There once was a penguin who lived in Antarctica and loved nothing more than swimming and eating fish. One day, as he was sitting in his house, he began to feel hungry and thought he would go for a swim and see what he could find to eat. He hadn’t gone far when he found a delicious-looking fish. He started to swim up to it, mouth watering, when the fish spoke to him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for a fish for my dinner,” the penguin replied, confused at the fish’s question.
“That’s silly,” the fish responded. “Penguins don’t like fish; they hate fish. What they really like is celery. You’d better go find some celery.”
The penguin was even more confused now. He thought he liked fish; he thought it was his favorite food; but the fish said penguins liked celery, so he had better go find some. He was getting pretty hungry.
He swam back to shore and headed straight for the supermarket. He selected a nice, crisp, green bunch of celery, paid for it, and took it home.
Once home, he sat down at his table and took a big bite. It didn’t taste very good. He made a face and swallowed it. Maybe it needed cooked? He got out his frying pan and fried a stalk. It still didn’t taste good. He tried baking it, freezing it, pureeing it, stuffing it, and boiling it, but it still wasn’t at all appetizing. The fish must have been mistaken, he thought. Celery could not be something penguins liked to eat. He decided to return to his original fishing plan.
It didn’t take him long to find the fish again. The penguin, who was now very hungry, swam quickly towards to him, eager to take a big bite.
“What are you doing?”
The penguin thought that this should be obvious, but answered anyway. “I’m fishing for my dinner. I tried some celery; I didn’t like it. I want fish.”
“No, you don’t,” the fish again answered. “I already told you; penguins hate fish. What you want is a big bunch of carrots.”
The poor penguin was more confused than ever. Carrots? Oh well, he had better hurry to get some. He really wanted to eat dinner.
Once more at the store, he bought a big bunch of carrots and took it home for dinner. He took a big bite out of the first one, and nearly spit it out. Penguins liked this? If he was a penguin, why didn’t he? It didn’t make sense. He tried cooking them all the ways he had tried cooking the celery, but had no better luck. Maybe he had better go back to eating fish. He thought he remembered liking fish.
Once more, he approached the fish, hungrier than he had ever been before. And again the fish asked,
“What are you doing?”
“I’m really, really hungry and I need something to eat and I don’t like celery or carrots so I think penguins must not like those and you were mistaken and I really think I need to eat fish!”
“No, no, no,” the fish answered. “You’ve got it all wrong. Of course penguins don’t like those things. But the thing they hate the most is fish. Penguins’ favorite food is popcorn. You had better go find some popcorn.”
Desperate now, the penguin set off to the store to buy some popcorn. Unfortunately, when he got there, he couldn’t find any. He tried another store. It didn’t sell popcorn, either. He tried a third store. No popcorn. Finally, he decided to swim until he could find some.
He jumped off his iceberg and started swimming. And swimming. And swimming. And swimming some more. He swam for days. He got very, very hungry. He kept swimming. When he got tired of that, he… kept swimming. Finally, he reached the shore. He crawled up on the beach, exhausted. And hungry.
He looked up, hoping to see something to eat. Standing directly in front of him was a boy with a bag of popcorn in his hand. The boy, amazed at the sight of a penguin on the beach in California, took a piece of popcorn and tossed it to the penguin. The penguin ate it in one gulp. The boy tossed another. Another gulp, and it was gone. And it tasted delicious! The penguin had never tasted anything like it!
The boy kept tossing the popcorn, piece by piece, and the penguin kept eating it. When the time came for the boy to go, he dropped a trail of popcorn and the penguin followed him home, eating all the way. From that point on, the penguin lived in the boy’s house, feasting on popcorn every day, enjoying the attention of every child in the neighborhood, and often thinking how lucky it was that the fish in Antarctica had known about penguins’ favorite food!
Saturday, November 17, 2012
The Purple Princess Story
There once was a princess who lived in a purple castle. She had a purple bedroom, purple blankets, purple clothes, and a purple collar on her dog. Everything she owned that could be purple was purple, even down to her toothbrush. When she went anywhere, it was a purple carriage that took her. When she sat down to eat breakfast, she had purple jelly on her toast and purple berries in her porridge. When she sat down to read a book, the pages abounded with beautiful pictures skillfully drawn in purple. Her name was Violet. And she hated purple.
It was her mother that had the idea of making her daughter’s life purple. The queen had grown up with five brothers, and everything had seemed to be decorated in blues and greens and yellows. She loved purple, so when her first child was a girl, she decided that her daughter would be blessed with an abundance of this lovely color to surround her at all times.
The queen did not have bad taste in decorating, really. Violet was a pretty girl and purple suited her very well. When she was very young she seemed delighted with all her purple toys and purple food. But as she grew older, she began to feel that something was odd, and slightly dreary, with all her things. She began to long for bright yellow bananas, blue picture books, and comfy red chairs. Soon, she loathed purple with all her heart. She felt trapped in a prison of purple. She was desperate to escape. Finally, when she was twelve years old, she decided she was going to do something about her situation.
She loved her dog, who was not purple (as no purple dogs could be found in that area of the world), and she often dreamed of taking off his horrid purple collar and giving him a bright green one, with rainbow colored jewels encircling it. So, as her dog came bounding over to greet her one day, with the hated collar around his neck, she thought of all the possible ways she could get him a new collar without offending her mother. She thought that she might say, “Mother, don’t you think a green collar would suit Prince, or perhaps a blue one?” But no, her mother had specifically chosen a dog for her that would look beautiful in purple. Perhaps she could say, “Mother, I heard that dogs are smarter when they wear blue, and make better watchdogs.” No, Prince had already proven himself to be a splendid watchdog, even catching some of the servants (who had served them for years) when they tried to rob the royal family. No, she would have to think of something entirely different.
Suddenly she realized that there was nothing she could say that would change the queen’s mind about the color of dog collar that Prince wore. In fact, nothing could change her mind about the color of anything in the castle. She was set on purple, and anyone who didn’t like that could just leave.
“That’s what I’ll do.” Violet thought. “I’ll take Prince out for a walk, and go find some town where I can buy him a new collar, and some new clothes for myself, and some new blankets for my bed, and new jewelry, and I won’t have to think about purple anymore, and I won’t have to tell Mother, and when I do go home, which might not be for a few days, I can keep all my new things in my bedroom, and… and… and then I’ll go back again, and get more things, and again, until I have nothing left that even slightly resembles purple!”
With this plan, Violet went into her room to find some things she might need for her shopping trip/vacation from purple. She had only a little money in her drawer, since her parents (especially her mother) bought her the things she needed, but she had plenty of jewelry that she thought might work just as well. “After all,” she thought, “it’s all purple amethysts and other purple jewels in the necklaces. I’ll be getting rid of them soon anyway.” With these supplies in her bag, she took Prince downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat before they left.
“What can you be needing so much food for, your highness?” one of the kitchen women asked her.
“I’m taking Prince out for a walk,” Violet answered, in a tone that said, ‘Don’t question me; I’m royalty,’ “and we want to have a picnic on the lawn.”
The kitchen woman said no more, but thought it very strange that the princess would be having a picnic with her dog, and with so much food. For of course, the princess was smart enough to bring enough food for several meals, since she planned to be away for at least a couple days and wasn’t sure how far she had to go before she came to a town where no one would recognize her. She certainly couldn’t stay in the royal city, for she would be sure to be seen by someone who had seen her at the palace or at a ball.
