Came the shout from across the Ball Room of his father. It was Mortimer, that jingle-jangling red-haired tormentor of innocent fat orange tabbies, and the balm of his existence. The only other person big enough to take him on behind closed doors, so he had someone decent enough to practice fencing with.

  Mortimer relished dancing around the King's son in his long green and yellow pointed shoes, driving him crazy with bawdy naughties of rhyme and reasonless-ness, even as he jabbed him mercilessly with the leather-balled tip of the rapier to show off. He did it now, despite the anticipated look of spilling out news, over spilling out hard lessons of defense. Then bright blue eyes twinkled and Mortimer began to sing:

 

  “There was a sweet Queen of Forstburg,

  Whose husband a ladyinwaiting's blood stirred,

An apple wine,

Poisoned with time,

And the clawed cat, became Queen, and purrrrred!”

 

  Prince Florus Leopold Adel von Schnee, curved his mouth up to the side in annoyance, and he swirled his safety-tipped rapier in a tight circle formation, substituting it instead of his hand to hurry Mortimer's answers out of his tale-telling mouth.

  “What do you mean the Queen is dead? Murdered by poison? How do you know this? And you are late as usual. What is your excuse this time? Upstairs wench who is suppose to be dusting the armor, or downstairs kitchen maid who is suppose to bring us some poppy cake?”

  Mortimer went to open his big big mouth.

  The Prince's voice shouted in annoyance instead.

  “You were really stretching the use of “lady in waiting” by squashing the words together, you know.”

  Mortimer glared.

  The Prince paced and snapped, his rapier to and fro, as he marched in his white-puffed sleeves, and crisp-clean white stockings, and fine fabriced trousers. He never wore pantaloons or breeches to the knee. He did love a clean stocking though. It showed off his perfect muscular legs which were not in the slight, twisted like Mortimer's odd shaped ones. In fact, despite what they had in common, their bodies were shaped very different. All his parts were in proportion, Mortimer's . . . were not. Even if none had privy to seeing his healthy legs or stockings for that matter, the Prince knew long-legged trousers made him look taller.

  Mortimer stated mater-of-factually, “I thought is was a fine-telling. Besides, your father says you shall possibly forthwith finally be gone to your get-to-be once you are on to-get, when the spring has sprung sun— Enough to melt that ice betweath here and there. He leaves it to you—though you know he means . . . you should go . . . a powerful suggestion from thy King. Thy Sire.”

  “I suggest: cat-in-waiting, and clawed lady.”

  Leo though Mortimer was going to have an apotheosized fit. His pale face went red with disgust, his big blue eyes, incredulous. Leo just blinked his blond lashes, trying to hold back a smile.

“You clearly know nothing of wordplay concerning puss-play, let alone the multi-meanings of a layered limerick of wit proportions; kindly stick to brush and board. You paint a picture far better than you could write one!”

  “My apologies. You need not voice news to me in such courtly-manner, you know. I am best at plain-speaking as you have just thoroughly acclaimed.”

  The court jester pushed back on his flapping multi-pointed ball-bouncing bell-jingling hat. It made his large head look even bigger.

  “That is my duty here as well you know Leo. To let you know the news, good or bad—”

  Leo moaned to himself and rolled his light colored eyes. A prelude to a song had taken flight . . .

  “—I have to deliver it in an entertaining;”

  Here is comes . . .

  “ Make a little mingle-jingle—”

  The hat went twinkling with a sarcastic exaggerated head shake curving down right-shoulder left-shoulder right-shoulder left.

  “A little dainty-dance —”

  Pointed shoes kicked up, right-foot left-foot right.

  “Kiss-lick your taller arse . . . to . . . like the informing words of farce.”

  Mortimer hit the black and white marble floor on one knee and spread out his arms in dramatic finale.

  “Ta-Da!”

  Leo rolled his light green eyes once more.

  “Get off the floor you fool.”

  Mortimer struggled to, the Prince grabbed up one billowing green and yellow color-blocked arm and yanked. Mortimer grunted.

