Princess Rose

Princess Rose

  by Nikolaj Vigrim

  Published by Nikolaj Vigrim

  Copyright 2003 Nikolaj Vigrim

  Cover by Lulu

  Inside Cover by Sofie

  ‘Harry’s Pocket Book of Clouds’

  ‘Mr Farty Pants’

  'The Adventures of Blackcat'

  'Harry the Cloud'

  'Lucy'

  ‘Cabo’

  ‘Strange Happenings at No 4’

  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/311520

  Contact the Author

  [email protected]

  Chapter 1 - In Antibes

  Sofie's house is bright yellow.

  From the chaos of the street, you step in through the dark green door between the shoe shop and the boulangerie, then climb the wonky, winding staircase where tall people have to stoop, and still bump their heads. After spiralling around three times you reach the apartment where Sofie lives. The apartment has two bedrooms, each with a tiny terrace overlooking the cobbled shopping street. Nick and Caroline, Sofie's mum and dad have one and Sam and Lulu the other. The other room has the kitchen at one end and a sofa and the TV and a big window at the other. In the winter it looks out across orange roof tops. In the spring, fresh green leaves block the view until the autumn winds turn them orange and yellow and chase them into untidy piles in the school yard far below.

  If you continue up a little wooden staircase from this room you get to Sofie’s bedroom. Actually, it’s not really a bedroom but just a space at the top of the stairs before you go out onto the roof terrace. On one side Sofie makes a nest out of a big old duvet for her and her dolls, Pinky and Marie, to sleep in. On the other side there’s a ledge just big enough for Sofie’s desk and her special things. As it’s a bit of a jump across the canyon where the stairs come up, Sofie’s little sister Lulu can’t get over to menace with her treasures.

  Sofie loves to draw. She draws girls and fairies and princesses. She draws houses too. Although she loves the apartment, she dreams of living in a house where she can have her own bedroom and a garden to play in. She writes stories and poems and is always dreaming, dreamy girly things. Her teacher says, 'Sofie, tu a ta tete dans les nuages.'

  Sofie, you have your head in the clouds!

  She almost does in her little space at the top of the stairs. Looking out the windows she can see the sky. Clouds scud by when it’s windy; martins glide high overhead by day then swoop around the chimney pots in noisy flocks at dusk; airplanes roar past low over the town and at night, the stars and the moon light up the sky and the ghostly shapes of seagulls glide by. She looks across the orange rooftops of the old town to Chateau Grimaldi, its flags flying happily in the breeze. To the north she looks out across the masts of the yachts to the Alps and there’s a glimpse of sparking blue sea and the hills of Italy.

  The roof terrace has great big terracotta pots with plants growing in them. There are bushes that are boring most of the time then suddenly burst into flower with pink and yellow blossoms. There's jasmine, which her mum says is too stinky and wants to throw it over the edge. Sofie imagines it flying through the air then landing with a smash on the street below, squashing someone flat. There are prickly cactuses that sit there doing nothing, waiting patiently for Sofie to get close enough to get her with their prickles. She loves the evenings best. The martins swoop so low over the terrace as they play tag over the roof tops that she ducks when they zoom by in a rush of air and noise. Then they are gone and the neon lights of the hotel opposite paint the terrace red and blue.

  Sofie's dad says that if you walk out across the roofs you can see Fort Carre guarding the entrance of the Port but he won’t let her climb up to see. That’s dads for you!

  The air on the terrace is heavy with delicious smells wafting up the chimney from the boulangerie below. Sofie loves the sweet, mouthwatering smell of fresh croissants and the nutty, slightly burnt odour of freshly baked bread and in the mornings she rushes down the stairs with a handful of coins to buy baguettes, straight from the oven and too hot to hold.

  Sofie dreams of fairies and princesses, and sometimes of witches and dragons. More and more, in the dreams she has just before she wakes up, she dreams of a young princess with golden hair and a long flowing purple dress. She seems patient and serene but at the same time, sad and desperate. She's a princess; Sofie knows that for sure, she knows all about princesses.

