The tale

“Long ago in the hills above the five clear lakes lived a great King with many sons. They were strong and bold, fierce and fiery. All except one. The youngest was as delicate and as beautiful as his mother and as gentle as the spring rain.

 

His brothers loved him dearly, though his father despaired of finding a use for his delicate child. As the older princes grew and earned praise for their strength and skill at arms, took noble wives and spread themselves through the near lands, the youngest stayed home and tended his dear mother’s garden.

 

He coaxed the most beautiful blooms anyone had ever seen from the rich earth. The air around the palace smelled sweet and the air hummed with bees, the honey from their hives was light and tasted of joy.

 

But none of this pleased his father the King. And in his twenty-fifth year, the King set him before the palace gate and told him not to return until he had learned to be useful.

 

His mother tried to give him gold and a sword but he refused them asking instead for tools and seeds from her garden. She gave them to him tearfully, and he kissed her cheeks and smiled with the warmth of the sun.

 

“Mother, tend your garden and think of me, you will find me in the flowers.” With those sweet words, he left his father's house.

 

He walked far up into the hills, under the dark trees, until he reached the clearest spring he had ever seen. The water bubbled up from the split stones, cold and pure, and created a small pool. Here he decided to stay. He began to plant a small garden with his mother’s seeds clearing the space and tending them as lovingly as he had in the palace garden in the day and at night he slept in the low branches of a tree on a carefully woven mat.

 

When his flowers bloomed the sweet smell wafted through the forest drawing bees and the attention of the Enchantress who lived in the high woods. When she came and saw the exquisite flowers she had to have them. She reached out her hand to take one and heard the startled prince gasp.

 

The Enchantress was as hideous as the prince was beautiful, her hair was as the hanging moss and her skin was as rough and scored as the bark of the wild nut trees. The forest went silent as she looked at the prince. Living in the forest had given him a wild appearance that only made his delicate beauty more breathtaking.

 

Now, sweet Vaeri, usually when the Enchantress found someone wandering around her woods that would be the end of them, they would find themselves tangled in tree roots and feeding the hungry forest. But this time she was so taken with the stranger and his garden that she let him live. She told him in a voice like a storm’s wind in the branches that he could stay as long as he kept growing the beautiful flowers.

 

He laughed in delight and thanked her, his green eyes sparkling as he bowed. The Enchantress was very unaccustomed to such a response. She looked at him skeptically and decided he bore watching.

 

Through the summer he tended to the garden, he spoke to the flowers for hours on end and the Enchantress listened. He spoke of home and his mother, of his brothers, and his father’s disappointment. He spoke of the garden he had grown and the bees and the honey. He told the flowers how glad he was to have found this place in the wood, how beautiful it was, and how he would like to meet the Enchantress again.

 

The Enchantress thought for certain he must be mocking her. Still, he was so lovely and the flowers so beautiful and sweet smelling she couldn’t bring herself to kill him for it. She came back to the garden toward the end of the summer intending to collect her flowers and send him down into one of the villages for the fall and winter when he would be unable to grow flowers for her.

 

He greeted her with such warmth and genuine pleasure to see her that she was smitten. He cut the most beautiful of his blooms for her and gave her a spray of flowers that a queen would covet. He begged her to sit with him and enjoy the coolness of the pool and the warmth of the sun, and she could not bear to send him away.

 

She used her magic to create a glass house over the space that he had come to love, pool and tree and garden. He could stay the winter in warmth she said with a voice like the strong fall wind in the dry leaves. He thanked her sweetly and bowed, promising that when she next returned he would have more flowers for her.

 

The Enchantress, as smitten as she was, couldn’t help but notice how little he had set aside for the winter as she watched him tending his garden in his glass house. She set about gathering food for him, honey and nuts, forest fruits and berries. Before she offered them to him she decided that she would test him as she kept him fed, to decide if he were truly worthy to live in her wood.

 

She disguised herself as a lovely peasant girl and began to visit, bringing him gifts of food. They spoke often and long, usually of his flowers. And when she finally asked him about the Enchantress he had only good things to say. When she asked if it were true that the Enchantress were cruel he spoke of her kindness in allowing him to remain in a place he loved and in giving him the glass house. When she asked if the Enchantress was as hideous as the stories said with moss for hair and skin like rough gnarled bark, he told her to look at the trees hung with moss, were they not beautiful? And then he spoke of the Enchantress’ eyes as dark as a moonless night and her smile as glorious as the first rays of dawn.