  “Are you alright?” Leo asked, once the court jester was to his right-leaning feet.

  Mortimer slammed his floppy hat back onto his head. He thrust a couple of long points out of his face with an agitated hand. Bells banged.

  “My left hip has been hurting again. Soon I will not want to hop with a hip which will not, and your father will not want a fool who will flop and not hop . . . I fell yesterday when I was dancing for some extra coin.”

  The Prince frowned and looked down in concern. The jester frowned and looked up in disgust. They never could see eye-to-eye about some things.

  “I told you if you need anything to come to me. Are you betting again and need extra coin? Do you owe coin? Please tell me you do not owe coin.”

  “I do not owe coin.”

  “Thank God.”

  “No need for blaspheme. Curb that Princely tongue of yours. Just because you are the son of the King, because he was the first son of the King . . . you should not swear. It is wrong.”

  “I should have left you on the floor. It is not my fault my father was born before your father. Besides, I have heard you say far worse. You who studied to be a man of God with all my Latin books.”

  “Circumstances of body over mind.”

  “Because your mind is on your body.”

  “I am no monk!”

  “Do I not know that for fact! A fool with the wenches. They think you a novelty. Why is it you need to “borrow” my bed when you needs get lucky?”

  “Tis not luck! I woo the women!”

  “Woo? Oh woe to woo, you boo-hoo. Please spare me that too. I heard them ask for coin as I was forced to hear your shouts to the Good Lord above, as you had me locked in my dressing room.” Then Leo thunked his own forehead with a dawning hand.

  “That is what you need coin for then is it not?”

  Mortimer's earnest pale face flamed bright red.

  “Of course. I should have known.” Leo rolled pale green eyes again. A habit around his cousin.

  Mortimer crossed his bright-clad short arms over his wide chest.

  “Well at least I get to plow and sow the fields!”

  “And just who are you pleasing with that little hoe anyway?”

  “Me!” came the snarl.

  “And you wanted to be a monk!”

  The two walked towards the hallway which led to the stairs and up to the personal quarters of the von Schnee royal family. It went without saying they wouldn't be fencing. Prince Leo rang for a servant, who came and took the two rapiers to dispose of them. The King's secretary went by, her graceful leisurely walk and smile reveling she must have just parlayed word and wit with the King. She was quite a pretty thing, straight black hair to slim hips and dark blue eyes framed by arched brows. A bow of red held her hair out of her face. Despite coming from a well-to-do family, she was plain-speaking and hardly used the educated manner of speech, as other Nobles did. Leo felt that was one of the reason's his father liked working with her at his side, she told him the truth of the matter, with no double-talk.

  “Your father is in love with her, I think,” remarked Mortimer.

  Leo scoffed. “He loves naught. He is the King. He is too old for such, besides, his luf days are over. Ever since my mother died. He cried for her. She loved him well. More than herself. My father has Catherine the Courtesan for throwing back skirts, remember. He has no needs of love.”

  Mortimer wisely held his tongue. If birthing five early-coming children, and only one live birth any indication, then yes, The Queen had loved King von Schnee well enough to die, trying to keep doing it for him and his big giant body. Mortimer frowned. He knew the difference between lifting skirts and feeling . . . loved. Even the King did. Leo had a lot to learn.

  Leo stomped up the curving ornate gilded staircase, Mortimer hopped-limped along, keeping up. Both kept their grips on the thick banister. It was a long long way down. Falling would not be fun.

  They finally got there. The third floor. A hall of staring, sightless, towering silver armor without knights. Endless. A couple of the upstairs maids giggled, holding and waving great big fluffy feather dusters at Mortimer, before they curtsied low to the ground. Mortimer looked one buxom beauty in the eye as they passed, all smirk and swagger, Leo ignored the other, his regal golden head held high in Princely prideful ignoring practice. Once they got to Leo's rooms, Mortimer turned on him with a disgusted, totally furious face.