Within fifteen minutes, Violet was on her way. Her parents would be sure to miss her at lunch, but the story she told the kitchen lady would reach them soon enough. They probably wouldn’t start looking for her until nearly dark, at which point she would be far from the castle. She still had to think of a story to tell her parents when she got back so that she didn’t get in trouble, or get found out, but she was a clever girl and was sure she would think of something.
It was just before ten in the morning, and the day was sunny and warm. She skipped along happily, dreaming of the wonderful colors she would soon be surrounded by. She and Prince ate their lunch at the edge of a lovely wood, and the princess started planning the route they ought to take.
“We must go away from the royal city,” she told Prince, “or someone will find us and we will be in trouble with my parents. We’ll get to some town with a big marketplace, and beautiful dog collars, and you’ll like them so much more than the one you’ve got. But first we have to get there without anyone seeing us. No one goes through this wood; I’ve even heard the game keepers say they won’t venture far into here. So if we go through this wood to the other side, we can reach a town without any danger of anyone we know spotting us. Won’t it be fun?”
She packed up the rest of their lunch and they headed on their way. Prince looked reluctant to go into the wood, but the princess seemed to insist on it, and of course he couldn’t let her go in alone. He was much too loyal a dog for that.
At first, the wood was as pleasant as the greenest park you can imagine. The trees grew high into the air, birds sang on the branches, and occasionally, a deer peeped its head out from behind the bushes at the two travelers. Violet was especially delighted with the flowers that grew at the base of some of the trees: there were big blossoms and little blossoms, bright orange lilies and yellow daises. She plucked a large red flower and put it in her hair and gathered some others to make into a necklace as they walked.
She was so absorbed in making her necklace that she didn’t notice the wood becoming thicker and darker. Prince was walking nervously close beside her, with his ears perked up in case anything should come try to attack them. Suddenly, the cry of a large bird startled Violet. She looked up, and noticed that it had become much darker. It looked as though the sun was setting, except she couldn’t see which way it was setting because of the trees. She put her half finished necklace in her bag and put her hand on Prince’s head to reassure herself that he was still there.
She walked on a little farther and it grew much darker. The noises of the forest grew much louder and more frequent, and, if possible, more frightening. She started walking faster. And then faster. Then she started to run. The noises kept getting louder. Prince started growling and barking. The noises seemed to be laughing at her. Threatening her. That’s when the rain started. It poured.
The sound of the rain drowned out the other noises of the forest at first. But before long they came back, though not as loud as before. Violet thought that perhaps it had been foolish of her to leave like she had done.
“Don’t worry Prince,” she said, “we’ll come out of these woods soon. Maybe even in the next quarter hour.”
But the forest didn’t end. Instead, the woods grew thicker and thicker, and darker and darker, and the rain continued to fall. Violet slid in the mud several times, when a hill or ravine appeared that she hadn’t seen, and tried to catch hold of the branches of the trees to keep from falling. Within a few minutes, her purple dress was no longer so purple. It was black and brown from the mud, and torn from the tree branches and bushes.
“That’s one conciliation.”
Prince was frantic by now, trying to keep sight of Violet and keep other creatures away from her. Violet saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and wondered whether it was the wind in the trees or a fierce animal that was following them, waiting for an opportunity to attack. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
A wolf started howling at her right. A few seconds later, another wolf joined in at her left. Prince moved even closer to the princess. She thought she had been hurrying before, but now she began to run as she had never run in her life. She tumbled down slopes, crashed through the branches of the ever-present trees, and nearly twisted her ankles and broke her legs more times than she had time to count. But she couldn’t seem to lose the wolves. To her horror she realized that Prince was no longer running beside her. She looked to her left and to her right, hoping to catch sight of her dog. Not seeing him, she glanced behind her, forgetting that she was still running forward in a very thick and dangerous forest. And, of course, while her head was turned she tripped over a rather large stone and stumbled into a small ravine.
She landed in a patch of briars, but didn’t notice the pain. What she did notice was that her dress was hopelessly caught in the briars. She tried to tear it away, but it only seemed to be caught worse.
Terrified, she looked up, but instead of seeing the wolves bounding toward her to eat her up, she saw three wolves, standing back, and looking scared themselves. They started to back away and then turned and ran. The princess was almost afraid to look at whatever was behind her; anything so fierce it would make wolves run would surely take no pity on her. She felt something touch her shoulder.
Jumping with fright, she whirled around the best she could to see what had come to devour her.
Unable to scream, she just stared at the huge teeth above her, only inches from her face. A lion was standing over her, and she was trapped in the briars! The lion looked her over, apparently trying to decide whether to eat her leg or her neck first. Violet was sure that now she was going to die. “At least the lion isn’t purple,” she thought.
But the lion didn’t stay for long. Violet heard a gunshot and saw the lion jump back, tumble over himself and run away. An old woman ran to her, struggling down the side of the ravine, and immediately set to work at freeing her from the briars.
“Come quickly!” The woman led the way down the ravine. The princess, with her dress torn but free from the briars, followed as fast as she could. The woman, old as she was, was hard to catch. Violet soon lost sight of her. She hurried on anyway. She was about to run into an even narrower and deeper part of the ravine when the woman grabbed her from behind a tree.
“Hush!” she whispered. “We can climb out of the ravine right here. Stay close to me if you don’t want the wolves or lions to get you!”
The princess quickly obeyed, struggling to keep up with the woman’s quick pace. Before she realized it, however, they had reached a small cottage, built right up against the trees.
“Come in! Come in!” The old woman opened the door and urged her inside. “Tell me your name and what you are doing in the middle of the forest on a night like this!”
“My name is… Rose…” she stammered, wanting to distance herself from anything related to the color purple.
“What a pretty name! And what were you doing out in the forest all alone?”
“I was with Prince, my dog. We were trying to get to a town…”
“You picked a poor route!” the woman laughed. “There isn’t a town this way for at least a hundred miles; maybe more. What were you needing to go to town for?”
“I… I wanted to go shopping…” Violet answered, feeling foolish now.
“Well, we’ll see what we can do for you here. Perhaps I have what you were looking for in the first place and you won’t have to go all the way to town. In the meantime, you need some dry clothes and something to eat.”
The old woman opened up a large trunk in the corner of the room and took from it several dresses that looked as though they might fit Violet.
“Pick one, and put it on,” the woman instructed. “You may keep it, so you can throw away dress you have on now. It looks as though you had been wearing it when a pack of wolves attacked you. Which very nearly happened.”
Violet wasn’t the least bit sorry to throw away her hated purple gown and put on a plain red dress. When she turned around the old woman had already prepared dinner and had a delicious looking bowl of soup waiting for her on the table. Violet wondered how she had cooked it so fast. For that matter, how had she managed to find her just in time in the forest?
“Thank you for dinner,” she said, “and thank you for saving my life! I’m sure I would be dead right now if you hadn’t been there.”
“You’re very welcome, dear,” the woman answered. “To be honest, I like to chase away those horrible creatures whenever I get the chance. Now, what was it you were going in to town for? Maybe I can save you the trip.”
