The Rose Petal Princess

The king and queen of the fourth kingdom had many children, fine healthy girls and boys, but only one of them was born in the heart of a rose, and that was the youngest, Zahara. She was tiny enough to fit inside a rose, with the petals wrapped tightly around her, and although she grew to be a normal size soon enough, the fragrance of roses clung around her for the rest of her life.

While her brothers and sisters were generous and kind, Zahara was not. She was selfish, and always thought of herself first. And although she was very pretty, with perfectly-shaped red lips and pale pink cheeks as soft as rose petals, the littlest finger on her left hand never grew to be the same size as the rest of her. It remained tiny and wizened, and Zahara hated it. It turned her whole heart into resentment and anger.

One day when Zahara was in the garden, swishing off the heads of daisies with a stick, she found a small, black worm lying on the path. For some reason she took a fancy to it. She carried it back to her room and put it in a small box and fed it on scraps from the kitchen. It grew quicker than you’d expect, first into a small lizard, and then into a fat lizard the size of a cat, and still it kept growing.

Zahara was pleased to have a pet of her own, but she told no-one about it in case her parents said that she couldn’t keep a pet in her room, especially one that sharpened its claws on the furniture, and liked nothing better than catching and eating birds that foolishly landed on the windowsill.

When Zahara’s pet tried to eat the maid that came to do the dusting, it couldn’t be hidden any longer, but it was already too late. Zahara had spent so much time petting the dragon, for that is what her pet truly was, and whispering to it of her unhappiness and resentment, that she had taken on some of the dragon’s nature. Its black heart had made its way into her heart too, so that she had gradually become more selfish, and more cruel and more wicked.

The queen, who came from a long line of dragon-slayers, wanted to kill the dragon then and there have it all over and done with, but the king stopped her, saying, “Zahara is more than half a dragon herself now. Would you kill her as well?” The queen put down her sword then, and didn’t know what to do.

The king said, “We’ll offer a reward. These things always work themselves out when a reward is offered.” So that is what they did. A proclamation went out throughout the kingdom, but secretly, of course, because if the princess Zahara had found out, she would have been furious and no-one wanted to have a furious half-dragon princess to deal with. Anyone who could kill the dragon but save the princess would be given a huge bag of gold, and the hand of the princess in marriage.

Once they heard that there was a dragon involved, who in fact was growing bigger every day because of the kitchen scraps, not to mention the birds and cats and pet dogs it managed to catch and eat, most of the young men in the kingdom decided that there were other, safer ways to earn a bag of gold and didn’t step forward.

In the end, after one or two false tries with young men who ran away as soon as they saw the dragon, now the size of a small dinosaur, and one young woman who thought she was supposed to kill the princess and save the dragon, it was the baker’s boy who came forward.

His name was Dray. As soon as the queen saw him, her heart sank. He was so sweet and gentle, she knew he could never kill even a weevil if he found it in a bag of flour, let alone a dragon.

The king said to Dray, “Now, young man, how are you going to kill the dragon, and save the princess from herself?”

Dray said, “I don’t know, but I beg you to let me try,” for he had loved the princess for as long as he could remember, since he was a very little boy. The queen offered to teach him the latest methods of slaying dragons, quickly and with as little blood going everywhere as possible, but Dray said, “Your majesty, I am a baker and pastry chef. My skill is with flour and yeast and butter, not with swords and spears. Let me try my own way.”

Dray began to take special treats and delicacies to the princess’s room every day. He would present them with a low bow, blushing with love for the princess, and because the pastries were made with love, the black bands around her heart loosened just a little. She fed the scraps to the dragon, as she usually did, and its eyes glowed nastily.

The next part of Dray’s plan was this. In the castle there was a room that nobody ever went into. A dragon had once been killed there, and although the whole room had been cleaned and scrubbed many times, the smell of dragon’s blood never quite disappeared. Indeed, no matter how well it was cleaned, drops of the dragon’s blood still appeared out of nowhere, and lay in corners and under the rugs like small, black coins.

Dray went to this room and collected all the drops of blood he could find. Then alongside the pastries he made for the princess, he made special treats for the dragon, and into each one he slipped a drop of dragon’s blood.

Now there is nothing more irresistible to a dragon than another dragon’s blood. The dragon grew fatter and its armoured body grew darker with each drop that it ate, and its eyes glowed fiery red. Indeed, after a week, Dray was so nervous of the glint in the dragon’s eye that he took to wearing Queen Shanama’s second-best sword hidden inside his shirt.

One day instead of almond crescents and custard tarts, Dray brought the princess a pretty little bird in a cage. “How sweet!” she said, and started coaxing it to see if it would sing.

The dragon was hungry and after all, he was a dragon, with a black heart, so he snapped up the bird, cage and all, in one bite.

Zahara turned on him and scolded him. “How dare you be so naughty?” she said. “It was such a pretty little bird.”

The glint in the dragon’s eye turned into a glare, and its tail swished ominously. It was still ravenously hungry for blood – the bird had been only one bite and a small one at that, whereas Zahara was big enough for a tasty meal. It opened its jaws so far that Dray and Zahara could see the burning coals in the pit of its stomach. Zahara screamed. Dray leapt between her and the dragon, pulling the sword from its hiding place, but clumsily and slowly because he was a baker’s boy, not a swordsman.

The dragon’s claw slashed once and cut off Dray’s sword arm at the elbow. Then it turned its evil eyes on the princess.

Zahara stopped screaming. She picked up the sword and sliced the dragon in two from its neck to its belly, for after all she was her mother’s daughter, and the granddaughter of the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven kingdoms.

The dragon lay dead, and Dray was clutching his elbow where his left arm used to be. “Your arm!” Zahara said.

“I would willingly have given more than my arm for you,” Dray replied. “I would have given my life.”

The black bands around Zahara’s heart finally snapped when she heard these words. She began to cry, as she thought about the years she had wasted in anger and resentment over her little finger.

Dray was rewarded with a bag of gold and the hand of the princess in marriage. However Zahara knew there were many things she had to do before she would be ready to marry, so she encouraged him to marry one of her sisters instead, and in a very short time he grew to love his new wife, a happy, roly-poly girl with a love for pastry, as well as or even better than he had ever loved Zahara. As for Zahara, she girded her sword at her waist and set off on a journey to find the years she had lost, but that is a story for another day.