  “You would contemplate at least the possibilities of having a good ride—which you have never had—before you lay over your future bride!”

  Leo threw a pillow at his head.

  Mortimer went over to the small carved chair near the fireplace, and placed the red and blue brocade pillow neatly back, and made himself at home in the nice-sized chair. Big long pointed shoes stood up at attention upon a royal carved pillowed foot stool.

  “This certainly is quite the fit,” Mortimer announced to a mutinous —not-happy-to-have-his-specially-made-chair-stolen-from-right-out-under-his-royal-arse— faced, royal pain-in-the-arse cousin.

  “Get out of my favorite chair!”

  “My hip hurts.”

  That was all it took. That played card of court jester complaint. Mortimer put his hands behind his head and leaned back, basked in the glow of a comfortable throne at last, as the Prince climbed up onto a high seating-bench filled with plump plush feathered pillows. He rubbed at the furry head of lazy flea-lion half-blind, fat orange striped cat, laying there like a royal himself. Leo's pet, his cat named . . . Pumpkin. Just because he was round, fat, and orange. Mortimer sighed. Terrible name. Leo really had no sense of the ironic, though the sweet Lord knew he tried.

  Gold and red pillows got kicked all over the place in wild arcs around the room, as far as strong well-shaped two short-compared-to-the-pillows of double-in-length-size-of-the-legs, could thunk them. The cat jumped down, hissed over at Mortimer, who made a face back—thumbs in ears—and hopped up onto the royal bed and plunked down onto his side and went back to snoring.

  “I hate these useless flops of feather-stuffed feather-covered feather-filled-headed-idea of pleasantry!” Leo spat as another pillow, one of green, went sailing over Mortimer's head.

  Mortimer ducked just in time before a loud crash ensued behind the chair he lounged in. “They were suppose to aid you. Feathers are harder than they look if that broken pottery is any indication. Can I try my hand, or rather foot, at tossing a pillow at the horrid orange beastie?”

  Leo glared, and his light green eyes looked like spring glass and dark menace all at once. “I do not need any help getting atop things.” Then, “Do not you dare kick a pillow at my cat.”

  “Piled pillows are wonderful for that very reason. Plying a puss.”

  Leo raised an annoyed Princely brow in warning.

  “You can use them to get atop many things.” Mortimer grinned wide and innocent, clearly not innocent in the least.

  “Please do not tell me you used these pillows to—”

  “The feathers tickled my fancy . . . or should I say:

 

  “Quick to pick a feather plucked,

  A cock tickled with teasing luck,

Little chickens made to be fu—”

 

  “Do NOT continue that present committed line of ear-injuring dirty-ditty. I would rather have my eye plucked out, than have that image of you in my head of my pillows and your erect cock sliding all over them.”

  Mortimer laughed.

  “I am so glad our mothers were sisters. I am glad you are my cousin. I am glad your mother took me in.”

  Leo grew sad. “I love you too cousin.” Mortimer's parents were going to drown him when he was born. His own mother, God-rest-her-blessed-soul, took Mortimer as her own, the misshapen tiny baby boy with too big a head. Mortimer was now twenty years old and barely four feet high. As it ended up, Mortimer's parents ended up themselves drowning, when their carriage fell into the quick running river from a bridge collapsing. Leo felt that was just deserves. He never voiced that feeling to Mortimer though. His cousin grieved his dead parents regardless of the truth.

  The jester-clothed man inquired, “Do you ever think we are like this because our fathers were brothers, and our mothers were sisters?”

  Leo thought a moment. He knew for a fact that one of their other cousins, a son from their mother's youngest sister, was little like them. The only one from that brood. Their cousins from their father's side of the family were not. Leo felt only their mother's side of the family had that trait of . . . little . . . , yet all the parents were tall.  Normal.

  “No,” he stated, “I do not care what that priest told my father. We are not curses. We are men, even if you are the only one shorter than me here. He said that, as we were born to royalty, not from orphans or foundlings and kept as pets.”