At first the princess was reluctant to explain, but in the end she told how she had grown up with nothing but purple all around her, and she finally couldn’t stand it anymore.
“I’m not running away from home,” she added at the end. “I’m going to go back in a few days; I just want a chance to get away from that awful color for a while. I’m so sick of it! I wish I never had to look at it again! I wanted to bring some other colors back with me, so that I can keep them in my room and look at them whenever I need relief from the purple.”
“And what kinds of things were you going to bring back?”
“Oh, anything, really. I wanted some new clothes, some new blankets, a couple decorations for my room, some jewelry and hair accessories… maybe a few toys…” She said this last part more quietly, because she felt that a princess of twelve ought not to be so interested in toys anymore.
“Well, come with me.”
Violet followed the old woman back to the chest she had gotten the dresses from. The chest was opened and Violet looked in. Inside was everything she had just described! And not one thing had a trace of purple. She guessed that the woman was a fairy.
“You may have all you like!” the old woman said cheerfully. “Though I don’t know how much luck you’ll have getting them home without your mother noticing. The moment you get back she will want to know where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, and then most likely punish you for whatever you’ve done, good or bad. That’s the way it is with mothers, sometimes. She’ll want to see all your things, and I doubt she’ll let you keep them. You might want to come up with a different plan.”
The princess was slightly bewildered by this, for it made perfect sense, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do. She was sure she couldn’t stand any more purple.
“You may stay here for a while, if you like,” the woman continued. “You’ll get your break, and when you do go home, after a while, your mother will be so glad to see you safe that she will not bother with what you’ve been doing or buying.”
“How long is a while?” asked the princess, thinking that this might work.
“A year, maybe two or three,” the woman answered, as if she had been simply saying how many potatoes to put in the stew. “She certainly won’t punish you after that, and you’ll likely be able to have things whatever color you want.”
Violet was shocked that the woman should say such things, but somehow it did make sense, and she even felt that it might be worth it. She would surely go mad if she had do endure that horrible color for the rest of her life.
“Thank you very much,” she answered. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stay nearly that long, but perhaps for a little while…”
“We shall see,” answered the woman.
And so Violet stayed. The woman gave her permission to decorate the cottage however she chose, so Violet chose all the most colorful and bright things in the trunk (nothing purple) and made the house look very… colorful. Not once did she lay eye on anything purple (They burned her old dress in the fireplace and boiled water for tea over it). Some nights she heard howling and growling and roaring from outside, but no animals ever tried to reach them inside the cottage. Whenever she heard the howling of the wolves, or sometimes the roar of the lion, Violet wondered what had happened to Prince. Surely the wolves had torn him to pieces while he tried to protect her, and then perhaps the lion had chased away the wolves and eaten what was left.
One night she woke up crying, wishing she had her Prince back with her.
“What is it Rose? What are you crying about?” The woman sounded very concerned by the princess’ weeping.
“It’s my dog,” Violet answered. “He was lost the night I came here. He was my best friend, and I miss him!”
“It’s all right,” the woman said, trying to comfort her, “it’s all right. Maybe you will be able to get a new dog one day, eh?”
“Do you think it’s possible that he’s still alive?”
“No, I’m afraid it’s not.” Violet’s tears began to flow even harder. “No good creature can survive out there in the forest,” the woman continued, “I’m surprised you made it as far as you did, meeting nothing worse than a few wolves and a lion. There are much worse creatures than those in this forest.”
Violet wondered what the woman meant by this, but she had already got up to go back to bed so the princess had no chance to ask.
Now the old woman was indeed a fairy, but she was a wicked fairy. Although Violet had not told her so, she recognized at once that she was a princess, and immediately began planning how this turn of events might be to her advantage. She did not, however, know the princess’ name, and so had believed her when she told her it was Rose. After all, it was a tradition in the royal family to name their daughters after flowers. There had been fourteen Roses in the royal family since the fairy had started living in that cottage, which had been quite some time ago.
When the princess got up the next morning, the first thing she saw was the colorful painting hanging on the wall above her bed. It was a picture of a waterfall, with a rainbow above it and a shepherd and his flock beneath it, with the sheepdog coming round the side of the flock.
“How I miss my dog!” She thought. “I never got the chance to even give him a new collar. I would love to see him now even with that horrible purple collar on!” It was all she could do to keep from weeping again. Now, of course she missed her father and mother too, but she was sure she would see them again, so it wasn’t so bad, but she knew that she would never see her Prince again.
The old woman was out walking, as she often was in the morning, and the princess had slept late and so had missed seeing her before she left. She thought she would make herself breakfast, and went to the cupboards to see what was there that she would be able to figure out how to cook. She had never made herself breakfast before, since the women in the kitchen at the castle always cooked it, and, since she had been here, the old woman always made it before she woke up. But she was sure she would be able to figure it out; how hard could it be?
She opened the first cupboard doors, but found nothing inside except a piece of glass. Though she had never cooked before, she was pretty sure that breakfast could not be made from that. She moved on to the next cupboard, and found it emptier than the first. She moved to the next, and the next, and then next but none of the cupboards contained anything that could be cooked. In fact, they hardly contained anything at all. Besides the piece of glass she found: dust, a piece of string, a bird feather, and a thimble.
“Maybe she keeps the food somewhere else,” Violet thought.
The truth was that the fairy did not keep food. Neither did she cook. She always simply made whatever food she wanted from magic. But the princess did not know this. Finding no other places in the cottage that looked likely to contain food, she went outside to see if the woman had a pantry out there.
Violet had hardly been outside since she had arrived. The memory of that night in the forest had been enough to scare her away from it for the most part, and the old woman had also been careful to point out the dangers that lay in the woods. But this morning was so bright and cheerful that Violet was sure no monsters could be lurking about.
She went around to the back of the cottage and saw a small shed built slightly back behind the trees. It surprised her that the woman would put her pantry back inside the forest, but then, her whole house was surrounded closely by trees, so maybe it wasn’t so strange after all. She made her way to the small building, careful not to make too much noise, even though it seemed that there were no beasts lurking nearby. She had trouble finding the door at first, and after she had found it, she found that it was locked.
“Perhaps she is guarding her pantry from thieves,” the princess thought. “Though I don’t see how any thieves could make it so far into the forest.”
She kept looking round the building, hoping to find some other way in. And, sure enough, she found another door in. A door in the ground, mostly hidden by leaves and brush. Still, it was a door. She pulled it up and descended the stairs leading deeper into the earth. She left the door open for light. But the further down she went, the stranger it seemed. Surely the woman did not come down here every time she wanted to cook something!
At the bottom of the stairs Violet stopped to look around. The underground room was mostly full of various boxes and crates, a few large clay jars and plenty of spiders.
“She must not have come down here for years,” Violet said aloud. “I must have found the wrong place after all.”
She was about to turn around and go back to the cottage when she heard a whimpering coming from the back of the room. At first she thought she had imagined it, but it came again, with more whining. It sounded very familiar. Suddenly she had a crazy thought. A hope. Could it be?
She ran to where the sound seemed to be coming from. It took her a couple minutes, but at last she found the place. Sure enough, there in a broken down crate was Prince! He had heard her voice and tried to attract her attention. Violet couldn’t remember ever being so happy. She quickly pulled of the boards keeping Prince a prisoner and let him out. His purple collar had come off, but he carried it in his mouth, refusing to leave it there. Violet petted her dog for several minutes and then turned to take him back outside. Unfortunately, she turned just as a lion was coming down the steps toward her. So much for that plan.
