Why the Prince Was Turned into a Frog

By: A.C.

The humble vendor had three beautiful daughters. One, the eldest, was gifted with golden flowing hair the color of wheat and flaxseed. The second eldest was gifted with eyes so green that fairies often mistook them for an enchanted forest. The last of the daughters was not gifted with special looks, nor special traits; no, she wasn’t special like her sisters. She couldn’t get away with stealing a few apples because of her hypnotic eyes, or charm the boys of the town so that they followed her like a swarm of flies. She had to adapt; she learned to read, write, and use her intelligence to get what she wanted, rather than her looks.

The prince of the town was a mysterious figure. The townspeople seldom saw the prince. He only left his castle every eight years. Nobody recalls the prince’s looks, only that he is extremely charming. The old humble vendor, the mother of the three daughters, was the prince’s last and most important visit on his trip outside the castle’s marble walls.

The prince knocked on the old vendor’s door, “Dear vendor Marie, open the door for me. Let me gaze upon your beautiful daughters, from whom I will choose my queen.” The vendor woman always opened the doors, happy that her daughters were being noticed by the prince. This was the first time the prince had asked for a wife from the vendor, but she was always happy to serve the crown.

The eldest daughters swooned at the prince’s looks but the third and youngest daughter was unphased by his mediocre appearance. The youngest was beautiful too, and the prince noticed so.

He stepped in front of the youngest daughter, “Dear fair maiden of beauty, take my hand in marriage, and let me carry you across the seas. Live in my castle, feast with me at my table, carry my children, and be my queen.” The daughter declined his offer, saying she is much too young to be wed.

The prince smiled at her, “Our wedding will soon be fair maiden. I will wait for affection to be returned.” The prince strode over to the eldest daughter. “Dear fair maiden of beauty in hair, golden wheat strands that were spun to gold, take my hand in marriage, and let me carry you across the seas. Live in my castle, feast with me at my table, carry my children, and be my queen.” The eldest princess agreed to his marriage, hoping to elevate her mother’s business.

“My hand in marriage will be yours if you promise wealth and good business for my mother,” said the eldest daughter. The prince agreed to her request, and he took her off to his castle. The youngest daughter took note of the prince’s looks, and she drew his face on a spare piece of parchment. She hid the parchment in the mahogany chest in her room and awaited the prince’s next visit.

The vendor sent letter after letter, after letter to her daughter; the reply she got every time went as follows, “Dear mother, I am very busy with my royal queenly duties. Send your next letter in the season that follows.” The vendor was troubled by her daughter’s response but didn’t whine, as she was getting good business from the castle. The wealth from the castle gave her the funds to buy her next eldest daughter green hair bows, and green dresses. She spared a small amount of money to get the youngest daughter books.

The youngest daughter spent her days reading books ranging from Forest Sprites to Picking Locks. She educated herself over the years, and when the prince’s next visit arrived, she had been more educated than all of the local professors.

The prince arrived and the daughters had only grown in beauty, especially the second eldest. The prince knocked on the old vendor’s door, “Dear vendor Marie, open the door for me. Let me gaze upon your beautiful daughters, from whom I will choose my queen.” The vendor opened the door with hesitation. The prince stepped in and once again tried his luck with the youngest daughter.

“Dear fair maiden of beauty, take my hand in marriage, and let me carry you across the seas. Live in my castle, feast with me at my table, carry my children, and be my queen.”

The daughter once again declined his offer: “Dear prince, your hand will be declined, for I am not the eldest in the house. It is unreasonable for you to marry me before my sister, for she is old enough to bear your child, and I am not.”

The prince, surprised at her sudden diplomacy, repeated his old phrase: “Our wedding will soon be fair maiden. I will wait for affection to be returned.”

The prince went to the next sister for her hand in marriage. “Dear fair maiden of beauty in eyes: forests of endless trees in two orbs of beauty, take my hand in marriage, and let me carry you across the seas. Live in my castle, feast with me at my table, carry my children, and be my queen.”

The second eldest agreed on one condition, “I will take your hand in marriage if you give my mother a most beautiful garden to sell the fruits and vegetables for which it bears.”

The prince agreed, and the next day a beautiful garden bigger than all of the local farmers’ gardens sprung up. The younger daughter recorded the prince’s looks again and drew another picture of him; it looked identical to the first one. The prince hasn’t aged in the eight years he was in the castle. The youngest daughter once again hid her creation in her mahogany chest and waited for the prince’s next arrival.

The vendor wrote to her daughters, but only the second eldest responded. She responded with the same letter as the eldest, “Dear mother, I am very busy with my royal queenly duties. Send the next letter in the season that follows.”

The vendor began growing suspicious of the prince’s returns for a new wife. She thought he would be satisfied with her eldest daughter’s beauty, but the humble vendor became wary after her first daughter’s unresponsiveness. The vendor decided to make a plan since she had more money now to spend on her youngest daughter.

The vendor bought her many books. The girl read folklore, romance, history, and anything else with pages and words. The girl was very educated at this point. She was running her mother’s gardening business and helping her mother finance her funds.

The vendor made a plan with her daughter, a plan to keep her daughter safe and find out what happened to her other daughters. The vendor told the youngest, “My youngest, most wise daughter, I ask for no funds, no help in my vending. I ask for a single black rose from the highest of the mountain ranges in the land. Ask the prince for a single black rose and search his castle high and low for your sisters. If you find them, bring them home, knock on my door ten times at midnight, and I will know you have returned home to me.”

The youngest girl was smarter than the prince, some would argue. She understood what her mother was planning, for once she asked for the rose, the prince would leave the castle. After the prince left the castle, she’d be left unattended, free to roam the castle in search of her sisters.

Then came the day when the prince would take the vendor’s last daughter away.

