A Prince, a Princess, and a Couple of Kings and Queens

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Part I

The First King, the First Queen, and the Princess

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ONCE there was a king named Felix who had never gotten anything he had ever really wanted and he had a daughter named Dulcibella. Of course, he hadn’t wanted a daughter, that goes without saying. And he hadn’t wanted to name her Dulcibella, but Constance; but Queen Calliope, his wife, thought that Dulcibella was a lovely name and so she became Dulcibella. Although the king never got anything he ever really wanted, he never cried about it, for that wouldn’t be proper for a king and he was very concerned about being proper.

What King Felix had really wanted was a son, someone to take over his kingdom when he was old or dead, but mostly when he was old. The next best thing to having a son was to have his daughter married off to some other king’s son, the king decided. But he must be a good lad. King Felix would have to pick him out himself.

So it was that the king invited princes from far and wide and near and narrow to come and visit his sweet beautiful daughter. It was a grand occasion. More beautiful and elegant princes had never been seen. They danced and gave spectacular pageants (with great feats of valor in between) while outside the palace courtyard the peasants celebrated, singing at the top of their voices.

While the princes were busy looking his princess over, King Felix looked them over. It was a hard decision, but finally the king narrowed it down to four princes: Prince Dashing, Prince Handsome, Prince Daring, and Prince Puddinhead. One of these would marry his daughter.

He invited those four to join him in the inner courtyard.

“Now,” he began, “you know,” he continued, “that only one of you may marry my daughter. It would be very unproper if more than one of you did, say if two of you did, or three. Now the reason this would be unproper,” he still continued, “is that—“

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!” a shrill voice echoed through the palace.

“Is that—“

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Kingly, my kingly!” the voice called. “Do come and see if you can help me squeeze out of this chair! I’m quite stuck!”

It was Queen Calliope. She was a large woman with a loud voice, neither of which had been what the king had wanted, but that was what he’d gotten. He excused himself from the princes, and left, feeling all the while that it wasn’t proper.

The princes had gotten just what they wanted: a chance to be alone with the King Felix’s daughter. This was their chance to win her.

But unknown to anyone else, Princess Dulcibella had a mind of her own and wished to educate it and so had taken it into her head not to marry any one of these princes. So, as each prince gave her his best compliment, the princess merely laughed. But Dulcibella had such a sweet laugh, it only made them love her more.

“I love you because of your beautiful face,” said Prince Handsome.

Dulcibella laughed.

“And I,” said Prince Dashing, thumping himself on the chest,

“I—I love you because of your beautiful face.”

The princess laughed so hard she had to sit down.

“And I love you because of your beautiful—“ said Prince

Daring, coming up and standing two inches before her nose, “—face.”

The princess laughed so hard she almost fell out of her chair. She laughed for a long time, but finally stopped to catch her breath.

“I love you, Princess Dulcibella,” said Prince Puddinhead, whose turn it had come at last, “because. . . because . . . because your toes are the loveliest in the land!”

Dulcibella laughed so hard she laughed her head off. Her head fell, rolled across the floor, out a side door, down a hill and into a wood, laughing all the way.

When King Felix came back, there was his daughter without her head, sitting gracefully in her chair, and the princes all around her, lamenting their loss.

“What I shall miss most,” said Prince Dashing, “are her eyes, blue as sapphires!”

“What I shall miss most,” said Prince Daring, “are her lips, red as rubies!”

“What I shall miss most,” said Prince Handsome, “is her golden hair, gold as gold!”

“And what I shall miss most,” said Prince Puddinhead, “is her brain! And, oh,” he added, “her toes!”

The other princes eyed him strangely, for, he hadn’t said anything about her brain before and, of course, her toes were still there, lovely as ever.

“Now, now then,” the king tried to console them. She’s still my daughter and one of you still shall marry her.”

“But if she loses her head, who knows what she might lose next,” said Prince Dashing. “She might lose my sapphires! I’ll never marry the girl!” And off he dashed.

“She might lose my rubies,” Prince Daring said coolly to the king, and, after challenging him to a duel unto the death with wet spaghetti noodles, ran away, hid, and has never been heard from since.

“And she might lose my gold!” exclaimed Prince Handsome. He combed his hair, brushed his teeth, stole the Princess’s royal mirror, then went to call a cab.

“If she hasn’t got a brain of her own, she certainly won’t be able to find one for me,” said Prince Puddinhead. “I suppose I may as well leave too.” It was obvious from his last remarks that he had hoped, since he had no great mind of his own, to marry a girl with one, but he now found even that idea folly.

