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Simple Princess
Natalie Yacobson
Princess Estella is beautiful, but stupid. Rumor has it that an evil sorcerer has stolen her mind. Bridegrooms flee from the princess, but the dragon living in the castle dungeons adores her. And a strange black creature, which Estella accidentally releases from his confinement, assures her that it is the stolen princess’s mind. Except that its purpose is to wrest all admirers away from Estella and awaken the sinister forces slumbering beneath the castle.
Simple Princess
Natalie Yacobson
Translator Natalia Lilienthal
© Natalie Yacobson, 2023
© Natalia Lilienthal, translation, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0059-6044-3
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Behind the Seven Seals
The doors of the royal treasury were like gates to heaven, but their voices were hellish. Princess Estella ran her fingertips wistfully over the gilded angel wings, nymphs, titans, apple trees, and serpents. Who would think to decorate the entrance to the treasury as if it were the gateway to a temple? Estella’s fingers burned as if the dragon’s breath was burning the gilded flaps of the door on the other side.
“Do you suppose there could be a dragon locked up in the treasury as a guard?” she asked Gisela timidly.
“More like a prisoner! Dragons are only good guards if they are chained,” said Gisela, the young, lively governess, who had wanted to be queen from the first day she came to the castle. Now her dreams of marriage to the old king were dashed with the death of the latter.
Since the king’s burial, Gisela had been sulking as if she had been deprived of her rightful inheritance.
“If I’d known he was going to die so soon, I would have taken a governess’s job with another princess,” she muttered to herself. “He had only just begun to like me! My feminine charms worked only a week ago, when the King invited me to a game of chess. I am sure he wanted me as his wife, not his favorite. He’s too old to have a minion.”
Estella merely nodded at her mentor’s scholarly speeches. She understood little of what was being said. What was a minion? And did the King, who had already been married once to her mother, have the right to marry a second time? Isn’t Gisela herself a princess from a ruined principality who came to Aluar for support and a position at court? Couldn’t she marry a duke or prince? Why would she want an old king?
When Estella asked all these questions aloud, her mentor would get terribly angry with her. So the princess preferred to remain silent.
“You’re so sweet!” Sobbing into a silk handkerchief, which for some reason was embroidered royal coats of arms, said Gisela. “You listen so attentively! You give the impression of a smart, when you do not say anything! And evil people say that the elves stole your mind, and that you have been a fool ever since.”
“What do you mean?” Estella frowned. She was preoccupied with the gilt doors. She could certainly hear the sound of many angry voices whispering in the doorway:
“Let us out! Come here! We have been waiting for you, Princess!”
Gisela did not hear these voices. She was crying and blowing her nose noisily, as if she had just been widowed. Her black silk veil, thrown over her intertwined golden braid, was like a widow’s veil. Gisela would have liked a gold crown over the black veil. Estella would have given her a crown of her own, too heavy and pressing on her forehead, but Gisela said it could not be done. Only queens or princesses had the right to wear a crown, not princesses’ tutors.
Even if there were demons hiding behind the treasury door, they were the only ones who didn’t call Estella a fool. That was nice! The word fool sounded insulting, though Estella didn’t know exactly what it meant. But the courtiers whispered in such sly tones about the empty-headed princess, whose mind had long been taken by magical creatures. It made Estella uncomfortable.
“Ever since you inherited the kingdom, many people have been looking at you like you’re game. You must be more careful,” Gisela warned her.
“I don’t think so! I have suitors who run away as soon as I open my mouth to say something nice to them.”
“It used to be like that. You were considered a princess, not a queen. An unmarried Aluar’s queen is a temptation for everyone. Now many dowry hunters will seek your hand as I sought your father’s. And I almost did! A brutal death has shattered all my plans like a house of cards! And they say death is merciful!”
“In the case of the lepers on the moors, it is,” she reminded her. “When people who have been to the Demon Lands begin to suffer so much that even the Court wizards cannot help them, then death is merciful. But it does not come for them for a long time. Those who are sick turn into monsters as long as they give up the spirit.”
“Don’t tell me such horrors,” Gisela sighed theatrically.
“But I’ve seen the sick ones myself. Their skin cracks like parched heat, their eyes scarlet. They keep saying curses. One of them whispered something in my father’s ear, and my father died thirteen days later.”
“You’d better keep quiet about it, or people will start saying again that an evil spirit has stolen your mind, and that your head is as empty as a cave.”
