In a kingdom far from the Risen Lands, there lived two kings and two queens. The queens had known each other since they were very young girls, and in their youth, they had made several promises to one another.

The first of these promises was to marry well, and marry together.

The second promise was to marry their firstborn children, if they lived past that treacherous and risky age which is birth.

The first of their promises saw itself to fruition on their sixteenth birthdays, and they happily joined hands with wonderful, wise kings. The ceremony was beautiful, and all in attendance agreed that the new queens would make their husbands proud and kind.

The second of their promises took some time to fulfill, as neither could produce a child for quite some time. After five years, however, they began to show the wondrous signs of being with child, and in due time, the first queen gave birth to a lovely baby girl, and the second, a handsome baby boy.

Now, the second queen gave birth, and found that it was an easy, calm birth. Her child was born with a healthy disposition and the perfect amount of howling and screaming. The first queen, however, suffered long through her delivery, and the entire castle winced in sympathy as the queen screamed her way through the night. In the morning, the reward for her pains was quite horrible, and caused several of the maids to wrench at their hair and cry in the kitchens. The queen's daughter had been born disfigured.

A letter was soon sent to her dearest friend, and a reply came back as follows:

My darling love,
Fret not, for I will still honor that solemn vow with which we have sworn to one another. When your child and mine reach their seventeenth years, we shall, if you are healthy enough and sound of sweet mind to agree, marry them together, to rule and live as the fruit of our love.

I pray for your baby girl, and if her poor marring of the face does not clear in the next week, I propose thus: keep her safe from the outside world, and keep her mind pure, and all will be well.

The first queen took this letter with a hopeful and most grateful heart, for after a week, her daughter's deformity had not cleared, and she would have despaired to know what to do with such a child otherwise.

The children of these two fast friends grew up thus, separated, but fully informed of their destined relationship. In the next sixteen years, the children grew up much loved, but quite differently from one another. As the daughter of the queen was isolated from the outside world, she was a quiet, demure girl, full of polite manners and a sweet temperament. The son of the second queen, however, was quite spoilt and given all that he ever wished for. His father often at war or out of the country, the boy was pampered by his well-meaning, but complacent mother, and it was not often that he did not get what he wanted, and when.

As you can imagine, this did not complement the separation he was forced to partake in from his intended. His whole life, he had been given excuses plenty for why he could not see her, if she was as sweet and charming as he had been told. None of the answers he had received had been satisfactory, and so, he designed to steal into the castle where she lived, and make his way to her room. If nobody would tell him, then he would see for himself if her various illnesses held any weight at all, or if this was simply a long attempt to deprive him of something he desired.

The young man set out one day to a strange and sinister wood betwixt the two castles. It was said that a sorcerer, a tree-spirit of sorts, lived in these woods, and was known to grant wishes and desires in exchange for hidden payments. The queen's son did not much care what it was that granted desires - he only wanted to know how to steal into his intended's rooms and avoid detection all the while.

After a lengthy trek, involving the destruction of one of his favourite boots and a rather unwanted sighting of a large snake, he at last found the green lanterns and swirling smoke that betrayed the presence of the spirit. It was a migratory creature, and hard to locate, but the prince was a well-learned youth, and was not at all dissuaded by the supposed difficulty in finding the spirit.

"Come, O Sorcerer! A prince would have a request of you!" He stood impetuously, hands on his hips, and an eyebrow raised in annoyance. A rustling sounded, and the smoke parted to reveal a hunched, hooded figure. Beads and keys of every size and shape hung from the hood of the spirit, whose face could not be seen.

"What is it you wish for, boy, that you would bother such a harmless creature?" The prince waved his hand impatiently and sniffed.

"Don't play innocent with me, Sorcerer. I need a way into a locked room." The spirit shuffled forward, the same greenish light in the trees emanating lightly from under the hood. It reached a hand up to the prince, a stick-like finger prodding him here and there.

"You need a key, then?"

"If a key will open a door locked for the last ten and six years, then yes, a key will do." The prince curled a lip and shook off the spirit's touch.

Fingering a key that dangled somewhere near its mouth, the spirit raised its hood and stared from the green darkness at the prince.

"You must give me something in return, yes?"

"Whatever it is you want, I am sure I shall be able to pay you." The prince was rather used to throwing money this way and that, and it was with an ugly look of surprise that he was told:

"Hmm. I want an answer, then."

"An answer? You live like this, and you would rather have words than wealth?" The spirit chuckled and turned around. It snapped its fingers, and with a wispy crack, a key appeared in the air. The prince stared hungrily at it, and watched in jealous awe as the spirit twirled it in its spindly fingers.

"Tell me," it said softly, ignoring this last remark, "what happiness is, and the key is yours."

"Happiness?" The prince replied incredulously.

"Oh, yes. I have been most curious. You may wander about and see for yourself, but know this: you may only answer thrice, and if you cannot truly say, then your key is mine."

The prince snorted and shook his curls out of his face.

"Fine. I accept. I hope it works on the first try." Confident that he would not need to look far, he marched on through the woods, looking about for anything other than trees and moss that might aid his answer. It did not occur to him to come up with the answer on his own, or ponder it in the slightest, and he looked eagerly around for something to express this happiness obviously.

He soon came upon a cabin, and he strode to the door and knocked. A young man of about thirty years answered the door, and his red cheeks smiled to see the visitor. He did not recognize the prince, which irritated the traveler, but he put aside his indignation at not being addressed as he ought when he learned that the man lived in the woods, largely alone, save for his old mother. The prince asked the man what he was doing out in the middle of such an unforgiving place, when he was told a story that made him grin inside.

The man had been engaged to a pretty, apple-faced girl from the next town over. He had even traveled to her house in preparation for their wedding, when he had received news that his mother, living alone and far from any town, had taken ill. He had forsaken his love at once, and had been living with his mother since.

After hearing the story, the prince made a hasty excuse and departed quickly back to the spirit.

"Come, Sorcerer! I have for you an answer!" The spirit shuffled out from its hut, blending in with the trees and the smoke, and stared up at the prince. The prince ignored the odd look of the hood, a dark void, and proudly stated his answer.

"Happiness is sacrificing your own desires for your duty, especially for those less able than yourself." The spirit stared for a moment and coughed.

"Is that really your answer?"

"Of course," the prince replied hotly, confused that this hadn't pleased the strange creature.

"Go," the spirit said, waving a hand and walking back into the smoke. "Come back when you've found something else."

The prince watched the spirit disappear in a mixture of anger and disappointment, but he had no choice - he would have to find another answer, else he would have to wait another year to see his betrothed for who she really was.

He pressed on in the woods, wandering around until he came across a pond. Stopping to scoop a handful of water to his handsome mouth, he looked fondly at the water. It was cool and gentle, but he soon saw something floating in the middle. He walked around the edge of the pond, his boots squelching in the muck, and he leaned forward to see... hair?

He grasped a stick from the ground and prodded the hair, and the floating object soon revealed itself to be a little girl, bloated, blue, and face down in the pond.

After screaming and trying to throw up the water, he sullenly made his way back to the spirit, rather annoyed with this search, and growing colder by the minute.

"Happiness," he announced to the green smoke, "is to never lose one's innocence!" He did not wait for the spirit to reveal itself, for his discomfort made his arrogance impolite.

The spirit's hood peeked out from a tree, and the prince could just make out a humming sound.

"Better. Much better, but no. You have one more guess, little prince."

"What do you want from me?" The prince screeched at the spirit, but it had retreated, and only repeated one more guess before disappearing altogether.

Freezing, hungry, and now itchy from the plants he had touched around the pond, the prince stomped off in a direction he had not been before. He walked much further, this time, squinting this way and that, for what felt like several days. After only a half-hour of this, he drew to an exhausted stop and leaned his arm against a tree.

Something squawked in the trees, and he leapt up, only to see a large, ugly bird scowling back at him. The bird was perched on a deer, or a small animal of the sort, and it had been dipping its beaks into the insides of the animal. The smell of death had not yet begun to settle on the area, but the prince was still disgusted. Although he liked to act mature and beyond his years, he was not around corpses and death as much as he had been today, and the effect was nauseating.