“Oh dear, dear,” said King Felix when they had all gone, “if she can’t keep her head about her I am afraid she never shall get a husband, and I shall never get a son-in-law.” So the king organized a search party to look for his daughter’s head, and sent them out to look far and wide, but he forgot to look near and narrow, because he knew his daughter’s mind wandered a great deal whenever he talked to her, and naturally assumed it must be far away. He also knew that she was a very broad-minded young lady. So he had them search in every place at least two kingdoms away the whole day long.

The search parties looked everywhere they could think of that a head might be. They looked in barrels and under beds. They looked in thickets and thin-ettes. They looked up in tree-tops and down in river beds. They looked everywhere, but they did not find it.

They selected a man to give the king the bad news. “Oh king,” he said, “days upon days have we searched, and did not give up until it was dark, but we could not find your daughter’s head. We can only conclude, your Majestic Eminence, that the head does not want to be found and is hiding itself somewhere. May it not displease you, therefore, if we give up the search in the hope that it will change its mind and come back, for we have done all we can.” He concluded with a remark that they all should “very very (very) greatly miss the princess’s head very much.”

“I have a feeling,” Queen Calliope retorted privately (but rather loudly) to the king, “that the princess shall miss her head more than all they combined!” The king responded by giving the search parties his hearty thanks and ordered ice cream to be served all around, which he thought was the proper thing to do. He, of course, did not eat any himself.

King Felix was determined, nevertheless, that nothing should stop his daughter from being married to some prince, no matter how humble. He tried to hide the fact that his daughter had no head. “Do you suppose they’ll notice,” he asked Queen Calliope, “if we put a lot of lace about her shoulders?”

The queen made no direct reply to this but merely said, “She’s certain to forget things, you know.”

“But think of the good side,” the king argued. “She shall never be hanged, and certainly she shall never be beheaded.”

“Must you always be so grim and morbid?” the queen asked.

“But that is supposed to be the good side,” the king responded.

“Well never mind then. You certainly don’t understand.”

Queen Calliope began to pout.

“Women!” the king cried out, disgusted. “One good thing about my daughter is that she shan’t be able to talk back. Any man would be sure to marry her for that alone if he had the sense!”

But too bad for poor King Felix, there was hardly a prince willing even to look at her.

But at last one came, a paltry prince, more of a knave than a king’s son, Prince Dorian. Even he was disdainful. He came in the room to examine the princess. He looked her over from head to toe. Well—not exactly from head to toe. He could find nothing wrong with her toes, to be sure. But he was undecided about her head.

“It doesn’t bother me if she doesn’t have a head for business,” he remarked, “or if she doesn’t have an eye for art, or a voice for singing, or an ear for music, or even good taste, and why, she needn’t a nose to put to the grindstone, for the servants can do all the work, and come to think of it, she needn’t have a brain either, for I shall do all her thinking for her. There is, as far as I can see, only one objection I can make. If she’s to be my queen, she must be crowned. But if she’s got no head, she has no place to put a crown, so no one will ever know she’s the queen. No, I’m very sorry; she will never do.”

The king was greatly disappointed, for, hearing Prince Dorian’s speech, he thought that his daughter must surely be the very woman he was looking for. King Felix thanked Prince Dorian kindly, and wished him luck on finding the girl he wanted.

The next day the king was told that when it was learned what Prince Dorian was looking for in a wife, hundreds of girls from hundreds of kingdoms had come to see if they would suit him and that he had found them to his liking and had decided to marry them all. Hundreds of princes learned of this, and, angry that Prince Dorian should marry all of these girls and not leave any for them, started a revolution.

The king got mad, spent the day moping in his bedroom (keeping the queen locked out), and shouted out his window three times every hour, “All is hopeless!” But not once did he cry.

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Part II

The Second King and Queen and the Prince

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Meanwhile, in a neighboring kingdom, there was a prince who, the very night of the very day that Dulcibella had lost her head, had gone out to look at the stars. His name was Prince Cornelius. His father, King Leonard, always got what he wanted, and so, at times, Cornelius came out to get away from his father’s commandings.

“Yes, father,” the prince was always saying.

If anyone ever crossed him, King Leonard would say, “Off with his head!” and that was that. But this never bothered Cornelius. He was far too happy not worrying about anything.

It was a pleasant night, warm, a soft breeze blowing, and the sky clear and bright. In his walk he had been drawn near the woods. When he came to the edge, he lay down, and making the trunk of an old tree his pillow, gazed into heaven.

