The Princess Rules

‘You never kidnapped me,’ Florizella pointed out.

The man shrugged. ‘Hardly worth the effort,’ he said. ‘A princess ransom? Not worth saddling up the horses. Now – is that him? Hand him over!’

‘Never! He goes nowhere without us!’ Florizella threatened. She meant the man to understand that he would have to fight them for Prince Courier but, instead, it seemed he was perfectly agreeable to the idea of kidnapping them all.

‘Just as you like,’ he said. ‘Since you’re all here.’

And the man behind him giggled. ‘Three for the price of one!’

‘Who are you?’ a kidnapping woman asked. ‘Before we go to all the trouble of seizing you?’

‘Princess Florizella and Prince Bennett,’ Courier told them.

‘Oh! The old princess.’ She was very unimpressed.

Florizella looked at Bennett. ‘Are there rules for old princesses too?’

He nodded. ‘It’s even worse for old ones. They have to live with no one but cats in a wood.’

While the first man kept an arrow pointed at Courier’s head, the others took the ponies’ reins and tied Florizella up in knots, before lashing Prince Courier to his saddle. As they turned towards Bennett the prince made his horse rear up on its hind legs; it was just brilliant. The kidnappers jumped back in fright, just for a moment, and Bennett whirled his horse round and dashed away.

‘He’s running away?’ Courier looked at Florizella. ‘Running away isn’t very princely! Shouldn’t he have fought everyone and freed us?’

‘Thinking not fighting,’ Florizella advised him. ‘He’ll have gone to get help.’

Courier turned to the kidnappers. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.

Florizella was surprised. The Princess Rules were very clear that ‘Princesses Live Off Air’ and ‘Princes Feast Like Kings’. So she understood that Courier had a right to get anything he wanted. But she didn’t expect him to be whining for biscuits in the middle of a kidnap attempt.

‘I want sweeties,’ he said. ‘Sweeties!’

Florizella was beginning to find Prince Courier most unheroic. ‘Get a grip, Courier,’ she hissed.

‘I won’t go anywhere without sweeties!’ he said, and he opened his mouth to make a great loud bellow.

‘No crying,’ Florizella reminded him. ‘It’s in the Prince Permit – no cry babies.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ he said, as one of the kidnappers produced a huge bag of sweeties and thrust them into Courier’s hands. ‘See? It gets you what you want. Anyway, I think I should be allowed to express my feelings.’

‘No cry babies,’ repeated Florizella, who was feeling that there was something to be said for the old Prince Permit, if it kept small brothers quiet.

‘You’ve got to loosen the rope,’ Courier whined to the kidnappers. ‘What’s the good of me having a bag of sweets, if I can’t eat them?’

Sighing, because it had been no more than ten minutes but they were already fed up of looking after children, the kidnappers loosened the rope, got on their horses, and led the way deep into the Purple Forest. Florizella followed them, her hands and feet tied to her saddle on her most dejected pony Jellybean. Courier’s pony was jogging behind, with Courier eating sweets so clumsily that he was dropping as many as he ate.

The kidnappers had a hideaway camp near the top of a mountain, deep in the forest, well hidden from any rescue party. As they reached it a kidnapper said to Florizella, ‘Ha-ha-ha! Nobody will ever find you here.’

‘And,’ said another, tying her to a tree, ‘you will never escape.’

Florizella, who had not forgotten the dagger in her boot, said nothing. But Prince Courier, who was tied beside her, started to whimper.

‘Oh, do be quiet,’ Florizella said crossly. It wasn’t very nice of her but she was learning to be a big sister, and she had only had a brother for three days. ‘Crying won’t help.’

‘But I’m cold!’ Prince Courier cried in a whiny voice. ‘Why don’t you light a fire?’

‘In case there is a rescue party and they see the smoke,’ one of the kidnappers said.

‘Just a little fire, and there’ll be hardly any smoke,’ Courier pleaded. ‘Or I’ll cry and cry and then I’ll probably be sick.’

‘Oh, all right, if you’re such a softie,’ the kidnapper said.

Florizella thought of telling Courier to man up; but she truly believed bravery was something that anyone could do. Same as being a bit weedy – boys and girls could be either, or a bit of both, whatever they thought best. Besides, now that the kidnappers had found some dry wood and lit a fire, it was rather cosy, and Courier had stopped complaining and fallen asleep.

The kidnappers found it cosy too, for first they warmed themselves, then they wrapped themselves up in blankets and lay down before the fire, and within moments everyone was fast asleep.

All except Florizella.

And, as it turned out, all except Florizella and her little brother. For Courier had been pretending to be asleep. In fact, he had been wide awake all along. ‘Have you still got your dagger?’ he whispered in a very different voice from the whiny spoiled-prince voice he had been using.

‘Yes, of course,’ Florizella said, surprised. ‘Are you all right now? Don’t want sweeties or a fire lit?’

‘Course I am! I was always all right. Can you get the dagger out of your boot and cut the knots at my wrists?’

Prince Courier wriggled backwards to his sister and held out his bound arms. She bent over her feet and got the dagger from her boot with her teeth. Then holding the hilt between her feet, and with Courier leaning backwards over the blade, they managed to saw through the ties that bound his hands. Then it was quick work, once his hands were free, for him to take the dagger and cut through the ropes that tied his feet together.

‘Me now!’ Florizella hissed at him. ‘Women and children first!’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll gallop off and get help like Bennett. You stay here, tied up, like a princess.’

‘You know that makes no sense at all,’ she hissed at him. ‘You cut my ropes too.’

Quickly and quietly he freed Florizella.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Help me heave our blankets on to the fire.’

‘Wha—?’

‘For smoke,’ he said, and so they took all the blankets they had been given and threw them on to the flames. They took the blankets from the horses too, and burned them as well. At once the fire belched out great clouds of white smoke up into the sky, a clear signal to anyone who might be looking. Florizella grabbed Courier’s arm and the two of them dived into the undergrowth.

‘What now?’ Courier asked her.

‘Up a tree, I think,’ Florizella said. ‘I don’t know our way home, and I’m sure Bennett will be coming to the rescue. He’ll see the smoke signal and come in this direction.’

‘Oh, he’ll find us all right,’ Courier said certainly. ‘I set a trail.’

‘You did?’

‘I dropped peppermints all the way here.’

Florizella looked at her little brother with something like respect. ‘You did? But why peppermints? Because they are white and shiny and showed up in the mud?’

‘Nope.’ He shook his head – he was still a little prince, not a big one yet. ‘I don’t like peppermints,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mind dropping them. I wasn’t going to drop the jellies, was I?’

Florizella shook her head in disbelief. ‘Up you go,’ she said, pushing him up into a tall pine tree.

Up, up he went, and Florizella followed after him. They settled themselves into the crook of a branch many metres up, and watched the smoke streaming into the sky while the kidnappers slept below – none of them knowing that their hiding place had been betrayed by the Prince Courier bonfire and the Prince Courier peppermint trail.

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