The Sleepless Prince

Once a little boy, a Prince, named Moreus was in the forest when he came upon a cave where an old white robed man was sleeping and he woke the old man.

 

But the old man was an immortal wizard who had been asleep for thousands of years and he was angry with the boy,

 

“Now because you have woken me it will take me a hundred years to get back to sleep”.

 

“I’m sorry”, said the boy, trembling.

 

“Sorry is not good enough”, said the old wizard, “Sorry will not close my weary eyes. No, you must be punished”.

 

Then, pointing to the boy with his stick, the wizard said, “Since you have woken me, you shall never ever sleep again; not until the day you die”.

 

Frightened the boy ran home and told his mother and father about the wizard in the cave.

 

“It was obviously some crazy old hermit”, his father said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure you will sleep tonight”.

 

But the boy did not sleep that night, nor the next night, nor the next month or the next year;in fact, for years and years the boy did not sleep but lay awake all night and every night looking enviously at his brothers and sisters who were able to close their eyes and dream.

 

And worried that the boy had some kind of sickness, his parents sent for physicians, healers and wizards from the four corners of the globe to try and make him sleep with potions and prayers. They even had musicians play soothing music to him and singers sing him lullabies but it was all in vain for he couldn’t close his eyes and never felt tired, not even enough to yawn.

 

But then, one day, the Prince heard from a traveller of a Princess who lived upon an invisible island at the edge of the world whose kiss alone could lift any curse.

 

“Since I cannot ever rest”, thought the Prince, “I might as well spend my days and nights searching for an answer to my predicament”.

 

And so the Prince with a crew of a twenty, set sail in a ship and he travelled all around the world searching for the land where the princess with the magical kiss lived but wherever he went and whoever he asked no one could tell him where the invisible island was.

 

Then, one day, while the ship was sailing across a far southern ocean, it struck something invisible and the ship sank; the prince because his limbs could never grow tired swam with twice the energy of the other members of his crew and so, while 19 of them drowned, he and a man that he rescued survived crawling onto whatever it was the ship had struck and, when they crawled onto it suddenly, what had been invisible to them became visible.

 

It was a large island completely surrounded by sharp rocks; the invisible island he had been searching for.

 

“No wonder no one has ever found it”, he said to the man he had saved, “No ship could approach it without crashing into its invisible rocks”.

 

But then suddenly, in the distance, the prince and the man saw a giant bird flying towards them and, though they tried to run, the bird was too swift and, swooping down, snatched them both up in two of its eight gigantic claws, carrying them far over hills and meadows to a large city and, at the centre of it a royal palace where it put them down again in front of a regiment of palace guards.

 

“What was that bird?”, asked the Prince.

 

“The catcherbird catches anyone who manages to make it onto the island alive and brings them here”, said the captain of the guard, sternly, “You and your friend will be presented to the Queen”.

 

Then the Prince and the crewman were led by the guards at sword point along a maze of winding corridors to the throne room of the dark robed and veiled Queen of the island.

 

“Why have you come here?”, asked the Queen.

 

“I heard a story, from a traveller, about an invisible island upon which a Princess lived who had a magic kiss that can lift any curse”, said the Prince, “I am a Prince who is cursed never to sleep and I seek her enchanted kiss so that my curse will be ended”.

 

“The Princess you spoke of is my daughter”, said the Queen, “You and your comrade may meet her but first you must drink a toast to me”.

 

Then the Prince and the crewman were both handed goblets of wine and made to drink them and because the Prince saw the crewman losing consciousness, realising that the wine must be drugged, he pretended to lose consciousness though, because of his curse, there was no drug in all the world that could make him sleep.

 

Then he heard the Queen order, “Take them and feed them to the Grithslash”.

 

And then he felt himself being lifted up by two of the guards and carried along another long corridor before being placed in a torchlit room and, opening his eyes briefly and reaching out he snatched a small dagger from the belt of one of the guards but then, turning his head, he saw, in front of him a giant creature like a porcupine covered all over with blood smeared quills as long as sabres and made of steel.

