The Very Little Princess: Zoey's Story (6 page)

Zoey, of course, knew nothing about what was happening to Princess Regina. She was too busy gathering flowers.

And then she’d had to go back inside the house. She made herself go in to ask if she could pick an iris—just one—from Hazel’s
garden. She had found lots of flowers, but one of the majestic purple irises growing by the back door was exactly what a bouquet for a princess needed.

“Yes,” Hazel had said when Zoey asked. “Of course.” And before Zoey could thank her and go on her way again, she’d added, “Would you like some ice cream?” Homemade vanilla ice cream in a bright blue bowl, with chocolate sauce poured over it and peanuts crumbled on top. (The argument had stopped, at least for the moment, when Zoey came into the kitchen.)

Zoey would have run back to the weeping willow tree to get Princess Regina before she sat down to the ice cream, but since the doll didn’t eat—
couldn’t
eat, apparently—there seemed no point. Besides, Princess Regina might feel bad, sitting there next to ice cream she couldn’t even taste.

All of which meant that Zoey had been gone longer than she had meant to be when, at last, she burst through the delicate branches of the weeping willow, her hands stuffed to overflowing with flowers.

“Look! Just look what I found!” she cried, and she held out her bouquet.

She’d found a few lilacs that were still fresh. At the edge of the woods, she’d picked some white flowers and some pink ones, too. She didn’t know what they were called, but she would find out their names later. Hazel would know their names, she was sure, but she hadn’t wanted to go back in again to ask.

She’d added bright yellow dandelions to the bouquet, too. There were lots of bright yellow dandelions growing in her grandmother’s yard.

And there was, of course, the one perfect iris she had picked, with permission, from
Hazel’s flower garden by the back door.

“Look!” Zoey cried again. “Flowers for Your Royal Highness!” That’s the way she and her mother talked when they played the game. “Your Royal Highness.” “Your Majesty.” Sometimes even silly, made-up titles like “Your High Royalness.”

Zoey knelt in front of the mossy throne and spread her bouquet out on the ground before Princess Regina. Then she checked the tiny doll’s face. Was she pleased?

Zoey looked. Then she looked again, harder.

“Princess Regina?” she said. And she reached out a careful finger to touch the doll’s arm.

But Princess Regina didn’t answer. And she didn’t move. And her arm … there was something wrong with her arm. It felt hard, of course. It always felt hard. After all, Princess Regina was made out of china.

Now it felt still.

Too still.

“Princess?” Zoey touched the doll’s other arm.

Nothing.

“Princess Regina?” She stroked the doll’s face. More nothing.

And then—I’m sure you’ll understand, Zoey wasn’t a crybaby by any means, but she couldn’t help it—she snatched up the silent doll and burst into tears.

The Secret

Zoey ran for the house. Where else could she go? As she ran, she sobbed and, with both hands, swiped at the tears running down her cheeks.

One hand held the tiny doll, so Regina’s golden hair and gauzy pink dress were soon soaked.

As Zoey approached the front porch, though, she slowed. When she came to the bottom of the steps, she stopped.

What was it that Princess Regina had said to her?
Grown-ups can never know
.

If she ran to her mother and Hazel, she would have to tell them why she was crying. And if she told them why, she would be giving away the secret.

And if she gave away Princess Regina’s secret, the doll would be taken away from her. She was sure of it. Grown-ups never let you keep anything really good.

Even if her mother and grandmother didn’t behave like other grown-ups and take the doll away, the magic would probably be destroyed if they knew. Princess Regina might never walk and talk again.

Zoey plopped down on the bottom step and held the tiny doll out in front of her. “What happened?” she pleaded. “Why did you go away?”

And Princess Regina, who had without question been silent and unmoving when Zoey had found her on the throne beneath the
weeping willow tree, answered in a shrill voice, “Away? What do you mean, away? You’re the one who went away!”

“I … I …” The accusation was so absurd that Zoey didn’t know how to defend herself. She had done what the princess had told her to do. That was all. She had gone to gather flowers, and she hadn’t taken all that long, either!

Well … maybe a little bit long. Picking the dandelions had probably slowed her down some. And then, of course, there was the ice cream. You couldn’t eat ice cream too fast or you’d get an ice cream headache. And it was too good to eat really fast, anyway.

But still …

“And now,” the princess went on, “look what you’ve done to my dress. Look what you’ve done to me!” She pushed at Zoey’s
fingers as though she thought she could stand in the air if Zoey would only let go. “You’ve smeared your messy tears all over me.”

