She considers, for a minute or so, asking for help like a sensible person. She could ask her parents, who keep telling her to come to them with her troubles, or the court wizard, who might actually know something. But the thing is... does she trust any of those people with this? She would've thought so, but now that the moment is at hand, she is forced to admit that she does not.

After all, if this is the work of some magic spell, who cast it? It's supposed to be Reed's job to protect her from this sort of thing, and if he hasn't, either he's falling down on the job... or he deliberately betrayed her. And if he did deliberately betray her, he might have done something to her parents too, something that will make anything she tells them about the problem fall down the same hole that ate her memories of the rose garden when she stepped inside that little bower. Or he might have just fooled them in the ordinary human way, gained their trust with words and charm, so that if she asks them to keep this quiet from him they won't. Better not risk it.

Well then. She's sixteen and a princess and this will be her kingdom someday and maybe she should practice solving her own damn problems. Reed is going away on business shortly, something about overseeing the weather in the north, and she should have plenty of time to sneak into his study and read up on memory magic.

Reed's study, despite also serving as his bedroom is not nearly as large as some of the other rooms in the palace, though it's still quite sizable. Shelves line two the four walls, of which one is filled with various tomes covered in various amounts of dust in an order that is not obviously discernable, if one even exists. There's probably a book or two on magic relating to memory in there, but they won't be easy to find without searching the bookshelves from top to bottom. 

The second set of shelves is extra dense with shelving, and contains neat rows of various items, packed much in a much less helter-skelter manner the other two bookshelves. There's a shelf and a half filled with small and medium sized and a few larger bottles of various liquids in a wide array of colors, all carefully labeled in a perfectly aligned grid, a few of which are slowly changing color or bubbling gently or glow with a dim but sure light. There are animal parts dried and preserved in jars and other containers, once again carefully labeled, there are small bone and metal and stone objects in strange shapes, and so on. Clearly the items of a wizard with a wide array of tools to bring to bear on a variety of problems. 

Against the third wall is a wide workbench, taking up the entire wall, with various equipment in specific locations. On one end, nearest the wall with the array of items, is a bunch of glass tubing and other instruments clearly used for distillation of potions, which is currently dropping a drop of green liquid into a receptacle one small drop at a time. There's another area nearby where some various pieces of clockwork lay half-disassembled. Near to that there is a writing area, with quills and parchment, for taking notes, of which there is a slightly askew pile of parchment covered in a dense and crabby handwriting, several passages are clearly scratched out and others are densely underlined or circled. Near the ink bottle is a tattered blue ribbon.

The fourth wall has a bed against it, and it's the only wall with a window, set high into the wall. There's also a rather small wardrobe, which may explain why Reed has so few different sets of clothing. 

A closer inspection of the shelving with books in it will reveal that there is an odd pattern of dust in the middle of the floor, as though something has traced a wide arc through the floor there in the middle. It's also the shelves that would have to have covered up the window, since Reed's suite is up against a corner of the castle. 

...okay, suspiciously doorlike bookshelves, she'll get to you in a minute once she's done having a moment about her fucking hair ribbon which is scrunched up in a well-worn tangle on Reed's fucking desk. She hasn't worn those in a year! Where did he get it? Who steals a teenage princess's hair ribbon and uses it as a fidget toy?? This is so disturbing!

Right, on to the bookshelves. That is blatantly the track of a swinging door. Can she spot any books on the shelf with a pattern of fingerprints suggesting they've been repurposed as doorknobs? It's a long shot, probably he uses magic to open it, but it's worth checking before she starts inventorying his entire library.

There are no obvious fingerprint spots or any other disturbances in the relevant bookshelf to indicate that there's a way to open the swinging door in the bookshelves assuming one exists. Some books have much less dust on them than others, but they're also the more dog-eared ones if she looks at them closely. There's definitely more dust in here than the palace maids would be comfortable with, so any such pattern is likely to be visible (it's why the arc of dust was visible in the first place) but the palace maids are rather glad that he's told them in no uncertain terms that they're not to dust or clean in there, ever. No one wants to dust a wizard's study and get accidentally turned into a frog. 

So, time to inventory the books, then. One by one, taking each off its shelf and then putting it back exactly in place, because normally she'd trust her memory to be able to hold onto the whole layout unassisted but lately her memory has been proving untrustworthy. There's not much she can do about all the dust she disturbs while she's at it, but she does think to duck out for a minute to borrow* a pair of her mother's fine silk gloves so that she never touches a book directly. Just in case there's any truth to those rumours about wizards' belongings turning people into frogs.

