Puzzled, but not the littlest bit afraid, the Princess went to her wardrobe and dressed herself as well as she could in a little red hunting-dress and cap. Then, throwing her warmest mantle over her shoulders and taking a lighted candle with her, she made her way from her chamber down the great stairway to the palace door. Fantastic shadows leaped and swayed as the Princess, holding aloft her taper, descended the long broad flight, and somewhere a huge clock ticked on, solemn, dutiful, and forgotten. Opening the door gently, Theolette stepped forth into the dark street and hurried along it to the royal gate of the city wall.
All seemed well; the gates were locked, and the drawbridge of the moat was lifted high above the black and starry waters. Standing motionless for a moment in one of the shadowy nooks of the giant portal, Theolette listened for a footfall or a sound, but heard only the sigh of the night wind and the ripple of water in the moat. Reassured by the silence, the Princess lowered the drawbridge, unlocked the great gate with her father’s own key, opened one vast swinging door, locked it behind her, and walked off bravely into the dark and lonely land.
The runaway Princess stepped forth into the dark street and, taper in hand, hurried to the gate of the city wall
On the following morning, a little after the dawn, the Princess arrived at a country town just over the frontier of her father’s realm, and there she sought out the inn and made preparations for her runaway winter-pilgrimage. From the host, a little white horse she purchased, and from the host’s fourth son, who happened to be a tailor, a fine warm riding-habit of country wool. Thus clad, away into the winter world galloped the adventurous Theolette. Of what befell her, you soon shall hear.
And what a wonderful pilgrimage it was through the world of ice and snow! I wish I had time to tell you of all she saw and of all she did, of how the first snowstorm so pleased her that she almost lost her way in the whirl of the flakes, of her first look at a bit of ice, of her visit to the winter festival of the Fairy of the Snows, of how she danced the minuet at the polar bears’ ball, and of how she rode Aldebaran, the skating horse, up and down the ice lakes of the wild. White as snow was this marvelous animal, and of blue leather edged with white were his saddle and bridle, whilst the skates he wore were of the blackest and shiniest adamant. You should have seen him skating o’er the lakes, now striking out with this hoof, now with that; his head held high, his long silky tail streaming in the wind. And Theolette thought, as she rode, of the old book in the royal library and of the City of the Winter Sleep far away, with the storm crying unheeded through its dream.
And now the winter waned, a venturesome bird or two returned to rock on budding twigs, the earth began to turn from brown to green, and Theolette knew that she must hasten back at once. Alas! one pleasant morning, as she was nearing the borders of her father’s land, a band of robbers suddenly sprang at her out of a wood, bound her securely, and hurried her to their castle with the intention of demanding a ransom. Once there, they pushed the Princess roughly into a little cobwebby turret-chamber, slammed and locked the heavy oaken door behind her, and left her to her thoughts.
From her window in the turret, Theolette could see the highroad leading toward the castle through the wooded lowlands, and the broad winding stream of a mighty river—the very river, indeed, which flowed by the walls of the City of the Winter Sleep. With every warm and sunny hour the spring was driving old winter from the land, the scales of tree buds were unsealing, frogs were piping in tiny triumph from every marsh and pool, and there were pleasant earthy smells in the air.
“The spring awakening is surely close at hand,” thought Theolette. “What shall I do?”