The Obedience of the Frog’s Princess

My own version of a fairy tale.

The Obedience of the Frog’s Princess

            Once upon a time, in a not so far off land, there lived a beautiful princess. She had short brown tresses that were the glory of her father’s eyes and her existence filled his heart with love and kindness. When she was born her mother died in the last moments of the birth and on the very next day the King had wed to another king’s kin so that his realm would be safe and protected. The new Queen was a vain and jealous woman and feared and resented the beautiful Princess and unbeknownst to the King the Queen made the Princess do all kinds of demeaning and impossible tasks that were below her station, and above her ability.

                The Princess was taught by her father that to obey was to serve and that the Queen she would one day become was the servant of her people and should always put their good before her own. He told her above all things that caring for friends more than yourself was the highest virtue any queen could have and she obeyed her father knowing he was good and wise. And so for many years the Princess labored in obedience to the step Queen and never spoke to her father unfavorably about his wife.  It was on her seventeenth birthday then that she was to be found scrubbing the grime incrusted dungeon floors. And so it was there that the servant of the Queen found her. He bid her to go at once, without changing or washing up, out of the castle and into the forest to fetch for the queen the water from the Well of Life.

                She did as the Queen commanded her and went into the forest with a single golden pail that she was to carry back the water in. Winter had set in and the few garments she had on were poor in contest with the severe and cutting wind that shook the great dark pines that loomed over the little tread path she walked. She had never heard of the Well of Life, though in the village she had heard tales from time to time of the Well of the World’s End, but that was a different place and when she chanced upon a woodsman in the thickest and most strange part of the forest he too told her this and gave her direction to the Heart of the Forrest where the Well of Life was said to lay.

                After her strength had all but fled her and her vision had grown scant from squinting into the cold and strange forest she came at last into the Heart of the Forrest and there in that moonlight filled clearing did she find the Well of Life. With a wave of relief she flung herself to the ground and if it had not for the memory of the Queen’s command she would have laid there until the wind faded and the air was gone and the sun died and all life had vanished from earth. But she knew her duty and remembered that she had promised the servant of the Queen that she would return with her water.

                So with darkness shrouding the clearing and her eyesight all but gone the Princess mightily rose up from the earth and shuffled dutiful step by dutiful step to the Well that stood all of ancient and crumbling stone in the middle of the open clearing. Because of the darkness and her tiredness and her poor and fading vision she did not see the dark spirit that ghosted swiftly from the tree line unsheathed blade gleaming wickedly in the moonlight as it plunged downward.

At what would have been the last moment of her then sad life, the Princess did hear a beautiful deep voice that shouted loudly with the strength of a King “Turn and see me you wench!” The command took her by surprise but her years of obedience made her obey. She turned away from the very mouth of the Well and took a step towards the voice which had bellowed from the woods. Behind her she heard a great splash as a large shape plummeted into the Well dropping its jeweled dagger in the process. Before the assassin had time to scream or even breathe in water his skull was dashed against the walls of the Well as the stones that made its top fell down around and upon him turning the Well into a pile of muddy rubble.

Crying out the Princess began to try and lift the great stones off of the Well. She cried out to the man in the woods to come and help her until she was hoarse and her hands were no more than numb and bloody paws. She lay down then on the pile and wept and wept until there was no more tears in her to be shed to water the small flowers that bloomed only in that place. As she cried a large and ugly frog came hopping up to sit on one of the large stones. And then the frog spoke to the crying princess.

“Why do you cry my Princess for you have escaped a terrible fate? The water of which you seek was poisoned long ago by a secret magic and all who drink it are transformed in different ways. If you had tried to carry it from here the magic would have pulled you into the ground until you were no more than food for the flowers. This is a dark and ancient place and few no of its existence, but I know it and so did the Woodsman. He was the one who showed you the way and he is the one who just now tried to kill you at the command of the Queen for she wanted to ensure your beauty’s demise. My Princess you are the most obedient of creatures and you have been wronged by the Queen who you obeyed. Please take me with you in your pale of gold. I can lead you from this place and before the moon fades from the sky have you safely in your bed.”

“Oh gods that be! A talking frog has been sent to save me!” and so she took him in her pail and went from that place to her castle.

