by Khoa Le
Céline wasn’t sure that she wanted to tell the prince that she was the baker. She just wanted to bake, not find a husband! But before she could slip away, the head servant grabbed her hand and pulled her into the middle of the room.
“Your highness, this—er—lady is the one who baked your cake.”
Everyone turned to stare at Céline. She saw all the rich people of the court sneering at her floury hands and the donkey skin that she wore.
But when she looked at the prince, he looked enchanted. He held out the ring. “Is this yours?”
Céline reluctantly held out her hand and the prince slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.
The prince smiled at her. “In that case, will you marry me?”
Céline gestured to her donkey skin. “Your highness, I am a humble servant wearing dirty fur robes. I am not suitable for a prince to marry.”
The prince waved a hand. “What you are wearing is just an outside thing, and being a servant is a perfectly fine job. I don’t care about those. Anyone who can bake cakes full of love like that is the most beautiful person on the inside and that’s someone who I would like to marry.”
Céline felt touched by the prince’s kind words. “Your highness, you are very kind. I do not feel ready to marry anyone. But if you think so highly of me, I wonder if I could ask you something?”
“Anything!” said the prince.
“Please may I have a job in your palace kitchen?” Céline asked. “All I really want to do is bake cakes.”
“Done!” declared the prince.
Thrilled, Céline shed the donkey skin at last and all the courtiers were surprised by how beautiful and young she was.
From that day on, Céline made every cake in the palace kitchens and her baking was legendary throughout the kingdom. The prince would come down to visit her—and taste her cakes—every day and eventually, after many years of dating, he asked her once again to marry him.
Céline agreed, but on one condition—that she never had to stop baking!
Princess Kaguya’s Great Adventure
Adapted from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a tenth-century Japanese story
There once was a princess called Kaguya. She was no ordinary princess, for she lived in the great kingdom of Celestia, on the moon. Celestia was full of magic and delightful things, but Kaguya was meant to stay in her room in the palace, studying. Her parents, the king and queen, told her that being a princess was a serious business. She needed to learn all of the Lunar Laws and the history of her people by the time she was grown up, so that she could be the best queen possible.
Kaguya tried her best to concentrate on her moon books, but she usually ended up gazing out of the window at the Earth. The swirling globe of green and blue was beautiful and mysterious to her. She wondered what it would be like to live down there.
One night, she grew tired of just looking and wondering.
I want to see it all for myself. I want to be a human on Earth.
It would be an adventure, away from her books and studying. Kaguya knew her parents wouldn’t approve, so she waited until they were distracted by a visit from the Starry Ambassador and then she slipped out of her room. She tiptoed down the golden staircase and outside. The golden light of the moon was beaming down toward the earth. Kaguya knew a bit of magic, so she flew down to Earth on a moonbeam. She landed in the middle of a bamboo forest in Japan.
Kaguya didn’t know how human babies were born, since children were born differently on Celestia. So, she planted herself in the ground and waited to start her new human life.
A little while later, an old, childless bamboo cutter called Taketori no Okina was walking past. He noticed a stalk of bamboo that was glowing with a golden light. Curious as to what was causing the bamboo to glow, he cut the stalk open to find a baby the size of his thumb. It was Princess Kaguya. Taketori no Okina was delighted to find such a lovely little girl and took her home to his wife.
As Kaguya grew, she caught up with normal human children in size. Although she never told her Earth parents where she was really from, she loved them dearly and did her best to be a good daughter. She had great fun exploring everything that she was allowed to, such as her local town and the bamboo forest, but even on Earth, Kaguya found that she was not free to go wherever she pleased. She was always careful to keep her head down, as well. She was sure her parents would be looking for her from the Moon and she didn’t want them to spot her.
Years passed and Kaguya grew up to be a very beautiful woman. She was famous throughout the land. Lots and lots of young men came to the house, asking if they could marry Kaguya.
Kaguya was not interested in marrying anyone. From what she could see, getting married to someone would just mean that someone else would be around to tell her where she could and couldn’t go. But when five princes arrived, each asking for her hand in marriage, Taketori no Okina begged Kaguya to at least consider them. He worried that the princes would be angry at being rejected straight away.
“Very well, Father,” Kaguya said, with a twinkle in her eye. “I’ll give them all a chance.”
