The Princess Rules Read online

  She jumped up and whistled for Jellybean, collecting the cut ropes and gathering the swords in a very busy, cross way.

  ‘But that’s how princes and princesses are supposed to be!’ said Prince Bennett, a bit cross himself. ‘We’re supposed to warn you, you’re supposed to wander into obvious danger, then I am supposed to rescue you.’

  Florizella put a hand on Jellybean’s halter and looked at the prince with blazing eyes.

  ‘Suit yourself!’ she said crossly. ‘If you want to be best friends, then you come to me when I need you and I’ll come to you when you need me. But if you want to be like other princes and princesses and get married as soon as something interesting happens, so that nothing interesting ever happens again, that’s up to you! But I told you once and I’ll tell you again – I won’t get married for a good long while. And I won’t marry you just because we fought a dragon together. You said we were best friends, and that’s what I want. But if you want me to be a regular princess – and worse than that – a princess who has to be rescued, then you can fight your own dragons … and I hope they eat you!’

  ‘But a proper princess—’ Bennett started.

  ‘This is a proper princess,’ Florizella yelled, waving her sword above her head in her agitation. ‘I am a proper princess! Like a prince only with more s’s!’

  ‘Why, what do the s’s stand for?’

  ‘Swordsmanship,’ said Florizella crushingly, and she jumped on Jellybean, dug her heels in and scorched off at a gallop. She did not even look back at poor Prince Bennett, standing all alone in the Purple Forest with his broken sword and the trees quietly smouldering all around him.

  She went home, put Jellybean back in his stall and gave him a rub-down and a feed. Then she climbed up the drainpipe (for her bedroom door was still locked) and pulled back the covers on her bed, tumbled in and fell fast asleep. She was very tired.

  So she did not know until the next morning that she and Bennett were the best of friends after all. For when the rescue party finally arrived in the Purple Forest, he did not go straight home, where his parents were anxiously waiting. He rode all the way back to Florizella’s kingdom and, for the second time that day, he sought and found the king, Florizella’s father, and addressed him as ‘Sire’ just like a proper fairy tale.

  Bennett told the king straight that he would never marry Florizella, unless one day she really wanted to marry him.

  ‘And I think, Sire,’ he said, ‘that a girl who is big enough to kill her own dragon is big enough to make up her own mind.’

  The king could not help but agree and give Prince Bennett a hug.

  ‘Undoubtedly! Undootedly!’ he said.

  And the queen, who had taught Florizella sword-fighting in the first place, nodded rather proudly and said, ‘Well, Florizella was never just an ordinary princess.’

  She hugged Prince Bennett too, and they sent him home in the second-best royal carriage, the silver one with the blue cushions. And from that day onwards no one ever suggested that Princess Florizella should obey the Princess Rules.

  Least of all Prince Bennett.

  It was a bright, sunny morning as Princess Florizella threw back her bedroom curtains and saw, to her relief, that no overnight spell had turned her kingdom into a watery waste, or the people into butterflies, or any of the other tedious and unpredictable things that can happen to a fairytale princess.

  Since everything seemed normal, she leaned out of the window to see her horse, Jellybean, grazing in the field beyond the palace gardens. She put two fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. Jellybean’s head went up and his ears went forward and he thundered down the paddock towards the gate and cleared it with a metre to spare, narrowly missing the king, who was gardening on the other side.

  ‘I do wish she wouldn’t do that,’ said the king as he pulled himself out of the rose bush.

  The queen gave him a helpful tug, and watched Florizella slide down the drainpipe and jump from the windowsill on to Jellybean’s warm back, and trot round to the stables.

  ‘I wish she’d use the doors,’ she agreed. ‘But she’s always been a princess in her own way.’

  ‘Undoubtedly!’ said the king, with much feeling. ‘Undootedly!’

  Florizella had Jellybean tacked up in a few minutes. She put on her hard hat with its smart princess cover, and trotted out of the stableyard, over the castle drawbridge and down the lane towards the Purple Forest.

  It was a wonderful day in early summer; the scarlet swallows and the golden swifts were swooping low over the river, and in the central square, the fairies were holding a farmers’ market, buying and selling farmers. Florizella was singing to herself, and Jellybean put his ears forward and went into an easy canter down the track that runs through the Purple Forest and up to the high moorland.

  But somehow they took a wrong turn.

  Florizella rode for a little while, then she pulled Jellybean to a standstill and looked around. She had never been this deep into the Purple Forest before and she was surprised at how dark it was. She knew there were wolves and lions in the forest, as well as witches and enchanters. Florizella felt rather uncomfortable – as if there were cold fingers walking up and down her spine.

  It grew darker, and Florizella started to wish she was at home. The black bushes and shadowy trees seemed to whisper in the wind, and the little rustlings sounded like someone coming closer.

  Jellybean put back his ears, a sure sign that he was unhappy, and moved restlessly. Florizella patted his neck and said, ‘Silly Jellybean! Fancy being frightened!’ as if she were not nervous herself, and she turned him round to ride back the way she had come.

  Then suddenly the rain started – great thick drops of rain that cascaded through the leaves of the trees and soaked Florizella and Jellybean in seconds so they both stopped being scared and became cold and miserable. Jellybean’s head drooped and his lovely bright chestnut coat went all streaky and dark with the wet. Florizella was wet through, rain dripping off her hat and down her neck.

  Then there was a great Crash! of thunder and a great Crack-crack! of lightning. Jellybean flung up his head and reared in fright and Florizella tumbled off his back and down into the mud. Before she could catch the reins, Jellybean was gone! Back to his warm stable – because he had known the way home all along, but hadn’t been able to explain it.

  That was bad. But there was worse to come!

  The lightning had struck a great tree nearby – it was groaning and creaking and swaying. Florizella could see it looming over her, but she was so stunned by her fall that she couldn’t move. She could only lie there in the mud while the great tree leaned and cracked and finally came down with a great roar and a crackle of breaking branches.

  She was always the luckiest of princesses! The two main branches of the tree fell either side of her. The tree trunk, which could have crushed her, fell short; the boughs that could have broken her bones were spread out all around her.

  ‘Crikey!’ said Florizella when she dared to open her eyes.

  The storm was still raging, and as she struggled to sit up and look through the great bushy branches of leaves, she heard the thunder roll again, and the lightning was as bright as fireworks. Florizella heard another tree crashing down, and she knew that she had to find shelter. She scrambled over the branches and looked around in the stormy darkness.

  There was a little hill to her left, away from the path, and some solid-looking boulders. Florizella thought that if she could creep under one of the rocks she would be out of the rain and safe from any more falling trees. She scrambled up the hill, her path sometimes very bright from lightning and sometimes very black from the storm; her eyes sometimes able to see everything as clear as day for the few seconds of light, and then quite blind afterwards. The rain poured down on her, and she was wet through and gasping – it was like being under a super-strong power shower turned to COLD – but eventually she scrambled up the slope and reached the top of the hill and found, to