  “I think of you as giant, I oft have doubts thee are a true dwarf. You need not worry about being compared to my lowly self. Nobody knows I am your cousin anyway. Besides. I make sure you look straight and tall, and handsomely Princely; even if you are just a half-head taller than me.” Mortimer shrugged. “Well a whole head, wit withholding.”

  Leo smiled. None dare say Mortimer did not have gift of mind, thought and words. Even if he was not a court jester, he was truly funny. Then he frowned. “I wish your hips and legs did not hurt as much as they do lately.”

  “They have always given me pain. You have given me joy though. An even swap I think. Thank you for being my friend.” Mortimer looked over to the double French doors with imported glass. “I am glad you always leave your drapes open to let that glorious splendor of God's hand in. The sun is warmth in itself, of the love in this world. More enjoyed with a comfortable well-suited seat against me seat.”

  “I suppose you want me to have that chair and foot stool dragged up to your little attic room.”

  “That would be nice . . . , but no. It belongs here. Where else would I sit when we visit?”

  “Indeed.” Prince Leo got down from the bench and went to the opposite wall, and yanked back another pair of floor-to-ceiling rich velvet, dark purple drapes.   Reflected sunlight bounced across the room and blinded both him and his cousin a moment. The mirror.

  He stared. He stared harder. A perfect version of his father's youthful portrait hung in the ancestor hall stared back.

  A miniature painting of a bigger-than-life King. In living reflection of course.

  “I need to select clothing.”

  “Going to the funeral then? The Queen has already been buried, morning black is required. It will be weeks until snow melts for travel. I suggest you do not wear those horrible red heeled shoes which are all the rage of the elite in France. They make you look as though you are desperate for a miserly three inches. That was not one of your father's better ideas.”

  The Prince shot a wry look over to the floppy-hatted redhead.

  “I have never, nor will I ever, wear those excuses of a man's foot attire even if they were five inches. I am no fop!”

  “They have their uses.”

  Leo sputtered. “Please tell me you did not—”

  “Would if I could, but I shannot, so I wont, and I did—I needed the height when I could not quite—”

  Leo grasped his blond head and just shook it as he sighed in the usual disgust towards Mortimer's escapades.

  “You are randier than a hound!”

  “That was why.”

  “What?”

  “That was why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Hound.”

  “Hound what?”

  “Yes.”

  Leo groaned and tugged at his shoulder-length curls. Hands on hips, he tapped his ankle-booted foot on the floor. The laces of the boot was as tight as he was.

  “What are you blathering about now. If you burst into song, I swear I will have your head lobbed off.”

  “There will not be much left of me then will there. You can not lob off my head. Where would you be then?”

  “Free from demented dwarfs.”

  “Careful. If my father was born first, this atrocious suit of forced-fool could be yours, sweet dear royal pain in my arse.”

  Leo went into his dressing room and started yanking out travel clothes, all black, and threw them across his massive bed of indigo blue brocaded throws, and more horrid feather pillows. Mortimer threw off his hated hat, and joined in aiding his cousin. Clothes selected, and kept in the travel room, hung and refreshed, readied to be packed the day deemed safe for travel. Leo was particular about his clothes and only allowed the maids to pack them, but never sort them, nor choose them.

  “You should not keep your mirror covered up. It is a beautiful mark of craftsmanship; the silver sings nothing but shivering sunlight and slivers of silent awed delight.”

  A cape of black velvet lined with forest green silk went sailing by.

  “It is not the outside of the mirror I hate, it is the inside I detest.”

  Mortimer glanced over at the mirror and the reflection of his cousin's perfectly shaped, yet miniature sized appearance, of his stately King sire. He was as handsome as his father, small in stature, yes, but quite the man. Then he stepped forward as Leo went passed him with an armful of trousers.

  Mortimer looked at himself.