  At first the Princess stands by her window looking out to sea, watching the martins and the gulls then she starts to talk and sing. She recites poems. They're in French. Sofie understands, everyone speaks French at her school. They're rhyming poems about all the things outside the Princess's window; the same things that Sofie can see out her window. She remembers them and writes them down in a book she made by stapling bits of paper together. After each poem she draws a picture of what it's about.

  She doesn't show the book to her mum and dad because they don't speak French, well not properly anyway. She tries translating the poems to English but they aren't the same, the words don't rhyme and sound stupid. She takes the book to school and shows her teacher. The teacher's impressed and asks Sofie to read the poems to the class. She's a bit nervous standing out in front of the class, but when she gets started the words flow smoothly and she gets lost in the Princess's world.

  The teacher is so impressed with the poems that she says that she's going to enter them in a competition.

  'But I didn’t write them', protests Sofie. 'Another girl told them to me.'

  The teacher gets angry and tells Sofie not to copy other peoples' work. Sofie wants to explain but the teacher would never understand that the princess in the purple dress in her dreams recited them to her.

  After that Sofie doesn't tell anyone about the girl in her dreams or the poems. She keeps writing them down every morning but hides the book under some girly things in the bottom drawer of her desk so Sam won't go finding it.

  The months roll by and Sofie gets to know the Princess with the golden hair well. She can tell that some days the Princess is happy and other days she's not. She almost seems scared. Sofie wonders what a princess could be scared of. Probably a dragon or an evil witch, or she's got to marry some fat, spotty prince when she's really in love with the baker's son. Normally Princess Rose is a little sad and some days a tear escapes and trickles down her cheek.

  One day the Princess speaks to Sofie, 'Hello, I’m Rose. Can you hear me?'

  It's funny because she doesn't move her lips like when she's reading her poems but Sofie can hear her all the same, not through her ears but in her head.

  'Oui, oui, I can hear you,' replies Sofie in French.

  The Princess doesn't seem to hear. 'Are you there? I’m sure you’ve been listening to my poems,' she says, without moving her lips.

  'I'm here,' shouts Sofie loudly enough to wake herself up.

  'Are you there?' asks the voice in her head.

  Sofie pinches herself. She's sure that she's awake but she can still hear the voice from her dreams. She opens the terrace doors and goes out into the night. Dawn is just starting to light the sky in the east.

  'I know you can hear me. Please talk to me', pleads the voice.

  Sofie sits on one of the loungers and thinks. When the girl spoke to her in her dreams she could hear her, but she didn’t move her lips. She can hear the voice in her head but it isn't a sound that comes in through her ears. Now that she's awake, she can't see the Princess but she can hear her in her head.

  Sofie clicks, the Princess is talking to her in her thoughts. She makes herself relax, then concentrates really hard. She thinks of the Princess standing by her window and sends out her thoughts to her. Hello, hello, hello, I’m Sofie, can you hear me?

  'Yes, yes, yes,' c
omes back the Princess's voice. 'I can hear you!'

  And that is where the adventure begins...

  Chapter 2 - Princess Rose

  My name is Rose,' says the Princess. 'What's yours?

  I'm Sofie, thinks Sofie, focusing her thoughts on the Princess.

  'That’s a nice name,' replies the Princess. 'Will you be my friend?'

  'Of course,' says Sofie. 'You know, I used to have an imaginary friend called Rose, now I have a real one.'

  'It might have been me,' says Rose, 'I’ve been trying to make a friend for years, but most of the girls just think they are having dreams or are scared and tell me to go away. I think you're different. You understand princesses and fairies.'

  Sofie is a little scared of the voice in her head but she knows at the same time that she's made a friend. Maybe her old friend Rose has come back again. Rose knows everything about princesses, fairies and magic things, even witches, but she doesn't like to talk about witches. They chat in their thoughts for hours, about castles and dragons, princesses and fairies. Sofie draws pictures of the things Rose tells her about and staples extra pages onto her book so she can write down all the poems. Sofie tells Rose all about herself and her family, Antibes, the Ecole Saint Marie and her friends.