The lion came the rest of the way down and toward her, backing her into a corner. By the look of his teeth and mane, Violet was sure he was the same lion that had tried to eat her several months ago.
The fairy, who was just coming back from her morning excursion, happened by the shed and noticed the door in the ground was open.
“Rose must have found the door and gone in,” she grumbled. “She’s sure to have found her precious dog. Why does she have to spoil my plans when they are going so nicely? Well, it will all work out fine in the end. I have other options. She won’t get away.”
The old woman listened, heard noises coming from the underground room, and concluded that the princess was still inside. As soon as she was sure of this, she shut the door and moved a heavy rock on top of it. Then she went inside arrange her backup plan.
Once the door closed, Violet panicked. She was in the dark with Prince and a huge lion! She could feel the lion’s breath. But he didn’t eat her. Instead, he nudged her toward the door. She felt for Prince, and found him still by her, still holding his purple collar. He wasn’t trying to attack the lion, so she assumed the lion wasn’t going to harm her. At the foot of the steps, the lion pushed past her and went up. She could hear him at the top of the steps, pushing on the door. Within a couple minutes, the door was open and all three were outside. By now, Violet was convinced that the old woman had no good intentions toward her. Escape was the only reasonable option she could think of. But how much of what the fairy had told her about the forest was true?
Having Prince beside her, and learning that the lion wasn’t going to eat her, she felt more hopeful of escaping. After all, she was a clever girl, wasn’t she? She was beginning to plot how they could all three make their way around the house and through the forest without the fairy noticing when the lion roared, louder than she could have imagined was possible. There was no way to sneak past the house unnoticed now.
The wicked fairy was out of the cottage in an instant, gun in hand, and the lion was fleeing for his life. The princess and her dog were following close behind. The wicked fairy was close behind them.
The lion ran through parts of the forest even thicker than what Violet had seen during the storm. She followed the lion, mostly because she was too frightened to think of anything else to do, and Prince stayed at her side. But it didn’t seem that they would be able keep ahead of the old woman. She was a very fast old woman. She was a mere ten feet away when the princess and her pets reached the gorge.
The edge came too suddenly for Violet to stop, and she fell right over it. The fairy, just behind her, also fell off the side of the cliff. Violet wondered why the fairy was falling so much faster than she was, when she realized that she wasn’t falling. She had landed on the lion’s back, and he was standing on a rock shelf several feet below the top of the cliff. Prince had turned to the side when he saw the gorge and was waiting for them at the top, tail wagging.
The princess and her dog and the lion hurried to make their way back through the remainder of the forest. Several times wolves and other creatures thought that Violet might make a tasty snack, but when they saw the animal guiding her through the woods they changed their minds. Violet noticed these creatures and was a little frightened at first, but she soon saw that she was in no danger from them as long as her lion was beside her.
Some time later, as they were going through one of the thicker parts of the woods, the lion stopped suddenly. Violet took several steps before she realized that he wasn’t coming with her. She looked up, and just ahead was a little monster as high as her knees. It was certainly one of the most hideous things she had ever seen. It had multiple heads (she couldn’t tell how many), six arms, long fingers or claws, and its skin seemed to be covered in hairs, sores, slime, and dirt (it was hard to tell which sometimes). It startled her, but she wasn’t afraid as long as she was with her lion and her Prince.
She stepped back from the monster and bumped into Prince. She turned, forgetting that she was turning her back to the monster behind her, and noticed that Prince was watching intently something further down the path they had just come. She looked up, and was amazed to see a creature even more hideous than the one she had just seen. Scales, hair, mud and slime covered its flesh, three heads vengefully observed its prey at its feet, and its five and a half arms reached down to the wicked fairy.
The fairy had been this monster’s enemy for hundreds of years. Although he was more powerful and magical than her, she had always been able to control him because of her magic gun. That same gun was the reason for his half-arm. She had kept him in fear and submission to her for years, and now he was ready for his revenge.
Now when the fairy had fallen off the cliff, she of course had not been smashed to pieces on the rocks on the bottom, but had been able to use her magic to keep herself from dying. However, in doing this, she lost her grip on her magical gun and it met its end on the rocks below. Despite this loss, she continued her pursuit of the princess, only to find that her enemy had quickly discovered the fate of her gun and was waiting for her in the forest. Thus, there she was, cowering beneath a twelve-foot tall monster that had every intention of destroying her.
Violet didn’t stay to see the outcome. She grabbed her pets by their fur and dragged them along, avoiding the small monster in their way, and further through the forest. They came willingly enough, but she continued to urge them to hurry. She had seen enough of the forest, she thought, and had no intention of ever entering it again.
They all made it safely to the edge of the forest before sunset. Violet was very hungry, for she hadn’t had breakfast, and had lost her bag of food months ago, and so was very happy to see the royal city only a little way off.
She and Prince, looking very dirty and tired, started toward the city. She had wanted to take the lion with them, but he refused to go past the edge of the woods. They reached the city within an hour, and Violet thought that perhaps they should go see the shops before they went home, since that was what they had left to do in the first place. She had no money with her, but she was wearing one of the necklaces the fairy had given her, and this would work quite as well.
After they had gotten something to eat, Violet decided that she must get Prince a new collar, for he had been a very good dog, and deserved something that was not purple. But Prince was still carrying his old collar in his mouth and refused to put it down. Violet tried to put blue collars on him, red collars, orange collars, green collars, rainbow collars, and black collars, but he wouldn’t wear them. The only ones he seemed interested in at all were purple. After being away from the color so long, the princess was not so opposed to it, so she let him have his choice of collar.
When they arrived back at the castle, Violet was surprised to find that there were no guards at the doors. She could hear people rushing to and fro, and shouting things to each other in the other rooms, but she saw no one. The palace seemed to be in a panic. She found dinner left on the table in the dining room, the chairs had not been pushed back in, various papers were left lying on the table, and every door was ajar. One of the maids came hurrying though with a platter of hot tea she was taking to the queen, but when she saw Violet she dropped the platter and fled.
What had happened was this: It was known by most scholars and a few common folk that if a fairy were to know a princess by name, gain influence over her and persuade her to live with her, the fairy would have greater power than a king with a thousand armies. The wicked fairy had desired to control the land for some time, but had been unable to do so for several reasons. So as soon as the fairy realized that she had a princess in her forest, she set out to find and befriend her.
Two weeks before the princess escaped the cottage, the fairy had started sending messages to the palace. At first they only hinted that something was soon going to come upon them, but then they began to get more threatening. Just half and hour before the princess had arrived back home, the king had gotten a final threat from the fairy, delivered by a large black raven. It had stated that the fairy had the princess, knew her name, and had not forced the princess to stay with her, but she had done it of her own will. Therefore, the king was to abandon the palace if he wished to live, and supply her with all the weapons, treasures, servants, soldiers and documents she demanded. When the raven confirmed everything in the note, and produced one of the princess’s purple-jeweled necklaces, the king was certain that everything it said was true.
