The Child of The Princess

Once, in a little village in the countryside, a poor peasant girl named Ammabella dreamt of being a princess; of living in a palace and of marrying a handsome prince.

She had lots of peasant suitors; local village boys, for she was very attractive with long auburn hair and green eyes but she turned them all away because she said that she did not want to marry any man if he was not a prince.

 And she longed so much to be a princess that she went to see a witch who lived in the woods near to her home; a wicked witch named Hezbera who agreed to make her a princess but only on the condition that when her first child was born the witch would be allowed to come and take it.

Now the peasant girl, though she may have been slightly greedy and shallow and longed too deeply to be wealthy and to marry a handsome prince did not have a bad heart, there was still a broad streak of kindness and goodness in her and, like most people, the thought of giving away her child to an evil witch appalled her but she agreed after secretly swearing to herself that once she became a princess she would never have children.

“If I never have a child”, she reasoned to herself, “Then the witch can never take it away”.

Then, with the witch’s  magic love spell; the thorn of a black rose with which she pricked his finger,  she seduced and married a prince called Carlsbad but, though he was certainly handsome, he was a prince with some dark secret for, every night, at the stroke of midnight, he went out of his palace and did not come back until the sun had risen.

And one day she asked him why he always went out at night but he begged her not to speak of it.

“Please”,  he said to her, “I love you and would do anything for you but I cannot tell you my secret”.

Now, hearing this the princess saw an opportunity to make a bargain.  “ Very well”, she said, “I swear that I will not ask you where you go at night if you promise that you will not ask me to have a child for I must not have a child but I cannot tell you why”.

And so the prince accepted the arrangement.

Still, however, before long the princess became pregnant and so, in tears, she confessed to the prince about the witch and why she was so frightened of having a child.

“I was afraid”, she said, “That if I told you that I was not a real princess, that I seduced you with magic, you would not love me anymore”.

Hearing this however, the Prince said that he loved Ammabella just as much as he always had and also that he was not afraid of her witch, Hezbera.

“When the baby is born I will guard the crib night and day and nothing will touch the child, not one hair upon its head, I promise you”, he said.

And so the Princess took heart from the Prince’s commitment to protecting her child and when the baby was born; a little girl named ‘Beloved’, it was put into a golden crib and the prince stayed by the crib day and night, as he promised, even sleeping beside the crib but he made the princess swear that she would not spend the night with him while he was guarding the crib.

Then, one night, the witch, turning herself into a cloud of black dust that blew through the night, entered the palace through a nursery window and attempted to steal the infant but, instead of a prince guarding the crib, she found a horned, hairy monster guarding the crib and the monster, pouncing upon her and attacking her with all his might and with sharp teeth and claws killed the evil witch.

Now, hearing the disturbance, the princess entered the room and, seeing the monster, was at first terrified but then the sun began to rise and she saw the monster slowly turning into the prince and then the prince explained that, long ago, a witch, like Hezbera, had cursed him to become a monster from the stroke of midnight until the rising of the sun.

But the princess still loved him because she knew he was a good person as well as a good father and husband and, upon kissing him, her love lifted the prince’s curse and they and their little girl, Beloved, lived happily ever after.