  Now Sofie is even dreamier than ever, she walks into lamp posts, trips over gutters and is in a dream at school. She tells her friends at school about the Princess. They laugh and tell her that she's dopey and daft and has had too much sun lately.

  It does worry her a bit. Does anybody else have a friend who talks to them by thinking? She asks her dad, 'Dad, can people talk by thinking?'

  Dad says, 'Yes, it's called telepathy,' and goes on to tell her a funny story about when Granddad Wigs used to work on a farm in New Zealand. He was sure the farmer's wife could read his thoughts because she always started talking about whatever he was thinking about. He tested it by thinking about selling fridges to the Eskimos and taking coals to Newcastle. Sure enough the conversation soon went that direction! He didn’t like the farmer’s wife very much or the boiled mutton, potatoes and cabbage she cooked for dinner every night. Soon he found himself looking for another job!

  ‘What am I thinking now?' asks her dad.

  'That I should do my homework,' replies Sofie.

  'That’s right, so get going!' teases her dad.

  Sometimes Sofie and Rose make each other laugh. Sofie tries not to laugh out loud in case everyone thinks she's loopy! Other times Rose is very sad.

  'What do you look like?' asks the Princess one day.

  'Can’t you see me when you dream?' says Sofie. 'Like I can see you.'

  'No,' says Rose. 'But if you practice a little, maybe I’ll be able to. Just like you learned to talk to me by thinking, you can learn to send out pictures of yourself. It took me fifty years to learn but now I know how, I'm sure I can teach you in a day. What you have to do is to relax, best be lying down first and sleepy, then open up your mind completely.'

  It doesn't take Sofie just a day or two. It takes her two weeks because every time she tries to relax and open her mind something happens. Her brother Sam jumps on her, her sister Lulu starts crying, or her mum or dad want her to do something. Finally she gets the hang of it during mathematics. Mathematics is super boring and the whole class is dozing. Sofie drifts away, her mind opens up and she feels someone looking in.

  'I can see you,' says Rose. 'Wonderful, you're just like I imagined.

  Then she says, 'Are you stuck?'

  'Yes,' says Sofie.

  'Well,' says Rose, '49 divided by 7 equals 7.'

  'Thanks,' says Sofie. Rose knows everything and enjoys helping Sofie with her work. Soon Sofie’s marks get much better. Not quite as high as Estelle’s, but up near the top of the class. Rose is tricky though. She won't just give Sofie the answers; she makes her learn it all. If Sofie doesn't understand something Rose keeps her awake until she does!

  Months go past. Sofie's happy with her new friend. She doesn't have time to play with her old friends anymore and her mum gets worried.

  'Sofie, is anything wrong?' she asks. 'You’ve been awful dreamy lately.'

  'Yes, yes,' says Sofie. 'No, no, I mean everything's fine. I’ve been playing with my friend Rose.'

  'That’s all right then,' says Caroline. 'I’m glad she's come back.'

  Sofie tells Rose all about herself and shows Rose everything she does. She can even open up her mind to Rose during the chaos of dinner time, so Rose can see what it's like living in her house! She realises that she knows nothing about Rose. She can see her by the window, with the clouds and sea outside, and knows her poems by heart, but she really knows nothing about her. She looks like she's the same age as her, but she seems much too brainy and wise, it's more like she's eighty! Strangely, she doesn't know much about the world around her. She's real surprised when Sofie shows her the TV. She thinks the telephone is ever so funny and doesn't know what to make of the computer Sofie’s dad pushes buttons on, or Sam's little one, a Gameboy, that he spends hours playing with.

  Rose thinks it's funny that Sofie lives in a world where everyone sits in front of little boxes looking at pictures rather than enjoying what's happening around them. And all those mobile phones everyone has. Do they talk to the person next to them when they're walking down the street or sitting on the train? No, they talk to someone miles away, possibly on the other side of the world. It's a bit like telepathy, except that they have to pay to speak!