  Bright red hair. Big blue eyes. A long nose, arched red brows, dimples. A nice shaped mouth—if he did say so himself, he had no complaints after all, that mouth and his tongue knew quite a few tricks and that was something he never jested about—

  Alright, so he leaned a little to the right side, his arse was a little big, his legs a little bowed. His hands a little . . . little. His fingers curved slightly. He looked down at the place between his legs.

  No complaints there. In fact, wenches liked the fact he did not hurt them like some of the knights and visiting nobleman did. They said he moved just right and hit all the right places. Helga the milk maid was the best. He was half in love with her. She was a foot taller than him, big bosomed and just sixteen. In fact, they did it a lot. She was always giving him presents. A cookie here, a tart there. He gave her a purple flower once, and she put it in her orange hair just to show him she thought of him.

  Mortimer glanced up just at that moment and saw the most pitiful sight of manhood he ever beheld.

  Bright blinding billowing silk of blocked greens and garish yellow. A big tent of pointed cock pushing out in a green square and a soft dreamy look in yearning blue eyes.

  Then he looked again at Leo.

  He said: “You know, sometimes I plain want to kick you with one of these disgusting slivers of belled speared shoes to wake you up. If I do though, I will kick so hard my belled foot will no doubt be stuck so high up you, I will be subjected to hopping around on my bad hip with my toes jingling with songs of bowels for all eternity, until we both either die from being pegged together, or you have a movement of said-bowel. That would not; a good impression make, for your father the King. He already holds me in low regard despite your affection towards me and my desperate dancing. He would likely lobe off my foot, then my head, to free your arse from my foot of common sensibility. That would not be a song I would like to sing . . .

 

“There was a dwarf from von Schnee, do tell.

Where only one von Schnee, had kept him well,

He was not worth much,

When the Prince he dared touch,

So the King hacked him to pieces to sell.”

 

  Leo stopped in mid-walk with a couple of black sashes, and his brown brows rose and blond-brown lashes . . . blinked.

  “Now what? First it is hounds and heels, now hacking away your foot and head.”

  Mortimer grabbed at the sashes and they played tug-of-war a moment until Leo simply let go of his end, and Mortimer bounced backwards into the mattress. He flung the sashes over his head and grabbed Leo's perfect arm and marched him to the mirror.

  “Look. Look at yourself.”

  Leo did not. He looked away.

  “Look at yourself!” Mortimer shook violently his cousin's tense arm. The Prince narrowed his eyes at the court jester in the heavily gilded ornate mirror.

  “You are beautiful Leo. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I am sure you are nervous meeting your future bride under such circumstances of her mother's untimely-timed death, but she will not find you lacking. How could she? You are a man of worth. Your beauty fills up the inside of you too. You and that treacherous tempered tattered cat of yours. A Prince with a one-eyed cat. Who ever heard of such a thing? A Prince who is perfection of compassion towards his misshapen cousin of ridiculed humanity. I have to pay them. Pay them all, those open-legged wenches; all but the sweet milk maid of delight. If I was as you —even at only four and a half feet tall— I would marry Helga. No more earning coins to earn a little rooster crowing relief. I would not need to throw crumbs at chickens. I could have the whole castle of dreams.”

  Leo looked at Mortimer. Really looked at him. Finally saw all of him. Beyond the clown of randy desperation to be a man.

  “You will never have to be a fool when I am King. You will be openly my beloved cousin and you will have a thatched-roofed cottage of stone and wood, or live here in your own suites if that is what you wish. You will marry Helga, she will give you babies, I will bounce your sons and daughters on my knee in cousinly-fashion, and they will never have to dance to please me. If they are little. If they are little.”

  “I do not want to father little children from my body. I wish not their hearts to hurt.”

  “You would guide them with your love. They will be grand men. How can you stop it?”

  “You have much to learn.”

  “I am older than you.”

  “You have much to learn. I am by far older and wiser despite our two year difference in age.”

  “I am afraid I will not please my betrothed in form or prowl in our marriage bed. She is said to be . . . tall.”

