The Little Princess Of The Fearless Heart

: MODERN FAIRY TALES
: Boys And Girls Bookshelf

BY B. J. DASKAM





Once upon a time the great, yellow stork carried a baby Princess to the

Queen of that country which lies next to fairy-land.



All throughout the kingdom the bells rang, the people shouted, and the

King declared a holiday for a whole year. But the Queen was very

anxious, for she knew that the fairies are a queer lot, and their

borders were very close indeed.



"We must be very careful to slight none of them at the christening," she

said, "for goodness knows what they might do, if we did!"



So the wise-men drew up the lists, and when the day for the christening

arrived, the fairies were all there, and everything went as smoothly as

a frosted cake.



But the Queen said to the Lady-in-waiting:



"The first fairy godmother gave her nothing but a kiss! I don't call

that much of a gift!"



"'Sh!" whispered the Lady-in-waiting. "The fairies hear everything!"



And indeed, the fairy heard her well enough, and very angry she was

about it, too. For she was so old that she knew all about it, from

beginning to end, and she was sure that the Wizard with Three Dragons

was sitting in the Black Forest, watching the whole matter in his

crystal globe. So she had whispered her gift--which was nothing more nor

less than a Fearless Heart--into the ear of the Little Princess. But the

Queen thought she had only kissed her.



So, when the clock was on the hour of four (which, as every one knows,

is the end of christenings and fairy gifts) the first godmother went up

to the golden cradle.



"Since my first gift was not satisfactory to every one," she said,

angrily, "I will give the Little Princess another. And that is, that

when the time comes she shall marry the Prince of the Black Heart!"



Then the clock struck four, while the Queen wept on the bosom of the

Lady-in-waiting.



And that was the end of the christening.



Then the King called the wise-men together, and for forty days and

nights they read the books and studied the stars.



In the end, they laid out a Garden, with a wall so high that the sun

could not shine over it until noon, and so broad that it was a day's

journey for a swift horse to cross it. One tiny door there was: but the

first gate was of iron, and five-and-twenty men-at-arms stood before it,

day and night, with drawn swords; the second gate was of beaten copper,

and before that were fifty archers, with arrows on the string; the third

gate was of triple brass, and before it a hundred knights, in full

armor, rode without ceasing.



Into the Garden went the Little Princess, and the Queen, and all her

ladies; but no man might pass the gates, save the King himself. And

there the Princess dwelt until her seventeenth birthday, without seeing

any more of the world than the inside of the wall.



Now it happened that, some time before, a young Prince had ridden out of

the west and set about his travels. For the wise-man on the hill had

come to him and said:



"In the kingdom which lies next to fairyland dwells a Little Princess

who has a Fearless Heart. There is a wall which will not be easy to

climb, but the Princess is more beautiful than anything else in the

world!"



And that was enough for the Prince, so he girded on his sword, and set

out, singing as he went for pure lightness of heart.



But it is not so easy to find fairyland as it is to eat a ripe apple,

and the Prince could have told you that, before he was through. For in

some places it is so broad that it takes in the whole world, and in

others so narrow that a flea could cross it in two jumps. So that some

people never leave it all their lives long, but others cross at a single

step, and never see it at all.



Finally, the Prince came to the place where all roads meet, and they

were as much alike as the hairs on a dog's back. But it was all one to

him, so he rode straight ahead and lost himself in fairyland.



When the first fairy godmother saw him, she laughed to herself and flew

away, straight over his head, to the wall around the Garden. But you may

be sure that she did not trouble the guards at the triple gates: for, if

one has wings, what is the use of stairs? So over the wall she flew to

the room where the Little Princess lay sleeping.



You may readily believe that the Princess was astonished when she awoke

to find the fairy beside her bed, but she was not in the least alarmed,

for, you see, she did not know that there was anything in the world to

be afraid of.



"My dear," said the old lady, "I am your first fairy godmother."



"How do you do, Godmother?" said the Princess, and she sat up in bed and

courtesied. Which is a very difficult trick, indeed, and it is not every

Princess who can do it.



Her godmother was so delighted that she leaned over and kissed her.



"That is the second time I have kissed you," she said. "When I go, I

will kiss you again, and you had better save the three of them, for they

will be useful when you go out into the world. And, my dear, it is high

time that you were going out."



