King’s Little Daughter: Magical Birthday Dreams

When the driver of the dream coach reached the last small star in the sky, he unharnessed his hundred misty horses and put them out to pasture in the great blue meadow of heaven. It was well he reached the end of his journey when he did, for in another moment a mounting wave of sunlight and wind, rushing up from the world far below, blew out the silver white flame of the star so that no one could follow the strange driver and his strange coach Resting place? What a mistake! The driver of the dream coach never rests. You see, there are so many things to do even when he is carrying no passengers. There are new dreams to invent. Queer dreams, funny dreams, fairy dreams, goblin dreams, happy dreams, excited dreams, short dreams, long dreams, brightly colored dreams, and dreams made out of shadows and mists that vanish as soon as one opens one's eyes. Then there is the very bothersome matter of keeping the records straight. Records of those who deserve good dreams, those who need cheering with ridiculous dreams, and those, alas, who have been bad and naughty and have to be punished. How the little driver hates this! With nightmares! It is hard to keep all those dreams from getting mixed up, there are so many of them. Indeed, sometimes they do get mixed up, and a good child who is meant to have a dream as pretty as a pansy or as funny as a frog gets a nightmare by mistake. But the driver of the dream coach tries as hard as he possibly can never to let this happen. He has so very much to do that he never would catch up with his work, no matter how quickly his beautiful horses galloped from star to star, from world to world, if there was not someone to help him. There are little angels who help the driver of the dream coach. In their golden white book, they keep a record of everyone on earth. As soon as the driver of the dream coach had unharnessed his horses, he went to these angels and planned his next trip. What a busy night it was to be! If I should use all the paper and all the pencils in the world, I could not begin to tell you about all the dreams he arranged to carry to the sleeping world. And yet there was one child who was nearly forgotten, a little princess whose name had been written at the top of a new page which the driver had neglected to turn in his hurry. Surely you are not going to forget the little princess on her birthday, pleaded the little angels turning the page. Oh dear, said the driver. That will never do, now will it? And yet I simply can't pack another dream onto the coach. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid... Oh dear, echoed the angels. Perhaps... Just then, one of the youngest angels, who happened to be leaning over the parapet of paradise, saw the princess begin to cry and took in the situation instantly. So he hurried to the others and suggested that he himself should carry a dream to the little princess. The driver of the dream coach thought this was a splendid idea and thanked him again and again for his help. That is how the seven white dreams of the king's little daughter were carried to her by an angel. And as you know, or if you don't, I will tell you, the dreams carried in the moonbeam basket of the angels are the most beautiful of all. What did the princess dream? That you shall hear. I cannot remember all the names of the king's little daughter, and indeed few can. The archbishop who christened her says that he can, but he is so great and so deaf a dignitary that no one would think of asking him to prove it. They are all there, 12 pages of them, in the great book where there are recorded the baptisms of all the royal babies, so that you can look for yourself, if none of the ones I can remember. Angelica, Mary, Delphine, Violet, Candida, Pamelia, Petronella, Victoire, Veronica, Monica, Anastasia, Yvonne, happen to please you. It was the fifth birthday of the little princess, and there were to be great celebrations in her honor. Fireworks would blossom in the sky, and in the gardens lanterns were hung like bubbles of colored light from white rose tree to red, while the great fountains would turn from pink to mauve, from mauve to azure, to amber, and to green, as they flung up slender stems and great spreading lacy fronds of water. Everyone from the king down to the smallest kitchen maid had new clothes for the occasion, and the chief cook had created a birthday cake iced with fairy grottos and gardens of sponge sugar, so huge and so heavy that the princess's ten pages in their new sky blue and silver liveries staggered under the weight of it. The little princess had a new gown of white satin, sewn so thickly with pearls that it was perfectly stiff, and stood as well without her as when she was inside it. It was standing by her bedside when the bells of the city awoke her on her birthday morning, together with her silver bath, shaped like a great shell, and her nine lace petticoats, and her hoops to go over the petticoats, and her little white slippers on a cushion of cloth of silver, and her whalebone stays, and her cobweb stockings, and her ten ladies-in-waiting, grand duchesses every one. When she opened her blue eyes, they all swept her the deepest curtsies, their skirts of bright brocade billowing up around them, and said together, long