Though he felt that the situation was hopeless, the king commanded that all the good fairies and the royal scholars attempt to find a way to protect the kingdom from the wicked fairy. In the meantime, everyone else was to prepare to flee, for he did not wish to leave any of his people to the cruelty of the fairy. All the scholars searched franticly for a way to stop her, and everyone else in the castle gathered together everything they thought they might need for their flight. No one had sent word to the city yet. When the maid saw Violet in the palace, she thought that the fairy had already come upon them and everyone was doomed.
Violet tried to reassure the girl, but the poor maid was too frightened to stay and listen. Violet decided she must find her parents and learn what was going on. She had little trouble getting to their rooms upstairs, since no one thought to lock any doors. Unfortunately, she could not find them in any of the rooms they usually occupied. In one room she found one of her brothers, but when she tried to talk to him, he shouted, “They're here!” and ran.
Not knowing what else to do, the princess took some paper from a desk and wrote a note to her parents explaining what had happened to her and that she had no idea what was happening now. She gave the note to Prince, and said, “Go give it to the king.”
Prince was a very intelligent dog, and found the king within a few minutes. The king did not fear anything from Prince, but was very surprised to see him after so long. He read the note, and, though he thought it could very well be a trap, he told the dog to take him to his daughter. He questioned her closely, and when he discovered that she had not given her name to the fairy, he let out a cry of relief and embraced his child.
It took some time to find everyone in the palace and assure them of their safety, but by morning the castle was calm again. The queen had been shocked to see her daughter wearing green, since she had never seen her in it before, but when she realized that her daughter had hated purple so much, she said she would allow her to wear whatever color she liked. Violet, however, didn’t want to wear anything that reminded her of the wicked fairy, and gladly put on a purple gown to have the green one burned.
From that point on, Violet never had the same loathing for purple that she once had. She certainly didn’t want her whole life to revolve around the color, but she didn’t mind having it around. Prince seemed to like it, after all. So with the help of her mother the princess redecorated her room in pink and purple and blue, and the purple carriage was repainted red and she put strawberry jelly on her toast. Never again did she wander into the forest, though she did wonder what had become of the lion. No one ever heard from the wicked fairy again, and the princess’ dog always wore a purple collar.
It was her mother that had the idea of making her daughter’s life purple. The queen had grown up with five brothers, and everything had seemed to be decorated in blues and greens and yellows. She loved purple, so when her first child was a girl, she decided that her daughter would be blessed with an abundance of this lovely color to surround her at all times.
The queen did not have bad taste in decorating, really. Violet was a pretty girl and purple suited her very well. When she was very young she seemed delighted with all her purple toys and purple food. But as she grew older, she began to feel that something was odd, and slightly dreary, with all her things. She began to long for bright yellow bananas, blue picture books, and comfy red chairs. Soon, she loathed purple with all her heart. She felt trapped in a prison of purple. She was desperate to escape. Finally, when she was twelve years old, she decided she was going to do something about her situation.
She loved her dog, who was not purple (as no purple dogs could be found in that area of the world), and she often dreamed of taking off his horrid purple collar and giving him a bright green one, with rainbow colored jewels encircling it. So, as her dog came bounding over to greet her one day, with the hated collar around his neck, she thought of all the possible ways she could get him a new collar without offending her mother. She thought that she might say, “Mother, don’t you think a green collar would suit Prince, or perhaps a blue one?” But no, her mother had specifically chosen a dog for her that would look beautiful in purple. Perhaps she could say, “Mother, I heard that dogs are smarter when they wear blue, and make better watchdogs.” No, Prince had already proven himself to be a splendid watchdog, even catching some of the servants (who had served them for years) when they tried to rob the royal family. No, she would have to think of something entirely different.
Suddenly she realized that there was nothing she could say that would change the queen’s mind about the color of dog collar that Prince wore. In fact, nothing could change her mind about the color of anything in the castle. She was set on purple, and anyone who didn’t like that could just leave.
“That’s what I’ll do.” Violet thought. “I’ll take Prince out for a walk, and go find some town where I can buy him a new collar, and some new clothes for myself, and some new blankets for my bed, and new jewelry, and I won’t have to think about purple anymore, and I won’t have to tell Mother, and when I do go home, which might not be for a few days, I can keep all my new things in my bedroom, and… and… and then I’ll go back again, and get more things, and again, until I have nothing left that even slightly resembles purple!”
With this plan, Violet went into her room to find some things she might need for her shopping trip/vacation from purple. She had only a little money in her drawer, since her parents (especially her mother) bought her the things she needed, but she had plenty of jewelry that she thought might work just as well. “After all,” she thought, “it’s all purple amethysts and other purple jewels in the necklaces. I’ll be getting rid of them soon anyway.” With these supplies in her bag, she took Prince downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat before they left.
“What can you be needing so much food for, your highness?” one of the kitchen women asked her.
“I’m taking Prince out for a walk,” Violet answered, in a tone that said, ‘Don’t question me; I’m royalty,’ “and we want to have a picnic on the lawn.”
The kitchen woman said no more, but thought it very strange that the princess would be having a picnic with her dog, and with so much food. For of course, the princess was smart enough to bring enough food for several meals, since she planned to be away for at least a couple days and wasn’t sure how far she had to go before she came to a town where no one would recognize her. She certainly couldn’t stay in the royal city, for she would be sure to be seen by someone who had seen her at the palace or at a ball.
Within fifteen minutes, Violet was on her way. Her parents would be sure to miss her at lunch, but the story she told the kitchen lady would reach them soon enough. They probably wouldn’t start looking for her until nearly dark, at which point she would be far from the castle. She still had to think of a story to tell her parents when she got back so that she didn’t get in trouble, or get found out, but she was a clever girl and was sure she would think of something.
It was just before ten in the morning, and the day was sunny and warm. She skipped along happily, dreaming of the wonderful colors she would soon be surrounded by. She and Prince ate their lunch at the edge of a lovely wood, and the princess started planning the route they ought to take.
“We must go away from the royal city,” she told Prince, “or someone will find us and we will be in trouble with my parents. We’ll get to some town with a big marketplace, and beautiful dog collars, and you’ll like them so much more than the one you’ve got. But first we have to get there without anyone seeing us. No one goes through this wood; I’ve even heard the game keepers say they won’t venture far into here. So if we go through this wood to the other side, we can reach a town without any danger of anyone we know spotting us. Won’t it be fun?”
She packed up the rest of their lunch and they headed on their way. Prince looked reluctant to go into the wood, but the princess seemed to insist on it, and of course he couldn’t let her go in alone. He was much too loyal a dog for that.
At first, the wood was as pleasant as the greenest park you can imagine. The trees grew high into the air, birds sang on the branches, and occasionally, a deer peeped its head out from behind the bushes at the two travelers. Violet was especially delighted with the flowers that grew at the base of some of the trees: there were big blossoms and little blossoms, bright orange lilies and yellow daises. She plucked a large red flower and put it in her hair and gathered some others to make into a necklace as they walked.
She was so absorbed in making her necklace that she didn’t notice the wood becoming thicker and darker. Prince was walking nervously close beside her, with his ears perked up in case anything should come try to attack them. Suddenly, the cry of a large bird startled Violet. She looked up, and noticed that it had become much darker. It looked as though the sun was setting, except she couldn’t see which way it was setting because of the trees. She put her half finished necklace in her bag and put her hand on Prince’s head to reassure herself that he was still there.
