Chapter 5

“Well - here’s one last favor. Think of it as a good-bye present!” said the Princess with a silvery laugh, which caused the dragon to regret even more that this lovely neighbor was so shortly to be gone. With these words she ripped off the poor girl’s peasant clothes, after which she bent down and removed her boots. Sara’s delicate, beautiful little nose wrinkled disgustedly as the odor from the girl’s unwashed feet reached her sensitive royal nostrils. “There, young lady, that’ll teach you not to go out late in defiance of your father’s wishes. Parents have good reasons for making these rules.” she muttered to the cowering and shivering girl.

She walked back to her place next to the dragon and resumed her squatting position at his side.

“There you are, my scaly, cigar smoking neighbor! One naked damsel! If you value my advice, you will give her a good hiding. She’s really high! Stinks to high Heaven. I can’t decide if I did the right thing or not in stripping her for you. I mean to say, just look at her! She’s so horribly flabby, and her skin tone is terrible - spots all over her! Not enough exercise and too much junk food - disgusting! No knight in his right senses would ever ride to the rescue of that! Best let her go in a couple of days. The knight would only kill you, anyway - they always do, you know! You hadn’t been told that, had you?”

The green dragon thanked her for this warning. Half an hour later Sara rose to her feet, preparatory to leaving. The pair embraced as they said good-bye for the last time. He promised to untie the village wench later that day. It had been the catching of her that had given him the greatest satisfaction, and he was beginning to tire of her perpetual whining. Not only that, but he too had noticed the peasant girl’s distasteful and offensive unwashed smell.

The few months that Princess Sara had spent on this hillside had been peaceful and happy. Her beloved white horse had been comfortably housed in the cave and provisioned daily as she went down to the farm and back to collect fresh hay, a load of which she carried on her back for him. During the day she would chat to her neighbor Bill, the incompetent, undersized and cigar puffing dragon, after climbing the rocky slope up to his cave.

She had slept outdoors every night and had long since ceased to call on the magical white dogs to shield her from the rain, which she had learnt to sleep through as easily as if the weather were warm and dry. How she dreaded being confined to her bedchamber of a night when she went home! She determined that she would have the windows wide open, no matter what the weather! And fires would be banned in her apartments!

As she made the journey from the dragon’s cave to her own for the last time, she asked herself once again what difference the last months had made to her. Very little in some ways, she decided. She still knew herself to be a Princess and had always been conscious of her superior rank even during the very worst times. It was a great joy, though, to have developed such a mystical rapport with all the birds and animals around her, whose unhoused and free condition she had shared these last amazing months, and would continue to share for a while yet.

Whenever she had been given hospitality along the way and this generosity had consisted in the provision of meals in which fowl and flesh had played a large part, she had never been able to suppress a feeling of guilt. Each lovely well-cooked dish might, after all, contain the body of a former friend! Generally, though, she managed to shrug off consideration of such moral issues and enjoy her meal!

The beautiful Princess was not a particularly deep thinker, being first and foremost a woman of action, whose quick intelligence was directed at the immediate world around her, as befitted a future ruler, which she was irrevocably determined to be by this time. “They aren’t putting me through all this shit for nothing” was her abiding thought.

Sadly, her use of foul language was increasing all the while - she had given vent to some extremely highly colored utterances at the time of her flogging, albeit ‘sotto voce’. Martha, with her peasant blood, would have applauded, but not her father. Still less the saintly Archbishop, whom she was, in any case, determined to sack as soon as she became Queen!

For the last time she laid herself down at the entrance to the cave, guarding her beloved white horse, safe inside, with her now formidable presence. She slept. Tomorrow the journey home will begin!

She woke up at the very crack of dawn on the day she was due to start her return journey. The Sun’s rim had just started to show itself in all its enormous early morning red circumference above the horizon, far away over the blue sea.

The white horse had been awake even before the Princess and was pawing the ground, snorting impatiently through his thoroughbred equine nostrils in his eagerness for the great adventure to come. He was bored after months of comparative inactivity. Soon, perhaps, he would be bearing on his willing back the weight of his beloved rescuer, mistress and friend on the final stage of her return journey.