Then the Little Princess was overjoyed, but she only nodded her head

wisely and said:



"I know, the world is as big as the whole Garden, and wider than the

wall. But I can never go out, for the gates are always locked."



"If you do not go now," said the fairy, "you will have to go later, and

that might not be so well. And you should not argue with me, for I am

older than you will ever be, and your godmother, besides. Now kiss me,

for I must be going."



So she flew away, about her other affairs, for she was a very busy old

lady indeed.



In the morning the Princess went to breakfast with the King and the

Queen.



"Mother," she said, "it is high time that I went out into the world!"



The Queen was so startled that she dropped her egg on the floor and the

King was red as a beet with anger.



"Tut! Tut!" he shouted. "What nonsense is this?"



"My fairy godmother was here last night," said the Princess, "and she

told me all about it. I will go this morning, please, if I may."



"Nonsense!" roared the King.



"You will do no such thing!" wailed the Queen.



"There could have been no one here," said the King, "for the gates were

all locked."



"Who told you that you had a fairy godmother?" asked the Queen.



And there was an end of that.



But that night, after the Princess had said her prayers and crept into

bed, she heard her godmother calling to her from the Garden, so she

slipped on her cloak and stole out into the moonlight. There was no one

to be seen, so she pattered along in her little bare feet until she came

to the gate in the wall.



While she was hesitating whether or not to run back to her little white

bed, the gates of triple brass opened as easily as if her godmother had

oiled them, and the Little Princess passed through the copper gates, and

the iron gate, and out into fairyland.



But if you ask me why she saw the guards at the gates no more than they

saw her, I can only tell you that I do not know, and you will have to be

satisfied with that.



As for the Princess, she was as happy as a duck in a puddle. As she

danced along through the forests, the flowers broke from their stems to

join her, the trees dropped golden fruit into her very hands, and the

little brook which runs through fairyland left its course, and followed

her, singing.



And all the while, her godmother was coming down behind her, close at

hand, to see that she came to no harm; but the Princess did not know

that.



At last she came to the place where the Prince from the west lay

sleeping. He was dreaming that he had climbed the wall and had found

the Princess, so that he smiled in his sleep and she knelt above him,

wondering, for she had never seen a man before, save her father, the

King, and the Prince was very fair. So she bent closer and closer, until

her breath was on his cheek, and as he opened his eyes, she kissed him.



As for the Prince, he thought that he was still asleep, till he saw that

she was many times more beautiful than in his dreams, and he knew that

he had found her at last.






"You are more beautiful than anything else in the world," he said, "and

I love you better than my life!"



"And I love you with all my heart!" said the Little Princess.



"Will you marry me," asked the Prince, "and live with me forever and

ever?"



"That I will," said the Princess, "and gladly, if my father, the King,

and my mother, the Queen, will let me leave the Garden."



And she told the Prince all about the wall with the triple gates.



The Prince saw that it would be no easy task to win the consent of the

King and the Queen, so nothing would do but that he must travel back to

the west and return with a proper retinue behind him.



So he bade the Princess good-by and rode bravely off toward the west.



The Princess went slowly back through fairyland, till she came to the

wall, just as the sun was breaking in the east. As every one knows,

White Magic is not of very much use in the daytime, outside of

fairyland, and if you ask why this is not so at christenings, I will

send you to Peter Knowall, who keeps the Big Red Book.



So the guards at the triple gates saw the Princess, and they raised such

a hub-bub, that the King and the Queen rushed out to see what all the

noise was about. You can easily believe that they were in a great way

when they saw the Little Princess, who they thought was safe asleep in

her bed.



They lost no time in bundling her through the gates, and then they fell

to kissing her, and scolding her, and shaking her, and hugging her, all

in the same breath.



But the Princess said, "I have been out into the world, and I am going

to marry the Prince!"



Then perhaps there was not a great to-do about the Garden!



They bullied and coaxed and scolded and wept, but the Princess only

said,



"I love him with all my heart and when the time comes I will go to him,

if I have to beg my way from door to door!"



At that the King flew into a towering rage.



"Very well, Miss!" he shouted. "But when you go, you may stay forever! I

will cut your name off the records, and any one who speaks it will be

beheaded, if it is the High Lord Chancellor, himself!"



