Once upon a time there was a tall willowy princess with the usual long, princess hair and big blue eyes, locked away in an ivory tower of her own design. This tower was built such that it had twenty-one doors with twenty-one difficultly impossible puzzle locks.
Nevertheless, many courtiers and princes and knaves, scoundrels and clever men, rogues and even scallywags, tried their turn each at the locks. All who tried failed, and the princess grew proud and vain at her own cleverness and looked down upon all men. This was sad, as really there is nothing more useless than an unattainable woman, such was the thinking of the day. Such a woman was considered as useless as a mirage on the desert whose bosom gives neither drink nor comfort to any man. Her vanity grew until no man's spirit was good enough for her.
She had not always been so. Once in simpler times she had been a simple milkmaid and apple picker. There had been a stable boy of the king who had taken a fancy to her. One day some of the king's apples came up missing, and because of that, the stable boy was imprisoned for 20 years (really a mischievous hungry horse had eaten them). As time wore upon the stable boy's mind in the dungeon, his thoughts turned to and found comfort in the memory of the milkmaid. Upon his release, he sought out a wizard to help him find her.
"Gaze into my crystal ball and behold your milkmaid..." the old wizard said. The boy peered deeply into its cloudy depths and saw the milkmaid as princess, the vanity that overshadowed her heart, the tower she had locked herself into, and the twenty-one difficultly impossible puzzle locks. He saw all the multitudes of suitors and proud and wealthy princes and clever men that failed to open them. Surely his chances were even less. He was overcome with despair.
"Oh greatest of woes, happiness was not meant for me, it is impossible!" he cried and he turned his face away. A shadow filled his heart and tears streamed down his face.
The wizard shook the boy and looked him in the eye and said "Nothing is impossible. If love is true, then it has existed for all eternity, exists now and forever after. Answer me this: even as you see her now, do you still love her? Answer not in haste. Look into your heart and there you will find the answer, for it is there and always has been."
The boy looked again into the crystal ball, and saw all the past and futures of the princess: he saw her growing old, he saw her looks fade from her, he saw her become an old woman, he saw her turn to dust. He saw all that was beautiful about her, and all that was ugly, and all that was broken, all that was sorrow, all that was the incomplete multitudes within her, all that was her good and bad.
The wizard asked again: "Do you still love her...?" The boy gazed at her in her entirety and so transfixed, he saw all that he was himself, and all that he would become and all that was shattered or deficient inside of himself.
"Answer me boy... this is not alchemy... we are not turning lead into gold... love is not such a complicated thing... what say you? Do you love her?" said the wizard.
"Yes..." whispered the boy.... "yes.. yes..."
"Yes what?" snarled the old wizard... "is it so hard to say that even the most commonest of stable boys can not say it?"
"Yes, I love her.."
"So mote it be...!" replied the wizard... and he took out his magic wand and lifted it high above his head... and waved it around, to cast the magic spell which would...
"Wait!" exclaimed the wizard. "You are able to pay me, right?"
The boy hadn't thought of such a thing as payment. He turned out his pockets, shuffled his feet, and looked down at the floor. Twenty years in a dungeon and he had not a pffenig to his name. Nothing but lint in his pockets. Zippo. Nada. Zip. Silence followed.
"Gott sei dank!" snarled the wizard, and turned away in disgust. "Get out of my sight, you have wasted enough of my time already, and be joyous and thankful to be leaving with your life!"
"No, wait!" pleaded the boy, as he clung on his hands and knees to the wizards cape. "Please help me. I have no one... and no money... I know no one. All I have known is the inside of a dungeon and its horrible loneliness. I must find her again. Can't you do anything for me at all... anything... anything?" he lamented.
The wizard paused... "Anything...?" He chuckled. "Why yes, yes, I can do ANYTHING..." With that he reached over to his shelf with a sly grin and pulled out a vial. He looked the stable boy squarely in the eye and told him this:
"Every day the princess sneaks out a secret passageway to this hidden spot in the woods." The boy looked over at the crystal ball and saw it swirling with a vision, a vision of the spot in the woods to which she went, and the way he must go to find his way there. "Be waiting there for her; when she approaches sprinkle this magic faerie dust upon yourself and your charm she will not be able to resist!"
"Blessed be!" exclaimed the stable boy, and he thanked the wizard profusely. He was then summarily thrown out on his duff by the wizard and the door to the wizards tower locked behind him.
As proscribed, he went to the princess's secret place in the woods and waited for her. Day turned to night, and the moonlight shone brightly, illuminating the woods around him. Finally he saw her approaching on the path. He fumbled with the vial and sprinkled the magic faerie dust upon his head. "Poof!" Instantly he was turned into a frog.