life and happiness to your serene highness. And then the first grand duchess popped her out of bed and into her bath, where she got a great deal of soap in the princess's eyes, while she conversed in a most respectful and edifying manner. The second grand duchess, who was lady-in-waiting in charge of the imperial towel, was even more respectful, and nearly rubbed the princess's tiny button of a nose entirely off her face. The third grand duchess brushed and combed the little ductails of yellow silk that covered the royal head, and oh how she did pull! The fourth grand duchess was lady-in-waiting in charge of the imperial shift, and as she was rather old and slow, although extremely noble, the princess grew cold indeed before the shift covered up her little pink body. The fifth grand duchess put on the rigid stays. The sixth put on the stockings and slippers. The seventh was very important and gave herself airs, for the nine lace petticoats were her concern. The eighth grand duchess was lady-in-waiting in charge of the imperial hoops. The ninth put on the little princess the dress of satin and pearls that glowed softly like moonlit drops of water. And the tenth grand duchess, the oldest and ugliest and noblest and crossest and most respectful of them all, placed on the yellow head the little frosty crown of diamonds. Then the princess's father confessor, a very noble prince of the church, dressed in violet from top to toe, came in between two little boys in lace and said a long prayer in Latin. It was so long that, I am sorry to have to tell you, right in the middle the princess yawned. So of course another long prayer had to be said to ask heaven to overlook such shocking wickedness on the part of her highness. Then the chief steward in attendance on the princess brought her breakfast, bread and milk in a silver porringer. The little princess had hoped for strawberries as it was her birthday, but the chief gardener was saving every strawberry in the royal gardens for the great birthday banquet that was to be held that evening. Then the little princess went to say good morning to her mother and father, and this is the way she went. First came two heralds in forest green blowing on silver trumpets. Then came the father confessor and his little lace-covered boys. Then came the ladies-in-waiting in their bright brocades with feathers in their powdered hair, and after each lady came a little black page to carry her handkerchief on a satin cushion. The ten pages of the princess were next, and after them came the royal baby's own regiment of dragoons in white and scarlet. And last came four gigantic blacks wearing white loincloths and enormous turbans of flamingo pink, and carrying a great canopy of cloth of silver fringed with pearls. And under this, very tiny and looking in her spreading gown like a little white hollyhock out for a walk, came the princess. After she had curtsied and kissed the hands of her royal parents, her father gave her a rope of milk-white pearls, and her mother gave her a ruby as big as a pigeon's egg, both of which were instantly locked up in the royal treasury. They then bestowed upon her, in addition to her other titles, that of Grand Duchess of Pinch-Pinchowitz, which took so long to do that when she had said thank you, it was time for lunch, which was just the same as breakfast, except that this time the porringer was gold. After lunch, the prime minister read the princess an illuminated birthday greeting from her loyal subjects, which ran along so that the ladies in waiting nearly yawned their heads off behind their painted fans, and the princess had a nice little nap and dreamed that there would be strawberries for supper. But instead, there was bread and milk in a porringer covered with turquoises and moonstones. Then, as the younger ladies in waiting were thinking of the gentlemen of the court who would be waiting for them among the rose trees and yew hedges to watch the colored water of the fountains and listen to the harps and flutes, and as the older ladies in waiting were thinking of comfortable seats out of the draft in the state ballroom, and having the choicest morsels of roasted peacock and lark's tongue pie and frozen nectarines, they popped the princess into bed pretty promptly, indeed an hour earlier than usual, and went off to celebrate her The room in which the princess lay was as big as a church, and the great bed was as big as a chapel. Four carved posts as tall as palm trees in a tropic jungle held a canopy of needlework where hunters rode and hounds gave chase and deer fled through dark forests. Below this lay the broad, smooth expanse of silken sheet and counterpane, and in the mist, as little and alone as a bird in an empty sky, lay the king's little daughter. One large tear rolled down her round pink cheek, and then another. The long dull day had tired her, and the great dim room frightened her, and she wanted to see the fireworks she had heard her pages whispering about. She sat up among her lace pillows, and her tears went splash, splash on the embroidered flowers and leaves of her coverlet. One of the youngest angels happened to be leaning over the parapet of paradise when the princess began to cry, and he took in the situation instantly and hurried off to his heavenly playmates to tell them