The Very Little Princess: Zoey's Story (5 page)

Which means
, Zoey thought,
I could go back inside and ask my mom and Hazel where the throne room is
. It probably wouldn’t do any good, though. Grown-ups didn’t seem to remember such things.

She didn’t want to go back to the kitchen with its heavy air, anyway. So she picked up the doll and looked around. If she set her mind to it, she could find a place as wonderful as that.

Sunlight and shadows. Green lace. Soft carpet.

Her eyes scanned the front yard and the gravel road. She walked around the side of the house. The backyard went on and on, edged by the lilacs she had noticed before. And just beyond the lilacs lay woods. Deep woods.

Sunlight and shadows?

Was Princess Regina’s “throne room” in the woods?

If it was, how would she ever find it?

Zoey was a city girl. She hadn’t spent much time in the country. Such a large collection of trees didn’t appeal to her at all. They looked forbidding. Once her Girl Scout troop had gone camping in a state park. The main thing she remembered from that was mosquitoes … and how dark it had been in the woods!

What would she do if Regina’s throne room was hidden among the trees?

Then she saw something that made the skin along her arms tingle. In the back corner of the yard, just at the edge of the woods, but not in it, stood an enormous weeping willow tree. It rose and rose and rose, then each branch stretched out wide and bent back down to the grass. The leafy branches cascading to the ground looked exactly like green lace!

Zoey popped the last of her sandwich into her mouth, wiped the buttery crumbs on her shorts, and headed for the weeping willow.

When she stepped between the delicate branches into the hushed silence beneath the tree, she didn’t even have to ask Princess Regina if she had the right place. She knew she did. There had never been a more perfect throne room!

“Finally,” the little doll said, as though Zoey had been extremely slow getting there, instead of walking right to it the way she had. “Now … you can put me on my throne.”

It didn’t take Zoey long to pick out the throne, either. At the base of the trunk was a large mossy rock. The top of the rock was indented, forming a velvety seat. At least it formed a seat for a very small doll.

Zoey set Princess Regina down carefully on the rock. Clearly she had guessed right, because the doll settled right in and pointed a royal finger. “Flowers,” she commanded. “Go gather flowers.”

Relieved to have gotten the first part right, Zoey curtsied obediently.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, and she went off in search of flowers.

Princess and Servant

You may be wondering right about now why Zoey is so willing to obey a doll, especially one who stands only three and one-quarter inches tall. Surely not because she is afraid of such a tiny thing. Not because she has no mind of her own, either.

There is a reason, to be sure, and it comes out of something I haven’t yet told you about Zoey.

Actually, there are many things I haven’t told you about Zoey, about her mother … about
everybody in this story. Lives are complicated things, you see, and the storyteller’s task, as much as any other, is to make them appear simple and easy to understand. In order to do that, I choose. I choose what to tell you, when to tell it, and what to leave out. It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.

For instance, I could have told you that Zoey’s favorite color isn’t really pink, it’s purple. She used to like pink when she was a little girl, but now she prefers purple. And her mother has never noticed that she has grown beyond pink to purple. That’s just the way her mother is. She loves every inch of Zoey, but her mind is very … well, perhaps the best word is
full
. Her mind is so full, in fact, that she often doesn’t notice things like Zoey’s growing from pink to purple.

But Zoey’s favorite color isn’t part of this
story. Not really. So let’s talk about something that is.

For as long as Zoey can remember, she and her mother have had a favorite game. They call it Princess and Servant. One pretends to be a princess and orders the other about. For instance, the princess says, “Go find me a sip of nectar so sweet it will curl my toes.” And the servant comes back with a thimble full of the brine from the jar of sweet pickles in the refrigerator. Then they turn the game around, and the other one is the princess for a time, asking, perhaps, for a puff of wind.

As you can guess, Zoey’s mother learned the game from Princess Regina. What she didn’t learn from Regina, though, was changing the roles about. The doll, as I’ll bet you can also guess,
never
in her long existence has played the servant.

Anyway, Zoey has always loved playing Princess and Servant with her mother. So when Regina announced that she was a princess and that Zoey was her servant, Zoey fell in with the idea happily. Perhaps the time will come when Zoey will decide that she has plans for her life beyond being a servant to a tiny doll. But that isn’t going to happen just yet.

