The Rainbow Tower

Once upon a time there was an Angry Princess.

She was so angry that she would ride around on her big, black horse with the flowing mane for hours on end trampling crops underfoot, breaking gates and fences and generally upsetting people.

The problem with princesses is that only a king can order them to stop.

One day while she was out pitilessly destroying someone’s rose garden, she happened across a Handsome Prince on a gleaming white charger.

“Well hello,” said the Handsome Prince to the Angry Princess. “You look like a bit of all right to me. Fancy a shag?”

So cheeky and impudent was the Handsome Prince, with his forthright eyes and his great big smile, that the Angry Princess was completely taken aback. Her black horse stopped, his right fore hoof poised above a prize bloom. Never before had the Angry Princess checked him and hopped out of the saddle in this manner. What on earth was going on?

The Angry Princess stood amidst the pulped and smashed roses and with her hands on her hips surveyed the Handsome Prince for a whole minute.

“All right,” she said, “let’s see what you can do.”

The Handsome Prince showed her what he could so and she was so rapt that she immediately kidnapped him and locked him up in a high tower, on the fourth floor, at the corner. This did not please the Handsome Prince. He admired the apartment, he appreciated the Angry Princess’s enjoyment but he did not like being locked up. To cheer himself up he put two rainbow coloured windmills in a window box. And watched the Angry Princess gallop off.

The people around named the tower the Rainbow Tower.

Word of the incarcerated Handsome Prince reached the King. The King did not approve. He called the Angry Princess to him immediately. She swept in, fully aware that she was particularly attractive when she swept anywhere, hoping thus to soften any blow the elderly King was about to inflict on her.

“Now listen, my dear,” said the old King. “I have had news of a Handsome Prince locked up in a Rainbow Tower and I have reason to believe that this has something to do with you. Am I right?”

The Angry Princess did not answer but looked redly at the floor.

“My dear, what is the point to this useless deprivation of freedom to an individual? I would have you know that I have signed the Declaration of Human Rights and I am a fully paid-up member of Amnesty International. I cannot condone this sort of behaviour.”

The Angry Princess looked sad.

“But I like him,” she objected, “and if I don’t keep him locked up he’ll run away and I will have nothing to do all day but destroy carrots and hedges.”

The King sighed. “Aye, there’s the rub.”

“The what?” asked the Angry Princess.

“The rub, my dear. The problem, the obstacle. It’s from Hamlet, you really should read more you know.”

“I shall endeavour to,” answered the Angry Princess dutifully.

“Now let me try to explain something to you,” said the King a little more kindly. “You see my dear, there are two kinds of Handsome Prince: the pebbles and the boomerangs. If you take a pebble and throw it, it will not return. You will be able to admire it in your hand for a moment, you will be able to admire it flash through the air for a moment, and then all you will have are these two memories and the fact that there are plenty more pebbles out there.
A boomerang on the other hand does something different.
If you throw a boomerang it will thank you for releasing it into the air it needs, for giving it the joy of flight, for letting it lash its colours in one great, wide graceful arc in the crystal fragility of sky and time. And so joyful will it be that when the movement dies it will not descend alone like a pebble but will turn back to search your hand, and beg you to launch it again.
Am I making myself clear?”

“Entirely,” said the Angry Princess.

With her black and tireless horse she galloped to the Rainbow Tower. She took a tiny golden key from a ribbon around her neck and opened the door.

The Handsome Prince, a little tired, a little sad, looked up from his computer with ADSL connection. The Angry Princess held out the key.

“This is yours now,” she said. “But I just want to know, what sort of Handsome Prince are you?”

“Ah, the King has been telling you about Pebbles and Boomerangs, has he?” he asked. “Great story, works every time.”

“It’s not a story,” said the Angry Princess with a look very much like that she wore prior to riding through someone’s chicken coop. “It’s The Truth. So what are you, then? A pebble or a boomerang?”

“Now that would be telling,” said the Handsome Prince with an impudent smile. “You see that would be like reading the last page of a story first. I like stories very much. I particularly enjoy the beginnings of stories – in fact I’ve made a blog about them – and I very, very much enjoy the middles of stories, but I don’t particularly care for the ends of stories. So why don’t we leave the end till the end?”

“That,” said the no-longer-Angry Princess carefully removing her knickers, “is an excellent idea. Care for a blowjob?”