Then it was the turn of the Princess to weep, for she loved her parents

dearly, but she could not promise to forget the Prince.



So matters went from pence to ha'pennies, as the saying goes, till

finally the Princess could bear it no longer, so she found her cloak and

stole down to the triple gates.



Everything went very much as it had before, save that there was no

Prince asleep under the tree where she had first found him. Then the

Princess would have turned back, but the little brook which followed at

her heel had swollen out into a broad, deep river, and there was nothing

to do but go ahead, till she came to a cottage among the trees, and

before the door sat an old, old woman, spinning gold thread out of

moonlight. And by that any one could have told that she was a fairy, but

the Princess thought it was always done that way in the world.



"Oh, Mother," she cried, "how shall I find my way out of the forest?"



But the old woman went on spinning, and the Princess thought that she

had never seen anything fly so fast as the shuttle.



"Where were you wanting to go?" she asked.



"I am searching for the Prince from the west," said the Princess sadly.

"Can you tell me where to find him?"



The fairy shook her head and went on with her spinning, so fast that you

could not see the shuttle at all.



But the Princess begged so prettily that finally she said,



"If I were looking for a Prince, I would follow my nose until I came to

the Black Forest, and then I would ask the Wizard with Three Dragons,

who knows all about it, and more, too! That is, unless I thought that I

would be afraid in the Black Forest."



"What is afraid?" asked the Little Princess. "I do not know that."



And no more she did, so the fairy laughed, for she saw trouble coming

for the Wizard. She stopped her wheel with a click, but for all her fast

spinning, there was only enough gold thread to go around the second

finger of the Princess's left hand.



As for the Princess, she thanked the old lady very kindly, and set

bravely off toward the Black Forest.



But the Wizard with Three Dragons only laughed as he gazed into his

crystal globe, for in it he could see everything that was happening in

any place in the world, and I do not need Jacob Wise-man to tell me that

a globe like that is worth having!



Now, when the Prince had left the Princess in fairyland, he lost no time

in riding back to the west. The old King, his father, was overjoyed when

he heard of the Little Princess, and he gave the Prince a retinue that

stretched for a mile behind him.



But when they came to the place where all roads meet, the Prince was

greatly perplexed, for this time, you see, he knew where he wanted to

go. In the end, he trusted to chance and rode ahead, but they had not

gone far before they came to the castle of the Wizard with Three

Dragons, in the middle of the Black Forest.



In the great hall sat the Wizard, himself, waiting for them, and he was

as soft as butter.



Yes, yes, he knew the Princess well enough, but it was too late to go

further that night. So the Prince and all his train had best come into

the castle and wait till morning.



That was what the Wizard said, and the Prince was glad enough to listen

to him, for he was beginning to fear that he would never find the

Princess again. But hardly had the last bowman come within the doors

than the Wizard blew upon his crystal globe, and muttered a spell.



At that, the Prince and his entire train were changed to solid stone, in

the twinkling of an eye, and there they remained till, at the proper

time, the Little Princess of the Fearless Heart came up the great stone

steps of the castle.



The Wizard was sitting on his throne with his Dragons behind his

shoulder, staring into his crystal globe as it spun in the air, hanging

on nothing at all.



He never took his eyes away when the Princess came up to the throne, and

she was far too polite to interrupt him when he was so busy. So for a

long, long time she stood there waiting, and the Wizard chuckled to

himself, for he thought that she was too frightened to speak. So he

breathed upon his crystal globe and muttered a spell.



But of course, nothing happened, for the Little Princess had a Fearless

Heart!



Then the Wizard grew black as night, for he saw that the matter was not

so easy as plucking wild flowers, so he turned away from the crystal

globe and stared at the Princess. His eyes burned like two hot coals,

so that she drew her cloak closer about her, but you cannot hide your

heart from a Wizard with Three Dragons, unless your cloak is woven of

sunlight, and the Little Black Dwarf has the only one of those in the

whole world, stowed away in an old chest in the garret.



So the Wizard saw at once that the Little Princess had a Fearless Heart,

and his voice was soft as rain-water.



"Oh, Little Princess," he said. "What is it that you want of me in the

Black Forest?"



"I am looking for the Prince from the west," said the Princess, eagerly.

"Can you tell me where to find him?"