So let’s look at what
is
going to happen.

The last time we saw Princess Regina, she was sitting high on her mossy throne. And that’s where we’ll find her still, on her throne, gazing about.

Ah
, she is thinking,
how fine it is to be awake and a princess!

How fine it was, also, to have her servant off gathering flowers for her. She
loved
flowers! They grew, she was certain, especially for her.

She also loved sitting on her throne,
watching the sunbeams play hide-and-seek among the dancing leaves.

But best of all, she loved being in charge once more. Nothing could be better than being a princess and awake and in charge!

Regina smoothed her gauzy pink dress.

This particular giant girl made an especially obedient servant. Princess Regina was glad about that. Some of the servants she’d had in the past had not always been quite so willing.

Regina frowned and shook her head thinking about those girls.

But then she looked about again and smiled once more.

At the dancing leaves.

At the glimmering sunlight.

At her mossy throne.

Silence wrapped her like a comforting quilt. At least the silence would have been
comforting if she hadn’t been growing a bit uneasy.

A light breeze riffled the lacy walls of her throne room, making only the faintest whisper. A disagreeably large bee bumbled by. It buzzed in front of Regina’s face for an instant. Then, realizing its mistake, it moved on.

Leaving Regina alone.

Entirely alone.

She squirmed on her throne. Surely her
servant didn’t need to take so long at her task!

What was this giant girl’s name, anyway?
Oh … that’s right. Zoey
.

Zoey should have been back by now.

When the girl did come back, she was going to get a good scolding for being gone so long. Not a severe one. Regina didn’t want to see more of those messy tears. But she would certainly be firm.

After all, why should anyone need this much time just to gather a few flowers?

Unless …

Unless …

Unless she didn’t intend to come back!

Regina frowned again and tried to peer through the wall of leaves.

Where was Zoey, anyway? How could she be so thoughtless as to go off and leave her for so long?

So thoughtless and so cruel.

Now, you and I know Zoey. We know perfectly well that she would never go off and leave a doll that had just sneezed in her hand. If she is taking a long time—and she is—it’s because she wants to do an exceptional job of pleasing the princess. Or because something else has called her away for a time. Or both.

But Princess Regina didn’t yet know Zoey as well as we do. And besides, she had her own reasons for suspicion.

She remembered another giant girl.

Her name was Rose, and one of the things the princess remembered about Rose was that she was a fantastic playmate.

She carried Regina with her everywhere, and together they always had the finest adventures. Rose climbed trees and waded in the
creek in the woods and spun her bicycle in the gravel road. She danced to any music that floated by on the air, and once, under a full moon, she even slipped out of her bedroom window and scooted down the rose trellis to dance in the silent moonlight.

Rose had been more fun than any girl the little doll had ever known, and most of the time she kept the tiny doll close … in a pocket or tied on a ribbon around her neck, or sometimes just cupped in her hand.

Except that sometimes—Princess Regina never quite understood how it happened—sometimes, Rose forgot. About Princess Regina, that is.

And when she forgot, she simply disappeared.

Vanished!

So that Princess Regina would find herself in the crack between the couch cushions, or
on the damp basement floor, or even sitting on a clod of dirt in the garden … alone.

Once the princess sat on her mossy throne beneath the weeping willow tree and watched the light fade in the lacy leaves. She watched the dark gobble up everything, the leaves, her mossy throne, even her own hands clenched in her lap.

When such a thing happened, Princess Regina became angry. Utterly furious. Then she grew frightened.

And then she went still.

First she’d feel alone in the world. And then she would feel nothing at all … until she found herself again in the hands of a giant girl, a giant
weeping
girl.

Princess Regina had never understood why being able to move and see and hear sometimes slipped away from her or what made her come awake again. But she was sure of one thing—
when she was left alone for too long, it happened.

Her breath would begin to come in short gasps.

The way it was coming now.

Her arms and legs would tingle.

Just as they were tingling now.

Her whole body would start to feel heavy. So heavy she could barely move it.

And then … and then …

“Zoey!” Regina called. Or she tried to call, but no sound—not even a tiny one—came from her mouth.

She could no longer blink, no longer move, no longer form a thought. Not even a frightened one. Nor even an angry one.

And then the princess was a doll again. Only that. A tiny doll made of fine china.

Beautiful, but completely still.