He was so overcome with contentment at the sight of the stars, so perfectly at ease with the soft breeze blowing, that, fearing nothing, and wanting nothing, he soon fell asleep, forgetting the dark woods behind him. He had a dream. In his dream a great fog descended upon the woods and mists rose from the damp dark forest floor. He heard voices calling and calling, but could not tell what they were saying. And then, a face drifted out of the fog, nothing more, just a face. But it was the loveliest face he had ever seen.

In his dream, he tried to move toward it, but could not.

The fog began to grow heavy; he was afraid that he would lose the face in the fog. He tried to move, flailing his arms about. He rolled this way and that upon the ground. He tried to kick but could not. His attempts at moving awakened him, and he found himself sitting in the woods, a dense fog actually upon him. The sun was about to rise through the heavy mist.

The heart can sometimes see things even the eyes may not, and sometimes in a dream a man may see something which he will search his whole life for. The beautiful face was nowhere to be seen.

Back at Prince Cornelius’s castle, King Leonard and Queen Cassandra were growing worried, especially the queen. What had become of her son? She did not worry when he did not return that night, for often he would go out at dusk to enjoy the stars and being alone. But he was always back for breakfast. That, at least, was something he was never content without.

Queen Cassandra suggested they send a search party out to look for him.

“Don’t be silly,” King Leonard said. “He’s a grown man. He can do anything he wants.”

“Yes, dear,” Queen Cassandra said.

The prince did not come back that day. Or the next.

The day after that the king proclaimed to his wife and subjects, “I have decided to go on a quest for my son. Don’t try to change my mind. It must be done!”

So off went King Leonard by himself to search for his son.

He found him (after a two day search) lying near the woods, unmoving, cold, and seemingly lifeless. “What’s wrong with you, my son?” the king asked him. Prince Cornelius made no reply, but lay perfectly still.

So King Leonard picked him up and carried him back to the palace. All the king’s subjects were greatly impressed by how strong he was, especially carrying Cornelius so far. Later that night the king made his wife give him a back rub, and moaned over and over while she was trying to sleep, but right then he lost no time. “Call the doctors!” he ordered.

“Yes, dear,” Queen Cassandra replied.

The doctors came, but stood far away, afraid to come too close and possibly get whatever Cornelius had. So they examined him from a distance.

“It looks like his respiration is slow, but steady,” one said.

“And I’d say he hasn’t got a fever,” said another. “I can’t detect any sign of sweat with my binoculars.”

“If he’s got any germs, I certainly don’t see them,” declared the third.

“Well, gentlemen,” said the fourth doctor, “it is my decided opinion that he is indeed not well, and needs treatment at once, and I will tell the king so myself.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine,” said the king, who was, of course, already there, “but what is wrong with him?”

“You have raised a very pertinent question,” one doctor responded and they all agreed.

“Extreamily,” said one.

“Indubitabubblely,” said another.

“Very-airy pertinititious and purpleplexing,” said the last.

“Off with their heads!” roared King Leonard. “Are there any other doctors in this palace? One who can do something instead of just looking?”

“No,” Queen Cassandra told him, “but I know one who makes house calls.”

“Then send for him at once.”

She did and he came. “Women!” the king exclaimed. “The best thing ever! Always do what you tell them.”

The doctor was an old man. Around his neck was coiled a large stethoscope and he carried a thermometer in one hand and a bowl of hot chicken soup in the other. The soup was for his lunch, or in case all else failed, he could try it as a prescription. He examined the prince, saying nothing. He took his temperature and felt his pulse. He put his stethoscope over the prince’s heart and listened for a long time. Then he listened to his lungs. Finally, the doctor did something strange. He moved the stethoscope over Cornelius’ entire body, listening. He listened to his leg, then his nose, to his hips and to his fingers. The doctor grew serious. He shook his head and muttered over and over, “Tut, tut, ah, tut!”

At length, King Leonard could take this muttering no longer.

“Well?” he said, “what’s wrong? My boy has such a good head on his shoulders, I don’t see why he can’t do anything for himself instead of just lying there waiting for others to serve him.” The king didn’t realize that deeds come from the heart, not the head.

The doctor replied. “He’s very cold, and he hasn’t got a pulse that I can feel, and what’s more, I can’t hear a heartbeat. I’ve listened for one everywhere. I thought maybe his heart was only wandering about a bit, but, I’m afraid the problem’s greater than that. I’m afraid he’s lost his heart.”

“And he’s not dead?”