She walked on a little farther and it grew much darker. The noises of the forest grew much louder and more frequent, and, if possible, more frightening. She started walking faster. And then faster. Then she started to run. The noises kept getting louder. Prince started growling and barking. The noises seemed to be laughing at her. Threatening her. That’s when the rain started. It poured.
The sound of the rain drowned out the other noises of the forest at first. But before long they came back, though not as loud as before. Violet thought that perhaps it had been foolish of her to leave like she had done.
“Don’t worry Prince,” she said, “we’ll come out of these woods soon. Maybe even in the next quarter hour.”
But the forest didn’t end. Instead, the woods grew thicker and thicker, and darker and darker, and the rain continued to fall. Violet slid in the mud several times, when a hill or ravine appeared that she hadn’t seen, and tried to catch hold of the branches of the trees to keep from falling. Within a few minutes, her purple dress was no longer so purple. It was black and brown from the mud, and torn from the tree branches and bushes.
“That’s one conciliation.”
Prince was frantic by now, trying to keep sight of Violet and keep other creatures away from her. Violet saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and wondered whether it was the wind in the trees or a fierce animal that was following them, waiting for an opportunity to attack. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
A wolf started howling at her right. A few seconds later, another wolf joined in at her left. Prince moved even closer to the princess. She thought she had been hurrying before, but now she began to run as she had never run in her life. She tumbled down slopes, crashed through the branches of the ever-present trees, and nearly twisted her ankles and broke her legs more times than she had time to count. But she couldn’t seem to lose the wolves. To her horror she realized that Prince was no longer running beside her. She looked to her left and to her right, hoping to catch sight of her dog. Not seeing him, she glanced behind her, forgetting that she was still running forward in a very thick and dangerous forest. And, of course, while her head was turned she tripped over a rather large stone and stumbled into a small ravine.
She landed in a patch of briars, but didn’t notice the pain. What she did notice was that her dress was hopelessly caught in the briars. She tried to tear it away, but it only seemed to be caught worse.
Terrified, she looked up, but instead of seeing the wolves bounding toward her to eat her up, she saw three wolves, standing back, and looking scared themselves. They started to back away and then turned and ran. The princess was almost afraid to look at whatever was behind her; anything so fierce it would make wolves run would surely take no pity on her. She felt something touch her shoulder.
Jumping with fright, she whirled around the best she could to see what had come to devour her.
Unable to scream, she just stared at the huge teeth above her, only inches from her face. A lion was standing over her, and she was trapped in the briars! The lion looked her over, apparently trying to decide whether to eat her leg or her neck first. Violet was sure that now she was going to die. “At least the lion isn’t purple,” she thought.
But the lion didn’t stay for long. Violet heard a gunshot and saw the lion jump back, tumble over himself and run away. An old woman ran to her, struggling down the side of the ravine, and immediately set to work at freeing her from the briars.
“Come quickly!” The woman led the way down the ravine. The princess, with her dress torn but free from the briars, followed as fast as she could. The woman, old as she was, was hard to catch. Violet soon lost sight of her. She hurried on anyway. She was about to run into an even narrower and deeper part of the ravine when the woman grabbed her from behind a tree.
“Hush!” she whispered. “We can climb out of the ravine right here. Stay close to me if you don’t want the wolves or lions to get you!”
The princess quickly obeyed, struggling to keep up with the woman’s quick pace. Before she realized it, however, they had reached a small cottage, built right up against the trees.
“Come in! Come in!” The old woman opened the door and urged her inside. “Tell me your name and what you are doing in the middle of the forest on a night like this!”
“My name is… Rose…” she stammered, wanting to distance herself from anything related to the color purple.
“What a pretty name! And what were you doing out in the forest all alone?”
“I was with Prince, my dog. We were trying to get to a town…”
“You picked a poor route!” the woman laughed. “There isn’t a town this way for at least a hundred miles; maybe more. What were you needing to go to town for?”
“I… I wanted to go shopping…” Violet answered, feeling foolish now.
“Well, we’ll see what we can do for you here. Perhaps I have what you were looking for in the first place and you won’t have to go all the way to town. In the meantime, you need some dry clothes and something to eat.”
The old woman opened up a large trunk in the corner of the room and took from it several dresses that looked as though they might fit Violet.
“Pick one, and put it on,” the woman instructed. “You may keep it, so you can throw away dress you have on now. It looks as though you had been wearing it when a pack of wolves attacked you. Which very nearly happened.”
Violet wasn’t the least bit sorry to throw away her hated purple gown and put on a plain red dress. When she turned around the old woman had already prepared dinner and had a delicious looking bowl of soup waiting for her on the table. Violet wondered how she had cooked it so fast. For that matter, how had she managed to find her just in time in the forest?
“Thank you for dinner,” she said, “and thank you for saving my life! I’m sure I would be dead right now if you hadn’t been there.”
“You’re very welcome, dear,” the woman answered. “To be honest, I like to chase away those horrible creatures whenever I get the chance. Now, what was it you were going in to town for? Maybe I can save you the trip.”
At first the princess was reluctant to explain, but in the end she told how she had grown up with nothing but purple all around her, and she finally couldn’t stand it anymore.
“I’m not running away from home,” she added at the end. “I’m going to go back in a few days; I just want a chance to get away from that awful color for a while. I’m so sick of it! I wish I never had to look at it again! I wanted to bring some other colors back with me, so that I can keep them in my room and look at them whenever I need relief from the purple.”
“And what kinds of things were you going to bring back?”
“Oh, anything, really. I wanted some new clothes, some new blankets, a couple decorations for my room, some jewelry and hair accessories… maybe a few toys…” She said this last part more quietly, because she felt that a princess of twelve ought not to be so interested in toys anymore.
“Well, come with me.”
Violet followed the old woman back to the chest she had gotten the dresses from. The chest was opened and Violet looked in. Inside was everything she had just described! And not one thing had a trace of purple. She guessed that the woman was a fairy.
“You may have all you like!” the old woman said cheerfully. “Though I don’t know how much luck you’ll have getting them home without your mother noticing. The moment you get back she will want to know where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, and then most likely punish you for whatever you’ve done, good or bad. That’s the way it is with mothers, sometimes. She’ll want to see all your things, and I doubt she’ll let you keep them. You might want to come up with a different plan.”
The princess was slightly bewildered by this, for it made perfect sense, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do. She was sure she couldn’t stand any more purple.
“You may stay here for a while, if you like,” the woman continued. “You’ll get your break, and when you do go home, after a while, your mother will be so glad to see you safe that she will not bother with what you’ve been doing or buying.”
“How long is a while?” asked the princess, thinking that this might work.
“A year, maybe two or three,” the woman answered, as if she had been simply saying how many potatoes to put in the stew. “She certainly won’t punish you after that, and you’ll likely be able to have things whatever color you want.”
Violet was shocked that the woman should say such things, but somehow it did make sense, and she even felt that it might be worth it. She would surely go mad if she had do endure that horrible color for the rest of her life.
“Thank you very much,” she answered. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stay nearly that long, but perhaps for a little while…”
“We shall see,” answered the woman.