 

The Enchantress took a different tack, admiring his flowers. She began to ask for some to take home to her village. He thanked her for her kind words but reminded her that he was growing them as payment, so that he might stay in the place he loved.

 

The Enchantress continued asking each time she brought him food. Never once receiving so much as a single flower. When she returned in her own form in the dead of winter, true to his word he had grown more flowers in his glass house. She had admired them and their sweet smell, the white petals as pristine as the snow.

 

He welcomed her warmly and made her a crown of the white blooms that put any made of gold and jewels to shame. He placed it on her mossy hair with the reverence of a man permitted to place a crown on the head of a goddess. He pleaded with her to stay and sit with him by the pool as she had at the end of summer and gave her sweets made of nut and honey with sweet vaerian flowers in them.

 

She gave him all the rest of the food she had gathered for him and stayed away until late spring because he had made her heart ache. When she returned he was overjoyed. He kissed her rough hands and drew her into his garden weaving a coat of the spring flowers for her, a thing more beautiful than any lady at any court could ever dare to dream of. The colors were vibrant and the smell was sweet. The Enchantress smiled like the sun.

 

Unfortunately, while the Enchantress was so preoccupied with the prince she had not been paying close attention to who had been coming and going in her forest. Hunters had ventured in looking for game and some had even seen the glass house at a distance, filled with flowers.

 

Tales were told that the Enchantress had a prisoner in a house of glass, someone growing her beautiful flowers in the deepest, highest wood.

 

Tales that reached the ears of the sad Queen and the regretful King. Once he had sent his delicate, useless son away he had begun to realize that the boy was not so useless. The flowers had begun to wilt no matter how his mother tended them, the bees began to leave and the most delectable honey dried up and left with them. The air of the castle no longer smelled sweet, and the absence of his beauty was as though someone had dimmed the sun.

 

The King on hearing the tale knew immediately that it must be his youngest imprisoned in the glass house. He sent his five strongest and bravest sons to fetch their brother home.

 

The Enchantress noticed these princes. She attacked them with the trees and they hacked the roots to bits, she sent winds and raged at them with her most terrifying voice. They persevered, thinking only of rescuing their beloved brother from this wretched witch.

 

They managed to fight their way to the glass house and the Enchantress despaired. She watched as they shattered it and heard the anguished wail of her sweet prince. His brothers did not understand and thought that the Enchantress and cast a spell on him, dragging him from the garden against his will.

 

When he was returned home galas were held in his honor but he wanted no part of them. He spent his days in his mother’s garden as he had before, but the flowers he grew now were all common forest flowers.

 

It was decided by his father and brothers that what he needed was a wife, one who could stir him enough to plant the beautiful garden he had done before. The ladies of the court were overjoyed by this, they had been pining for the sad but beautiful prince since his return. Each and every one of them began trying to catch his eye with lovely dresses and painted ears, they flirted and sang and sat with him in his garden.

 

After he had been home for a year his father had had enough. He decreed that his son would be married at the grand gala celebrating the anniversary of his return and that he would choose his wife at the gala itself. He told his son that if he did not choose a bride he would have her chosen for him.

 

The prince attended the gala with a heavy heart. He barely looked at the brightly dressed ladies vying for his attention. Until. He smelled the sweet scent of his forest garden. He lifted his head and looked around and there she was. A beautiful lady wearing a crown of white petals and a coat of vibrant spring flowers. Her eyes were as dark as a moonless night and she smiled at him like the dawn breaking.

 

His sadness evaporated and the beautiful prince took her hand and danced with her until his father called him forward to ask if he had decided. And he said? What did he say Vaeri?”

 

She sighed wistfully. “He said, this is the creature I love and I will spend the rest of my life with her. I will make her my wife and her flowers will be the most beautiful for as long as she will have me.”

 

“That’s right. How many times have you heard this story? Are you tired of it?”

 

“A thousand, I’ll never get tired of it, pappa.” She sighed again and tapped his arm impatiently. “Finish the story!”

 

Eremur laughed softly and kissed her head, “She lifted the crown from her head and placed it on his, then she took off the coat of flowers and put it over his shoulders. Her voice was as sweet as the sighing of a gentle breeze in the branches as she said, “My sweet Prince of Flowers, I will keep you forever if you will but kiss me.”

 

The guests recoiled in horror as the lady changed before their eyes, her mossy hair and bark like skin terrified them. The prince smiled as touched her face, lovingly bending his head to kiss her. When they kissed, they vanished. No one ever again saw the Prince of Flowers or his Enchantress wife, but they say that the higher you go in the wood you will find the most beautiful flowers and the honey of the bees there tastes of joy.”