The Stone Princess – Part 3

Poor Gordo. If only he had known all the things that lay ahead; terrible, living nightmares dredged up from the evil Lightning Queen’s warped imagination, he might well have given up and turned back then and there but, as he rode onwards, following his bright, winged companion, the love bird, he could only think about the princess he had seen earlier in his dream.

In all his life, the squire had never seen any woman more lovely ; no rosy cheeked peasant girl or high born lady; none who had ever, to him, appeared more gentle, sweet and kind and it seemed very wrong, to his mind, that anyone so lovely should have to suffer as dreadful a curse as the one which the wicked Ulcimea had placed upon her.

But then, just as he was dreaming of her face and wondering if she could ever think of falling in love with a knight who was really only a humble squire in a stolen suit of armour, he was shaken from his dreaming by a terrible, monstrous roar and, pulling tightly upon the reigns of his horse to make it halt, he saw, up ahead of him, the most bizarre and terrifying beast he had ever seen. It was a giant, frilled and scaly lizard but with a large, snapping crocodile head at either end of its long body.

“What do I do now?”, he thought, looking at the creature, open mouthed in awe, “I would attack it from the rear but this beast has no rear; only two very ferocious fronts”.

Then he saw his little lovebird friend flying bravely about one of the creatures, snapping, scaly snouts and feared that it might get eaten up.

But also, as the beast was snapping, trying hard to catch the bird, Gordo saw a light shining from its mouth like the light of the bright, setting sun beyond and, seeing this, realized that the creature must be entirely hollow inside, like an old, dead tree trunk.

“Since there is no way of going around the creature”, he thought, “I will have to go through it”.

And so, tying a blindfold around the eyes of his horse who seemed utterly terrified by the two-headed monster, Gordo pulled tightly upon the reigns and yelled ‘Giddy up’ to the horse, urging it onwards towards the creature and, as the giant lizard opened its mouth wide to snap at him , Gordo lowered his head and rode right into its mouth, his horses hooves stamping upon its bottom jaw, and he kept on riding, dreaming of the princess’s smiling face beyond, until, amazingly, he came out of the mouth at the creature’s other end.

Only the tail of his horse, which came out last, was snapped clean off by the creatures teeth but Gordo consoled his horse, saying, “You may not have a tail, my friend. But you’ll certainly have a tale to tell the other horses”.