She met the princes and told each of them to bring her an item that she knew was impossible to find. She told the first prince to bring her the legendary begging bowl of Shakyamuni.
The prince could not find such a bowl, so he bought an expensive stone bowl and presented it to her.
“This bowl does not glow with holy light; it is a fake!” Kaguya exclaimed. “I might have married you if you were honest.” She sent the prince away.
She told the second prince to bring her a branch covered in jewels from the mythical island of Horai. The prince could not find the island, so he tried to trick Kaguya with a fake branch. She saw right through it and sent him on his way.
The third prince, she asked to bring her the legendary robe of the fire rat. The prince didn’t want to go anywhere near a fire rat, so he gave her a robe he had bought from a merchant. Kaguya laughed and told him to leave.
The fourth prince was told to bring her a jewel from a dragon’s neck. He tried hard but was forced to turn back from his journey to the dragon’s lair because of a most terrible storm.
“Let’s take it as a sign that it wasn’t meant to be,” said Kaguya, with a grin, as he left.
She asked the fifth prince to bring her a cowry shell laid by a swallow. The prince could find no such thing anywhere and returned to the palace in a rage.
“I wouldn’t marry such a grump anyway!” Kaguya said.
She and Taketori no Okina laughed together over how she had tricked the princes.
But the next man who knocked on the door was very different to all the princes who had come before. It was Mikado, the Emperor of Japan. When Kaguya opened the door, Mikado was struck by her amazing beauty and the way she seemed to glow from the inside.
“Are you Kaguya?” Mikado asked.
Kaguya dipped her head. She knew who Mikado was and she didn’t want to be rude. “I am.”
“Ah, the cruel lady herself. I hear you send suitors on impossible missions so that you may laugh at them when they fail.”
Kaguya’s eyes danced. “Perhaps ….”
Mikado grinned back. “How interesting. Might I ask why?”
“Because I don’t want to be married,” Kaguya told him. “I would rather go on adventures, not stay at home with a husband.”
Mikado looked thoughtful. “Is that so? You know, I don’t really want to get married either. But emperors are supposed to, you know. In fact,” he chuckled, “that’s actually why I came. I thought perhaps I could pretend to my advisors that you turned me down so I don’t have to get married.”
Kaguya suddenly had a wonderful idea. “Why don’t we go exploring together? People will think you are trying to woo me and neither of us will have to bother with any suitors for a while.”
/> “That’s a great idea!” said Mikado. “Where would you like to go?”
“Everywhere!” cried Kaguya.
The journey was everything Kaguya could have hoped for. She was finally able to visit all the places she had seen from the moon—the huge cities, the great rivers, the forests, and finally, the mountains.
Mount Fuji was the tallest mountain in the empire. As they stood at the top, Kaguya gazed at Earth spread out beneath her, while Mikado looked up at the moon.
“We are so much closer to the moon up here,” he said. “I can see every bump on it!” Suddenly, he yelped in alarm. “Who’s that? What’s happening?”
Kaguya turned to see her parents and several guards from Celestia riding down toward them on a moonbeam.
Kaguya knew that they must have spotted her because she had climbed so high. She quickly turned to Mikado and told him the whole story.
Mikado’s jaw dropped. “You’re from the moon?”
Kaguya’s parents stepped off the moonbeam, looking furious.
“Kaguya, it is time to go home,” said her mother, sternly. “We’ve all been extremely worried.”
“You belong in Celestia,” added her father.
Although she was sad, Kaguya knew that they were right.
“At least I got to see everything, thanks to you,” she said to Mikado. “But let us stay friends. I will write to you and send letters down on a moonbeam.”
“But how will I write to you?” Mikado asked.
“Bring your letters up here and burn them,” said Kaguya. “The smoke will rise all the way up to the Moon and I will know what your letters say.”
She stepped onto the moonbeam and floated back up through the sky, waving goodbye to her friend.
Kaguya and Mikado wrote to each other all the time. Everyone in the empire got used to all the smoke at the top of Mount Fuji as the Emperor and his best friend stayed in touch.
Kaguya knew her place was on the moon, and she loved her home, but her heart always held a special place for her greatest adventure, visiting Earth.
This edition published in 2020 by Arcturus Publishing Limited
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