Ever After Read Free Page B

strange man and you forget about your
parents?" the queen roared.
    "What shall I
say to my subjects, knowing that my only child has diluted her blue
blood? What if his blood is yellow? Is that what you want, for your
children to bleed green?" the king asked.
    "And how will I
face the King and Queen of Rivers, the lords and ladies of the
forests?" the queen wailed. "And just when the King and Queen of
the Three Seas have invited us for their fiftieth anniversary.
Everyone will be there. What shall I do? What shall I say—that my
daughter has run away with a garden sweeper?"
    "He is not a
garden sweeper," the princess objected.
    "Pooper
scooper, then. What does it matter, they are all the same," the
queen sobbed. "My daughter, a pooper scooper's wife … a poopy
scoopy—waaaah!"
    The king spoke
above his howling wife, "How will you buy your silks, pearls, and
diamonds? Do your recall your childhood dream of owning the biggest
palace in the world? How will you build such a place with no coin
to your name?"
    "I want to
marry him," the princess replied. "I care about him not sparkling
things. Does my happiness not count? Does being good and caring and
kind mean nothing? Do we have to live a pretentious life
forever?"
    The queen
stopped crying and faced her daughter. "If that is so, then
denounce your family name."
    "If you marry
him, then you will have no home to return to," the king agreed.
    "Please," the
princess begged. "Please give me your consent."
    "Marry him and
consider us dead," they replied.
    It was their
final decision.
    The princess
raised her chin and on trembling legs walked out of the palace
never to return again.

 
(ii)
    She married
him.
    And on their
magical wedding night, her husband named her Anahita. It was a new
name for her new life. And as Anahita she crossed over the border
onto foreign soil.
    They travelled
west, and the further they moved away from the great snowcapped
mountains, the more the landscape changed. The trees grew sparser,
the flowers smelled sweeter, and the grass turned greener and
greener with every passing day.
    Every now and
then, her husband fed her new and exciting fruits. She bit into
them, juices running down her chin. He wiped them away and kissed
her head. It was the little things he did that made her heart full,
his gestures replacing the shiniest diamonds in the world.
    The further
inland they moved the more the temperature increased until it was
so hot that they took to pouring jugs of water over themselves to
keep cool, offering some respite from the heat until the blazing
sun dried them out once again.
    Soon the hectic
pace of their journey took a toll on her delicate form, and unused
to the heat, her limbs turned into jelly. She wobbled when she
walked, she jiggled when she moved, and all the rippling that her
limbs were doing started making her head swim. It wasn't long
before she felt awfully ill.
    Her husband
bathed her hot forehead every night and fanned her while she slept.
Every time they stopped in a town or village to rest, he would
carry her in his arms towards the nearest stream or well.
    “This is my
beautiful wife,” he crowed to one and all he met. “She is a
princess,” he added, his chest puffed up proudly.”
    She smiled at
his foolishness and gently reminded him that she was Anahita now,
his Anahita, and no longer a princess.
    And so it
continued until one day after months of exhaustive travel crossing
innumerable roads, lakes and seas, they finally reached her
husband's home. They journeyed through the town. Her tired eyes
took in the florescent green earth and the bright yellow flowers
dotting the landscape, while her dry lips smiled at the strange
faces with dark, dark eyes so like her husband's.
    He took her to
a house, his manner embarrassed. He showed her the sweet little
cottage that he kept by the lake. It had a quaint little garden at
the back. She peered out of the window and spotted a few
green-hatted gnomes near the bushes. They caught her