Another fairy story! Fit the first

Once upon a time in a land far beyond the boundaries of the widest ocean lived a young Princess. Fair of face, slender of form, the fairest of her race in the long days of their slow decline it was said; but wilful, oh so wilful.

As a small child she would often leave the castle at daybreak, without telling her parents, the King and the Queen, or the servants. She was to be found hours later, and after desperate searching by the entire household, in front of some peasant hut watching an old crone grinding corn with a rude pestle and mortar or outside the blacksmith’s, peering intently at the rows of horseshoes. No matter what her parents did, no matter how much they chided, scolded, punished her, no sooner did they believe that they had cured her wanderlust than she would once again be off on another of her small adventures, accompanied by her imaginary friend, Marsupilami.

Eventually, the Dowager Marquise, her grandmother, could stand the constant worry no more, the never ending searches, the child’s contrite apologies and promises, the nightmare imaginings and she finally persuaded the King and Queen that perhaps a change of air, away from the stifling atmosphere of the castle and the court, would rein in her overarching desire for new adventures.

“For surely, if she remains here, some misadventure will eventually befall her; some mishap, fatal or nay,” she said to the King and Queen one day. “A child so young cannot wander aimlessly in the world unaccompanied. Even here it is perilous; wolves, bears, even thieves and cut-throats from the Far Reaches quarter our land. I will retire to the country. I grow tired now of this gloomy castle and its sycophantic court and I will take her with me, as my charge; to watch over her and see that she comes to no harm. Rest assured, my children, that she will also be loved, as though she were of my own flesh, not once removed.”

The Princess though deeply saddened at being parted from her family, her sisters, her brothers, more especially her mother, the Queen, was also elated to be embarking on such a new adventure; so much bigger, grander, more fraught with possibilities than she had ever imagined. She willingly accompanied her grandmother to a small mansion, some distance from the capital and court and there she lived and played and never wandered far from the grounds of her home. Mischievous she was, it is true, are not all children so? Her wanderlust had, however, been silenced. In this perhaps her Grandmother played the larger part, accepting the lesser of the two sins of childhood, mischief, as necessary to quieten the wilfulness.

After a few short, most happy years, the Dowager Marquise grew ill, rare among the fair race, and, one day, as she lay slowly dying in her bed, her breathing, short, pain filled gasps, she had the Princess summoned to her bedchamber. As the Princess knelt on the soft, down-filled cover, she noticed that her grandmother’s eyes, previously two black, limpid pools in a dark forest, pools she too had inherited, had become grey, clouded, as though a fog was slowly descending. The Dowager Marquise gently took the child’s hand and said softly: “Do not cry, child, for there will be time enough for weeping when I am gone. Today I wish to see your eyes shine, not in grief but in joy; I wish to see you smile. I wish to prepare myself for that which we, except in battle, have never before suffered however long we lived. Death! Alas, this is the fading time of our people, our twilight years. What once we were, we are no more, we diminish and the reckoning must now be paid. I go to wherever it is we go when we are no longer of this earth. To the Halls of Waiting, perhaps, to join our kind to attend on this world’s end and the remaking of another.”

Although the Princess gallantly tried to smile, the tears were slowly falling in small rivulets down her cheeks and her nose dripped gentle drops of rain on her lips. “I have always tried to do what was best for you, my child,” the old woman said. “To this end I have made arrangements for you. You will not return to your parents, the King and Queen, at this time. Your aunt has agreed that you shall live with her when I am gone. She is a kindly soul and she has children of her own, a little younger than you ‘tis true, but they will make admirable playmates and you will not be lonely. And you will be loved, as I have loved you. Think of this as simply another adventure, just as this was. Be happy, child. We will meet again though the wait will seem long, and far longer for me, but meet we will."

Some hours later the Dowager Marquise died in her sleep. When the Princess was told, the child locked herself, distraught, in her room and remained there the whole day. The sound of her sobbing could be heard from far away, as though she wept for the loss of the whole world. No coaxing, cajoling or persuasion would make her leave her room. Finally, as the housekeeper was preparing supper, the Princess appeared in the parlour doorway, her eyes swollen with so many tears. “I leave for my aunt’s on the morrow after next,” she said clearly and without emotion. “Will you help me to pack my things?” The housekeeper smiled. “Of course, my sweet, but there is time enough for packing. Come! Eat!” She ushered the Princess to the table and laid cheese, butter, hams, beans and bread before her as the Princess settled herself on the small wooden chair. “Eat, child!” the housekeeper said. “You have eaten nothing today and you are already only skin and bone. Eat, I say!”

The Princess ate. She broke off small pieces of bread, spread them with butter and delicately placed them in her mouth, one by one, as though saving them, storing them for a long hard winter, as a squirrel. As she slowly chewed, the Princess gazed out of the window, at the candles burning on shelves, at her plate. The housekeeper laid her head in her hands and gently whispered to her palms: “’Tis no age to learn that we, the undying, do indeed die. I fear for her and what this knowledge may bring. Would that our God in his mercy had spared the child but she knows now; we have become mortal. Our lives will now shrink to nothing and we will become little more than strange looking humans, elves no more! It will be hard, I think, to die but if die we must, then will hope for a world made new sustain us?”

To be continued............