It was the work of a few minutes to saddle the noble beast and fill the saddle bags with enough food and water to last for a couple of weeks. Princess Sara gave one last look at the cave where her unlikely friend, the dragon, saw that there were no signs of life from him. He would not be up and about for hours, yet!

She noted with relief that the plump and greasy skinned village maiden had been released from her uncomfortable captivity. She led her faithful horse down to the plain, not looking back once at the scene of her hibernal resting place. It would only have made her sad.

The ground was still soft underfoot after the winter rains; easy for the still barefoot Princess to walk over. It was covered as far as she could see by a profusion of wild flowers, of a myriad different variety - a breathtaking kaleidoscope of blues, reds, pinks, yellows, ultramarine and every other color of the rainbow. She still found it hard to comprehend that a landscape that was so barren and parched in the long summer months could yield such an amazing fecundity of floral richness in the Southern Spring.

The little girl in her longed to make a chain of daisies and other flowers, draping them around her delicate, fragile neck, framing her small, firm and exquisitely formed breasts with their colors, but the proscription on any kind of adornment or covering, save the fairy ring, made this quite impossible. She contented herself with making a garland for her beloved white four-legged friend. He knew that this was a special gift from the adorable Princess and successfully resisted the temptation to eat it - for an hour or two at least!

When she came to the site of the healing lake, there was no sign of those warm and gentle waters, whose touch had restored her torn and tortured body to normal. However, she was sure that it was not imagination on her part that the carpet of flowers was even richer here than elsewhere. It was still a place of magic.

She was not without her misgivings when her route led her through that town where the now deceased mob had bidden for her blood on that terrible day. She need not have feared. The dead had been buried and the survivors, the little children and those peaceable decent souls who had not been carried away by the puritanical zeal of the majority, locking themselves into their homes and praying that the poor girl might be spared, flocked out to greet her. They assured her that they bore her no ill will for what had befallen the rest of the townsfolk.

“After all” said the new mayor, “They were going to kill you in the most degrading and painful manner, bringing everlasting shame on themselves and also upon the rest of us. They only reaped what they had sown.”

She accepted their offer to replenish her supplies of food and drink, continuing on her way, thankful that her earlier adventure had not been repeated.

For whatever reason, the horse then diverged from the route she had followed earlier in the year and she found herself in unfamiliar territory. The homes and farmsteads seemed meaner and poorer than those she had passed earlier. She came to a town and was saddened at the decrepitude of the buildings and the shabbiness of the people. Everyone seemed mean and shriveled - in some way oppressed, as if by some ever present fear, which the Princess herself could sense in the very air of the place.

“There is a purpose in my coming this way” she told herself. “I wonder what, exactly?”

Her question seemed part way to being answered soon enough. A group of people were walking across to her, breaking away from what looked like some kind of meeting in the town square. They were a sorry looking lot, shabbily dressed and downcast, with the very notable exception of one tall and faired haired young man, extremely young, but sufficiently far removed from boyhood as to have grown a full red beard, which accentuated the stern and decisive manliness of his features.

He was the only person in this place who did not look like a slave to fear. Princess Sara felt herself drawn towards this youth -he seemed to be the sole healthy feature in what otherwise looked to be a diseased and dying community, a community being eaten away from within by defeatism and despair. She knew, as soon as she saw him, that Destiny had brought the two of them together for some great purpose! She waited for him to speak, but was surprised when one of the older members of the group spoke first.

This elder spoke in a thin reedy voice. “Greetings, exquisite and undressed lady! What misfortune have you suffered to reduce you to this wretched nakedness? What wrong have you done to incur such a punishment?”

“I have done no wrong, save give my heart to the man I love and be rejected unless I travel the world naked and homeless with no companion save this beloved steed whom I am forbidden to mount. I am a Princess and a very great lady in my own land and a great lady in your and any other land, despite my poverty.”

The old man frowned at this. He explained, in a stern voice, that in this land there were no Kings and Queens and no Lord and Ladies either. All men and women were equal in this country and no one stood higher than his fellows, all decisions being taken by popular vote at meetings, one of which had been in progress when the Princess entered the town.

