The Very Little Princess: Rose's Story (4 page)

And Princess Regina certainly stayed after Rose carried her upstairs to her room.

As soon as Rose closed the door, the princess began talking again.

She talked. And she talked. And she talked.

Rose listened.

After a while—it was a long time, really, but since Regina was doing most of the talking it didn't seem so long to her—Rose put on her pajamas and climbed into bed. She lifted Regina to the pillow and lay down next to her.

Princess Regina went on talking. Rose went on listening.

She talked about what it was like to be a
princess. It's a great responsibility, don't you know, to be in charge of such a huge world.

She talked about how difficult it was being small. (“I see the undersides of everything,” she told Rose. “Including your nose. Ugh!”)

She talked about what she wanted to do the next day. She wanted to go back to her throne room. She wanted Rose to find flowers, not just pebbles and pinecones. Surely there were flowers somewhere. She wanted Rose, her humble servant, to wait on her.

Rose talked a bit, too, mostly about Regina, which suited the little doll just fine. She admired Regina's pink and white cheeks, her golden hair, her sapphire eyes.

(
Sapphire
and
golden
and
pink
and
white
were instantly Regina's favorite colors.)

Rose's mother looked in a couple of times. Her father did, too. Regina went quiet when
they appeared. When they were gone, she went back to talking.

But at the point that Regina began trying to remember former servants, all clumsy and oversized, too, Rose quit answering. Her eyes drifted closed.

How rude!
Regina thought.

Rose began to breathe deeply.

“Wake up!” the princess ordered. She tugged on one of Rose's eyelashes. “I didn't say you could leave me!”

Rose's eyes popped open. Then they narrowed dangerously. “Don't you ever sleep?” she asked.

“Of course not!” Regina replied. “Why should I sleep?” She shuddered. She could think of few things she wanted less. That was where she had just come from, wasn't it? Sleep … or someplace very like it.

“Well,” Rose said, “I do. Sleep, I mean. And if I'm not allowed to do it, I get to feeling real mean.”

“So?” Regina said with a shrug of her tiny shoulders. Why should she care about how her servant
felt
?

But Rose wasn't through. “When I get to feeling mean”—she bared her teeth—“I eat little dolls!”

Eat! Little dolls!
Princess Regina had never heard anything more silly … or more terrifying.

Still, she poked her chin out. “You can't eat me,” she said. “I'm made of fine china. Nobody eats china.”

She said this as though she were certain. But she wasn't entirely. Since she herself didn't eat, eating was something she didn't understand very well.

“Just try me!” Rose said. And she turned over, away from the tiny doll sitting on her pillow.

Regina decided not to.

She lay back on the pillow and let her humble servant drift off to sleep.

But while Rose slept, Regina sulked. She didn't like being alone. The girl had no right to leave her alone. No right at all.

She remembered the threat, though, about being eaten. So she waited, silent and still.

A smothering dark filled the room. It pressed in from every side.

The floor creaked. Had someone come in? Someone else who ate china dolls?

Moonlight stalked the floor. Every shape it found turned into a monster. Every monster was bigger than a thousand princess dolls. They were bigger than a hundred thousand dolls.

Regina closed her eyes to shut out the monsters. She could hear Rose breathing. She didn't know why humans had to breathe. It was an ugly sound.

She opened her eyes again.

More darkness.

After a long, long time the moonlight snuck away. The sky faded from black to navy blue. It went from navy blue to silver. Then it turned the palest pink possible.

Sunlight peeked in the bedroom window. Even when it lay across Rose's face, it didn't wake her. And Regina still didn't dare to.

The house came slowly to life with thumps and bumps.

Rose slept on.

At last Hazel's voice drifted up the stairs, riding on the smell of coffee and toast. “Rose,” she called. “It's time to get up. Rose!”

The instant Rose's eyes opened, the little doll started talking again. Actually, she began complaining … loudly. “I don't know why you humans have to sleep so long,” she said. “I don't understand why you have to sleep at all. A princess should never be left alone in the dark like that. It's creepy. And listening to you breathe … Ugh!”

Rose sat up and rubbed her eyes. She stared at Regina as though she'd forgotten she was
there. “Don't you breathe?” she asked finally.

“No!” Regina said. “I don't breathe. And I don't eat. And I don't … well, I don't do that other thing you humans do. From the other end, you know?”

To Regina's surprise, Rose laughed. “La-di-da,” she said. “Aren't you something?”

But before Regina could respond to that, Hazel called again. “Rose, dear! It's time to get up. School.”

Rose's face went pale at the word
school
. Still, she called back, “I'm up.” And she swung her feet out of the bed.

