10

'The Dead Princess'

A long time ago, when we all lived in the forest and none of us lived anywhere else, a group of sparrows was flying across the deepest and darkest part of the wood, aimlessly flying far from their normal haunts until they began their search for food.

As sparrows do, they paid little attention to anything, and were content to wrangle and chatter with each other, zipping here and darting there, commenting. 'It's quiet,' said one sparrow, and another answered, 'Yes, but it was much quieter yesterday,' and another promptly disagreed - and soon they were all agreeing or disagreeing.

Finally they circled through the air above the trees, listening to see how quiet things really were, in order to argue about it more accurately. The sparrows were now, as they had not properly realized before, almost over the palace of the king who ruled all that part of the forest. And there was no noise at all.

Which was odd indeed. For if the forest was normally full of noises the sparrows had known all their lives, the palace was a virtual beehive - horses trampling in their stables, the dogs woofing in the courtyards, the servants gossiping in the open spaces. Not to mention the pots rattling in the kitchen, the banging from the palace workshops, the bing bing bing of the blacksmith… Instead of all these sounds the sparrows should have heard, only silence met their ears.

Now, sparrows are as curious as cats, so naturally they all flew down to have a look - they had forgotten all about their argument. Down they came, and down, and down, and still they heard no noise. 'Let's get away,' said one of the younger sparrows. 'Something terrible has happened here, and if we get too close, it may happen to us as well.'

Of course no one paid any attention. Down they came, down, down, until they were within the walls of the palace. Some sat on the windowsills, some on the cobblestones, some on the rain gutters, some on the stable doors; and the only sounds they heard were those they made themselves.

Then they saw why. Everything else in the palace was asleep. The horses slept in the stables, the servants slept leaning against walls, the dogs slept in the courtyards. Even the flies on the doorknobs slept.

'A curse, a curse!' shouted the young sparrow. 'Let us go, let us go now, or we shall be just like them.'

'Stop that, now,' said one of the oldest sparrows, for he had finally heard something. This was the faint sound of a human voice, and not just anybody's, but the king's. W- is me, w- is me - that was what the king was saying to himself far up in one of the turrets, so despairingly that all of the sparrows immediately felt sad in sympathy.

Then another, very brave sparrow heard another sound. Someone was pacing up and down in the long building beside them. He slipped around the door to see who besides the king was left awake. The sparrow saw a long dusty room with an enormous table right in its center. Beams of light filtered down from the ranks of high windows, each falling in turn upon the back of a woman in a long rich gown who was slowly moving away from him. When she reached the rear of the dining room, for that was what the brave sparrow had entered, she turned about all unseeing and came back toward him. She wrung her hands together; she worked and knotted her brows. The sparrow's whole little heart went out to her, and he thought that if he could help this distraught beautiful lady in any way, he would do it on the spot. Of course, he knew that she was the queen - sparrows are intensely conscious of rank. When she saw him standing before the door, he cocked his head and looked at her with a glance so intelligent and kindly that she stopped in her tracks.

'Oh, little sparrow,' the queen said, 'if you only understood me.' The sparrow cocked his head even farther. 'If you understood me, I would tell you of how our daughter, Princess Rose, sickened and died. And of how her death took all the life from the palace - from our kingdom too, little sparrow. I would tell you of how all the animals first fell asleep, so soundly that we could not awaken them, and then of how all the people but the king and I succumbed to the same illness and fell asleep where they stood. And most of all, little sparrow, I would tell you of how the death of my daughter is causing the death of the kingdom, for as you see us now, we are surely all dying, every one, in palace and in forest, king and commoner, wolf and bear, horse and dog. Ah, I almost think you understand me,' she said, and turned her back on the sparrow and continued her sad pacing. The sparrow nipped around the heavy oaken door and joined his fellows. He whistled to them all to be quiet, and then told them exactly what the queen had said. When he had finished, one of the older sparrows said, 'We must do something to help.'

'Us? Us? Help?' the younger sparrows all began to twitter, hopping about in agitation. For it was one thing to witness interesting and entertainingly tragic events, another to try to do something about them.

'Of course we must help,' said the oldest sparrow.

'Help? Us?' the youngest sparrows twittered. 'What can we do?'

'There is only one thing we can do,' said the oldest sparrow. 'We must go to the wizard.'