“It is worse when a mischievous devil gets into your empty head,” someone hissed from around the corner. “That would be a laugh! The man would move like a puppet at the mercy of the demon and smash everything.”
Gisela did not hear the voice, but Estella heard many voices behind the golden doors.
“There are wings of angels, seraphim, cherubim, feet of giants and titans, basilisks, snakes, golden apple trees with monster roots,” she began to list all the creatures she discerned in the bas-reliefs on the door. “There’s even mandrake engraved here. It’s a sacred root. And then there are tritons and leviathans and sirens and mermaids and beautiful fairies. And it’s as if they’re all guarding some kind of evil, not treasure.”
“Are you sure you’re not confused,” Gisela frowned. “I remember mythology a little differently.”
“The six-winged angels are surely guardians of evil.”
“The treasury probably contains the bones of that sorcerer king your father defeated in battle in his youth,” Gisela boasted of her erudition. “He was known as a fearsome sorcerer, wasn’t he?”
Estella looked at her hand. Her fingers and palm were burned. There might be a dragon imprisoned in the treasury.
“Let me out!” A voice outside the door shrieked. “I will find you a demon consort to put sense back into your witch-devastated head.”
Once again Gisela heard nothing, and Estella became alarmed.
“Where are the keys to the treasury?” She inquired, noticing between the bas-reliefs on the door a number of keyholes at once.
“They are with the king’s key-keeper, perhaps.”
“But my father had him executed a month before he died.”
“So someone else has the keys.”
“Could you find out him for me? And find out why there are so many locks on the doors at once?”
“The last one is obviously! There must be a great treasure in there!”
“But the keys aren’t even in the king’s things! Look for them right now! I can only entrust such a delicate task as finding the keys to the treasure to you. You are like a mother to me.”
“I would have preferred to be a stepmother!” Gisela sighed and went to run the errand. Her black silk skirts rustled like fallen leaves. Beautiful, thirty years old, unmarried, and quite sensible, she would have been a far better heiress to the kingdom than the simple-minded princess who had supposedly had her mind stolen from her by elves. Estella sincerely wished the king had married her young tutor. Gisela would have made a model queen. Now, wearing all black, she resembled an elegant widow.
A chorus of eerie voices echoed from behind the door again. With Gisela’s departure they revolted. The cacophony of shrieking, growling, and squeaking grew stronger and stronger.
“Let us out! You don’t need the key! Just let us out!”
Estella ran her finger over the six-winged angel and burned herself again.
“I can’t,” she moaned.
“Open up, you fool!” Behind the door, they obviously thought she was faking.
“You say fool!” She was indignant. “Well, stay there!”
Estella was so furious that she walked briskly away. Her yellow-gold skirts rustled softly, and her auburn curls, intertwined in the summer, tickled her neck. And behind her, it was as if someone was breathing fire. Estella glanced behind her to see if the dragon was following her out of the treasury.
“Come back here!” The voices called out, exchanging anger for kindness. “Let us make peace! You want a dragon, we’ll give you one! You want a prince. We’ll bring him to you! And you want a faithful genie, and we’ll send one to your service!”
“And what is it in return?” Estella couldn’t stand it.
“Just let us go!” The voices repeated the same request. The golden door glowed with a sort of unnatural, magical radiance, as if beckoning to her. Behind it was hidden not only treasure, but living creatures as well. Estella was not so foolish as not to understand it. But how could they live there without food and drink? After all, the treasury had not been unlocked for decades. The king used to drop the gold he brought back from his marches into the treasury through a crack in the manticore’s mouth on the door. Now, it seemed, a claw had come through the crack.
Estella was frightened. The treasury was almost empty, and it was scary to enter the secret treasury because of the demons that lived there. What should we do?
“Let us out!” A piteous plea was heard.
Estella could not do it. For one thing she was afraid, and for another she had no key. She would have to think how to save the state without money. But she was not good at thinking. It was not for nothing that she was nicknamed a simpleton.
Who Stole the Princess’ Mind?
Outside the windows was a tournament. Estella watched from her high balcony. The aim of the contestants was to identify the sorcerer who had stolen the princess’s mind, and the reward was to be the princess’s hand.
