Once Upon a Time
… the little Princess woke up to find her life turned upside down. Her father, the king, had died suddenly. No one would tell her how it had happened. Her mother wouldn’t leave her room, and the servants milled around, pale and grim.
“Who is going to be king now?” she wondered, too little to understand yet that the father who had doted on her was really, truly gone.
But the servants would do nothing but wring their hands and shake their heads and tell her to go play with her dolls.
And then her uncle arrived …
Her uncle … the new king.
He was nothing like her father.
The palace became a place where adults had conversations in low, angry voices.
Where everyone looked over their shoulders and scuttled about their business.
Where children were not to be seen or heard.
No sneaking into the library to look at the pictures in the encyclopaedias.
No bringing their dolls to have tea in the kitchen.
No playing in the gardens.
One of her uncle’s men caught her coming down from a tree one afternoon. She’d been cloud-gazing, but the sun was starting to set, and her belly was grumbling. Grabbed roughly by the arm, the princess was hauled to her uncle’s study.
“Show her what happens to little girls who dally in places they’re not meant to be!” her uncle commanded. And since he was the king of her father’s empire now, his word was law.
She was dragged, crying and pleading, back into the darkening garden, past the tree she’d been sitting in all day until they reached the river.
Shoved forwards, she hit the icy water with a splash. It was not shallow enough for a girl of six. She’d never been in any water but her bath and the heated pool inside the palace, with her floatation devices always on.
The cold shocked her, and she gasped. Water rushed into her mouth. She thrashed and found the surface to suck in a desperate breath before the water tugged her under once more.
Panic was like electricity, zapping every pore of her being, but no matter how hard she fought, she could not keep her head above the water for long enough to breathe.
The princess was dragged out, tossed onto the bank, coughing and gasping and vomiting river water, her eyes streaming. She wanted her mother, but Mother never came out of her room anymore.
She wanted her father … but Father was gone, replaced by her evil uncle.
“This is what happens when you poke your nose around places you aren’t welcome,” the man who had almost drowned her spat. “Let that be a lesson to you.”
It was a lesson, but it turned out to be a very different one than her uncle had intended …