“Oh no. Not at all,” said the doctor. “Surely no. Everything else is perfectly fine. Lost mine once myself, don’t you know.”

“Well, what’s to be done about it?”

“I’ll give him some soup and maybe after a while you can get him to tell you about it. If you find out how it happened, then maybe he can get it back, with a little help.”

“Hummm,” said Queen Cassandra. “He’s only lost his heart. I really should have guessed.”

That only goes to show that you can lose your head and everyone will know right away what’s happened, but if you lose your heart, it might take some time to discover it, even if it’s your own heart that’s lost. After all, not many people have seen and know their heart.

“Well, well, my boy,” said the king, “if that’s all it is, then tell us your problem.” But Cornelius didn’t. It took two more days and several gallons of soup before the prince would do anything at all.

It was all very new for King Leonard not to have instant obedience. Before, his son had always done what he told him to; now, he couldn’t. The king had to learn patience. He also began to learn kindness, and what it means to care for someone. He wanted nothing more than to help his son.

Finally the prince was able to talk, although very brokenly, and he told his story about the face and the fog, and how, when he had awakened and discovered it was only a dream, that he hadn’t felt much like getting up and decided he would just lie there a while.

“Ah-oh,” said King Leonard as soon as he heard. He was afraid that to lose your heart to a face that was only a dream was a great mistake. “I’ve heard of the girl of your dreams,” he said, “but the face of your dreams is too ridiculous.”

Still, the king thought to himself, if a face can be dreamt, then surely it must exist somewhere. He must find her for his son somehow. So he made a proclamation that all the princesses of his kingdom and of all kingdoms should come and show their face to Prince Cornelius.

The king took each princess and made her look between two curtains so that the prince might see only her face and not the rest. That way, he would be able to recognize it quicker. There were fat faces and skinny faces, beautiful rosy faces, and ugly warty faces. They came from far and wide and near and narrow, but no face was the face the prince had seen in his dream.

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Part III

Together

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When his neighbor, King Felix, whose unfortunate daughter had lost her head, heard of King Leonard’s proclamation, he grew greatly depressed. “Now here is a man who will judge how good a princess is only by her face! Can that be right? And our poor Dulcibella hasn’t even got a head. And I think she shall never get ahead in this world without a pretty face. And that prince, if you can call him one. He couldn’t even love her with all his heart, for he hasn’t got one. How dare they send their daughters to such a man! It isn’t fair.”

And it wasn’t fair. He would have cried, if he hadn’t been a king, but instead he was very proper about it, and just pouted.

Princess Dulcibella continued to do the things she had before, only she couldn’t do them nearly so well. For example, she loved to dance: Her movements were still as graceful, but she always was bumping into walls and stepping on toes. But she didn’t care, for she didn’t know it. When she played the piano, her chords were cacophony, her melody was mad, and her beat, beastly. Instead of picking flowers from the lane, she gathered thornbushes, ragweeds and rotten sticks.

These things drove her father mad. “What are we going to do about her?” he asked the queen.

“I wouldn’t know,” Queen Calliope replied in her loud raspy voice. “She’s your daughter. I certainly never lost my head. Or—“ she continued, seeing that the king had gotten angry, “my temper.” She was wise enough to know that these two often amount to the same thing.

So they didn’t do anything about her at all, except keep a close eye on her to see that she didn’t hurt herself. They were very concerned about their child, as all parents should be, and wouldn’t even let the servants help watch for fear they wouldn’t do it right.

One day, however, they made a mistake and overslept. One of the unfortunate side effects of the princess’s having no head was that she never knew when it was day or night, time for play or time for bed. That night she had been up, picking peat moss at midnight and arranging it in a vase until four in the morning. The king and the queen hardly slept.

But the next day Dulcibella was up at dawn before them, and had gone down the lane that led to the woods and disappeared, following nearly the same course that her head had traveled several months earlier. The woods were sparse where she entered with houses scattered, like the trees, here and there.

At one cottage an old woman sat upon the porch in a rocking chair. The poor woman was blind and as she rocked, the chair crept closer and closer to the edge. At another house, more shack than shelter, hungry children came out to greet the princess and beg for food or money. Farther still lived a man who had been hideously scarred in a fire and lived on alone and unknown.

The princess passed these all, and would have pitied them all, for her heart was tender and caring. But since she had lost her head, and her eyes with it, she didn’t see, and didn’t cry, and went skipping by them deeper into the forest. She couldn’t look and couldn’t pity, which was a pity itself.

