The Princess...

whose father didn't insist she repay the dubious favor of a slimy stranger by taking him to bed.

Once Upon a Time, a princess lost her golden ball down a well in the palace gardens. (The ball, by the way, was only golden in color and in how much fun it was to play with. Real gold is very heavy, and if you had a ball made from it you would drop it on your toe, and the experience wouldn’t be golden at all.) The princess got to work, winding the bucket down into the well and then bringing it up again, hoping to scoop up her ball. On her third attempt, sure enough, her golden ball was bobbing in the bucket as she brought it up. A large frog was also perched on the side of the bucket, one possessive foot propped against the ball.

“I saved your ball,” the frog announced to the princess, “so you owe me a reward.”

The princess was pretty sure she had saved her own ball, but she had been raised to be gracious to all her subjects, so she said, “Thank you very much. What reward would you like?”

“I would like to come home with you and stay forever,” the frog said. “You are obviously helpless without me and need me beside you at all times to take care of you.”

“Interesting,” said the princess. “I’ll think about it.” Then she went home to the palace with her ball.

The princess didn’t really need to think about it, so she didn’t. But the next day, the frog came to court and complained to her father, the king, that the princess owed him a debt that she refused to pay. The king sent for his daughter. When he had heard both stories, he recognized the frog as a con artist with delusions of grandeur. “I cannot grant your request,” he told the frog, “but as the palace well does not suit you, I will reward you for aiding the princess with a much finer dwelling place.” Then he had the palace guard escort the frog to a very nice pond on the farthest end of the kingdom, right at the border with the next kingdom over.

Some time later, the next kingdom over held a fancy ball and invited the princess, whom they hoped would marry their prince. After the two had danced for a while, the prince asked the princess to walk with him in the gardens and admire the fountains. The princess, remembering the frog and his preference for palaces, asked the prince somewhat nervously if they had many amphibians. “None at all,” the prince replied proudly. “The chemicals from the strip mining operations that make our family so wealthy have driven all the frogs out of our streams. Once you and I are married, our miners will do the same for your streams and you will never have to worry about frogs again.”

“I see,” said the princess.

After the ball, she told her father that she wouldn’t be getting married anytime soon and wanted to rule the realm herself. Her father said, “I’m very glad to hear it,” and taught her everything he knew, which was a lot. In good time, he left the realm in his daughter’s capable hands and retired to the mountains, which were pristine and lovely because they had not been strip mined.

The princess, who was now the queen, took excellent care of her lands and her people. The waterways were so clean that they teemed with amphibians of all kinds, and a famous herpetologist came to study them. The herpetologist was funny and intelligent and very kind, and he thought the queen was the most remarkable woman he had ever met. She thought he was pretty great, too, so she married him. Over time, they had several children. Their father taught them science, their mother taught them leadership, and the ones who wanted to went to art school. One of them even studied math. And they all lived happily ever after.