  Sofie remembers that Rose said that it took her fifty years to learn to send out pictures of herself! But she looks like a seven year old girl!

  She gets up courage and asks Rose, 'Rose, you know all about me and my life but I know nothing about you. You seem very close, like you are not far away, yet you live in a different world. Where do you live and how old are you?'

  Rose is quiet for a minute, then says, 'I will tell you my story and let you see my world. Please don’t be scared, and please, please don’t shut me out. Be my friend. You’re the first friend I’ve had since the Witch stole me, except for Jinx, the Witch's cat. He's not much of a friend; you couldn’t trust him with a secret or anything.

  Chapter 3 - A Terrible Tale

  Sofie can hardly believe her ears when the Princess tells her story. It takes a bit of getting her head around. As Rose tells the tale, Sofie finds herself drifting into the Princess's thoughts, first like she's watching a movie, then like she's really there living it. Princess Rose was born in Windsor Castle, near London in the year 1702. Her father was the King's brother and her mother a beautiful duchess whose family owned land in the north of England.

  She grows up in the royal court and by the age of five she can speak fluent French, the language of diplomacy, as well as her native English. She can play piano, write poetry and the Queen’s artist teaches her to draw.

  Her father goes on an important diplomatic mission travelling with Rose and her mum to Nice to meet the Italians to try and avoid a war starting.

  Arriving in Nice after spending a week bumping across France in a splendid carriage, there's a fine reception awaiting them. Trumpets fill the air, flags fly from towers and townspeople line the streets to watch their carriage go by on its way to the Viceroy’s palace. The business passes very well, trade deals are agreed and treaties signed. There will be no war. Rose's dad is a good diplomat!

  However, there's a witch who lives in a tumbledown hovel, near the town. The local farmers keep well clear and don't dare go on her property. She turned a farmer's dog into a toad right in front of his eyes! She poisoned the water supply of another farmer and killed him, his wife and children and his animals, just because his rooster was a bit noisy in the mornings!

  She's in town to watch Les Anglais arrive. When she sets eyes on the Princess, she knows she has to have her.

  Witches don’t have babies, they steal them! She pays some robbers handsomely to kidnap the child.

  As the carriage slows to ford the River Brague, on its way back
from Nice, the highwaymen set upon it. In the dark they quickly overpower the guards and kill Rose’s mum and dad. After stealing all the valuables from the carriage, they throw Rose in a sack and ride off to collect their reward from the Witch. Some reward it is, all the promised gold in a bag of poisonous dust! The Witch has Rose and soon there's no one around to tell the story. When the King of England hears of his brother’s murder, he immediately suspects foul play by the Italians and a terrible war is fought.

  Living with the Witch, Rose’s fine clothes quickly become dirty and torn, her shoes wear out and her hair becomes matted and knotted.

  She turns into a right little urchin; nobody would ever recognise her as a princess. The Witch does not treat her badly though, she adores this little urchin. She feeds her well, well in witchy terms anyway, and makes sure she has a place to sleep by the fire and warm covers at night. She loves the little girl and sings witches' songs to her. She never scowls at Rose; she always smiles at her, although it is a bit of a sly, witchy smile. She takes Rose for flights on her broomstick and they travel to different lands to go to witches' conventions and collect ingredients for spells.

  Rose misses her parents, terribly at first, and misses having other children to play with, but all in all she's happy. She plays in the Witch's garden, and can even do a few spells the old hag taught her, like making cicadas, chirping in the trees, go pop in a flash of flame and a puff of smoke!

  When she reaches seven, Rose begins to question what happened to her parents and what she's doing living with the Witch. Rose can't remember much about the night when her parents were killed because it was really dark and it happened very quickly. The door of the coach had burst open, there was a flash of swords, a splash of warm blood, then strong hands grabbed her and she was in a sack being bounced about on the back of a horse. She wonders why it happened, did this old witch have something to do with it or had she rescued Rose from the robbers, like she said she did?