After she had gone through the thickest, densest part of the forest, the trees began at last to grow sparse again. She had entered another kingdom, the kingdom in which Cornelius was prince.

The first person to notice her was a farmer just returning from milking his cows. He peered at her in the distance. “There’s something wrong with her which I can’t quite make out. . . . Why! She hasn’t got a head. Wife! Wife!” he called. “Come quick!” (In his surprise he’d forgotten his wife’s name.)

She came and they both stared at her. The wife called someone else to come and see. Soon all the neighbors were there.

“How can she do it? Look how gracefully she skips along. She must be an acrobat.”

A little girl came up to her and touched her hand. The princess stopped, and curtsied, then patted the child on the . . . well, it would have been the head, but I’m afraid it was the eyeball.

“So gentle,” the people said. “She must be a nurse. So they watched her all day, then invited her to tea. She held her pinky properly out and sat straight in the chair, and when the cake was placed before her, she always had only one hand above the table and kept the other below, and never did her elbow rest on the tabletop.

“Ah—such grace—and such manners. She must be a maid.” Of course, since the graceful girl had no head—or mouth—she poured the tea all over herself, and dumped the cake on top.

“No, no, it cannot be! She’s no maid! Look!” At that moment Dulcibella took off her shoes and began to wiggle her toes. No lovelier toes had ever been seen.

“She’s a princess! She must be!” And then they noticed her clothes and all the lace, especially the lace piled around her shoulders, and they knew they were right.

So, having figured that out, they decided she must see King Leonard, because of his decree.

When they rang the bell, the king himself answered the door.

“Hello?”

“Hello king. We have found a princess and have brought her here for your son to see.”

“Very well. Musicians!” he called out, “Play your trumpets! Bring her forth!”

Dulcibella was led forward.

“Wh-What? This princess has no head!” King Leonard exclaimed.

“Yes we know, so she couldn’t answer for herself, but we figured out she was a princess anyway, and brought her. She has very fine manners and dresses especially well, don’t you think?”

“But that’s not the point! You’ve brought a headless princess so that my son might look upon her face? Fools! What good does that do? Use your heads! A good head on your shoulders is better than any crown on your head, and she hasn’t even got a crown! Off with her hea—Off with her—Be off with her—NOW!”

“And what are we to do with her? We don’t know anything about princesses.”

“Okay, she can stay with me,” said the king, “as long as she doesn’t eat too much.”

They promised him she didn’t.

Days went by. King Leonard hadn’t bothered to tell his son of the princess who had moved into the castle with them. But one day Prince Cornelius overheard the servants talking. He was lying in bed while two maids were struggling to move some furniture in the hallway.

“I must keep my eye on that girl every minute of the day,” one maid said.

“I know what you mean,” said the other. “I know exactly what you mean. Let her alone for one minute and the next she’s into the china cabinet. We’re already using the third best china ‘cause she broke the best.”

“Yes, and she’s no help at all around here. Give her something to do and the next moment she’s forgotten it.”

“I know it. I’ve heard of absent-minded before, but that girl is plain absent-headed.”

“Yes, yes, I suppose she’s not to blame. That’s the point of it all, right there. You’ve hit the nail upon the head, so to speak. Where would we be without our head? Probably in the same fix as that poor girl. . . .”

They continued talking, but the prince heard no more.

Before, he had been so content, he could never think of anything he wanted to do. And now, ever since he had lost his heart, he didn’t want to do anything he could think of, and so stayed in bed, sighing. But when he heard of the princess, something stirred within him—not his heart—but something.

He crept down the stairs to see her. The princess, unlike him, was always restless and could not sit still. She walked about, bumping into the walls and tripping over the furniture. He watched, slightly amused. But then he saw her step toward the fireplace. A huge red fire rushed up the chimney. She leaned toward the fire.

The prince ran down the stairs, grabbed her just in time, and made her sit in a chair. But she didn’t sit for long. Up she was and walking about again.

Her hands were always moving about as she walked, feeling into the corners and between the books on the bookshelf and under the cushions of the couches. She even stooped and reached under the rugs.

She was nimble. He grew to appreciate her and would have loved her, even without her head, if only he’d had a heart. He didn’t like her because of her pretty face, for she didn’t have one. He liked her for her heart, for who she was.

He watched her for days. Slowly it dawned on him that she might be looking for something. She didn’t have eyes, but, maybe, at least, she was feeling for something. Then it occurred to him that she might be searching for her head. Of course, it wasn’t between books or in the china tea cups, or under the rug, but, it just might be that she didn’t have sense enough to know that without her head.

