Part Twenty
 

The returning princess patted the horse's head and urged it into a gallop.  She was somewhat behind schedule after being diverted several times from her proper route by one thing and another.

 Once she had been attacked by three robbers, whom she had managed to kill, but not before receiving a shocking blow to her beautiful face, leaving a bleeding wound that went down her nose and upper lip, causing blood to flow from both.

In the exhilaration of combat and her unlikely victory, the Princess had paid little heed to this injury. She had  even gloried in it  for a while, treating it as a rite of passage into a new phase of her life, in which she would be a warrior Queen, earning herself an imperishable name as a woman of valour.  Two days after the incident, she was less happy.  The  wound started to throb painfully and was obviously badly infected, oozing pus and causing the most intense agony whenerver she touched it, no matter how gently.  She could sense that the poison was invading the rest of her body, and cried out to the unseen Fairy for help.

A further day passed and the sick and suffering  girl could go not a step further, sinking  onto the grass at the roadside and falling into a feverish sleep.  When she woke up, her pains had gone.  She touched the injured face to find the skin smooth and unscarred. It would seem that the Fairy world had again taken her into their care after they had withdrawn it as a punishment for her cruel treatment of the young King.

She wished they could have left her just the faintest mark, though, to remind her of her great victory in the first ever fight of her life - the first of very many, she still hoped!  When she next had the chance to inspect herself in a looking glass, she was overjoyed to see that they had!

A day after this, the Fairy had appeared to her and told she could now mount her horse, which she had just decided to name Champion.  She was now near the borders of her own land and in two days' time, her long exile would be over.  The bird messengers told her of the preparations that had been made for her return, with a great festival in the Palace, as well as many separate fetes and fairs in her honour throughout all the land, with free food and wine for every citizen - as much as all could eat or drink.

She was trying to decide what to wear for this glittering pageant, and finally made her decision.  She would wear nothing!  As long as her father did not insist on her conforming once again to the norms of that society to which she had been so long a stranger and from which she had been exiled, she would grace the celebrations attired as she had been for the past year in the fair, and by this time greatly beloved,  garb of Mother Nature.

 Only when all the guests had departed would she finally and very reluctantly don once more the clothes which she had once loved and treasured and now despised, dreading their rough, unwelcome and abrasive touch on her long exposed skin - skin which had come to love the caresses  and blows, tender as well as harsh,  of the vernal breezes,  the winter rain and hail and the hot, searing burning of the summer sun.

As her horse, galloping in response to her urging, took her nearer and nearer to a joyful reunion with family and friends, she felt the air cooling her skin as the wind blew in her face, and the sun's rays on her back warming her with their kind and gentle heat, knowing that these physical sensations, these simple joys, which she had come to take for granted over these last wonderful months would soon be rare pleasures as she undertook once more, the duties of her royal rank and prepared for other solemn duties - those of a wife and future mother.  There was more than a hint of sadness to set against the increasing joy she felt at the prospect of  her reunion with her beloved Martha and the long hoped for and and expected engagement to Prince Adelbert.

This last year had transformed her.  The shy and frail Princess, afraid to show her nakedness even to her dearest friend,  who had set out on that fateful day had now become a self-confident woman, strong and proud of her body and not caring who knew it.  She had survived freezing cold and burning heat, been attacked by robbers and prevailed over them, and helped in the establishment of a new kingdom after first helping the brave young king slay the ogre that had been sucking the life blood out of his community for so many years.  Life was going to seem so terribly mediocre and deathly boring in the weeks and months ahead!

This was a young person whom danger and hardship had rendered as fearless as she was resourceful. All the arrogant and unthinking assumptions she had always held,  regarding her own fitness to command obedience and respect,  had been confirmed by the way she had triumphed over one peril after another.  She knew with an absolute cast-iron certainty that she was rightly destined for better things than mere wifehood and motherhood and was determined to secure for herself a great position in the counsels of the land, taking her place by the side of her father, her future husband and all the other great figures in the realm.

As she was considering all these matters, she crossed the border into her own land and soon began to pass people by the roadside, standing in their hundreds and thousands peering to catch a glimpse of her after her year's absence.  There was much surprised drawing in of breath, as the bronzed and supple figure of the naked Princess, with her long and unkempt mane of golden hair galloped past.  There were many cheers as well - especially from the men!

She rode through the night to make the Royal Palace just as dawn was breaking. As the exhausted horse approached the Palace gates she saw  that standing at the gateway was Martha, that well remembered and more than ever beloved childhood friend whose loyal attempt to follow her into exile had led to her enchantment by the Good Fairy.  Princess Sara let out a scream of joy, which rang and echoed around the Palace precincts, and leapt from Champion's back, her tanned and hardened little feet  landing nimbly and lightly on the ground in front of her friend.

She embraced her,  fiercely at first,  and then with  gentle and increasingly  longing tenderness, her hands stroking every inch of that beloved and much missed companion's warm and shapely body and receiving,  in return,  an equally loving and emotional response from the tearfully happy Martha .  It was many minutes before their lips drew apart, their arms released each other and they had their first real  long,  searching  and joyful look at one another in many a long month.

The Palace had been wakened by the sound of Princess Sara's delighted shout and the courtyard began to fill with people, chief among them her father and mother.  She kissed them and embraced as many of the gathered servants and courtiers as she could before being urged inside, to find herself no longer under the open skies, but back inside the Palace.  This was after a year, during which she had known no other roof than the dome of the heavens and had come dearly and irrevocably to love it.

The palace, spacious building though it was,  seemed to be closing in around her and crushing the breath out of her body.  She wanted to scream in sheer blind panic, but controlled herself.  The people around her were so happy to see her safely returned. This was not the time to be weak and, with all her formidable powers of will,  she beat down the urge to dash outside, mount her horse and ride away, never to return.

TO BE CONTINUED ?
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