“Tell me,” she said to him. “How did you acquire this jewel?”
“I brought them five wagon loads of water,” said the prince. “They need water so badly, that they were happy to trade it.”
“Then is not water their greatest treasure?” asked the princess, and she sent him away.
There were three of us left, and her father preferred another rich and powerful prince. This second prince chose to go to the great civilization to the west. There they have built a miraculous clock that never stops, and it predicts the weather. They brag about it to no end. Everyone knows that it is their greatest treasure. He spent a fortune, and they sold it to him. He was very happy to bring it back, but she was not happy to receive it.
“Why did they sell it to you?” she asked him.
“I gave them enough money to build another,” said the second prince. “But that will take them some time. This is still their greatest treasure.”
The princess snorted.
“The knowledge to build it is their greatest treasure. You should have brought a book on clock building from them.”
That left two of us, and the other suitor is not even a prince. Her father does not like me, but he preferred me to the other boy. That left two kingdoms, the land of great wealth to the east, and you. I could never afford even a small treasure from the land of wealth, so I came here.
* * *
EVERYONE IN PASS Village thought this was a wonderful tale, and they all ran home to look for what would be their greatest treasure. The prince noticed that the inn keeper’s daughter stayed behind, where she sat on a high counter in the corner, and slowly kicked her feet. She was certainly the gardener of the family, for she had dirt on her hands and on her knees, and under her fingernails and even on her face. But she had a thoughtful look on her face as she chewed her lip and considered the prince’s story.
“What do you think of the princess?” she said after a while. The prince was not sure how to answer.
“She’s…hard to please,” he said at last, which he knew wasn’t a very good answer.
“Maybe not,” she said. She asked him more questions about the royal court. What did the other suitors look like, how did they dress, how did the princess dress, what kind of face did she make when she received the gifts? She was very curious, but he knew she never saw much of the outside world, so he did his best to answer.
* * *
EVERYBODY BROUGHT THEIR finest possessions back to the inn, and they spread them out on the tables and on blankets on the floor and outside. It was like a market fair, and the prince was the only customer. The innkeeper, who was king, had even managed to find his crown, which he had lost long ago. But it turned out his wife had been using it as a trivet in the kitchen. It was dented and dark from grease and smoke and ashes and rust.
“It isn’t made of gold, so I don’t think it will polish up,” said the innkeeper king. “It isn’t much of a treasure.”
“But it makes an excellent trivet,” said his wife. She set down a large kettle of cabbage soup on the crown. The prince did not think he would like cabbage soup, but this smelled wonderful, and when he tasted from her wooden spoon, he found it tasted even better. And beside the kettle, the cook placed a fancy little cake she’d whipped up quickly out of pancakes, with syrup whipped into frosting. The prince thought, if nothing else, he’d get a good meal out of the trip.
But none of these seemed quite like the treasure the princess sought. The soup, perhaps, except that as the innkeeper had pointed out, it was the cook who was the treasure there. He sighed and looked among all the goods that the people had brought. There were clay candlesticks and embroidered aprons. One fellow had taken his boots off and stood barefoot, offering them to the prince in case they might do. They weren’t particularly good boots, but they looked comfortable, and the prince thought that they were probably that man’s greatest treasure. Just not the greatest treasure of the whole kingdom, small as the kingdom was.
The prince continued along, looking at napkins and glass trinkets, and feathers collected from the woods. And vegetables. Lots and lots of vegetables. As he came to the end of the line of people outside, the innkeeper’s daughter came up carrying a huge bundle of cabbage leaves. They spread in her arms like a giant flower, and nestled in the middle was a cabbage. She struggled and set it down which a whoof.
“You’ll never find a bigger cabbage than that,” she said. And then she went and looked at what everybody else had brought.
It was strange, because everyone watched her, as if her choice was as important as that of the prince. Even her parents followed her along, and waited for her reaction. She walked through all the offerings, and she considered each one very carefully, and then finally stopped to look at her own cabbage, and sighed.
“There is nothing here that will do,” said the girl. “We value our people the most, so you cannot bring our greatest treasure to your princess. And your princess is clearly very picky.” Then she looked up as if she had an idea. “You have some money?”
“Yes,” he said, and he pulled his purse out of his pocket. He realized that it was probably worth more than all things in this tiny kingdom. “That’s it! I could buy you a great treasure, and then it would be the best….”
“No,” she said, making a face. “It has to be our treasure, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“I think that what you need to do is bring the princess something she likes. The diamond might have been big, but I bet it was ugly, and what princess wants a clock? She’s just making excuses.”
“Oh,” said the Prince, and he thought about it. “It did sound kind of like excuses to me.”
“So what you need to do is ride fast to the kingdom of the east, and buy the finest horse you can find. As a matter of fact, I think my father knows just the right one.”
