“Come on, Pingu!” Eselda cried excitedly over her shoulder when she failed to hear the dog panting behind her. “I want to see the princesses!”
Penguin pulled his nose out of the hollow log he’d been investigating and caught up with her after a couple of easy lollops. “But, Zel, there aren’t any princesses in Shaman.” The little girl slowed a little and her face dropped visibly, so he added hastily, “there’s a prince, though.”
“Is that Prince Tristan?”
“Yes.”
“He’s friends with Uncle Thoth,” she informed him importantly.
“Yes,” Penguin replied with the air of one who was bored of hearing about this topic. “I know.”
Even though she could see it, the castle was a lot further away than Eselda thought and after a little while she had to slow back down to a walk. Her mum and brother and sister had gone off to market, but Eselda was allowed to ‘run along and play’ as long as she had Penguin with her. The first thing the seven year-old had done was pull the shiny pink ribbon out of her hair and tie it around the dog’s neck to show off her newfound ability to tie bows. Penguin would tolerate this kind of dress-up from no one else, and wasn’t too grumpy about it since they hadn’t run into anyone yet. As they got closer to the castle, he started to feel a little more self-conscious and tactfully told the little girl that loose hair was not allowed on castle grounds. Eselda believed this without question, and paused the expedition in order to solemnly remove it from the dog and tie it back into her own copper-brown curls.
The closer they came, the bigger the castle got. It had to be at least… a hundred times bigger than the cottage she lived in. Tugging Hannah the ragdoll into the crook of her arm, she popped her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully while she gazed up at the looming building, wondering what to do next. When she’d asked her mum if she could go off with Penguin, she hadn’t really detailed a plan beyond ‘find the place where the princesses live’. There were lots of people hurrying around (mostly people carrying things), but none of them looked very royal. A person holding something Eselda recognised and associated with very positively – a horse’s saddle – was striding off around the side of the castle. Without thinking, she followed him. Where there were saddles, there were surely ponies.
Penguin trotted along beside her, pausing every now and again to sniff at something particularly interesting. Eselda chatted to him about various topics, which jumped around according to her thought processes; for the most part, he could just nod and pass the odd comment here or there to keep her happy. They quickly lost sight of the man she had been following, but as they rounded the final corner they saw him leaving a familiar-looking wooden building. Stables! Eselda pulled her thumb out of her mouth and broke into an excited run, clutching Hannah carefully to make sure the doll didn’t slip away. They reached the stable door, which the saddle-carrying man had left the door ajar, and peeked around the edge. Almost immediately, she withdrew and pressed her back against the wall next to it, hugging Hannah to her chest.
“There’s someone in there,” she whispered to Penguin.
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