And so Violet stayed. The woman gave her permission to decorate the cottage however she chose, so Violet chose all the most colorful and bright things in the trunk (nothing purple) and made the house look very… colorful. Not once did she lay eye on anything purple (They burned her old dress in the fireplace and boiled water for tea over it). Some nights she heard howling and growling and roaring from outside, but no animals ever tried to reach them inside the cottage. Whenever she heard the howling of the wolves, or sometimes the roar of the lion, Violet wondered what had happened to Prince. Surely the wolves had torn him to pieces while he tried to protect her, and then perhaps the lion had chased away the wolves and eaten what was left.
One night she woke up crying, wishing she had her Prince back with her.
“What is it Rose? What are you crying about?” The woman sounded very concerned by the princess’ weeping.
“It’s my dog,” Violet answered. “He was lost the night I came here. He was my best friend, and I miss him!”
“It’s all right,” the woman said, trying to comfort her, “it’s all right. Maybe you will be able to get a new dog one day, eh?”
“Do you think it’s possible that he’s still alive?”
“No, I’m afraid it’s not.” Violet’s tears began to flow even harder. “No good creature can survive out there in the forest,” the woman continued, “I’m surprised you made it as far as you did, meeting nothing worse than a few wolves and a lion. There are much worse creatures than those in this forest.”
Violet wondered what the woman meant by this, but she had already got up to go back to bed so the princess had no chance to ask.
Now the old woman was indeed a fairy, but she was a wicked fairy. Although Violet had not told her so, she recognized at once that she was a princess, and immediately began planning how this turn of events might be to her advantage. She did not, however, know the princess’ name, and so had believed her when she told her it was Rose. After all, it was a tradition in the royal family to name their daughters after flowers. There had been fourteen Roses in the royal family since the fairy had started living in that cottage, which had been quite some time ago.
When the princess got up the next morning, the first thing she saw was the colorful painting hanging on the wall above her bed. It was a picture of a waterfall, with a rainbow above it and a shepherd and his flock beneath it, with the sheepdog coming round the side of the flock.
“How I miss my dog!” She thought. “I never got the chance to even give him a new collar. I would love to see him now even with that horrible purple collar on!” It was all she could do to keep from weeping again. Now, of course she missed her father and mother too, but she was sure she would see them again, so it wasn’t so bad, but she knew that she would never see her Prince again.
The old woman was out walking, as she often was in the morning, and the princess had slept late and so had missed seeing her before she left. She thought she would make herself breakfast, and went to the cupboards to see what was there that she would be able to figure out how to cook. She had never made herself breakfast before, since the women in the kitchen at the castle always cooked it, and, since she had been here, the old woman always made it before she woke up. But she was sure she would be able to figure it out; how hard could it be?
She opened the first cupboard doors, but found nothing inside except a piece of glass. Though she had never cooked before, she was pretty sure that breakfast could not be made from that. She moved on to the next cupboard, and found it emptier than the first. She moved to the next, and the next, and then next but none of the cupboards contained anything that could be cooked. In fact, they hardly contained anything at all. Besides the piece of glass she found: dust, a piece of string, a bird feather, and a thimble.
“Maybe she keeps the food somewhere else,” Violet thought.
The truth was that the fairy did not keep food. Neither did she cook. She always simply made whatever food she wanted from magic. But the princess did not know this. Finding no other places in the cottage that looked likely to contain food, she went outside to see if the woman had a pantry out there.
Violet had hardly been outside since she had arrived. The memory of that night in the forest had been enough to scare her away from it for the most part, and the old woman had also been careful to point out the dangers that lay in the woods. But this morning was so bright and cheerful that Violet was sure no monsters could be lurking about.
She went around to the back of the cottage and saw a small shed built slightly back behind the trees. It surprised her that the woman would put her pantry back inside the forest, but then, her whole house was surrounded closely by trees, so maybe it wasn’t so strange after all. She made her way to the small building, careful not to make too much noise, even though it seemed that there were no beasts lurking nearby. She had trouble finding the door at first, and after she had found it, she found that it was locked.
“Perhaps she is guarding her pantry from thieves,” the princess thought. “Though I don’t see how any thieves could make it so far into the forest.”
She kept looking round the building, hoping to find some other way in. And, sure enough, she found another door in. A door in the ground, mostly hidden by leaves and brush. Still, it was a door. She pulled it up and descended the stairs leading deeper into the earth. She left the door open for light. But the further down she went, the stranger it seemed. Surely the woman did not come down here every time she wanted to cook something!
At the bottom of the stairs Violet stopped to look around. The underground room was mostly full of various boxes and crates, a few large clay jars and plenty of spiders.
“She must not have come down here for years,” Violet said aloud. “I must have found the wrong place after all.”
She was about to turn around and go back to the cottage when she heard a whimpering coming from the back of the room. At first she thought she had imagined it, but it came again, with more whining. It sounded very familiar. Suddenly she had a crazy thought. A hope. Could it be?
She ran to where the sound seemed to be coming from. It took her a couple minutes, but at last she found the place. Sure enough, there in a broken down crate was Prince! He had heard her voice and tried to attract her attention. Violet couldn’t remember ever being so happy. She quickly pulled of the boards keeping Prince a prisoner and let him out. His purple collar had come off, but he carried it in his mouth, refusing to leave it there. Violet petted her dog for several minutes and then turned to take him back outside. Unfortunately, she turned just as a lion was coming down the steps toward her. So much for that plan.
The lion came the rest of the way down and toward her, backing her into a corner. By the look of his teeth and mane, Violet was sure he was the same lion that had tried to eat her several months ago.
The fairy, who was just coming back from her morning excursion, happened by the shed and noticed the door in the ground was open.
“Rose must have found the door and gone in,” she grumbled. “She’s sure to have found her precious dog. Why does she have to spoil my plans when they are going so nicely? Well, it will all work out fine in the end. I have other options. She won’t get away.”
The old woman listened, heard noises coming from the underground room, and concluded that the princess was still inside. As soon as she was sure of this, she shut the door and moved a heavy rock on top of it. Then she went inside arrange her backup plan.
Once the door closed, Violet panicked. She was in the dark with Prince and a huge lion! She could feel the lion’s breath. But he didn’t eat her. Instead, he nudged her toward the door. She felt for Prince, and found him still by her, still holding his purple collar. He wasn’t trying to attack the lion, so she assumed the lion wasn’t going to harm her. At the foot of the steps, the lion pushed past her and went up. She could hear him at the top of the steps, pushing on the door. Within a couple minutes, the door was open and all three were outside. By now, Violet was convinced that the old woman had no good intentions toward her. Escape was the only reasonable option she could think of. But how much of what the fairy had told her about the forest was true?
Having Prince beside her, and learning that the lion wasn’t going to eat her, she felt more hopeful of escaping. After all, she was a clever girl, wasn’t she? She was beginning to plot how they could all three make their way around the house and through the forest without the fairy noticing when the lion roared, louder than she could have imagined was possible. There was no way to sneak past the house unnoticed now.
The wicked fairy was out of the cottage in an instant, gun in hand, and the lion was fleeing for his life. The princess and her dog were following close behind. The wicked fairy was close behind them.