  “Pure as white snow. What she does not know, you will teach her. It is not as hard as you think . . . well, it needs to be hard to work. I tell you again, start using that beauty of blond curling lock, and springtime glow of luminously lit orbs of eye and—”

  “Someday . . . Someday I will be blessed with lack of poetic prose.”

  “When I am dead.”

  They both went stock-still silent and looked at each other again.

  “I believe in love, you know Mortimer. That is why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why I do not frig them. The willing wenches. They want me because I am the Prince. I just want a wife whose husband happens to be the Prince . . . I want my white-as-snow princess to simply love me. All of me, or rather, lack of me.”

  “She will grow to love you I am sure. She will have to get to know you first, I am thinking. Yes, me thinks it will be a shock at first, your little self, because of the size of thine father. But heed me, your heart will outshine your lack of height. She has never witnessed your true self, only that portrait your father sent to hers— That bitter lie of your handsome manly attributes on the King's own war mount! Double the size of your pony, that man-killer is. That big black brute would eat me for supper and swallow me whole, while doing it. I hate that horse.”

  “So do I.” Then Leo paced. Back and forth, forth and back.

  “Is it hard to keep your . . . self inside a woman?”

  Mortimer looked mortified, then gave a mournful shrug.

  “I push in as deep as I can. No, I do not have any problem other than height of reaching new heights.” His blue eyes went dreamy a moment. “Helga holds me nice and tight. She makes me feel ten feet tall and touches me, as if I am handsome to her.” Then Mortimer became all business inquiry. “Is that what you are really worried about? The size of your cock?”

  “Should I not be?”

  Mortimer looked serious. Leo began to look serious. Mortimer contemplated. Leo panicked.

  “It is bigger than yours! It should work right and stay in then . . . right?

  Mortimer laughed and Leo wanted to punch his fool-smirking face.

  “I do not find anything humorous about this serious conversation. I expect you to answer me. I certainly can not go to my father with my questions. I strive hard enough to keep up with his expectations of me. He has mentioned more than once he might legitimize my older half-brother, who is also two feet over my head and my father's width of shoulder. That would make me . . . what would it make me? I do not know. Are you going to wipe that silly grin off your pale white face and be serious? I can not take it anymore. I have been unmanned with worry for months. Ever since my father stated I need to finally meet my betrothed beloved . . . ”

  “Beloved; that we have yet to see. You and those tragic Greek tragedies of love found and lost, and hero's whose escapades of surging over mountains, and crossing seas to look upon a beauteous face; and the damsel falls at his feet! You needs to lift your nose out of books at times, and keep it straight on your goals of the Kingly future at your blessed feet. No, you definitely can not take these questions to your father, indeed I am the best to answer your inquiring mindful concerns, and I am sure, unneeded worries of the state of your Princely future prince-making principle part.”

  “Enough of the Hades prose if you will! I am going out of my mind!” Leo yanked at his long hair. Mortimer just grinned some more.

  “Drop them.”

  Leo looked perplexed. “Pardon?”

  “Drop them. Drop the drawers. Trousers, I do assume you are attired in the correct amount of short clothes, and padding.”

  “I do not need any enhancement if you please.”

  Most nobles of their acquaintance stuffed their breeches with the proper amount of padding to appear more endowed.

  “There you go! You are not so worried as you think if you go around showing the wares, if you do not mind me saying so.”

  Leo scoffed, then guarded his personal parts from an inquiring blue eyed contemplating search.

  “Might as well show me anyway.”

  The Prince ground his teeth, and went about untying and untucking, yanking and yawing, and letting his fine trousers fall to a heap at his heels.

  “Satisfied?” came the through-his-teeth-reply of embarrassed, yet understanding the necessity of it all, response. Leo dared a glance in the mirror.

  Mortimer was at his side as usual, bearing it all for his cousin.

  They were definitely a little different. A tear came to Leo's eye.

  “Happy now my Prince? Your princess will have no complaints, that is obvious. She will be satisfied indeed.” Mortimer jammed himself back into his flashing, colorful hated silk breeches. Leo quickly did the same with his own pieces of this and that.

