Make a good fate girl

Author: Wu Danru
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: Once upon a time, there was a princess who couldn’t sleep all night. Since she realized she was no longer a child, she had been suffering from insomnia. On her sixteenth birthday, her king and queen told her that, like all the princesses in neighboring countries, she must find a brave prince, capture his heart, and ask him to become her king, to defeat a thousand-year-old dragon with three heads and six stinging tails.
How could she capture a prince’s heart with love? The princess asked. The queen sighed and didn’t answer, glancing at the king, who had almost forgotten how to speak. “I don’t know either,” she said. “My mother didn’t teach me, and her mother didn’t teach her any spells or magic to follow. Once upon a time, I was a princess too, and I was ordered to find a prince who could defeat the thousand-year-old dragon. So I found your father, a prince.”
“But he, he said he loved me, making me think I had captured his heart with love. He refused to go find the dragon for me. He was too lazy, not strong enough, not clever enough. He’d say he was too busy or that he didn’t have the mood to go on an expedition, just like my mother and my grandmother’s husband—they didn’t go, so that dragon has been alive for at least a thousand years, or maybe several thousand. Our hope is in you. You must find a prince to defeat the dragon for us and bring us honor. If you can’t find one, we can help you look.”
For everyone’s sake, the princess decided to join the other princesses at the ball to look for a prince. She sat on a small stool, waiting for a prince to notice her delicate face and elegant dress. The princess quickly found a dance partner and a date. Although the corset tied so tightly around her waist made it hard for her to breathe and the false eyelashes made her eyes tear up, the tiny high heels ruined her heels and toes. The princess was a girl with a quick temper, so every date she went on was every dance partner she had.
She heard the prince came from a wealthy country, and she was so excited she felt dizzy. After dancing just one song, she immediately agreed to go on a date with him to the garden. Under the shade of the trees, the prince passionately kissed the princess. Oh, poor princess, when she lost her first kiss, she thought this was how international etiquette worked between men and women—the king and queen had never taught her. The prince said to the princess, “It’s an honor to know you, because you are the kind of princess every prince dreams of. In my treasure chest, there is a magic wand that turns stone into gold. My ancestors passed down a secret spell to me: If I find a true princess, the wand will begin to work.”
At her second ball with the prince, he pointed to another princess and said to her, “Look, you should tighten your waist even more and learn to be graceful like her. That’s what a womanly princess should be. A true princess should dance as lightly as a swallow.” The princess did as she was told. If she hadn’t almost fainted one day because she couldn’t breathe, she might have become as thin as an eight-inch waist like some other princesses.
Looking at the bruised abdomen in the mirror, the princess sighed and said to herself, “I don’t know what love is, but I don’t love this prince. Every time I see him, it makes me more miserable.” The princess, no longer willing to attend any more balls with the prince, decided to go to different balls to find a prince.
The second prince was very gentle, and for the first time, the princess realized she wasn’t ugly when she looked into his eyes. One night, they sat together in the rose garden watching the moon. When his lips were about to touch her snow-white neck, the princess asked if he would kill the three-headed, six-tailed dragon for her. Suddenly, the prince hid under the chair and trembled. “I’ve always been afraid of hearing dragon stories since I was a child.” The princess sighed and left in her high heels, the prince crying behind her. All the grasshoppers and frogs in the bushes immediately stopped playing romantic tunes.
Determined to focus on her future, the princess found the third prince. When she left the dim ball, she realized the handsome prince was wearing high heels even taller than hers. His face, trying to act cool after tripping, looked very funny. The princess laughed all night and couldn’t sleep.
The fourth prince was actually an older king of a small country. He used the lighting to hide his fish-like wrinkles and made up fantastical stories about his life. By chance, the princess’s maid visited his country and learned he already had a wife and many children.
The fifth prince asked the princess for money on their third date. Out of pity, the princess lent him her money box. Soon after, she found out the prince had bought a new horse, and the horse was carrying another princess.
The sixth prince was well-read, and the princess was captivated by his eloquent words. He recited a sonnet from “The Prince Who Slew the Dragon” to her and wrote a book titled “Sixty-Four Ways to Kill a Dragon,” training her to be a proper, traditional princess. But when the princess asked, “When will you kill the dragon for me?” the prince told her he had never learned to ride a horse or use a sword. Just then, a cockroach flew past their feet, and the prince shouted, “Kill it! I can tell you how my mother deals with these vermin. Quickly, take off your shoes!”
The seventh prince seemed very capable. His father was just a beggar, but he had built his own kingdom and become a king himself. The princess thought, “Now I’ve finally found a brave prince.” The prince tried to take the princess on “national diplomacy” to other kingdoms to build his reputation. After much effort, the princess finally found a chance to ask him if he would kill the three-headed, six-tailed dragon for her. The prince looked at his packed schedule and said, “No time, no time. I still have twenty dragons to deal with myself. Your dragon isn’t in my plans. If you love me, you should learn some ninja techniques and set some poison traps to eliminate a few for me. That way, I’ll be much lighter.”
Disappointed, the princess turned and walked away, unable to sleep all night again. When the moon reached its zenith, the queen suddenly appeared at her bedside and said, “Daughter, have you found a prince yet? My neighbor, Princess Hoa, and Princess Mi, have already found partners long ago. I didn’t give birth to you to be any uglier than others! Stop picky!”
“But no prince is willing to kill the dragon!”
“It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter! I thought your father would kill the dragon for me too, but no. Oh, he can’t even take care of a horse. That horse can’t run anymore; it couldn’t even bear his weight long ago.”
“But what if I can’t find a prince to kill the dragon?”
“You can just find any prince. Maybe they’ll have a princess, just like all our ancestors. When the princess grows up, she can find another prince to kill the dragon. Then it won’t be your problem anymore.”
The princess was stubborn and didn’t give up. She began to learn horseback riding and swordsmanship, hoping to find a true white horse prince in the dim lights of the ball. Unfortunately, the eighth prince was strong but impossible to control; the ninth prince suffered a concussion from a backflip while boasting about his riding skills; the tenth prince was defeated by the princess’s sword and told her that no princess could ever truly “win” over a prince.
Frustrated, the princess snapped and rode her horse wildly, jumping over all the kingdom’s fences marked “Dragons Present, Dangerous.” She held her sword and searched for the three-headed, six-tailed dragon. The closer she got to its massive figure, the faster her heart beat. Yet, the closer she got, the smaller it seemed. It was a phantom dragon. By the time she reached it, it was as small as a Barbie doll.
The dragon looked at her with gentle eyes and said, “Please don’t be so scary. If you had asked me to leave politely just now, I would have welcomed you nicely.” The princess and the dragon became friends. Strictly speaking, it was just a beautiful little chameleon, but it could perform some magic. The bigger you feared it, the farther away it would appear, which explained why historical records claimed it was taller than Mount Everest.
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