Then, it entered his mind that they might be looking for the same thing, or very nearly.

“Mother,” Prince Cornelius said to his mother, “I’m going to take her for a stroll.”

“Don’t go too far,” Queen Cassandra told him, but secretly was delighted to see him up and about. She thought they would make a wonderful pair. King Leonard laughed out loud when his wife suggested this to him. “A heartless king and a headless queen! That’d be a fine pair to rule this land of mine!” he said.

The prince led the princess by the hand into the woods and was delighted by how daintily she stumbled over stones and slipped on broken branches. But he kept her from smacking into trees and from falling on her face (you know what I mean) and she kept him going even when he wanted to quit, because she didn’t know when to quit. Mysteriously, they reached the spot where he had slept.

A beautiful clump of flowers grew by the path, every color of the rainbow. The prince pondered whether he should pick one and give it to the princess. She couldn’t see it or smell it, so what was the use? Besides, now that he had stopped walking, he felt very lazy. However, seeing that her hands seemed to be reaching for them, he bent over to pick one.

There, to his amazement, was the princess’s head, and the beautiful face he’d longed for, and there was his heart beside it. It hadn’t been a dream after all. He’d seen her whole head and only supposed he saw just her face. It had been there all along, beside him. If he hadn’t lost heart the moment he had awakened, it might have crossed his mind to search for the face, even in the fog. Sometimes it is better to follow your heart and not believe your eyes.

Carefully, he put the princess’s head back in place. (This is a delicate procedure and should only be attempted by a well- trained prince.) Dulcibella then stooped and gave him back his heart. They were so mutually impressed by the skill with which the other performed such subtle surgery, that, well, they kissed.

“You are beautiful, and I love you,” the prince told her, looking at her at last with his heart and seeing more than just the beautiful face. The princess did not laugh as she had previously at her other suitors. Instead, she only smiled.

“Do you think,” she said, “that you could find it in your heart to come with me back to see my father? I’m sure he must be worried about what’s become of me.” She looked at his face and saw it sober and thinking. “No, silly me, I’m sure you won’t come. I’m sorry,” she said, and turned her eyes downward.

“Of course I will go,” he said, and grinned. What silly notions some women get into their heads, he thought.

And so he accompanied her back and asked for her hand in marriage, and her head, and all the rest of her.

The prince and the princess were married, after which Dulcibella went to college and graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy. It was a lovely wedding, at least, according to Prince Puddinhead, who should know since he’s been married now seven times to the same girl without a divorce in the hopes that the next wedding will be more glorious than the last, and—that he will get more wedding gifts.

Two heads are better than one, and two hearts are better than one, for they think together and act together. Cornelius and Dulcibella gave each other their hearts and then they put their heads together and came upon a plan to unite their parents’ kingdoms.

Their parents met each other and became fast friends. They liked the plan so well they decided to use it immediately. From what I’ve heard, their kingdom is now the greatest kingdom in the world, chiefly because it is governed by united love and leadership.

After seeing the way in which his son and the princess got along together, King Leonard changed his mind about a lot of things. At his wife’s suggestion they moved out to live with King Felix and Queen Calliope where the climate suited them better. “Just think,” King Leonard told Queen Cassandra with a kiss, “we should never have known this lovely weather if we’d stayed home. I’m glad at last we found a place without so much fog! I never even realized it was so damp back there.”

“Yes, dear,” said his wife.

As for King Felix who had never gotten anything his heart desired, he had given away his kingdom and found it twice as large, given away his daughter and found a son and heir, and had given up his proper diet, and had grown so fat he even began to love his wife, Queen Calliope. They placed their thrones facing each other where they could look at one another all day long and—pull each other out whenever they got stuck.

He then began to love Queen Calliope’s voice so much that he made her the official spokesperson for the palace. His first decree was that she would become the lead singer in every pageant. His second was that there was to be a magnificent pageant that very day. She delivered the announcement from the top of the palace. Her voice was heard far and wide and near and narrow.

As for the grandchildren, of whom there were six, three girls and three boys, nothing delighted them more than to play on King Felix’s stomach and be smothered in his hugs. They told him that no grandfather should ever be skinny. (Of course, they told King Leonard, their other grandfather, that skinny was best, and he believed them too.) Every night they brought King Felix a book that he might read a story to them.

He would take them to bed, tuck them in, and read to them, and I’m sorry to say, would weep hideously at the end of every story, for they all had happy endings, and nothing in the world made King Felix cry more than a happy ending.

The End