The Wax Figurine

Once an evil witch named Nastia was spurned by a handsome prince named Rickhart and so, in a mood of vengeance, she made a figurine out of wax and with strands of the prince’s own golden hair, stolen from his sleeping head, she made its hair and with two drops of the prince’s own blood left upon the thorn of a rose in his garden, she painted its lips bright red and then, casting a spell of darkness upon the figurine, she stuck it with long sharp pins and, when she did so, thunder boomed; lightning flew down from the sky and the poor prince felt sharp pains stab him deep in the heart.

“Now Prince”, she said to the doll, cackling, “You will know the pains of rejection”.

In desperation, the prince consulted all the greatest physicians in the land, telling each of them that he would pay any price if they could only end the pains that tormented him day and night but, though they gave him all kinds of pills and elixirs, there were none who could cure his suffering.

One day, however, the witch forgot to lock away the figurine as she usually did and, while the witch was out in the world casting evil spells upon people and working mischief for her amusement, her daughter found the figurine and, thinking that it was an ordinary doll, took it to her room and played with it and hugged it.

The Witch’s daughter was called Sherylina and she was not a little girl but a beautiful young woman but her mother had been very mean to her as a child and had never given her any toys or dolls to play with or let her have any friends and so she had always felt lonely and sad and thus, when she saw the figurine, she immediately felt a love for it.

But as she was hugging the figurine close to her heart and saying to it, “I will always love you and be your friend”, suddenly, in front of her, in a bright flash of emerald and sapphire and ruby, there appeared a very bemused Prince Rickhart and the moment that the Prince saw Sherylina he fell instantly and deeply in love.

When Sherylina told Prince Rickhart about her mother, however, that she was a witch and showed him the wax figurine that looked like him, the prince immediately realized what had been causing his pain.

“Your mother”, he told Sherylina, “It’s her who has been torturing me all this time with her witchcraft; using that wax doll”.

Sobbing when she heard this, Sherylina told the Prince that she was sorry for what her mother had done but that she had had no part in it and because he was so in love with her, he believed her; he even swore to her that he would rescue her from her grim life with her evil mother and make her a princess.

But then, just as they were leaving the witch’s house together they saw the witch returning home upon her broom and, the moment that her evil eyes spotted them, Nastia transformed herself in to a huge black dragon with a roar like thunder; breath of lightning and a rattling tail like a rattle snake and, reaching down, the dragon grabbed hold of the prince in its enormous, scaly right hand and, opening its gigantic jaws wide, prepared to swallow him whole.

At first Sherylina looked on, helpless and fearstruck, not knowing what to do but then she remembered the figurine and the power that the prince had told her it held and, running back into her mother’s cottage, she picked it up and placed one of her mother’s long pins, like a toy sword, within its grasp.

And the moment that she did this, a real sword, shimmering brightly with magic, appeared in the prince’s hand and he drove it deep into the evil heart of the dragon.

Roaring and then screaming in pain; the dragon transformed back into the witch and then the witch began to melt just like a wax figurine in the heat of a furnace until there was nothing left of her but a pool of wax upon the ground.

Now, free from the witch’s control, the prince and Sherylina ran into each others arms and, soon after, they were happily married in a huge and lavish Royal Wedding; Sherylina in a beautiful golden wedding gown; the Prince in his officers uniform and two crowned figurines, not of wax but of marzipan and sugar, arm in arm and smiling, upon their wedding cake.