Gisela had already warned her about the dowry hunters, so Estella watched indifferently. She didn’t believe that anyone could propose to her. Normally suitors scattered from her like mice from a kitten. All the ambassadors and distinguished overseas guests admired her from afar, but after the first dialogue it was clear that they disliked the princess.
“You are a child,” Gisela consoled her when the princess was sixteen years old. “As soon as you grow older, wiser, the matchmakers will come back. After all, their princes want to take as a wife a mature and wise beauty. She can help in the government of the country.”
Three years have passed since then. Estella is nineteen and no more desirable to suitors.
It was a pity that in Aluar a woman’s age was determined by her mind. Estella was treated like a naughty child. But Gisela, who was twelve years older than her apprentice, was considered quite ripe for marriage. She was inundated with marriage proposals. Alas, all the applicants for her hand were not kings, so she rejected them all.
“The advantageous place is only next to the throne,” she often repeated, taking Estella to etiquette lessons.
Estella often spilled tea on her dress, but Gisela neither scolded her nor mocked her for it.
“Try it again!” She allowed it, instead of laughing at the silly princess like the others.
Gisela studied the family legends of the Aluar’s dynasty carefully, too, because she wanted to captivate the king with her erudition.
“They say King Abraham was married to a star fairy, maybe that’s why you’re not smart enough,” she once remarked while reading another almanac. “Fairies’ children are either ugly or empty-headed.”
“Only they must have some sort of magical talent.”
“How do you know?”
Estella frowned.
“I don’t remember.”
“I must have heard the maid’s stories.”
Gisela began to study the Kings’ Almanac further.
“There seems to be a lot of fairy tales in here instead of truth,” she concluded. “Your Uncle King Clement, who disappeared so abruptly after his coronation, was supposedly married to a sorceress who could turn into a dragon.”
“Is it in a dragon?” Estella wondered. For some reason dragons had fascinated her more than handsome princes and suitors lately.”
“Yes! There she was. Queen Raymonda. For some reason, she’s considered both a wood elf and a dragon. It says here that she burned half the capital. Then she and her husband both disappeared. Aluar was without king and queen, so your father was invited to the throne. He was King Clement’s uncle. So I don’t know exactly who King Clement is to you. Let’s just call him your uncle.”
“It is all right! He’s my uncle,” Estella repeated bluntly. “Is he still alive?”
“I don’t think so! The dragon-wife most likely burned him and then burst out into the wild. He must have kept her with him by some sort of magical spell. Your father also seemed to know how to cast spells: he could make crops ripen earlier, he could call down rain on withered land, and he could send away enemy troops without even starting a battle or surrendering. One conversation with the enemy and they would leave, forgetting about the war. That’s why your father was so beloved by the people. He was the perfect king.”
“Just don’t call him a sorcerer. Sorcerers are feared and hated.”
“I didn’t say he was a sorcerer. He just had some kind of magical gift,” Gisela slammed the almanac shut.
“I don’t want him to pay for it with my mind,” Estella sighed.
“Oh, that’s all right. You’re pretty enough without a mind. Just don’t spill wine on your dress. You can see the scarlet drops on the pale silk.”
“So what is of it?” Estella thought they were just specks of purple.
“It’s not clean!”
“I think it’s beautiful. There are a lot of stars in the sky, and the wine makes my dress sparkle scarlet.”
Gisela sighed wearily.
“It is quite original, but not practical,” she muttered to herself.
“Does it say in the almanac that my name means star? I was named star, in honor of the Star Fairy who was supposedly my mother.”
“It is too bad you’re not a star fairy yourself.”
“Why is it?”
“Well, you don’t have wings,” Gisela twisted. She really wanted to say something else.
“So you’re saying the knights are only fighting for the right to marry my throne, not me?” Estella looked out the window. “I’m just an unnecessary appendage to the king’s scepter and staff and ermine robe?”
Gisela had said it so many times. Even the fool had already memorized it.
Something went wrong at the tournament. The duels turned into a massive battle. The herald escaped. The bouquet the princess is supposed to present to the winner was trampled. It felt as if a demon had strayed among the knights. Some dwarf creature had indeed galloped across the ring, whispering disgusting advice to the warriors, after which they did violence to themselves and to others. Some jumped on their swords. Some toppled a torch over themselves and were burned alive. Some attacked the ladies with their swords. Well, well, well!
“I’m not the dumbest girl in the kingdom!” Estella rejoiced.
Gisela, who hadn’t been looking out the window, didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Look!”