The bird squawked again, raising its wings in warning. It was protecting its foul meal, and with a jolt, the prince realized that this bird would be quite happy to be left alone with its meal.

He was back at the spirit's abode in only a day - seven minutes, in reality - and when he arrived, panting and out of breath, the spirit was perched in the tree that housed its hut. It looked curiously down at the filthy prince and smiled underneath its hood.

"Do you have your final answer, little prince?"

"Y-yes!" The prince stood tall and spat, clearing his throat before giving a confident glare into the spirit's hood.
"Happiness, O Sorcerer, is to accept. It is to accept what you are and what you must become, in order to survive. It is fighting, tooth and bloody nail, to secure life, no matter how vile or how unclean that life is." The spirit glided down from its perch and pulled back its hood.

It was a small, twisted thing, with greyish skin and pointed ears that peeked out of matted, wiry hair. Its eyes, green as the smoke around it, were crinkled in an approving smile.

"Aha," it said, and it reached into its cloak to pull out the key the prince had seen earlier. "An answer well said. Your key, as requested." The prince snatched at it and stared hungrily at the dark shape. He looked up at the spirit and nodded, as much gratitude as he could muster, and he turned toward the castle where his intended lay locked up.

"Do not blame me for what you find," the spirit called out, but the prince did not hear it, so absorbed in his prize, was he.

He marched onward, a newfound vigor filling his step as he drew nearer the castle. Once at the gates, he professed his name and was let in at once - everyone here, at least, recognized the power of his name, and the special relationship he had with the inhabitants. After his entrance, though, he slipped into the hallways as silently as he could, for he did not want his progress hampered by anybody who wanted to stop him from seeing the lady he was to marry.

Soon, he was at the door which he knew belonged to the princesses. He took a deep breath and pressed the key to the lock, and he pushed the door open with elation when the lock turned.

"Hello?" A soft voice, elegant and tender, called out in the twilight of the room. "Mother, is that you?" The prince did not answer, but approached in silence. Around the bed of the princess was a heavy curtain, and behind the bed was a wide, open window. The dregs of sunlight just barely revealed her silhouette, and her shape was as pleasing as he hoped it would be.

"Who goes there?" The princess said, her voice taking on a sweet tremor of confusion and fear.

"It is your prince," the young man cried, and he pulled back the curtains with a dramatic twist. He looked greedily on the princess, but the twilight just obscured her face.

"My prince?" She gasped and fumbled with a dresser on the side of her large bed, and in a moment, she had struck a match and lit a lamp, which she held up to the waiting prince.

The light revealed a face that made the prince's blood freeze dead in his veins. He opened his mouth, but no sounds came out. A hand raised itself limply from his side and clutched at his chest, and the princess looked on in nervous fear.

"What is it, my darling?" She asked softly, but as she sat up to reach out to him, the prince finally screamed and backed up. Each movement the princess made was a step away from the bed for the prince, until he was pressed against the frame of the window. "Wait, my love!" She reached a hand desperately out to the prince, but this was the last movement she should have done, for the prince, so overwhelmed with fear, took an impossible step back. Before either of them could do anything else, the prince had fallen out of the window.

The princess screamed herself and ran to the window, where she could just hear a sickening crunch on the ground, far below.

The queen, aroused by the commotion, soon ran in, and saw her poor daughter, wordless and crying, at the window.

As the castle scrambled to discover what had happened, and how the prince had found his way into a room for which there was only one key, the spirit of the woods crept out of the trees and approached the twisted body of the prince. It stared emotionless at the body and a thin, whispering sigh came from under its hood, hiding its face once more.

"I did tell you not to blame me for what you saw," it said quietly, and it reached into the prince's shirt for the key. In a moment, it had slipped back into the woods, and was gone. Nobody noticed the spirit, and nobody knew that the prince had ever been to see it.

The princess was allowed at his funeral, dressed in a dark veil and a dark dress. It was the first time she had been let out of her room, and it was only a month from her birthday and wedding to the poor, dead prince.