*(steal)

She is not transmuted into a frog, or covered in purple and yellow boils, nor are her ears and eyes turned upside down, or any other of the gossip she's heard about the kinds of things that can happen from disturbing a wizard's study. 

However, in one area of the middle bookshelves, against the back wall (the books go two layers deep) there is a stone that is incredibly, unbearably cold, and makes her fingers feel worse than the winter where the entire lake froze over for a month and a half. When she pulls her fingers back they feel as warm and regular as ever, after a moment, despite the biting cold they had previously been subject to. 

...disturbing.

She... decides to leave that alone for now. Maybe she'll come back to it later and see if she can prod it into opening the secret door.

There are a lot of different books on various subjects tossed in some areas of the bookshelf almost haphazardly. There are some books on magic and potions and spells in there, mostly gathered near to the left where the shelving full of other magical items are, but the further to the right Iris gets the more strange and eclectic the collection becomes, especially in the mostly-invisible layer of books closest to the wall. There are books on economic and political theory, a book on the history of a kingdom that Iris hasn't even heard of, and some various books of fiction, including a collection of children's tales for young readers. 

If there was a defining characteristic of the books in this library that seem out of place, it would be "old and worn and leather-bound". 

It is looking less and less like she's going to find a handy book on memory spells. Probably he keeps his handy book on memory spells behind his obvious secret door. Nevertheless, she slogs through the entire collection, just in case he stuffed a book on memory spells into the back rank of a shelf somewhere, perhaps behind this book of obscure bread recipes. (Those currant buns sound tasty. No, don't get distracted.)

There is a single slim book, green, packed in the back behind a naturalist's book on the different birds of whispering woods and a rather dry-looking book that purports to list the yearly exports and imports of every country on the entire continent for a decade. It's labeled "Memory Spells and their Dangers: the ways they go wrong and why they should be avoided". 

Well that's not exactly what she was looking for but it sure is what she's about to sit on the floor and read for the next half hour.

The author explains in great detail that memory spells cannot be made with the level of fine detail required to be truly useful, as they are always either detectable or equivalent to killing the person. In most cases, the subject of memory spells are left unconscious and drooling for the rest of their short lives -- which can hardly be considered a successful piece of magic if the idea was to remove the memory of an object or person undetectably without incapacitating the subject. The most successful spells and formulations, if you could call them successful, wipe out entire months or even years of the subject's memory in order to remove a specific memory concept, which makes it rather obvious to the subject that they're missing something important. In the cases where the spells are successfully cast with sufficient fine detail (and you can count the verifiable cases on the fingers of one hand, most other accounts are just foolish myth and legend), the subjects quickly regained the memory of the person or object they were spelled to forget as soon as they saw them or something related to them. Even in the more... legendary cases, the stories still describe the same failures, and even if they were true, the methods used to perform these incredible feats of precision and care are lost to time, and the methods that exist today cannot ever hope to reach the same heights of power that the wizards of old were able to accomplish. In short, memory spells are dangerous to the subject (you might as well just kill them, which can be accomplished in a number of ways requiring far less effort or preparation), easily detectable, and fragile. No self-respecting wizard would waste their time researching on working on such things. 

Oh, and also it's totally unethical and you shouldn't. 

Well, that sure is a long list of warnings that somebody has ignored. If he even read them. She's really starting to suspect he has not actually read most of these books.

Was it Reed who cast the memory spell? She's pretty sure it was Reed who cast the memory spell. Between 'failed to protect her' and 'did it himself', the second rings truer in light of his apparent competence; also, the book on the pitfalls of memory spells is a bit of a hint. As for what he was trying to make her forget...

Reading between the lines a little, it looks like memory spells remove some specific thing from the subject's memory, a person or an item or something. So she should be looking for a missing piece of her life, a person or object who would have appeared in all the places that are wrongly unfamiliar. A treasured book? A cherished friend? Something like that.

It also looks like they're easily knocked loose just by rediscovering whatever was taken away, which means that (a) solving the mystery should also solve her problem and (b) Reed is probably not using memory spells to make her forget that he's been doing unmentionable things to her in all her favourite childhood haunts, because probably she'd remember it all as soon as she saw him again, which she definitely has. Unless he memory-spells her again every time he sees her. But surely at some point that's got to start being an obviously bad idea, right? Right? Ugh.

Okay, let's... proceed for now on the assumption that Reed has carved some specific person or thing out of her memory, because the alternative is probably reading too much into the presence of that tattered hair ribbon. All she has to do, then, is find the lost thing and get a good look at it. Or even just find something related to the lost thing.

The obvious first place to check is all the blank places, the rose bower and the library nook and the attic hideaway. As much as she hates the idea, she knows they're going to be the likeliest places to find something related to whatever she lost.

First, though, she carefully puts the book on the dangers of memory spells back where she found it, and after looking at the trails she left in the dust, she sighs and sneaks out again to find a broom and feather duster and give the whole place the sort of halfhearted going-over that might be applied by a newly hired maid who didn't know she wasn't supposed to clean in here but did know she really didn't want to. That way, when he comes back and finds the dust in his study is not where he left it, there will be an obvious explanation that has nothing to do with Princess Iris.

With that important job complete, she heads back to her bedroom and digs up her old basket of hair ribbons, because if she's going to be venturing back into the blank places anyway, she's determined to make things easier for her future self in case she is having parts of her memory repeatedly erased. She should probably have already done this, the moment she noticed something was wrong; but the fact that she didn't do it the moment she noticed something was wrong might mean that this isn't the first time she noticed. So. Little bits of ribbon, tucked into barely-visible spots in the blank places, as unobtrusive as she can make them... and, on consideration, she digs into the bottom of the basket to get out all the ribbons that aren't blue, the ones she hated and never wore. Just in case Reed happens to pass by and see them, she doesn't want him noticing the colour.

She practices one of the prettiest knots from the cherished book of knots in her bedroom, and bookmarks it with yet another bit of ribbon, and then goes forth to scour all the blank places for clues and mark each one with a pretty knot as she leaves it.

As far as she's aware, Reed doesn't notice she's been through his study, and she lose any more memory that she can detect -- all the ribbons she finds hidden away the following weeks and months are ones she remembers placing. 

Three months later, preparations begin for a large state visit -- the kingdom of Golden Fields (a longtime friend and ally to Iris' kingdom of Silver Lake) will be visiting for the Springtime Festival, along with a smaller delegation from Autumn Hills (a less friendly kingdom with which the relationship is somewhat more, strained at the moment). There will be a small ceremony during which the prince from Golden Fields and a princess from Autumn Hills will be renewing their engagement, for a wedding (and alliance) between the two kingdoms a few months hence. 

It may take a bit of time for her to notice, but her memories of the Springtime Festival for the past eight years has a large number of gaping holes. Also both of her parents are quite adamant that she accompany her astronomy tutor to see a comet in the northern mountains of Silver Lake, where the sky is clearer and the stars are brighter. Apparently it's a once in a lifetime opportunity that all past rulers of Silver Lake have experienced and it only comes around once every twenty two years. Both her parents are apologetic that they won't be able to come with her, but they have matters of state to attend to, and so on. 

The astronomy tutor is delighted to hear of this previously undocumented royal mystery, and has set about excitedly packing all his things to observe and chronicle the passage of this comet himself. 

...so, the Springtime Festival, huh.

Odds seem high that she was childhood friends with someone from one of the other kingdoms. Probably the prince from Golden Fields, because relations with Autumn Hills are more distant and she doesn't think they actually show up to all the Festivals, but then again maybe her friendship was erased precisely because she was friends with someone from the wrong kingdom.

The fact that her parents are pushing for her to be gone during the Festival both reinforces the idea that her missing memories are connected to it somehow, and also introduces the complication that they're probably actively in on it, not just being manipulated by Reed for his own purposes.Or maybe they're actively in on it and being manipulated by Reed for his own purposes. Whichever way around, the bottom line here is that she's on her own.

She doesn't give any sign that she is unenthusiastic about the possibly-imaginary comet, or suspicious of how suddenly and emphatically her parents are insisting she go see it. She does protest about missing the Festival, but not very hard.

When the morning comes for her to set off on her journey, she steps into the carriage with a little picnic basket full of snacks for the road.

When the carriage reaches its next stop, she is no longer inside, because she fed her astronomy tutor a currant bun laced with sleeping draught and then snuck out the door while the carriage was still moving and dove into a ditch.

The trek back to the palace from there is a bit of a pain, but she's always been the tree-climbing type, and she's not about to let a few miles of hiking get in her way. It goes much smoother once she tears off the outer layer of her skirts and leaves them in another ditch.

She makes it back to the palace before noon, and cheerfully sets about sneaking back in through the secret passages she's known about since she was eleven.

She's passing through a small meadow with an ornamental small pond, complete with a softly burbling fountain which a couple of the palace's ornamental swans were bathing in, when she hears a familiar voice. 

