Not meaning to tell Hollywood how to mangle fairy-tales, but …
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It was a great day like every other day has been great since we started living in the Wood. In the morning, we raced each other to the rapids and had a lot of fun teasing Gob for being the last to get there. We weren’t being mean or anything, and Nob knows that he’s the slowest of us. Of course, he’s also the smartest and if it weren’t for him and his fishing rig, well, we would never have lasted a day. So Nob takes the ribbing in stride mainly because he knows its all in fun.
For lunch, Alf cooked the rabbits that Dog shot with his bow. Unfortunately, he burnt one because Cob kept us all laughing with his attempts to turn a somersault. Cob isn’t what you would call agile, I suppose, but he’s handy with knots. His da’ was a sailor and taught him all those tricks with ropes and whatnot before the war came and took him away. He keeps a length of rope knotted around his wrist, Cob does. He says it’ll be how his father will recognize him after the war.
After lunch, we finally made our way into the old abandoned mine. Ban is the only one who likes it there, truth be told. He likes rooting around in the dirt looking for shiny stones. The rest of us don’t really care for those stones, but apparently, some people do. When we’ve washed them and polished them, I have to admit, some of them look nice enough, but really, they’re just stones. Can’t eat them, can’t do much of anything with them except sell them to people who think they’re worth something. That’s Eon’s job. He’s the tallest of us and he talks as smooth as anything. He takes the stones we find and once a week, he takes them to the village to sell.
No one wonders about Eon. He’s sold them all on the lie that he works the mine with his da’. At least that’s what he thinks. Myself, I think the townspeople just don’t care. None of them have, these past three years. If they did, then we wouldn’t still be here, would we? Deep in the Wood, living off the land, and doing all sorts of things children aren’t supposed to do.
Not that I’m complaining. The Wood is a great place and having no grown-ups to tell you what to do is even better. And it would have stayed a good place if only she didn’t come wandering into it.
Like I said, it was a great day. After picking through the rubble in the mine for about an hour or so, we had collected a good number of rocks and decided to head back home. Home being the shack that I, Fig, had built for us from wooden planks and nails that we’d traded rocks for. I came from a family of carpenters, see? And, altho I didn’t really like the craft, some of it did rub off on me.
Anyway, when we got home, there was this girl lying on the doorstep looking for all the world that she’d died there. All of us quickly retreated into the wood, wondering what was going on. All of us, that is, except Gob. He handed his sack to me and quietly crept up to the girl. Now Gob isn’t the stealthiest creature in the wood, so he made a lot of noise trying to sneak up on the girl. Still, he managed to get close enough to poke at her foot with a stick.
The girl yelped and sat up bolt upright and when she saw Nob – at this point filthy with mine-dirt by the way – screamed her head off. It was hilarious. Gob turned tail and waddled back to us, just as we were slowly coming out of the brush. There was no way this girl could pose any danger to us if she took fright at Gob’s mug. But I suppose she did get addled out of her wits a little and the sight of six dirty ruffians coming at her didn’t help things at all.
The next morning, I suppose she would’ve fainted at the sight of us again if she weren’t soaking wet. After waiting all night for her to come out of her faint, Dog got impatient, as Dog often does, so he took a bucket of water and doused her with it. Her eyes flew wide open and her mouth made a big circle out of which no sound came since she was busy sucking in air. It was almost winter after all, and the water was icy cold.
For a long moment, she stared at each one of us in turn. Then, in a small voice, she said: “I’m a princess.” Outside, the sun broke over the ridge of the Rim and I heard for the first time the blowing of the horns of Ganzenland. I knew, right then and there, that we were in for a great heap of trouble.