about it. It's her birthday, he said, and no one has given her as much as a red apple or a white rose, only silly old rubies and pearls that she wasn't even allowed to play marbles with, and now they have left her to weep in the dark while they dance and feast. I shall go down to her and sit by her bed till her tears are dry, and take her a white dream as a gift. Oh, let me send a dream too, cried another angel, and let me, and let me, so that by the time the little angel was ready to start to earth, there were seven white dreams to be taken as birthday gifts from heaven, and he had to weave a basket of moonbeams to carry them in. That night the princess dreamed that she was a daisy in a field, dancing delicately in the wind among other daisies as thick as the stars in the Milky Way. Feathery grasses danced with them, and yellow butterflies danced above, and the larks in the sky flung down cascades of lovely notes that scattered like spray on the joyous wind. Some poor little girls were playing in the field. Their feet were bare, and their faded frocks were torn, but they danced and sang too. There came a rumbling like thunder, and through a gap in the hawthorn hedge, the children and the daisies saw the king's little daughter driven past in her great scarlet coach drawn by eight doppled horses. They could see the little princess sitting up very straight with her crinoline puffing about her and her crown on her head, and after she had passed, all the children played that they were princesses, making daisy crowns for their heads, and hoops of briar boughs to hold out their limp little petticoats. The next day the princess looked in vain for a daisy as she took her morning constitutional in the royal gardens. There were roses and lilies, blue irises, and striped red and yellow carnations tied to stakes, all stiff and straight. Hold up your heads, serene highness, snapped one of the ladies-in-waiting, who had had too many cherry tarts at too late an hour the night before, but daisies danced in the princess's heart. The next night the princess dreamed that she was a little white cloud afloat in the bright blue sky. She floated over the blue sea and the white sand, and over black forests of whispering pines, and over a land where fields of tulips bloomed for miles, in squares of lovely colors, delicate rose and mauve and purple, coppery pink and creamy yellow, with canals running through them like strips of old dark looking glass. She floated over rye fields turning silver in the wind, and over nuns at work in their walled gardens, and finally over a great grim palace where a king's little daughter lived. I would rather be free and afloat in the sky, thought the small white cloud. When she took her air the next day, she looked up to see if any white clouds were in the sky. Her highness is growing very proud, said the ladies-in-waiting. She holds her nose up in the air as a king's daughter should. On the third night the princess dreamed she was a little lamb skipping and nippling the green grass in a meadow where hundreds of lilies of the valley were in bloom. They were still wet and sparkling with rain, but now the sun shone, and a beautiful rainbow arched over the meadow and the lilies of the valley and the happy little lamb. Through the rest of her life the gentleness of the lamb lay in the heart of the princess. The next night she dreamed that she was a white butterfly drifting with other butterflies among the tree ferns and orchids of the jungle, gentle and safe from harm, although serpents lay among the branches of the trees and lions and tigers roamed through the green shadows. A white butterfly flew in at her window the next day. A moth! A moth! cried the ladies-in-waiting. Come, for a boughs of cedar must be procured instantly, or the dreadful creature will eat up her highness's ermine robes. But the little princess knew better than that. On the fifth night she dreamed that she was a tiny white egg lying in a nest that a hummingbird had hung to a spray of fern by a rope of twisted spider's web. The nest was softly and warmly lined with silky down, and above her was the soft warmth of the mother bird's breast. On the sixth night she was a snowflake. It was Christmas night and the towns and villages were gay. Rosy light poured from every window, blurred by the falling snow, and the air was full of the sound of bells. High up on the mountain was a lonely wayside shrine with carved and painted wooden figures of the mother and her child, whose birthday it was. There were no bells there, nor yellow candlelight, but only snow and dark evergreen trees. The snowflake whirling and dancing down from the sky, a tiny frosty star, gave its life as a birthday gift to the holy child, lying for its little moment in his outstretched hand. The angel was distressed to find, on the seventh night, that the seventh dream had slipped through a hole in the moonbeam basket and was lost. Careless little angel! But it really did not matter, for instead of a dream he showed himself to the princess, and she liked that the best of all, for she had never had anyone to play with before, and there is no playmate equal to an angel. But the seventh dream is still drifting about the world. I wonder where? Perhaps it will be upon my pillow tonight. Perhaps upon yours. Who knows?