  “I-I am sorry Mortimer.”

  “For what? Believe me, it does not matter. I still feel good when I plow a woman, and I make them feel good too.” Then, at Leo's blushing face, “I needed those shoes because I had Helga bent over the bed and could not get the right angle. She likes it when I do it hound-style with her.”

  Leo's mouth moved silently. Shocked. His cheeks were pinkened.

  “See, much to learn. Let us call for a maid and get you packed.”

  “I am sorry,” Leo uttered again. But he could not say what he was sorry for.  Mortimer's legs were twisted and his hips crooked, two different sizes, and he looked like he was in far greater pain than Leo ever realized. And suddenly Leo knew he was. Frail and sick.

  His dancing days were over.

  He would inform his father the King this very night.

  His first pre-King decree, as all Princes had privilege to enforce, and Leo wished he had been man-enough to do it before.

  “You are done being the fool,” Leo announced boldly and with strength. Mortimer looked at him strangely in mid-pull of the fabric bell-pull to summon a maid to the room to pack clothes rather than the Prince.

  A perplexed court jester said: “Pardon me?”

  “I am retiring you. No questions, no words, no gestures of that rude thumb under chin, not a peep, not a poem, not a prose, not a humming-hint of song.”

  Mortimer just stared bewildered blue.

  “Cottage or here at the Castle? That is the only answer I want from you. Nothing more, nothing less. Well?”

  Silence.

  “Cottage?”

  Silence.

  “Castle?”

  More silence.

  “I have been wanting you to be quiet for the past twenty years and now when I do not want you to stand there like a witless wordless . . . fool . . . there you are!”

  Mortimer did not blink. He was shocked.

  “Well???” the Prince growled, “Better answer or I swear I will go get Helga up here and try her out myself!”

  Mortimer quickly croaked out, “I am without words.” He pulled off his multi-pointed hat and bells fluttered a dying soft twinkle, and he held it between his small hands at his waist.

  “Do you still want to marry Helga? I will give you both whatever you need to be happy.”

  For the first time in his life, Mortimer's bright big blue eyes filled with tears, and Leo simply went to him and took him in his bigger arms. He patted Mortimer's back as his cousin hiccuped against his clean white shirt then blew his long nose into it.

  “I wish you did not wet my shirt with your nose.”

  “Sorry,” came the muffled snort, on another blast of clearing stuffed tear-filled nose and throat.

  After a while the two cousins separated.

  “I could use some peace and quiet Leo. I want to be a man, not a laughable thing to make sport of. I do not want to abandon you though. You need me.”

  “You can not abandon me.” Leo pointed to his heart inside his chest. “You are here. Always. I need you to be happy.”

  Mortimer stood in silence for a long long time. Then he pulled Leo back over to the mirror.

  “Look,” Mortimer whispered, “Look at us. There is magic in the air, I feel it down deep to my bones.”

  Leo looked at his smaller dwarfed cousin in the mirror. Mortimer began to sing:

 

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Who is the fairest of them all,

Reflections we doth see,

Of soul-connection, him and me,

A just, King, a charming Prince shall be.”

 

  The two sets of eyes held in the magic of the mirror.

  “A cottage. A cottage in the wood between this castle and that of your bride-to be, so whilst our children grow, they will know each other, and we can visit and talk of these good, fair times. Our friendship, our kinship, our loyalty, our beginnings of dreams.”

  Leo put his arm across Mortimer's tiny shoulder.
  “You know something Mortimer?”

  “What?”

  “You are God's man. Your heart is bigger than my kingdom. You will always be the bigger man in my eyes.”

  Then Prince Florus Leopold Adel von Schnee, got down to his knees, bent to the floor, and pressed his cheek against the big, long, belled, yellow and green slippered feet. Which of course, made Mortimer sputter and kick him away, moaning and groaning about Princely dignity and the like. But when Leo stood and smiled down into his smaller cousin's face, Mortimer's eyes were big and blue, and wet with adoration.