The Rose Hearted Princess - Part 1

Once, in the far off and exotic land of Zamarkand, a baby princess was born with a red rose growing out of her heart and through her chest.

It was fed by her own blood and it opened its petals and bloomed whenever she was happy and wilted whenever she was feeling sad and all who saw it marvelled at it and thought it a miracle.

However, the royal physicians who advised her mother and father; the King and Queen of Zamarkand, warned them that if the rose were ever picked then their daughter would die.

“The flower must be protected at all costs, your majesties”, they said, “To protect your daughter’s life”.

And so the little princess was not allowed to go outside and play with other children for fear that the stem of the rose might be damaged and, instead, she lived a solitary life, locked away in her gilded apartments within the royal palace; her only friends, the mechanical toys made by the royal toymaker.

In fact, the only person of the princess’s own age who she ever came in contact with was the son of the toymaker; a boy named Faziq, who delivered his father s toys to the palace and would sometimes stay and play with her.

At first, Faziq felt sorry for the princess, locked away from the sunshine in her golden rooms but, over time, he fell deeply in love with her and longed to find something that would help her and give her her freedom.

“If only there was something I could do to help her”, he said to his father, “It isn’t right that she should have to spend her life like a prisoner in a dungeon because of that rose”.

“The greatest and wisest physicians in all Zamarkand have tried to help her”, replied his father, “And if they cannot do anything for her then what can you, a humble toymakers son, hope to do”.

But Faziq was too much in love with the princess to listen to his father and one day, swearing that he would not return until he had found a way to help the princess, he rode off upon one of his father’s white stallions.

For many years the young toymaker’s son travelled, through several strange and exotic countries where he encountered all manner of magical and fantastical things but nowhere did he find the thing which he was searching for.

Until, one day, as he was crossing over a steep, snow covered mountain of Tibet, he came across a very bizarre looking cave.

It was shaped just like a mouth with teeth of stalagmites and above the cave was a jutting nose carved out of rock and, above that, two white marble eyes with irises of sapphire and pupils of obsidian.

“What sort of cave are you that looks so much like a human face?”, he wondered to himself.

But then, from deep within the cave, there came a bellowing voice as loud as a waterfall, “I am a Gadarind; a living treasure cave  and keeper of the golden bottle in which the crystal elixir is contained; a medicine that can cure all the ailments known to man”.

And, peering into the cave, Faziq saw the golden bottle sitting upon a stone altar and glowing with an immensely bright light.

“At last”, he thought rushing into the cave and snatching hold of the bottle, “The cure that will help my beloved princess”.

But then, just as he was putting the bottle into his shoulder bag, the toy maker’s son heard a bellowing sound of laughter and the mouth of the cave began to close.

“Ha!”, laughed the cave, “Foolish human. We Gadarinds only use treasure to lure and trap people. Now I shall eat you for my supper”.

Desperately, Faziq struggled with all his might to try and pry open the stone jaws of the cave but they were too tightly clamped together.

Just then, however, he felt a cold breeze hitting the side of his face and, looking in the direction that the breeze was coming from, saw that air was entering the cave through the two nostrils in the nose of the cave.

Now, clambering up the wall of the cave, Faziq took off his turban and his tunic and used them to block up the nostrils so that the cave couldn’t breathe through them and, though the cave struggled hard to hold its breath, before long it had no choice but to open its mouth, gasping for air and, when it did, Faziq ran out of the cave and leapt upon his white stallion as fast as his legs could move and, though the cave reached out with its enormous pink tongue, like a tentacle, to grab hold of one of the horses legs; Faziq jabbed his sword into the tip of the tongue and, crying in pain, the monster let go, then Faziq tugged hard upon the reigns of his horse, shouting “Yahh!” and rode away as fast as he could leaving only a cloud of dust behind.