"I see." Reed's voice says, from behind her. "I thought I'd been very careful with you, but you were always a bit too clever for your own good. What did I miss?" 

Oh, he's going straight to the villainous monologuing, that's never a good sign.

Keep him talking, or...? Well, keep him talking for now, at any rate. If the opportunity arises she can punch him in the nose and bolt. Note to self, generate an opportunity to punch him in the nose and bolt.

"That's a bit dramatic for a man who just caught his princess dodging her responsibilities like usual," she says, aiming for an air of lighthearted mischief and doing a pretty decent job at it. "It's not like ditching the carriage was that hard. Did you have a spell on it or something? I just jumped out and walked home." Come on, walk it back, walking it back is the smart move here, if she actually didn't know what he was talking about he'd be much better off playing along than explaining her mistake...

Reed states at her blankly for a few moments. "Clever, but not clever enough," he says finally. "Or maybe you're not clever at all and telling me the truth, but at this point I don't think I can take the risk either way. The delegation is going to be here in a a few hours and getting your parents involved would just complicate things. Once we get through the festival, which apparently just had to happen here, because it happens here every year, even though I told them..." he trails off and stares at her. "But that's enough of that. The only question then is how to deal with you, now."

"Are you okay?" she asks, leaning closer and squinting in concern, as though she still has no idea what he's talking about and is also a bit slow on the uptake about the implications of what he's saying and how he's saying it.

Then she punches him in the nose and bolts.

She gets about nine or ten steps before she feels something wrap around her legs and she tumbles to the ground, rolling a few more feet. If she looks down at her legs she'll see a faint glittering green aura around both of her legs, and she can't pull them apart no matter how hard she tries. 

Reed, if she looks, is holding a hand over his face and nose, with blood dripping down his chin. 

"You just won't behave like a princess should," he says, in a furious and aggravated tone she has not before heard from his usually more urbane lips, speaking to no one in particular. "You, and that prince just will not play your parts. Both of you just wouldn't listen to reason, or your parents, and now we're stuck here by this fountain with a couple of swans..." he trails off for a moment. 

"Aha," he says, a light of inspiration in his eyes. "No one will notice an extra swan, not with how many tend to wander the grounds like cultivated vermin, and I can collect and deal with you in a more effective manner when I don't have to worry about the time."

Reed makes a complicated gesture, says a short phrase in a language Iris cannot identify, and there's a glitter of gold and white motes of light in the air. And Iris starts to feel very very strange. 

Okay, prince of Golden Fields confirmed target, good to know, thanks for that—

Wait. What?

"Are you serious?" she blurts. "You're turning me into a swan?! You daft bastard, have you ever—"

But, perhaps fortunately, she doesn't make it to the end of the sentence.

All that emerges is incredulous swan noises.

"That's better," he says, taking a hand away from his face to reveal a nose in perfectly good condition (other than the trail of dried blood running down his face and neck). "Do stay put and try to behave. I'll be able to find you if you do somehow manage to run off, but do keep in mind you'll stay like this forever without my help. And you won't be able to break the spell on the prince if he can't see your face, no matter what I missed that let manage to break it on your own. He probably gave you a self portrait or something, I'll have to go through your things more closely." 

He turns towards the wrought iron gate in the fence that encloses the decorative meadow, and heads towards it. 

Oh, she'll never get back without his help, will she? Come on, Reed, you're not the only wizard in the Eastern Kingdoms. You're not even the only one in Silver Lake. Also, Iris would personally rather break both your arms than let you cast another spell on her even if the spell in question is definitely just to turn her human again.

Speaking of which, she's heard that a swan can break a man's arm with a single blow from one of her wings, and she's interested in finding out if the rumours are true.

Unfortunately, it turns out that a swan in full charge is a pretty noisy affair. If he has any sense he's going to run for that gate like angry dragons are after him.

He does in fact have sufficient sense, and enough time to turn around and slash his hand through the air, and then Iris' wings are encompassed in a sparkling green aura, and without them for balance she has a bit of a tumble. 

"Didn't I just tell you to behave?" Reed asks. "You're a bird. What do you think you're going to accomplish? He sighs, exits the gate, and then touches a hand to the fence, which burns with purple fire for a moment. "There. Now you're not going anywhere, whether you want to or not. I'll collect you in a few days and clean up this mess, even if I have to swiss cheese your brain to do it. Honestly that would likely make things much, much easier, so by all means force my hand." 

He turns away, the green aura disappears, and he walks off, leaving her alone, save for the two other swans in the meadow with her.