Be forewarned: I tried a new genre for this story and wrote it in a very short amount of time.

If you’ve never read about Fae before, don’t worry. This story is a good introduction.

It’s also in honor of the writing contest I’m judging.

Ready to dig in?

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They had buried him alive again.

Underneath dirt and stone and grass and sun and moon and stars, the Fae Prince groaned. They’d knocked him out before hiding him down here alone. 

“Hello?” A female voice said.

So not alone. “Who goes there?”

“Anneme, sire.”

The Prince hardly dared to look in her direction, even in the dark. “Are you…?”

“I’m afraid so. Why must they do this to you, sire?”

The Prince wiggled the best he could. His bare skin touched wood. So not just underground, but in a tiny coffin. “It’s part of our bargain,” he answered Anneme.

“Why am I here then?” Her voice echoed off the corners of the coffin only inches above their bodies.

The Prince sighed. “I should have used more specific language.”

“Then get us out of here, sire.”

The Prince felt that Anneme had tacked a smirk onto the word “sire” under the cover of darkness. He winced. “It’s not as if I can use my hands. Wait a moment.”

“So it’s true then…you pried the last coffin open with your bare hands?”

“Yes, a brilliant feat, no doubt.”

“Just to avoid a little magicking, sire?” Anneme snickered.

“I can’t avoid it now, so let me concentrate.” The tiny coffin would have magic locks. He spoke to them. “What is your rune? Reveal it to me.”

The locks responded without hesitation. This was the easy part. Light shone on the lid of the coffin, emanating from nowhere. In the glow, he glimpsed pale skin in the direction Anneme’s voice had come from. 

He looked away. 

The Prince focused on the light forming a shape to represent which spell he ought to use to release himself. It formed an apple. 

All he needed to release the lock was to magically create an apple out of thin air. Easy, right?

The light revealed the shadowy corners of the coffin were truly only inches above his head. He longed to reach out and touch them.

Digging and dragon snorts came from above ground. His dragon guards. The question was whether they would rescue him or eat him. 

They would probably eat him.

The Prince groaned again. He’d caught himself in this trap.

The exercises prepared him for escaping capture by other Fae kingdoms, yes, but his tutor had designed it more in the light of a huge game.

In a normal castle room, with brilliant sun rays shining through the windows and elegant drapes covering the walls, the Prince could cross his arms and refuse to practice magic. 

In a coffin, an unspecified number of feet underground, with a servant girl, not in his best form, and with dragons digging overhead, his life could depend on using magic. 

“I will only use magic when I need it!” The Prince had declared once in an argument with the Baron. 

“As long as you do use magic when your life is in danger, I am happy with that. Do you agree?”

The headstrong Prince had said yes. 

As a Fae, he could not break his agreement. Even spoken, it represented a legally binding compulsive contract. 

It had been a nasty trick, indeed. 

Baron Frost spent his nights thinking of ways to put his pupil in life threatening danger. His parents didn’t object, of course, because the Prince had bound himself in a contract.

The coffin shook, the sound of dragons snorting close by.

“You’re a Fae Prince. You should be able to open the coffin and turn us back in a matter of seconds!” Anneme cried. “I don’t want to die!”

He grit his teeth at the grim prospect and turned towards Anneme.

She had pale skin. Not like flesh, but like an onion…or more specifically, like a tulip bulb.

Baron Frost had turned them both into tulip bulbs. A dragon’s favorite treat.

“Can’t you turn us into apples?” He inquired. 

Dragons didn’t eat apples, so at least if they turned into apples, they would be safe from being eaten.

“My magic doesn’t work in here.” Anneme started to cry, big dollops of water dripping from her Fae eyes set into a tulip bulb’s skin. Tufts of roots emerged from her skin like scraggly hairs. Her mouth wasn’t quite Fae, but teeth showed, even though her white skin just cracked where a pair of lips should be.

Dragon claws scratched the lid of the coffin. 

Her life depended on his ability to do magic in the next few seconds.

“Become an apple!” He commanded her tulip bulb body.

She turned orange and lost the roots.

“Become an apple.” He commanded again, visualizing the red skin and stem of a ripe apple.

“Did it work?” Anneme cried, interrupting his thoughts. She stayed an orange, with dimples added to her skin now.

“Be quiet.” The Prince thought of an apple, securing the image in his head, and added the words “please help” to his mental plea. “Become an apple, like the apples of lore that hang from the trees.”

Anneme morphed into a bright red apple, with stem and leaf and smile.

The coffin hinges creaked.

Triggered by the correct magic spell, the lid opened, exposing one perfect apple and one tulip bulb.

The Prince looked up into the mouth of a dragon, prepared for whatever fate awaited him.