“I wonder if that’s true,” said Aryenis, contemplating the fire’s molten heart. “You speak sometimes as if you thought you knew all about me. But you don’t really.”
“I do, though. Quite a lot. Shall I tell you your life-history?”
She looked up at me from the fire. “I love being told—stories,” she said half seriously, half mockingly.
“Well, once upon a time there was a very beautiful princess—”
“All stories begin that way,” she interrupted.
“Yes; that shows they’re true. Anyway, once upon a time there was a very beautiful princess, whom some people called ‘Shahzadi.’”
I waited for the interruption which didn’t come.
“Called her ‘Shahzadi.’ And she lived in a very beautiful country, only it was not half as beautiful as she. Then once she ran into a lot of dragons—nasty ones, not the friendly kind—and she looked around for a fairy prince.”
“She didn’t. She’d given up all hopes of fairy princes then.”
“She must have been right, for no prince came, but a swineherd arrived—”