The Queen then grew terrified and, knowing that her evil works must have been discovered by the Princess, who would surely tell her father,  threw herself from the tallest tower to scatter her body on the sharp and pointed rocks of the beach and she flowed out with the tide. The King did not remarry with his daughter so close to her Queenship and he being so close to his end and though he was sad for a time, he never truly felt loss for the women he had never loved.

So the Princess was freed from the grip of the step Queen and regained her honor and strength and soon grew to love life and the frog who was her secret companion. They were always together and he dwelled beside her in the golden pail she carried everywhere and they soon were no longer strangers but friends. They talked of many things of importance and many things of frivolity but they were always learning from each other. And every night, before she went to sleep, the Princess would make a promise in her heart to never hurt her friend who had saved her life. But one night deep in the midst of a fine and bountiful summer she said so out loud so the frog would know how she felt and what she had promised him every night since they had become friends.

And to her great and terrible surprise Frog, upon hearing this news, wept and wept and was made deeply distressed. Frog begged her to forgo the promise and to swear something else. His pleas confused her and she was at a loss to understand the strange desires of her friend. And so he told her of how he had guessed that he had once been human and the he had found the Well of Life and drunk of it for some unknown purpose and had then been transfigure into a frog. He could only remember being a frog, but his heart was that of a man and his voice also. Once a great and powerful wizard had come to see images of the future in the Well and had told him that if he truly wanted to be free, he would only have to have a true friend who would kill him out of love. The frog had been sad for a long time knowing that he would never have a true friend and so would be Frog the frog forever, but then the Princess had come and they had saved each other and he gained what he never thought he could have: a true friend.

But long ago the Princess had promised to care for her friends and knowing that she could never kill him she told the Frog that she would never do what he asked of her. She loved him too much. And for a time Frog the frog was quiet and cried and then after a long and filled silence he spoke.

“You are the Truest of friends Princess.”

“And you are my heart’s only companion Frog”

 

For another ten years they lived together and in that time the King died and the Princess became the Queen and with her true friend at her side she was never alone and ruled with wisdom, but for all their shared memories and life there was always a small unbreakable pocket of sadness in Frog and not even the Queen could make it wholly vanish, though it shrank in her presence.  And one day the frog Frog became too weak to go out of the castle with the Queen and so she left him at home in her bed to rest and when she returned his life had faded away from the world. The Queen had the golden pail forged anew into a golden heart shaped box and put her dead friend in it. She was sad for a very long time and had the casket of her friend placed in the tomb of her forefathers to wait for her and her time.

The Queen never married and obedient to her father’s words she was a good Queen and ruled for many years protecting and serving the land. She grew old and wise and even as her skin sagged and her beauty fell away from her like the years, she never forgot her dearest and truest friend. One particular dark and terrible day she went down into the tombs and found the dusty heart of gold that held her friend. She grabbed it up and sat down on the floor in a manner of a servant at a loss for work and with tears forged out of the fire of memory she oh so gently kissed the golden box. And before her aged eyes the box became liquid and alive and grew and spread until not a dead cold piece of gold sat in her hand but a strong and tall man stood in her arms holding her as she wept.

He held her for a moment and then allowed her to step back and look at him. He was as beautiful as she had long ago been and as the Truth at last came to her she sagged into his arms. The Queen had killed her in the end after all, not the Queen of then but the step Queen of the past who had sent her on the mission of death because her obedience was required. If not for her obedience to duty she could have killed Frog as he had begged of her and he could have been the husband she had secretly longed for though had not found in the world of mortal men. Her obedience had taken away what could have been and the weight of that life that never was, that never could be, was too much. She sagged back into his arms and as she felt the life drain from her withered old body she could hear the beating of her Frog Prince’s heart like the soft croaking of a frog.

And so the Prince carried her to her bed and watched over her and cared for her in her last days and all the kingdom heard the tales of the mysterious Prince who was so kind to the Queen on her death bed. He was with her until the breath finally left her chest in a great sigh and the Queen was no more. The Prince lived on for many more years as the King of the Kingdom and every year he would go into the tombs and talk to the dead Queen. His subjects assumed he loved her like a mother, his servants knowing better thought he loved her like a husband, but none knew the truth. 

Author's Note

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