“Yes,” said her father. “I sell cabbages in their border city, and the duke there has a very fine gray stallion. A beautiful and spirited but well-mannered horse. The perfect gift for a princess.”
“But how will I say it is their finest treasure?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said the girl. “The people of the east love sports and gambling. That horse is a young stallion who could be the foundation sire of a whole breed of great racing horses.”
The prince had a fine dinner and a good night’s sleep, and then bid them farewell. He rode down from the mountains, and as quickly as he could to the east. He brought with him a letter of introduction from the innkeeper king, and all the money he had with him. And he was lucky enough to buy the horse, although the duke wanted more money than he had. In the end he traded in his own horse, and rode the stallion back.
* * *
THE PRINCESS LOOKED surprised when he led in the fine horse. She stood up in spite of herself. The horse was beautiful and graceful, and you could see the strength and power in its every movement. The princess reached for an apple in the basket of fruit at her side, and she came down off the dais to feed the apple to the horse. She stroked its neck and sighed sadly. She stepped back.
“And how is this the greatest treasure?”
“Well,” said the prince. “In the kingdom of the east they value gambling. And this horse represents a great new line of racing horses….”
The princess looked relieved, and then she raised her head haughtily.
“Gamblers do not value horses,” she said. “They run them to death for sport.”
“But….”
“If you wanted to bring me what such gamblers value most, you should have bet on this horse in a race, and brought me the winnings!”
She turned heel and headed back to the dais.
“But wouldn’t you value such an animal?” said the prince desperately.
“Of course,” she said, seating herself again. “Who wouldn’t?”
“And it is a gift for you,” said the prince. The princess shook her head.
“That wasn’t the test,” she said. “I’m
sorry. You have failed.”
Her father protested, and her mother protested, and the prince protested, but the princess would not change her mind.
The prince watched the last suitor head north, toward Pass Village, which was the only kingdom left. If the innkeeper’s daughter was right, there would be no suitable treasure for him. Perhaps he would fail too, and then the princess could choose the gift she liked the best, and forget the silly contest. He was sure that she liked the horse better than the clock or the diamond, and he couldn’t imagine anything from Pass Village that she would like better.
* * *
HE WAS SURPRISED when the fourth suitor returned, and he had a procession with him. Half the village was with him, and they carried baskets or led donkeys laden with baskets. And all the baskets, it seemed, had vegetables in them.
They entered the great hall, and began to sort themselves out as though they were going to make camp right there in the hall. The young man, who was not even a prince, stepped forward and bowed, going down on one knee.
“I’m afraid I present you with nothing, your highness,” said he said. She looked surprised, but the king looked satisfied. The prince could tell he liked this fourth suitor least of all. The suitor merely smiled and continued. “For you commanded me to bring you their greatest treasure, and that, I’m afraid is theirs. As a matter of fact, it is something we give to them.”
The people of the village continued to scamper to set up tables and cooking pots. The king frowned.
“This is not acceptable…,” he began, but the princess raised her hand, at the same time the suitor bowed and smiled again.
“And thus I realized I had to bring a token,” he said. “I thought at first I should bring only myself, since what these people treasure most is a guest. But you said I could not present you with a person. So instead, I present you to them, and you will be their treasure, and they will present you with a feast.”
The king protested and the queen protested, but the princess did not. The villagers set right up to their cooking, and some played music and there was dancing. The innkeeper king gave a speech of welcome and gratitude. He’d even remembered to wear his rusty crown. By the time the delicious soup was served, and the bread and the roasts and the salad and the sweets, the king’s protests stopped, as did the queen’s. And the princess was able to declare that not only was this the greatest treasure of the north, but the greatest she’d ever heard of.
* * *
WATCHING ALL THIS, the prince got very angry. He realized that the people of the village had fooled him. Especially their little cabbage princess. He wandered around the great hall, but did not find her among the villagers who were entertaining the royal family.
“She’s afraid to show her face,” he said to himself, “after she deceived me.”
He mounted on the fine gray stallion and rode north, to go and tell her exactly what he thought of her, before he turned to go home and explain to his father how he had lost the hand of the princess.
He found her working in her garden, as dirty as before.
“Did it go all right?” she asked, when she saw him.
“You know very well it didn’t!” he said, and he dismounted from the horse.
“I meant if it went all right for him. You hadn’t a chance in the first place.”
“Not with you giving me advice!”
She looked at him with very large eyes. “I told you, she was just making excuses over the diamond and the clock. It was clear to me that she already knew who she wanted as a husband. It didn’t matter what you brought her. If she wanted you, she’d have accepted it, and if she didn’t want you, she wouldn’t have.”
“Then why didn’t you just give me a cabbage or something?”
She bit her lip, and thought about it.
“For three reasons,” she said at last. “For one, I thought at least you’d get a nice horse out of it if she refused you. For another, I didn’t want to send my family down there to be humiliated if she refused you, so I decided to wait and see. If she refused you, she’d certainly pick him, and he’d have to come up here, wouldn’t he?”