"Yes," said the Wizard. "I can tell you that, and perhaps some other

things, besides. But what will you give me for my trouble?"



Then the Little Princess hung her head, for she had nothing about her

that was worth so much as a bone button, and the Wizard knew that as

well as you and I. So he said, very softly, "Will you give me your

Fearless Heart?"



And there was the whole matter in a nutshell!



But the Princess stamped her foot on the stone floor. "Of course I will

not give you my heart," she said. "And if you will not tell me for

kindness, I will be going on, for I have nothing with which to pay you!"



"Not so fast!" cried the Wizard--for he was as wise as a rat in a

library--"If you will not give me your heart, just let me have a kiss

and I will call it a bargain!"



Then the Princess remembered her godmother's three kisses, and she

thought that this was the place for them, if they were ever to be used

at all, although she liked the thought of kissing the Wizard about as

much as she liked sour wine. She crept up to the throne, and, with her

eyes tight closed, gave the Wizard the first of the three kisses.



At that the whole Black Forest shook with the force of the Magic,

hissing through the trees, and the Wizard, with his Three Dragons turned

into solid stone!



The crystal globe spun around in the air, humming like a hive full of

bees and sank slowly to the foot of the throne.



Hardly had it touched the ground than the whole castle rent and split

into a thousand pieces, and I would not like to have been there, unless

I had a bit of gold thread spun out of moonlight around my finger, for

the huge rocks were falling as thick as peas in a pan!



But the Princess hardly noticed the rocks at all, for, as the sun rose

over the Black Forest, she recognized the marble figure of the Prince,

standing among the ruins. You may be sure that she was heartbroken as

she went up to him, weeping very bitterly and calling and calling on his

name. Then in her sorrow she reached up and kissed the cold stone face

with the second magic kiss.



Then suddenly she felt the marble grow soft and warm beneath her touch,

and the Prince came back to life and took her in his arms.



When he recognized the silent figures of his gay train, he was sad as

death, and the Princess wept with him. But suddenly they saw an old, old

woman picking her way among the fallen stones.



"Oh," said the Little Princess, "that is the old woman whom I met in the

forest, spinning!"



At that the fairy laughed so hard that her hair tumbled down about her

feet, and it turned from gray to silver, and silver to gold. The years

fell from her like a cloak, until she was more beautiful than the

thought of man could conceive!



"Ah! I know you now!" cried the Little Princess. "You are my first fairy

godmother!"



And that was the way of it, so she kissed them both for pure joy. But

when they asked her as to which of the stone figures should have the

third magic kiss, she shook her head,



"None of them at all!" she said. "But give me back that bit of gold

thread, for you will have no further use for it."



Then she stretched the thread between her two hands until it was so fine

that you could not see it at all, and laid it on the ground around the

Wizard and his Dragons, and tied a magic knot, just behind the crystal

globe.



"Now give the third kiss to the crystal globe," she said, "and see what

will happen!"



So the Little Princess kissed the globe, and from the place where her

lips touched it, a stream of water trickled down. As it touched the feet

of each statue, the marble softened to flesh and blood, and the breath

came back to it until all of the Prince's train were alive again; but as

for the Wizard, the water could not pass the gold thread, so there he

sits until this day--unless some busybody has untied the magic knot.

Then the fairy flew away, singing a low, happy song.



When the Prince and the Princess came to the Garden, there was a wedding

which lasted a month, and then they rode off toward the west.



After they had gone, the Queen whispered to the Lady-in-waiting,



"You see what careful parents can do! The first fairy godmother was

quite wrong about the Prince of the Black Heart!"



But at that very moment, the Prince had bared his arm to pluck a

water-flower, as they rested beside the way.



"What is that black mark on your arm?" asked the Princess.



"Oh," said the Prince, laughing, "that is just a scar I have borne from

birth. It is in the shape of a heart, and so, for a jest, my people call

me the Prince of the Black Heart."



"Black Heart, indeed!" cried the Little Princess, angrily.



And that is the end of the story, for if you have no fear in your heart,

black magic is no such great thing after all.



But if any old fogy should wag his gray beard and say there is not a

word of truth in it, you may be very sure that he came to fairyland at

the narrow place, and never saw it at all. So you may just smile at him,

for there is one thing, at least, that you know more about than he does!