“A fat lot of good this freedom seems to have done you!” said the Princess, appalled to think that these people owed allegiance to no King and ruled themselves. Shocking!

“It is true that we have our problems here, young woman. We live under the shadow of a great evil. A monster lives at the top of that hill and demands tribute from us every year, so that we have little left of our produce to feed ourselves. Worse than this, this Thing demands the sacrifice every month of a fair maiden to appease his wrath. The time is near when we must decide which beloved daughter of our community must surrender to his insatiable greed for blood.”

“I resent being called ‘Young woman’, my good man. I am used to being addressed as ‘Your Serene Highness’, but since you are obviously benighted and ignorant folk hereabouts, I will overlook your impertinence on this occasion. You need a King to rule you and I can see just the one you need.”

She pointed to the fair young man, who stood head and shoulders over his fellows, even allowing for his upright stance and their shifty hang dog demeanor.

“Where is the unfortunate young lady you propose to sacrifice, a miserable man?”

The elder pointed to a cowering maiden with pale and tear stained face, who stood a few yards apart from the rest.

“She is indeed the fairest of all your maidens as far as I can tell. She is not to be the latest innocent victim of your cowardice and this monster’s evil. She shall be this young man’s wife and your Queen. As for the sacrificial victim, look no further than at me! This monster shall be fed no more innocent maidens. He shall be killed this very day! I and your future King will do the killing!”

She turned to the young man.

“Come, fair youth, lead me to the lair of this creature and let us dispatch him forever!”

The young man responded eagerly to these inspiring words. He offered to find a suit of armor and a sharp sword for the Princess, but she refused haughtily.

“I wear no clothes and I carry no sword. Neither must you! Remove all your clothes, this instant! Naked and together, with nothing save our humanity to oppose this creature, we shall remove the curse under which you have all lived for too long. Come, youth! We waste time!”

The proud Princess and the youth, whom she had arbitrarily designated to be the King of this barren and enslaved land through which she was passing, walked together, both as naked as on the day of their respective births, up the steep down that led to the lair of the monster. The newly naked young man winced with pain as the sharp stones cut into his tender feet, drawing blood, and the tough and hardened Princess glared angrily at his weakness.

“You must be a true and valiant man, a man of steel, my dear young friend! It is imperative that you face without fear the many dangers that this day will bring. Only such a man as that can be King of this unfortunate land. You are he, oh handsome youth, although you may not know it yet! Do not forget the maiden whose life will soon be entwined with yours and for whom you walk side by side with me to rescue from a hideous fate.” The young man said nothing in reply to this strange girl whose mysterious and arrogant coming and contemptuously withering condemnation of the people’s craven cowardice had given hope, at last, to a doomed and dying land.

Together they continued their long climb to the top of the hill where the monster had his lair. Her Serene Highness the Princess Sara looked sideways at the fair youth’s manly form. Gosh! What an absolutely gorgeous and dish guy he was, she thought! What fantastically handsome genitalia he had, hanging way down between his thighs and swinging about as he walked! And what muscularity and grace he had been endowed with! She could almost have wished that she herself could be the bride of this King in waiting. However, she was, as ever, conscious of her duty to her own land and of her continuing and absolute love for Prince Adalbert.

“Do you know what kind of a monster it is that we must both face and fight to the death?”

The youth replied “No, Princess. No one has ever set eyes upon the ogre and lived to tell the tale. The maidens are left outside his stockade and their bones are later thrown out to whiten on the hillside in the sun. You will see them when we get nearby. He made his home here five years ago and we have known no peace and no joy in all that time.”

The Princess said no more and the pair continued to walk quickly up the slope towards the wooden stockade. When they reached the site of their ordeal, they stood still outside and waited for the creature to emerge. A roaring could be heard within and after some minutes, during which the young man grew pale with fear and anticipation of a horrible death, the doors flew open and the monster was revealed in all his gross and ugly malevolence.

The low-browed, ape-like figure was a good five inches taller than the young man, squat and thick, where the other was athletic and lean. His arms were long and almost brushed the ground. Instead of five fingers, his hands terminated in three scaly claws, like those of a bird or reptile. The diminutive Princess was dwarfed by this mighty beast, but, of the two, she was the one who showed no fear. She led her companion in the assault, urging him to remember that to be a King, he must first prove himself to be a man and a man of supreme velour at that.