The prince came knocking on the humble vendor’s door, “Dear vendor Marie, open the door for me. Let me gaze upon your beautiful daughter, from whom I will choose as my queen.” The vendor opened the door, and there stood the vendor’s beautiful and wise daughter. The prince smiled and said his same line, “Dear fair maiden of beauty, take my hand in marriage. Let me carry you across the seas, live in my castle, feast with me at my table, carry my children, and be my queen.”

“Good prince, the day has come when I will be your bride. I ask only one thing from you; it is not money, not power, not a garden, nor a business, but rather a rose. I wish for a single black rose from the highest mountain in the land. Bring me this rose, and I will be your queen,” the youngest daughter stated.

“Dear fair maiden, I will get you this rose, for your affection is all I have been in search of.” The prince took her to his castle, and he gave her a brief tour, before confining the daughter to a room that he dubbed hers. The prince still looked the same, even after twenty-four years.

Shortly after the tour, the prince set out on his journey to get his bride-to-be her rose. He gave a long-winded speech to the people, and he set out on his journey to the tallest mountain in the land. The youngest daughter sprinted around the castle. There were no servants, no people at all. She ran to the cellar and a locked door caught her attention.

The girl picked the lock and opened the heavy wooden door. The girl found a dark room with a cauldron at the end. There was a scent of death in the air and she looked behind the door. There sat her sisters’ bodies, legs cut off, and their beautiful faces were gone. The eldest’s hair was cut off, and the second eldest’s eyes were cut out.

The youngest daughter clasped her hand over her mouth. She turned and looked at the cauldron, suspicion rising from within her. She walked over to the cauldron, she looked inside: frog legs and her sister’s legs were floating in the mixture. Her sister’s hair made the cauldron glow gold. The other sister’s eyes made green twinkling flex within the spinning elixir.

Next to the cauldron, sat a pedestal. She looked upon the pedestal that sat by the cauldron. There was a book open to a page that read “Youth potion.” The prince was using young girls to make a youth potion. That’s why he looked the same even after twenty-four years.

The daughter grabbed her sister’s bodies, only to find their bodies weighed her down. She couldn’t carry them, or she couldn’t carry all of them. She searched for an item the prince used to chop her sister’s legs off with. She found an ax with dried blood, presumably her sisters’ dried blood on it. She brought the ax to her sisters’ bodies and hacked their heads off. She put the heads in a hackney sack she found in the cauldron room and left.

The youngest daughter ran through the castle and out the front gates. No guards were there since they were all off hunting for the rose. She ran through the town to her mom’s house, and she knocked on the door ten times at midnight. Her mom opened the door and quickly ushered her daughter inside the house.

“Where are your sisters?” The youngest daughter dreaded telling her mother, but she opened the sack to reveal her sisters, one hairless and the other eyeless. As the youngest daughter explained what she saw and what happened, her mother began to fume. The humble vendor ran to her room. She ran out with a staff, one she said was her father’s old walking stick. The vendor ran from the house, held her stick up to the sky, and chanted something in an old tongue the daughter didn’t recognize from her many books.

Suddenly the prince appeared in front of the vendor in a flash of lightning. With a black rose in his hand, he looked surprised as he looked down on the old humble vendor. “Vendor Marie, what is the meaning of this?”

“You killed my daughters! Drank them up for soup! Were going to kill my third one! All so you could look young?!” The guards began to surround the old woman. The townspeople gathered in front of their houses wondering what was going on at such an hour.

“What! This is blasphemous. I did no such thing!” The youngest daughter rolled her sister’s head out of the hackney sack and in front of the prince’s steed hooves. The prince paused for the briefest of seconds. He charged at the vendor, knife pointed to stab the woman.

The vendor ducked away and thrust her staff into the prince’s sternum, “You will be ugly and slimy, as ugly and slimy as you are on the inside; big and croaking, dwelling in the swamps. You will be as alive as those frogs you used for your soup.” A flash of green shot through the air and the prince disappeared, the creature standing in his wake and a slimy, grotesque, gigantic bullfrog.

“You will respect beauty. You will respect grace. You will respect a woman as you will need to sleep in one’s bed and eat her food for three days, or you will never see your two legs again, foolish prince.” The witch laughed, and the frog hopped away quickly. The townspeople crowded around the scene, and the guards turned tail and ran home. The castle was left empty, and the last person in line had mysteriously died.

The witch turned to her daughter, “You, my daughter, wise and fair, shall rule this kingdom, mountain to mountain; streams to lakes, to seas. You will guide it and control it well, for you were to be wed to the prince.” The youngest daughter accepted her seat on the throne and quickly became favored by the people.

The youngest daughter did what she thought was right for her sisters. She buried the eldest in the palace garden, and the other in the woods. The eldest daughter’s head grew over time into a flourishing tree of spun gold. The gold was pure, purer than the gold in the ground. As long as the townspeople respected and cared for the plant, it provided gold for them to use.

The second eldest daughter was planted in the woods. Her head flourished and became a faerie bush. The woods became magical and enchanted, and as long as the townspeople respected and cared for the bush along with the magical creatures that manifested from the woods, the townspeople got priceless hides and dust from faeries to use in various trades.

The prince was never seen in the town again. Legend has it he’s still looking for a princess to turn him back. At least, that is what the queen heard last before she died. Her long and prosperous rule led the kingdom to become a global superpower. The queen ruled for twenty years before she died of influenza. The tree and magical bush mourned her death.

They planted the queen’s head by the side of a river that overlooked the castle. The queen’s head grew a tree, no special tree. The tree had a big bush of leaves and branches that spread far, roots that dug deep, and shade that spread for miles. Those who needed advice sat in its shade. As long as the townspeople respected and took care of the tree, it gave them advice and knowledge.