Once upon a time there was a princess who was not princessy at all. She despised pink and had atrocious manners and worst of all when she grew up she wanted nothing more than to be a great, famous explorer. She worked hard to achieve her dream. She would spend hour after hour reading maps late into the night; even though the only school work she was required to do in that kingdom was to study languages, history, etiquette, and needle work. Her parents would worry about her. Her mother would say, “It is not right that such a young girl should be so interested in exploring!” Her father would say, “And she always tries to ignore us when we do things for her safety, like the tasters, doctors, and guards.”The servants would see her trying to have adventures and escape the guards and they would say, “What a spoiled child! She has all that wealth wasted on her and she isn’t thankful. If I could afford it, I’d have such fine foods and tasters, but she insists on acting like she wants to escape her wealth.” The King and Queen would hear this and shake their heads sadly but their daughter was not willing to listen to their side of the story: how they worried for her and did all that for her own good.
They would have loved to have an exploring daughter but they had to look out for the kingdom. The kingdom would need a king who would marry the princess and what prince would marry a princess who was unladylike? One day the Queen sighed, “If only there were some children our daughter could play with. Then she would be happy.” The King exclaimed, “You are a genius! We can have some other good princes and princesses come and play with her, and she will be happy!”
And so it was done. One morning when the princess, whose name was Sarah, woke up, the queen was standing next to her, beaming. She said excitedly, “We have a plan so you can be happy! We have some children for you to play with, and you will like them!” Princess Sarah sat up, barely daring to hope, and got ready, then went outside into the courtyard. There were some plump children dressed in frills and bonnets awaiting her. She, unwilling to abandon hope of playmates despite their appearance, said, “Let’s play hide and go seek!” One of the children said, “Oh no. I might get scratched on some thorns inside of bushes!” Sarah cocked her head. She had never worried about that before. She tried again. “How about kick ball or tag? With those you stay away from thorns.” Another plump princess said, “That would be horrible! We could slip, and twist our ankles!”Sarah asked, “I have it! Will you roll down a hill with me? That way we won’t go near thorns or have anywhere to fall to.” The other children said, “That would be worst of all, because then we would get dirty.”
Sarah shook her head sadly and was very thankful she wasn’t like those other children, content to sit around and never do anything wrong or exciting. But still, it made her kind of angry that they wouldn’t play with her, that her parents thought she wasn’t good enough, and she never got anything fun to do. So Sarah decided to explore. She knew the perfect place. On the other side of the west wall of the courtyard, there was the Deep Forest. Many brave explorers and bold adventurers had gone in there and come back scared and frightened or not at all. It was said to be filled with monsters, witches, and evil trolls. It would be the perfect place to start Sarah’s career as an explorer. Leaving the children behind, Sarah hurried over to the west wall and climbed up the ivy and sat on top of the wall. Looking back at the castle, you and I would have seen a happy life filled with luxuries, but all that Sarah saw was the tedious manners, itchy clothing, and disappointed parents. Still, when Sarah looked ahead, things looked even worse and, for a moment, Sarah wanted to climb down and go back to her normal, boring life. But that didn’t last long. Even with the shadows and dead trees and fearful noises, Sarah was very stubborn. So she climbed down into the forest, oblivious to the trials she would soon face.
Read tomorrow's post for the rest of the story!
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