He fought down his fear, overtook the Princess and launched himself upon the monstrous, slavering beast, being immediately thrown back, bleeding from a cut to his side. The Princess urged him not to heed his wounds, but to throw himself again into the fray, and this he did, time after time, being wounded until the blood from many wounds glistened all over his lithe muscularity. Despite these wounds, which were deep and terrible, he was gradually wearing down the clumsy and cumbersome giant.

It became obvious, after two long and weary hours, that both adversaries were tiring and that the poor youth was now tiring faster. Just as it appeared that he was about to succumb after a mighty slashing blow from the creature’s lethal talons had sent him staggering back, with a horrible gash opened up across his chest from which gushed out a veritable fountain of blood, the Princess was transformed from being a mere spectator and dashed towards the ogre, jumping at him and hitting him a glancing blow on the face with the hand on which her ring had been fixed all those months ago.

As the ring came into contact with that foul face, a horrible scream came from the monster’s ugly mouth and he clutched at his eyes, which had already begun to show the same awful melting disintegration that had afflicted the hand of the youth at the well.

“He is blind. Now is your chance. Finish him!” she cried to the young man, who had staggered weakly to his feet after the last and most fearful of the many terrible blows the monster had dealt him. He gathered up what remained of his strength and jumped for the monster’s neck, applying a stranglehold. Despite the giant’s attempts to shake him off, he held his grip on the thick, muscular neck. Gradually the struggles became weaker and then ceased altogether. The pair had triumphed!

With the monster dead before them, the triumphant couple stood regarding their handiwork. The man asked the Princess if he might lean on her for support on the way back to the town, as he was very weak by this time, with so much of his blood shed upon the battleground. She scornfully told him that he was a King now and must look for no support to save his own strength from now on. He had a job to do, now that the curse was lifted from his people. Rest was now a thing he would never know until death released him from the burdens of kingship. She wished him well and took the reins of her horse, which had followed them up the hillside, walking off in one direction, towards her own land and future, and allowing the new young King to go back to his people.

She turned just once and saw him walking down the hill, summoning up all his will and strength to walk firmly and confidently. She smiled. She could easily have dispatched the creature herself with no blood shed, but the young man had needed this battle and all his awful wounds, which had transformed him into a hero in the eyes of his people.

“I wonder what more excitement lies in store for us, my darling companion,” she murmured into the horse’s ear. The animal neighed and shook his head. He was saying he could not wait to see the fine stable which the Princess had promised him when they finally returned to the Royal Palace.

Three weeks had passed since the adventure with the young man and the fearsome monster. Princess Sara learnt from her overhead messengers, the birds, that the brave and strong youth had indeed been acclaimed as King, had recovered well from his wounds and was now betrothed to the lady originally intended as the monster’s next victim. She was happy to hear this.

For some time now, she had entertained doubts concerning her own role in the affair, letting him suffer so much hurt when she could easily have used the fairy ring to disable the ogre at once. The Princess had certainly experienced rather more than a frisson of pleasure at the sight of the brave young man shedding so much blood, experiencing such pain and yet bravely refusing to submit.

It had always been the same with her. Once, two young and valiant men had jousted to secure her favors and she had watched, fascinated by the sight of the blood they had both shed and the horrible injuries they had inflicted one on the other. After the tournament, she had presented the weary, and half dead, victor with a richly embroidered silk handkerchief, which he had promised to treasure forever. She had given him nothing else! “All muscle and no brain - typical of his kind!” had been her sardonically dismissive comment to her dear companion Martha as they had left the scene of carnage together.

She certainly would not be so contemptuous about the new King, whose name she still did not know. He was not only brave, strong and marvelously handsome, but, more importantly, he was a man of character and intelligence. Yes! She should assuredly have come to his aid earlier, and felt increasing shame that she had not. She offered a petition to the Fairy expressing her willingness, her eagerness, to make amends for this and to be allowed to perform some act of penance.