"Oh what horrible rotten luck!" cried the stable boy. "What am I to do now?" The princess was fastly approaching and there he was, a frog. Just as she was about to pass by and out of his life forever, he tried to think of something quick. The stable boy thought... if I could have but one kiss from her... I might live out my days with at least something of a memory.
He croaked up and he implored as loud as he could manage.. "Princess, please, I am a prince cursed to be a frog until I am kissed by a princess! If you kiss me I will love you and marry you!" A clever trick, perhaps if nothing more he could get at least one kiss.
The princess stopped suddenly, and her eyes popped wide open. She quickly grabbed the frog, and the curious looking vial laying beside him, hiked up her skirt, and ran back to the castle. She carried him right passed all the doors, right pasted all the puzzle locks, straight into her tower. She released her doves, and placed the frog into a bird cage!
Oh what poor fortune, our poor stable boy, to be imprisoned yet again, to suffer such a state only feet away from his beloved. The frog cried out in confusion... "Princess, what are you doing? Aren't you going to kiss me, so that I may become a prince???" To which the princess replied "Heck no, princes are a dime a dozen, but a talking frog, now that's something else!!!"
Such might be the end of our tale, but allow us to indulge the curiosity of our fair reader yet a moment further... for our story does not end there!
After a time, the princess became curious of the vial. "What is in this?" she demanded to know of the frog. "Oh, that, that is the accursed magic dust of the wizard..." said the frog, "He promised me it would make me irresistible. But alas it is a lie, it does not work."
The princess's thoughts hung upon the word irresistible. "With such power," she thought, "the knaves will be throwing themselves upon my locks, and my beauty and fame would be unsurpassed in all the land. She looked upon the frog and found him not to be an unhansome frog, as far as frogs go... surely he had used the dust and he was trying to trick her and keep her from such bountiful wealth. She uncorked the vial and sprinkled some upon her long, blond princess hair. Oh no!
"Poof!!!"
The princess was now a frog...
A common, ordinary, unextraordinary, plain Jane, super tame, house frog.
Without her beauty, no suitor craved or cared for her. Her identity was shattered. There was nothing more to support her vanity. She cried out in absolute sorrow of her lamentable fate... "Nobody loves me anymore... nobody.. I am just an ugly ordinary frog, no man will want me now! Look at me!"
The stable boy frog did look at her, and know her, and found her still to be beautiful. He told her it was not true, he loved her. He told her of the stable, of her as a milkmaid, of the years in the dungeon, of all his thoughts that had dwelt upon her, of the wizard and the crystal ball and all of it. And how he had seen all that she was, in the crystal ball, had seen him becoming a frog, and her becoming a frog, he had seen it all, and he had still loved her then as he loved her now. And he had still chosen her. She had to believe in the fairy tale, like he had believed in the fairy tale. He told her what the wizard had told him, to look for the answer in her heart, not in her head.
The princess thought upon this, all that he had said, and thought about how empty her life had been locked up in a tower of her own design. Was it not better to be a frog and loved for all time by one, than to be a princess locked in a tower loved by no one really? Her heart was overcome by these thoughts, of all those years she had been alone, and yet this frog stable boy had been locked in some horrible dungeon thinking upon her as she had been once upon a time.
If she were to chose, she would chose him, this stable boy that had held on to the memory of her for twenty years. And in such a moment, she did just that. She gave our stable boy frog a kiss. A nice, long, big fat wet frog kiss. A real humdinger!
"Poof!" The spell was broken. Both frogs, the princess and the stable boy, turned into their true natures, two beautiful flighty enchanted unicorns with shiny horns and gleaming manes of white. Together they busted through the 21 doors and 21 puzzle locks, and ran off to the high mountains. They could not go straight to the mountains, as there were many more journeys of self assessment they had to make along the way. But in the end they would make it there together. It is said that even today they dance together and frolic in the moonlight, in fields of flowers by sparkling waterfalls.
The old wizard peered into his crystal ball, and saw it all, and took a slow, long drag on his pipe, and blew smoke rings into the air. He pushed a pawn into the back row of a chess board on the table before him, and it changed into a horse. As he did so, his true image was revealed, as Father Time. The crystal ball swirled with images from all points past, present, and future of the stable boy and the princess. The mountains, the tower, the locks, the dungon, the stables, and the apples that started it all. The mischievous horse saw the apples swirling in the crystal ball, which whetted his appetite, and he bounded off the board into the crystal ball.
Our narrator is not sure, but believes he could detect a twinkle in the old man's eye as he drifted off to sleep, the smoke rings dissolving into the ether above his head.
The End