet's eyes. Though they had not the ability to see the truth, as had those of Charm­ing, yet the eyes could see triviality and artifice, and these they perceived as she considered the tableau she made, she and Prince Charming, and the poisoned dagger. Her artist's eyes saw the artificiality of it: this was not a good subject for one who paints from life. She rebelled for artistic reasons from plunging home the knife, and then, later, her sensibilities fol­lowed her aesthetic judgment.

Scarlet said, "What are you talking about?"

"You shouldn't have killed him," Azzie said. "You've doomed yourself to an eternity of infernal torments, young lady."

Scarlet burst out laughing.

"Laugh at me? I'll show thee - "

Another voice joined in the laughter. It was Charming, standing beside her, his arm around her waist. Charming, up-dead! The dagger had not been employed for its fell purpose! Azzie stepped back in confusion.

They were alive, those two, and somehow love had won out over the ancient predestination of Azzie's curse. Seeing these beautiful young people together, the audience of angels and demons was moved; there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

"This isn't what I meant!" Azzie cried. "This isn't what I meant at all!"

But this was what he had produced: a merry little tale of love and redemption which caught everyone's fancy and en­sured that Good, not Evil, would win the destiny of men's souls for the next thousand years.