Now, that really pitched them into consternation, and there was a lot of hopping about and quarreling. Even the youngest sparrows had heard of the wizard, but they had certainly never seen him. Besides that, the very mention of him frightened them. One thing everybody knew about the wizard was that while he was fair, he always made you pay for any favor he did you.

'It is the only thing,' said the oldest sparrow.

Where does he live? Is it far? Can we find him? does he still live? Will we get lost? A thousand chirping questions.

'I once saw where he lived,' said the oldest sparrow. 'And I believe that I can find it again. But it is a long way away, clear across the forest and on the other side.'

'Then let us follow you now,' said the brave sparrow, and they all lifted up and circled away from the dreadful quiet of the palace.

For hours they flew over the thick trees and wide meadows of the forest, over foaming rivers and wandering valleys. Over the caves of bears and the dens of foxes, over hollow logs where ants dozed, over packs of wild ponies asleep on rock cliffs.

Finally they saw a little curl of smoke coming up through the heads of the trees, and the oldest sparrow said, 'That is the wizard's house.' And they began to circle down, down, down through the trees. And finally saw a nondescript little wooden house with two little windows set beside the front porch.

One by one the sparrows landed on a branch outside one of the windows; when the branch was so full of sparrows it bent, they landed on the next higher; and so on, until sparrows filled the entire tree. Then they all began to sing at once.

The door of the little wooden cottage opened, and the wizard stepped out into the light. He was an old, old man, with skin the color of milk. The dark robes he wore were covered with the moon and stars; once they had been impressive, but now the robes were so threadbare you could see the fabric right through the stars. He looked up at the tree with his clear old eyes and said, 'I see that the sparrows have come to visit. What do they want, I wonder?'

Then the oldest sparrow looked at the brave sparrow, and this fellow spoke up - his voice may have trembled, because the wizard frightened him, and now that they were actually here he wished they were somewhere else, but he told the wizard the entire story, just as the queen had told it to him.

'I see,' the wizard said. 'And you wish me to give life back to Princess Rose?'

'That is right,' said the sparrows.

'It is not difficult,' said the wizard, 'but you must agree to sacrifice something before I will do it.'

Then all the sparrows began to chirp and protest.

'Would you give up your wings?'

Another loud wave of twittering. 'No, that is impossible,' said the oldest sparrow. 'Without our wings we could not fly.'

'Would you give up your feathers?'

The sparrows' noises were even louder after this question. 'No, we cannot,' said the oldest sparrow. 'Without our feathers, we would freeze to death in the winter.'

'Would you give up your song?'

The sparrows were quiet for a moment, and then burst out louder than before. 'Yes,' the sparrows said. 'That will be our sacrifice.'

'It is done,' said the wizard. 'Return to the palace.'

As one bird, their nervousness giving them added speed, they lifted off the tree and wheeled about over the wizard's cottage and began the long flight across the forest.

Hours later, when they reached the palace, all was as it had been - all the inhabitants of the palace save the queen and king still slept. The sparrows looked at each other uneasily, wondering if the wizard would take their sacrifice but give nothing in return.

Then, from down under the palace, they heard a dusty little voice calling: Momee! Daddee! Momee! Daddee!

And a great wooden door set right down into the ground opened up, and a little girl wandered out, rubbing her eyes.

So the horses woke up in the stables, the dogs woke up in the courtyards, the flies spun awake off the doorknobs, the servants stirred and yawned; and in the deep forest, foxes too yawned and stretched, bears shook their massive heads, wolves stirred beneath trees. At that instant every sparrow in the palace began to feel a transformation within himself: just as if a cold hand had thrust itself down in their innards and were moving bits and pieces about. Their minds grew fuzzy; their bodies plumped out, altered in substance, their beaks softened and spread, their feet grew.

And instead of birds, now there were frogs on the windowsills, frogs on the railings, frogs hopping on the stones.

Fortunately the king witnessed this transformation and understood what had happened. He raised his arms in thanksgiving and said that from that day forth all frogs in his kingdom would be protected, for once they had been sparrows who had gone to the wizard to return the life of his daughter.

''And that is why frogs croak, and why they hop,' said one sparrow to another on a branch in the wood. 'They were once birds, but were tricked by a great wizard, and now they are still trying to sing and still trying to fly. But they can only croak and hop.''