Zoey had no answer to that. It was true. Princess Regina
was
wet all over. Her gauzy pink dress was damp and wrinkled. Her golden hair was darkened with moisture. Even her face glistened with Zoey’s tears.

Zoey was sorry to have gotten the doll wet. She truly was. But still … Princess Regina
was
awake again! That was what mattered. She was completely, even obnoxiously, awake. And Zoey couldn’t have been more delighted. She was so happy, in fact, that she hardly minded being yelled at!

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to get you wet. But I’m so glad you’re—OUCH!”

Zoey barely stopped herself from dropping
the tiny doll. “Did you bite me?” she cried. She changed Princess Regina to the other hand and shook the hand that had been holding her. “Did you really bite me?”

It hadn’t been a serious bite, to be sure. The doll’s mouth was too small to do much damage. But it had definitely been a bite.

“Take me back to my room!” Princess Regina ordered, not bothering to answer the question. “I want to go to my room this very minute!”

That was easy enough to do, so Zoey slipped back inside the house and up the stairs. (She cocked an ear toward the kitchen as she did. The cross voices had started up again, climbing over and over one another.)

When Zoey reached the bedroom, she shut the door to keep out the noise.

“Put me down!” the princess ordered.

Zoey set her down carefully on the bed in the dollhouse. “I … I’m glad you’re awake again,” she said.

“I’m always awake!” the tiny doll snapped. “What are you accusing me of, anyway?”

Zoey didn’t know how to answer that. She hadn’t meant to
accuse
Regina of anything. But clearly the tiny doll hadn’t been awake when Zoey had come back with the flowers. Was there nothing she could say without offending Her Royal Highness?

Her High Royalness
, Zoey thought grumpily.

She sat down on the side of the bed, directly across from the dollhouse, and waited to see what would happen next.

The tiny doll kept swiping at her skin, shearing away Zoey’s tears and grumbling under her breath. At last she spoke up. “You’re just like her. You know that?” she said. “Just
like
her!”

“Like who?” Zoey asked, confused.

“She used to go off and leave me, too,” the princess went on, again not answering Zoey’s question. “She’d forget all about me.

And she wouldn’t come back, either. The same as you!”

“I didn’t forget—” Zoey started to say, but the doll interrupted.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she accused. Her voice was as brittle as glass. “How could you ever know what it’s like to be alone in the world? Nobody to take care of you. Nobody who cares about you. Nobody at all!”

“I … I …,” Zoey said, but this time, though the princess didn’t interrupt her, she stopped herself. In fact, her thought just snapped in two.

She truly didn’t know what it was like to have no one to take care of her. Did she?

Somehow she couldn’t seem to answer her own question.

But then the princess was talking again,
so Zoey pushed the terrible thought aside.

“Is it true?” the doll said. She sounded less angry now, even a bit uncertain. She looked away from Zoey and twisted the bottom of her skirt so that water dripped from it. “Just now … did I really go to sleep?”

Zoey wasn’t sure she wanted to reply. The princess would probably yell at her again. But besides being a brave girl, which is something I’ve already told you, Zoey was also a truthful one. So she said, “You did. You were asleep when I came back with the flowers. And I couldn’t wake you. I tried. Honest.”

“So just for a minute there, I wasn’t talking or moving or … anything?”

“You were as still as still,” Zoey told her.

Princess Regina shuddered. She reached with both hands to touch her damp hair but then let her arms fall to her sides again.

“But now you’re all right,” Zoey assured her. “So it doesn’t matter, does it? You’re awake and—”

Once more the doll interrupted. “But
why
did it happen?
How
did it happen? What makes me go”—she shuddered again—“what makes me go to sleep?”

Zoey wanted very much to help, but she had no answer. If only she could ask her mother or her grandmother.

There was no point in asking them anything, though. All they cared about was yelling at one another. Remembering their angry voices made Zoey’s stomach go tight.

Why were they so angry, anyway? And why did she keep hearing her name—
Zoey, Zoey—
again and again?

And why, for that matter, had her mother brought her here after all these years of not
even mentioning that Zoey had a grandmother? Why had she asked Zoey to pack a suitcase but had packed nothing for herself? Not even a toothbrush!

And who was the little doll talking about when she said
she … she? She used to go off and leave me
.

Zoey found that she wanted to think about all that even less than she wanted to think about the argument going on in the kitchen.

She turned her attention instead to the doll’s question. What made Princess Regina go to sleep?

Besides being a brave girl, and a truthful one, Zoey was a thoughtful one. And so she said, reaching deep into her own heart, “Is it maybe because you get lonely?”

Her reward for her well-intentioned words was a very cross look from the little doll.