 

Looking round about him, the Prince could see no weapons to fight with, only the small dagger he had stolen from the guard and he feared that he and the crewman might end up being impaled upon one of the steel quills of the giant monster.

 

But then the Prince had an idea.

 

“I have nothing to fight you with but this small dagger”, he said to the creature, lifting up the unconscious crewman in his arms, “But I have one advantage over you. I never get tired”.

 

And then he ran round the room, carrying the sleeping crewman on his shoulder, the giant Grithslash lumbering after him but because the curse which denied him sleep also denied him tiredness, the Prince never got tired while the Grithslash, wheezing and panting, exhausted and out of breath rolled over onto its back to rest exposing its soft and unprotected underbelly.

 

Now, the moment that it did this, the Prince saw his opportunity, and laying down the crewman he leapt upon the belly of the the Grithslash and, hearing the pounding of two gigantic hearts in its chest plunged his dagger deeply into both of them.

 

Then, the Grithslash dead, the Prince cut two quills from its back and, waking the crewman handed him one of them.

 

“Here, these quills will do just as well as swords”, he said.

 

Then they waited for the guards to return to confirm that the Grithslash had killed them and when the guards entered the room, they surprised them, leaping upon them and disarming them before taking their armoured uniforms and putting them on.

 

Now, disguised as guards they went to the throne room of the queen and walking up to the throne, the Prince suddenly grabbed hold of her and pulled her towards him putting a dagger to her throat.

 

“Now take me to the Princess as you promised”, he said.

 

But then, to the Princes astonishment, the Queen seized hold of the dagger and stabbed herself in the heart and, as she did so, a dark cloud like a swarm, flew out of the wound in her heart and disappeared into the air.

 

“Why did you do that?”, asked the Prince, horrified.

 

“Because I am the Princess that you seek but years ago an evil force came to my island and entered my heart making me evil like it. I have longed for centuries for someone who could free me from its control and the only way to do that would be to kill me”, she said.

 

Seeing the Princess dying in his arms, the Prince was grief stricken but then, just as the last breath was escaping her lips, she kissed him.

 

“Here is the kiss that you seek”, she said as she closed her eyes and died.

 

Immediately, the Prince fell unconscious; decades of the sleep he had been denied rushing upon him all at once and overpowering him.

 

But then when he awoke, he was in a royal bed surrounded by the guards of the queen but, seeing him wake, they were not angry but jubilant.

 

“Hooray”, they cheered, raising wine goblets in a toast to him, “Hooray for the man who has slain the tyrant queen and freed our island from its evil curse”.

 

But the Prince wanted to know what had become of the Princess.

 

“She’s gone to a happier place”, said the Captain of the guards, “To the royal palace of heavens invisible realm”.

 

However, that night as the Prince sailed home on a ship leant to him by the people of that Island he had a dream in which he saw a white dove fly down from the sky and, perching upon the prow of the ship, transform into the Princess dressed in white robes like an angel.

 

“Why did you want to be free from your curse?”, she asked.

 

“Because I wanted to sleep. My soul was tired even if my body could never be”, said the Prince.

 

“But because of your curse you were able to defeat the Grithslash and free my island from evil”, she said, “An ordinary man, a man who gets tired could not have done that. Your curse gave you the power to do great good for others and any curse that does that is a blessing in disguise”.

 

“But it’s too late”, said the Prince, “I am asleep; dreaming and that means the curse is gone”.

 

“No”, said the  Princess, kissing him again, “I give it back to you”.

 

Suddenly the Prince woke up; his curse of sleeplessness returned.

 

And his curse was never lifted but he came to see it not as a curse but as a chance to help others; he returned to his kingdom and became a good and wise ruler living bravely and happily until the day his soul, released from its weary body, found, in the bed of heaven, its eternal rest.