The lion ran through parts of the forest even thicker than what Violet had seen during the storm. She followed the lion, mostly because she was too frightened to think of anything else to do, and Prince stayed at her side. But it didn’t seem that they would be able keep ahead of the old woman. She was a very fast old woman. She was a mere ten feet away when the princess and her pets reached the gorge.
The edge came too suddenly for Violet to stop, and she fell right over it. The fairy, just behind her, also fell off the side of the cliff. Violet wondered why the fairy was falling so much faster than she was, when she realized that she wasn’t falling. She had landed on the lion’s back, and he was standing on a rock shelf several feet below the top of the cliff. Prince had turned to the side when he saw the gorge and was waiting for them at the top, tail wagging.
The princess and her dog and the lion hurried to make their way back through the remainder of the forest. Several times wolves and other creatures thought that Violet might make a tasty snack, but when they saw the animal guiding her through the woods they changed their minds. Violet noticed these creatures and was a little frightened at first, but she soon saw that she was in no danger from them as long as her lion was beside her.
Some time later, as they were going through one of the thicker parts of the woods, the lion stopped suddenly. Violet took several steps before she realized that he wasn’t coming with her. She looked up, and just ahead was a little monster as high as her knees. It was certainly one of the most hideous things she had ever seen. It had multiple heads (she couldn’t tell how many), six arms, long fingers or claws, and its skin seemed to be covered in hairs, sores, slime, and dirt (it was hard to tell which sometimes). It startled her, but she wasn’t afraid as long as she was with her lion and her Prince.
She stepped back from the monster and bumped into Prince. She turned, forgetting that she was turning her back to the monster behind her, and noticed that Prince was watching intently something further down the path they had just come. She looked up, and was amazed to see a creature even more hideous than the one she had just seen. Scales, hair, mud and slime covered its flesh, three heads vengefully observed its prey at its feet, and its five and a half arms reached down to the wicked fairy.
The fairy had been this monster’s enemy for hundreds of years. Although he was more powerful and magical than her, she had always been able to control him because of her magic gun. That same gun was the reason for his half-arm. She had kept him in fear and submission to her for years, and now he was ready for his revenge.
Now when the fairy had fallen off the cliff, she of course had not been smashed to pieces on the rocks on the bottom, but had been able to use her magic to keep herself from dying. However, in doing this, she lost her grip on her magical gun and it met its end on the rocks below. Despite this loss, she continued her pursuit of the princess, only to find that her enemy had quickly discovered the fate of her gun and was waiting for her in the forest. Thus, there she was, cowering beneath a twelve-foot tall monster that had every intention of destroying her.
Violet didn’t stay to see the outcome. She grabbed her pets by their fur and dragged them along, avoiding the small monster in their way, and further through the forest. They came willingly enough, but she continued to urge them to hurry. She had seen enough of the forest, she thought, and had no intention of ever entering it again.
They all made it safely to the edge of the forest before sunset. Violet was very hungry, for she hadn’t had breakfast, and had lost her bag of food months ago, and so was very happy to see the royal city only a little way off.
She and Prince, looking very dirty and tired, started toward the city. She had wanted to take the lion with them, but he refused to go past the edge of the woods. They reached the city within an hour, and Violet thought that perhaps they should go see the shops before they went home, since that was what they had left to do in the first place. She had no money with her, but she was wearing one of the necklaces the fairy had given her, and this would work quite as well.
After they had gotten something to eat, Violet decided that she must get Prince a new collar, for he had been a very good dog, and deserved something that was not purple. But Prince was still carrying his old collar in his mouth and refused to put it down. Violet tried to put blue collars on him, red collars, orange collars, green collars, rainbow collars, and black collars, but he wouldn’t wear them. The only ones he seemed interested in at all were purple. After being away from the color so long, the princess was not so opposed to it, so she let him have his choice of collar.
When they arrived back at the castle, Violet was surprised to find that there were no guards at the doors. She could hear people rushing to and fro, and shouting things to each other in the other rooms, but she saw no one. The palace seemed to be in a panic. She found dinner left on the table in the dining room, the chairs had not been pushed back in, various papers were left lying on the table, and every door was ajar. One of the maids came hurrying though with a platter of hot tea she was taking to the queen, but when she saw Violet she dropped the platter and fled.
What had happened was this: It was known by most scholars and a few common folk that if a fairy were to know a princess by name, gain influence over her and persuade her to live with her, the fairy would have greater power than a king with a thousand armies. The wicked fairy had desired to control the land for some time, but had been unable to do so for several reasons. So as soon as the fairy realized that she had a princess in her forest, she set out to find and befriend her.
Two weeks before the princess escaped the cottage, the fairy had started sending messages to the palace. At first they only hinted that something was soon going to come upon them, but then they began to get more threatening. Just half and hour before the princess had arrived back home, the king had gotten a final threat from the fairy, delivered by a large black raven. It had stated that the fairy had the princess, knew her name, and had not forced the princess to stay with her, but she had done it of her own will. Therefore, the king was to abandon the palace if he wished to live, and supply her with all the weapons, treasures, servants, soldiers and documents she demanded. When the raven confirmed everything in the note, and produced one of the princess’s purple-jeweled necklaces, the king was certain that everything it said was true.
Though he felt that the situation was hopeless, the king commanded that all the good fairies and the royal scholars attempt to find a way to protect the kingdom from the wicked fairy. In the meantime, everyone else was to prepare to flee, for he did not wish to leave any of his people to the cruelty of the fairy. All the scholars searched franticly for a way to stop her, and everyone else in the castle gathered together everything they thought they might need for their flight. No one had sent word to the city yet. When the maid saw Violet in the palace, she thought that the fairy had already come upon them and everyone was doomed.
Violet tried to reassure the girl, but the poor maid was too frightened to stay and listen. Violet decided she must find her parents and learn what was going on. She had little trouble getting to their rooms upstairs, since no one thought to lock any doors. Unfortunately, she could not find them in any of the rooms they usually occupied. In one room she found one of her brothers, but when she tried to talk to him, he shouted, “They're here!” and ran.
Not knowing what else to do, the princess took some paper from a desk and wrote a note to her parents explaining what had happened to her and that she had no idea what was happening now. She gave the note to Prince, and said, “Go give it to the king.”
Prince was a very intelligent dog, and found the king within a few minutes. The king did not fear anything from Prince, but was very surprised to see him after so long. He read the note, and, though he thought it could very well be a trap, he told the dog to take him to his daughter. He questioned her closely, and when he discovered that she had not given her name to the fairy, he let out a cry of relief and embraced his child.
It took some time to find everyone in the palace and assure them of their safety, but by morning the castle was calm again. The queen had been shocked to see her daughter wearing green, since she had never seen her in it before, but when she realized that her daughter had hated purple so much, she said she would allow her to wear whatever color she liked. Violet, however, didn’t want to wear anything that reminded her of the wicked fairy, and gladly put on a purple gown to have the green one burned.
From that point on, Violet never had the same loathing for purple that she once had. She certainly didn’t want her whole life to revolve around the color, but she didn’t mind having it around. Prince seemed to like it, after all. So with the help of her mother the princess redecorated her room in pink and purple and blue, and the purple carriage was repainted red and she put strawberry jelly on her toast. Never again did she wander into the forest, though she did wonder what had become of the lion. No one ever heard from the wicked fairy again, and the princess’ dog always wore a purple collar.
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