Once upon a time in a land not so far away, there lived a beautiful young lady who didn’t know who she was. Although she knew her name quite well, as she had been called it all her life. She lived on the edge of a forest with her aunt, in a small wooden farmhouse, and though it sometimes seemed to her as though there should be more to her history, that was all she could remember. As far back in her past she could go, no other memory would appear, except for a constant thought in the back of her mind that somehow, sometime there was more to her world than just this little plot of land, the animals, and the deep enchanted forest.

Oh. I forgot to mention that the forest was indeed enchanted, like most forests are, didn’t I? You see, deep in the centre (as the tales go) there lived a wiley old wizard who could actually talk to the trees. In fact, if one listened closely at times it would sound as if the trees were talking back in a language old and forgotten by men. Or it could have just been the wind in the branches, but who wants to believe that?

“Never go into the forest, Mackenzie!” her aunt had cautioned her on many occasions (for that was the young lady’s name). “You know what happened to Hansel and Gretel!”

And yes, they had narrowly escaped death, the girl thought to herself, but that was because they were both quite clearly lacking any God-given common sense. Or sense of direction. “If I were in the forest,” she declared later, “I’d use a knife to mark the trees and make a path to follow.” She was an immensely sensible girl.

But this is all irrellevant, because she never did go into the forest because, as I’ve said, she was a sensible girl. Do sensible people enter enchanted forests? Not if they can help it! Enough cautionary tales have been told about enchanted forests to make certain that should a sensible person come across one, said person will pass by without even the slightest hint of curiosity. This is, co-incidentally, why there are so many more stupid people killed by sorcery that sensible people.

Now, she is not the only person that this tale involves. That would be boring. There is (as per tradition) a young prince. He too, was trapped in a place that he had always been, but he never had the thought that he was anything else but a prince. He hadn’t the imagination, for though he was in no way sensible, he was so boring a person that he didn’t need to be.

However, something happened to him one day that made him question everything that he had ever been taught, and all that he had ever learned. He read a book.

The castle he lived in – for a prince must have a castle – was a very large one, and had quite a few rooms that no one lived in anymore and were just ripe for a young man to explore. The only problem being the one young man that lived in the castle was too unimaginative to want to explore anything, and usually kept to himself in his room, watching the birds fly by. He never wondered how they flew. He knew they did, and that was enough for him.

However, one day quite against his will and also quite by accident, he was carrying some of his school books — history books! what a bore! — back to the old and hardly used library. His tutor (also a bore) had sent him there to get the next volume of the history of his country, which mostly involved faded pictures of old men with wierd hair using language no one could understand anymore, saying prodidgously important things about history-shaping matters, all of which was of the most pressing importance to his father who was also one of those old men with wierd hair who used the languages of antiquity. Strangely enough, the prince didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, and why couldn’t they have just had a nice civilized game of chess instead of all the bloody wars? (And if he had the slightest spark within him, he would have groaned at his own pun.)

These thoughts were running through his mind as he placed his book back on the shelf – stirring up a good hundred years of dust – and grabbed the next one. As he did, the prince noticed that behind the next volume in his history textbook there was a strange cubbyhole. Inside was nothing except a book, bound in leather, looking as if it had been stored there by another of those ancient men with strange hair. But this prince, lacking in imagination a he was, knew from all the fairy tales that his former nurse (who was fired for talking such nonsense) had told him, that something this old, hidden behind a bookshelf, bound in leather, written by ancient men with strange hair, must be hugely important and perhaps even interesting. So, with the expression of a man hoeing potatoes, he pulled the book out and gazed at the cover.

It said: “Imagination.” Of course, you must understand that it’s strange to hear a book speak, especially for someone who’s always thought books were meant to be read, not listened to. As one my brothers might say, “Buy a Walkman, dude,” but that’s neither here nor there. Regardless of what the prince thought the duty of a book should be, it still spoke to him, and he just about dropped it.

And then came the dilemma - forget about the book, put it back, pretend it never existed, and certainly couldn’t pronounce words, or open the cover and find out what was inside?

Perhaps the book had already affected him, or perhaps he did indeed have a spark of curiosity inside of him that even fifteen years of training to be king hadn’t snuffed, but he decided to open the cover.

There were no pages inside. It was a hollow shell of a book, with nothing but a quantity of grey powder inside. “Grey powder?” he thought to himself. “Grey powder?” Twice, because there was quite a bit of it.

Suddenly from the deepest part of his being came a sneeze, such as had never been sneezed in that library before that instant. The prince closed the book, climbed down the ladder he had used to reach the shelf his books were on, and looked around. Suddenly he was possessed of a mad desire to understand — to know what things were, and how things worked, and why things existed -

Rushing out to the stables, he saddled his royal horse. Suddenly he looked up and noticed birds flitting along, singing songs, and he wondered, “How do birds fly?” And was startled by the thought that had never before entered his mind.

Now, just because he was suddenly afflicted with a great deal of curiosity did not mean he was suddenly particularly brilliant; if he had, the prince would have known that riding a horse is fit to teach one only of how much a bow it can put in the profile of ones legs. Knowledge, of course, would have been better found in the library.

However, it isn’t quite that easy for a prince to go on a journey of the imagination into a world he has not yet tasted, especially if he has the stereotypically evil guardian looking over his shoulder. Imagine for a second sitting on a horse while your evil mother looks over your shoulder. She is very tall. Imagine also that she has evil powers that she can weild according to her evil will. She is very tall, and very powerful. You would get off the horse too.

“What are you doing!” she shouted at him (because evil people never speak softly unless threatening or offering poisoned apples, cf. Snow While). It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, and it meant “Get back to your studies!” Because even though she didn’t share her husband’s passion for people of the past with strange haircuts, she realized there was no better way to keep the prince and his father busy, and also make work for tutor, which would in turn make her look beneficient, thereby raising public opinion of her Niceship, which in the end was a bang-up PR job. At least that’s what her ad agency said.

Tags: fiction