August 15, 2018
Meet Joy
Joy is the princess of the Southern Kingdom in The Princess and the Swans.
She loves her family; her father, mother, and eleven older brothers. Can you imagine having eleven older brothers?
Joy makes friends easily and is loved by everyone around her.
One day her happy home becomes sad. Her mother, the Queen, gets sick.
Her father hires a nurse named Wanda from the village who is supposed to be the best in the land, but she is mean to the children behind their father’s back. Joy says that all healers are distant when they are working. Her brothers distrust this woman, one going so far as to call her a witch!
Then something happens to lead Joy on a quest:
Near midnight, Joy was jolted awake by a shriek. She threw on her robe and raced to her courtyard window. She shoved the heavy drapery out of the way. As it fluttered closed behind her, she saw her mother’s nurse illuminated in the brilliant beams of the full moon, laughing noiselessly at the sky. Beautiful white swans emerged from various places about the courtyard, fluttering their wings oddly as if they were cygnets just learning to fly. So sad was the plight of the pitiful creatures that tears crept down Joy’s cheeks.
Wanda’s laughter stopped and she circled her hand above her head then threw it at the gathering swans. Joy strained to hear the woman’s words in the otherwise noiseless night. “Fall apart and you will fall away. Enter sight of this palace and you will fall away. Cause me pain; I curse you to endure days of endless flight. You must stop at the rock by the wood every day before the sun sinks, if your feet are not there, you will die. Nothing will break my enchanter’s curse!” She crooned, “now fly!”
The swans looked bewildered and kept examining their wings and bodies, but nonetheless, obeyed her command and flew in the direction of the Sea Wood.
Joy watched the lovely feathered creatures until they were out of her sight completely; tears of sympathy had washed her gentle face. Wanda was no longer in the courtyard. Joy felt as if she were in a dream, and once returning to her bed, cried herself to sleep.
The following morning, Joy was so greatly vexed by what she believed to have been a dream the previous night that she was awake at dawn with a pressing need to ask someone else’s opinion of her dream. She didn’t want to wake little Rosa, her chambermaid, so instead she went searching for one of her brothers. No one could tell her where her brothers were. None of the princes were where they were supposed to be. Only Wanda had an explanation – she told the king and Joy as they ate breakfast that the princes had abandoned the palace last night because they no longer wished to be there. Joy did not believe this and said so. It was the first time she had spoken against Wanda. Joy was surprised when her own father told her that Wanda was obviously right and not to challenge her word.
“I will find them; the princes did not abandon their king and queen and sister!” Joy resolved. At this a smile crept up the corners of Wanda’s mouth.
The king said nothing, only sighed, declared he had lost his appetite, and retreated to his chambers.
Joy was determined to find her brothers and prove that they would never abandon their family. All of her brothers’ horses were in the stable. None of the guards or servants had seen them leave. Only they were not in the palace and only Wanda said she had seen them leave. Joy took her horse, a pretty white mare, and with a bag in her saddle pouch with bread, fruit, and cheese, left the palace in search of her brothers.
Be sure to read The Princess and the Swans to find out what happens to Joy. Will she find her brothers? Can she bring them back home?
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart