A Happy Ending

You don't actually tell stories you know. After all, every story has been written before, and stories carry a certain inevitability. You can no more change the course of a story than live without breathing. Stories are living, breathing things, and they contain a natural order that must be followed.

So the little girl doesn't realise that it's a wolf dressed up as her grandmother, and only one bear in three ever manages to do things right. Same rule goes for pigs building houses.

And the prince always manages to save the princess in the end.

Now, for Princess Tracy, a rescue was really rather overdue. She had been stuck for almost ten years now, in a tower guarded by a dragon which had killed quite a few random questing heroes. Now, none had been Princes, but still, she'd hoped. After all, she'd been stuck in the tower since she was ten, eight whole years ago.

At eighteen, she knew she was getting a bit old, and pretty soon there would be no chance of a prince at all. So, she sat by the windowsill and glared at the dragon, and hoped.

And then one cold winter morning, the whole world changed. She heard a deafening roar, and then a thud. And when she went to the window, she saw a dead dragon, with a handsome man standing beside it with a bloodied sword.

Her prince.

His name was Horace. And he was a handsome prince. And she was a beautiful princess trapped in a tower guarded by a dangerous beast. There was no chance for anything else to happen. He ran up the tower and rescued her from there, and took her back to his kingdom.

And they lived happily ever after. Because that's how the stories go, right?

And for a while at least, Tracy really was happy. Horace's castle was a beautiful old castle, built in the days where defences were more important than looks. So unlike most other castles which came up more recently, and looked like they belonged in bakeries, this one could have been passed off as a fort. Which meant that there were no tall, thin towers, a fact that pleased Tracy very very much.

There was a beautiful courtyard within the walls of the castle, and Tracy spent hours walking there. Horace meanwhile, was a handsome and caring husband, and kept her really happy. The only thing was the he was quite secretive about his past. His family's history and lands were never talked about.

One day, while roaming through the castle, she came across a bedroom in another wing, which had a full set of gowns in it. When she asked him about it, he said, "Oh, those are for you! I wanted to surprise you so I put them in a guest room!" She was overjoyed at first, but later when she thought about it, there was something strange about his smile.

The next day, she went to the room again, to look at the dresses, and discovered that most of them seemed quite old, and some had definitely been worn. But at the same time she was scared to ask him about it. After all, her life before Horace had been her sitting alone in a tower with a dragon for company. Now, her life was perfect. And if Horace had a few secrets, then well, she could deal with that.

Like the room.

That was the biggest secret of all. There was a door in Horace's room, and it was always locked. She didn't want to pry, but every now and then she had to ask what the room was for, and why it was always locked. Sometimes she thought that there must be some sort of terrible monster stored in the room.

While she was around she never saw Horace go in there, but once or twice when she walked in from the gardens she'd see Horace stepping out from that door. But when she asked him about it, he always ignored her, and would be cold and distant.

And so it went for some years.

After the first few years, the novelty of not living in a tower had worn off, and the company of just Horace the servants in the castle had palled, and Tracy's curiosity had grown. By now she was fed up of the way things were, and really not very happy at all.

One day though, things changed when a courier from a nearby town came. He was looking for handsome princes to rescue the lost princess of the town, since everyone knows that only princes can save princesses. Horace became quite excited, and started to put together his old adventuring gear.

When Tracy saw what was happening, she yelled furiously at him, "How can you do this? You're married to me! How can you go chasing after princesses now?" Horace though ignored her, and went on packing. That night, furious, Tracy decided to see what he kept in the locked room.

It wasn't much but it was the only way that she could think about rebelling against Horace. That night, she fished inside his clothes, and after a few minutes, found his key. She tiptoed silently across the bedroom, and quietly put the key in the keyhole.

Horace's soft snores confirmed that he was still asleep, and mustering her courage, she pushed the door, which swung open noiselessly. She saw a long tunnel in front of her, and walked in carefully. After a little while, the passage opened out without any warning, but the room it ended in was completely dark, and she couldn't see anything.

She fumed, and turned around slowly to walk back to the room.

That's when a voice called out from the dark towards the room. It was Horace! He said, "Always carry torches, it's the first thing you learn when sneaking around." He struck a match and lit a torch, and for a moment all she could see was his face in the light.

He had a terribly calm look on his face, a smile that she'd never seen before. It wasn't particularly nice. All the torch seemed to do was heighten the gloom around them, leaving them in a tiny circle of light. But instead of walking into the light she instinctively backed away from Horace.

"What's the matter dear," he continued in that mocking tone, "Don't you want to see the room? You're the one who's always pestering me about it." He grinned horribly, and she wondered how she had ever considered him handsome.

He stepped towards her, and she stumbled backwards. He smiled again, and said, "You know, it's a good thing you came into the room yourself tonight. I wanted to take you here myself, and I would have in a day or two."

"You would have?"

"Of course. Don't you want to see what I keep here?"

With that he took another step and she saw what was kept there. And screamed.

The next day Horace left on his quest. And what about Tracy? She never left that room again.

And what about the happy ending? Well, Horace rescued another princess, and the two of them lived happily ever after.