…The young prince was five years old when, one spring morning, his queen mother called for him in the garden. She was so beautiful with her red dress and her long braided hair. She gave him gifts, a paintbrush and a pallet with colors as well as something she called “easel”.
“I will show you how to fill the white of the canvas with colors. I will show you how to keep your favorite images forever with you.”
With the sundown the garden had become magically a painting and, for the first time, a smile had found its way to the little prince’s face… … The years were going by and the prince continued to grow up and become more and more handsome. Painting was his only consolidation. However, now he did not only draw what he saw but all else that was invisible to others. All the things that could exist should the world was different. Had he ever stopped, it would be only to dream. For example, if one would take a closer look at the sky, one would clearly see that inside a cloud heavy with raindrops a fairytale castle was hiding, an entire city full of life. A city in red.
The princess with no name also loved the color red. Of all the princesses in the stories of colors her grandmother told her, the one with the Red Princess was her favorite. Was it because it was the first one sheever told her?
These stories came from some forgotten paintings her grandmotherfound one day in her enchanted trunk. They were all about a girl indifferent ages. A beautiful little girl with long, dark hair that she made intobraids that formed halos or crowns as she grew up.
“Who is she?” the princess had asked her grandmother
“The Princess in Red!”
And the story began. The Princess in Red slept in a red bed with red sheets. She used red notebooks and red pencils. In the mornings she would eat strawberry marmalade and drank cherry juice.
She liked watermelons, tomatoes, the morning sun and the sundown, poppies, red anemones and red roses. She was crazy for red cherries and red grapes. She always wanted a taste of the sweet red wine kept in the Palace.
Her carriage’s seats were all red and she was friends with a robin bird that had a human’s voice. …“What is the reddest of them all?” her grandmother asked her one day while reading her a story from a book that was about a red house. The princess without a name never found the answer.
Until that day: when she saw the pomegranates the prince had painted. Yes, if one would juice them, their juice would be the reddest of them all.
With that thought she approached him without hesitation and they talked. It was just that a lump in the throat was stopping the little prince from asking her what was tormenting him:
“Did she sleep well? She didn’t have any problems with the bean? Is she a real princess?”
But yet again he asked nothing as the princess without a name started telling him about her enchanted balloons. He was so charmed by her story that he found himself abstracted while listening. A smile appeared on his face again.
The princesses’ grandmother had taught her how to make a balloon out of red string and make it fly. The princess without a name must have been 7-8 years old by then. She went out to the garden full of flowers and took in her hands, for the first time, one of her grandmother’s enchanted balloons. After that she started making her own…
She made a balloon and another one in heart shape and made them fly. A pigeon came and stood next to her on a tee. Since then it kept her company during her play hours. After they came to know one another it revealed to her that it could talk. And so, she also had a bird friend just like the Princess in Red had her robin bird.
They both grew up, bird and girl and took their separate ways. Now the princess without a name was friends with the clouds, the trees that blossomed for her, the moon… She would make little balloons shaped like angels and would send them to the skies…
Any other time she would go to the sea looking for redfish, but once she would catch some she would feel sorry for them and toss them back into the water. She however gathered some pretty seashells which her grandmother called “crimsons” and with those her grandma painted other red threads that would not fade in the water and one could make from them small boats that would reach the depths of the sea. Her grandmother said that she even had once met a fairytale mermaid and she had the reddest hair, just like her threads!
…A magical sense had filled the air above them, a cloud that smelled like strawberry and cinnamon.
And then the little prince dared to ask her about the thing that tormented him:
“Was she a real princess?”
…I am afraid I will have to disappoint you!
“I am a real princess on our little house in the woods!”
“And your queen grandmother?”
“My grandmother was the queen of the house.”
“And the palace?”
“Oh, that was before. My grandmother was a queen there as well. But she could not become cruel-hearted so she left. She took my mother and they left, away in the woods where we live now. Her king father wanted to marry her to a prince but she wanted the gardener’s son. My dad!
The king said that he would never allow such a thing and that she and her gardener would spend the rest of their days in the palace’s deepest dungeon. Separate from one another!
My grandmother who was then not a grandmother but a beautiful queen read to my mother a book: -How to escape from the palace with your gardener- and before she was finished reading, my mother made a suitcase, threw her crown away and waited for the right moment…
A moonless night, both mother and daughter, gardener and son, fled and went away, far away, to the far side of the deepest woods. The king could never find them. He became more and more cruel-hearted. Anyone who had the means would leave his kingdom, until one, who was even crueler than he was, took him for everything, using armies and cannons. And since then, no one ever heard from him again
On the other hand, in the small house in the woods, joy and happiness blossomed.
However now, the little prince felt misery itself. Nevertheless, he did not wish to hide anything from her so he opened his heart. He told her of the evil wizard’s curse…
…But, I do not want to keep you on the edge of your seats
The little prince and the princess, who now had a name, since she said it for the first time in the prince’s garden, being lost in the aroma of strawberry and cinnamon and with her own hear fluttering, both made the choice to become swallows.
A big red balloon from the grandmother’s thread united the palace with the little house in the woods forevermore.
They made their nest in the palace, on the king and queens’ balcony. Each autumn they would leave to return every spring, giving them countless grandchildren who were, as you can imagine, swallow princes.
The families of the two love stricken swallows would spend many, many hours in the fragrant palace garden. The father gardener of the bride had it filled with pomegranate trees and all the flowers in red one could Imagine.
…No matter how much it pained them both in the beginning, the two families could not help but feel happy as never before every spring when they would listen to the swallows’ chirps.
They would hold in their hands, gently, small eggs and then newborn swallows.
Such happiness is beyond anyone’s dreams.
The years went by. Despite their happiness, the king and the queen yearned to see their child’s face. The same was true for the parents of the princess with a name.
And then, in an April’s night, in the strangest heat, the miracle Happened…
As they would learn later on, the evil wizard fell victim to his own arrogance, transforming himself into a mouse, just so he could prove that no feat was out of his reach and became the dinner of a puss in boots!
The puss in boots became most famous. His story became known to the entire world and even today is told by parents to their children…
Thus suddenly the two swallows became human. Their young, two girls and three boys found themselves crawling on the greenest grass. A big celebration took place that night. It lasted days and days as princes from all the country’s corners came to celebrate, transformed into boys and girls again. The palace and the woods were filled forevermore with their cheerful voices…
As for the princess with a name, I shall that name a secret. For you see, no one must find out, for then evil spells will fall upon the kingdom. And that is something none of us wants. But I will tell you the grandmother’s secret. She was the Princess in Red! I will also tell you her words of wisdom so can think about them carefully:
“Someone who is wise enough to soil his hands
with dirt sees very often the endless sky’s blue as
all the colors that cover it during sundown.
For the best time to soil yourself with dirt is during sundown”.