“And what about the third reason?”
“Well, a fine horse makes a very fine gift for a princess, and if she accepted you, that would work out very well too. Besides,” she added, wiping the dirt from her hands and getting it all over her apron, “your father wants you to marry a princess. I am a princess. And I am not so snooty that I would not accept a gift of such a fine horse.”
“What?” said the prince.
“I suppose you wonder why I would ever want to marry you?” she said. "You tell a good tale, and we need a storyteller here abouts. You also look enough of a fool that you will get yourself into trouble often, which will give me puzzles to solve when I get bored.
“And besides,” she added, “you brought us the greatest treasure before he did, because you came first, and were our guest and asked for our help.”
= * * * =
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When Good Stories Go Bad
Stories are meant to be shared freely, otherwise they might go bad on you…. (Inspired by a Korean folktale.)
* * *
ONCE UPON A time in the big woods by the lakes lived a girl who loved stories. She loved them so much that she began to collect and hoard them in a little book–a little diary with a lock. She crammed that book full of stories, from front to back, and still she collected more.
She listened to the tales of the lumberjacks when they came to dinner in camp, and the tales of fishermen who brought in bushels of fish for the Friday fish-fry. She got stories from the ladies who baked the bread and mixed the flap jacks and fried the bacon, and to the men who sat around the market where the farmers sold produce.
But it was her grandmother who told the best stories, and she gave them out freely. She sat, summer and winter, by the fire with the dogs at her feet and the cats in her lap, and she told stories to everyone who came by. Through her words those stories blossomed, as if they had a life of their own. The little girl sat on the floor with the dogs and cats every night, and scribbled these stories down. When her book was full, she wrote in the margins, and when those were full she had to write between the lines of stories that were already there. You couldn’t even read them, they were so crowded in there. But the little girl didn’t notice, because she was so busy collecting more stories, that she never read them, or let anybody else read them.
But then the day came when her old grandmother died, and it broke the little girl’s heart. After that, she couldn’t bear to hear any more stories, and so she closed the book and locked it. She set it on a shelf in the kitchen and went off to cry.
And she forgot about that book.
Eventually her broken heart healed up. She grew, and she played with the dogs and the cats, and took care of farm animals, but she never did go back and look at that book again. If she had, she’d have noticed the book had begun to rot.
The stories inside, all crowded in together, forgotten and neglected, grew sour. More sour than raw eggs in the sun. And with the rot, they grew resentful. They were trapped in the book without air or light or an audience. So they just stayed and went bad.
The girl grew up, as I said, and one day she found a beau she loved, and they planned to get married. The night before her wedding, her mother was in a tizzy, preparing for the big supper they would have the next day. She shoved a box aside to get at the matches, and didn’t even notice when she knocked the book off the shelf. It fell to the floor behind the wood box, which was next to the stove. The binding cracked just a little bit, but not much.
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, and the dogs and cats had been put out in the yard, one of the older cats decided it was too cold to be outside, so he slipped back into the kitchen through a loose window, and settled in to sleep behind the stove.
He didn’t sleep very well. For one thing, he smelled something rotten, and for another,
he kept hearing voices. After a little bit, he got up and followed his whiskers over to the book, and there he could hear the stories talking to one another inside.
“I’m telling you the binding is loose!” said one. “We can get out of here.”
“I don’t care any more,” said another story. This one sounded grouchy.
“I do,” said the first. “I want to get out and I want to get revenge on that girl that locked us in here.”
“And how would you manage that?” said the grouchy one.
“I’ll tell you. In all this time, I’ve become so rotten, I’m like a disease. I’ll get into her milk in the morning, and when she drinks me, she’ll get sick and die.”
“That won’t work,” said the grouchy one. “She’ll be so excited about her wedding that she won’t drink anything.”
“Well, then,” said another story. “If that doesn’t work, I’m so full of rot, I’ll get into the mounting block at the church, and when she gets out of the carriage, I’ll crumble away, and she’ll break her neck.”
“That won’t work either,” said the grouchy one. “What if somebody catches her before she falls?”
“Then what would you do?”
There was a pause, and finally the grouchy one spoke again, and its voice sounded so scary the cat’s fur stood on end.
“I hate it so much in here, my soul has turned to pure poison. I’ll become a rattle snake and I’ll wait in her wedding bed, and I’ll bite both her and her husband, and they’ll die.”
The cat sunk low on its belly and listened for a while longer as the three rotten stories agreed to each try their murderous plan. Then he backed silently away as only a cat can do, and ran back outside and told the dogs about it, and together they went and told the horses and cows.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING as the girl’s mother stoked up the fire and started working on morning breakfast, she was surprised to find every cat in the family sitting in the kitchen. She was even more surprised when none of the cats got underfoot or begged for anything. They just sat and watched until the girl came in, and poured herself a cup of milk.