“I have to get ready,” she told Regina. “And I can't take you with me this time. Something bad will happen if I do. Something bad nearly happened yesterday.”

The only reason Princess Regina didn't go pale, too, was because she was made of china.
If she'd been made of blood and bones the way you and I are, her cheeks would certainly have lost their cheerful pink.

“You're going to go off and leave me!” she cried. “You're going to leave me alone after that horrible night?”

Rose shrugged. “I
have
to go to school. All kids do. It's a law … or something like that.”

Princess Regina stood up in the middle of the pillow. She clenched her fists. She screwed her face into a ferocious frown. “You … will … not … leave … me!” she shouted. “And that's a command! If you're going to school, I will go to school, too. If you go out to play, I will play. If you eat, I will …” Here she hesitated. Then she started again. “I will watch you eat,” she said. “But you won't leave me. Ever!”

Rose had been reaching for her clothes. She
stopped and turned back, her mouth fallen open into an O.

Princess Regina waited. She would have held her breath if she'd had breath to hold. What would the girl do?

Regina was a princess. She knew she was a princess. Rose was her servant. That was certain. Servants followed orders. That was the way the world was made.

But even at her most royal, Regina could never quite forget that she was a very small princess. And this servant of hers was a very large girl.

Regina needn't have worried, though. Not right now, anyway.

Rose's mouth closed. It curled into a smile. It stretched into a grin. A laugh came tumbling out. “Well, then,” she said, “if that's the way things are, I guess I'd better figure out how to hide you away!”

Relieved, Regina plopped down on the pillow. Everything would be all right! Rose was going to obey her.

A World Shared

And she did. Rose tucked Regina safely into her pocket and kept her with her all day long.

The first thing she had to do when she got back to school was explain to Mr. Simmons why she had left so abruptly the day before.

And since she couldn't tell him that she couldn't stand his bullying, she had to make up a story. Luckily, Rose was good at stories.

“I got this terrible bellyache,” she said. “It came on real fast. I didn't want to throw up
on the clean school floor. So I decided I'd better get home right away.”

When Mr. Simmons pointed out that he had called her mother and she hadn't known where Rose was, she added, “That's because I went around behind the house. I don't like to throw up in front of anybody, you see? It's the retching. The sound of it. It's so awful to listen to anybody retching. Don't you think? Whenever I hear that sound, it makes me want to—”

Mr. Simmons sent her to the principal, Ms. Whittenbottom. And at the exact same point in Rose's story, Ms. Whittenbottom sent her back to her classroom. Which was, of course, the next best thing to being sent home.

Dawn and Melanie, the girls who sat in front of Rose, had lots of practice rolling their eyes that day. They did it when Rose first came into the classroom. They did it when she was
explaining herself to Mr. Simmons. They did it when she was sent to the principal and when she came back.

They looked at one another across the desks each time and lifted their gaze to the ceiling. It was as if something odd about Rose were written there. Then they looked back at one another in that
meaningful
way again.

Their look said … well, you know exactly what it said. I don't need to explain.

Rose told herself she didn't care. She just set about creating a second throne room for the princess. Inside her desk she set her math and spelling books on one side. She stacked social studies and language arts on the other. She threw out all the old papers that filled the space between them and blew the crumbs off a fat pink eraser. It made a fine throne.

She even found a small notebook with some
blank pages and several broken crayons. (Most of Rose's crayons were broken.) Then she slipped Regina from her pocket, holding a finger to her lips to warn her to be still, and put her on the throne. She propped the desktop open a bit with another eraser to let in some light so the princess could draw.

With all that finished, Rose turned her attention to Mr. Simmons. He was at the chalkboard talking about adjectives. Rose pretended to be extremely interested in adjectives.

Strangely, the day whizzed by. Having a tiny princess in her desk made every moment more interesting. Or if lessons about adjectives weren't exactly interesting, they passed more quickly than usual.

Rose kept slipping her hand into her desk to make sure Regina was really there. Had she dreamed her? No! There she was!

This was what she had needed all her life, a tiny, walking, talking doll made out of china. She just hadn't known it before now.

Each time Rose reached for Regina, the doll touched her. She tapped a fingernail or ran a china finger across Rose's wrist. The touch was hard—hard as china—and cold—cold as china, too—but every single time it made Rose glow.

When the school bell rang, Rose tucked Regina into her pocket again and hurried home. When she got there, though, she didn't go in. She waved to her mother, who was watering her plants at the living room window, and headed for the woods behind the house.

There they walked and talked. At least Rose walked. The princess rode and gave directions.