This adorable story was a huge hit with some of my "little sisters." I found it on
www.hisprincess.com... feel free to pass it on if you want!
Once upon a time there was a very beautiful, but vain princess who loved no one but herself. One day the Princess was taken captive by the evilest of princes who had determined to force her to become his bride. The princess was very lonely and the only joy she found was in walking in the castle gardens just before sunset--which was her favorite time of day. It was here, in the cool of the day, that she could pretend she was free, ignore the high, inescapable walls all around her and just be.
The only person there to talk to was a simple gardener. Tattered and dirty—the young gardener still smiled at her each day as he cut a rose for her hair and said to her “Good Evening My Princess, how are you?” She never paid much attention to him and was not very kind to him, but he was always kind to her, even when she barely looked at him. He always returned kindness for her sharp attitude, and over time his humble ways won her over. She began to really look at him, see through the dirt and really hear how kind and loving his voice was. How his eyes sparkled! And the gentle way in which he tended the flowers of the garden. He pruned the gorgeous roses and never once got pricked by any of the thorns. For so long she had hardly noticed him, not bothering to more than glance his way, just like everyone else. After all, what was he compared to a princess? Nothing in the world’s eyes.
Every night as the gardener drove his cart out of the gates, the guards let him pass without even stopping him. They paid hardly any attention to him at all but rather turned away so they would not feel obligated to exchange pleasantries with this man so much lower in station then they were. But he had become dear to the Princess. Her heart longed all day to escape to the garden where he waited for her. Each evening they would talk. She would tell him how she feared the evil Prince and how he was becoming even more insistent that she marry him. He had told her that day either she would be his or she would perish. Sadly the Princess explained that death would be better then to marry the cruel Prince and that she knew what she must do. She tearfully told her young gardener good-bye, wrapped her hooded cloak tightly around her and ran from the garden. How her heart longed to escape the castle with the gardener, but there was no way and also she cared too much for him to put his life in danger.
The next day the Prince demanded to know if she would marry him. The Princess shook her head ‘No’ sadly, knowing that it meant her death. In a rage he flew from the room. She followed him, staying in the shadows of the castle corridor; she wanted to hear how soon her fate would come. She overheard him speaking to his greatest marksman and making arrangements for him to shoot her through the heart that evening as she returned from the garden. Quickly she put on her hooded cloak and ran to see the garden, and her wonderful gardener, one last time.
As she bid him good-bye, she could feel each tear as it streamed down her face. His eyes were sad, but they still shown bright as He wordlessly untied the heavy hooded cloak around her shoulders and placed it around His. Once the hood was up, you could barely see the face inside. He reached down and took from his gardener’s sack a pair of scissors and an extra set of gardener’s clothes. The Princess gasped, she began to understand. Such was the gardener’s love for her that He was willing to die in her place. Despite her protests, the gardener quickly cut her hair and then turned away as she changed into his gardener clothes.
Because He had turned away, and because of the hood that hid his face, she did not see the tears begin to fall down His face as He wept softly. Once they dirtied her face, she only fairly resembled the beauty that she had been, but there was a new beauty, a new kindness that shone in her that had not been there before. She reached out and grasped His hand tightly, not wanting to let go, not wanting to be parted from Him. Gently he touched her face and then he was gone. The Princess’s heart pounded as she drove the gardener’s little cart through the castle gates and past the guards, but she need not have feared. The guards did not even acknowledge the gardener as he drove through. Beyond the gates the Princess sobbed in relief but her heart also grieved for she knew that it could not be long now.
Even as she moved farther away from the castle, the arrow had left the marksman’s bow. The cloaked figure lay still on the ground. The evil Prince kneeled triumphantly over the body and then he lifted the head of his victim, he wanted to gaze at the Princesss face one last time. But as the hood fell away it exposed the radiantly beautiful face of a young man! Not the Princess but a handsome young face that had been washed clean by his own tears. The Prince let out a bitter scream but it was too late, the Princess was gone.
Soon the Princess was home, safe in the borders of her own kingdom. There she told her parents of the young gardener that she had befriended and of his loving sacrifice to save her. Her mother began to weep. At first the Princess just thought her mother was relieved to have her home, but then her father began to tell her a tale of a young King who had come from a far off kingdom and had offered to rescue the Princess. “At all costs” he had said. "I will bring your daughter home. Then I wish to ask your permission, and hers, to make her my bride for I have always loved her and I wish to prove it by saving her." How courageous and fearless was the young King. How determined to infiltrate the castle as a gardener, no one special and no one they would notice, and rescue His true love, to save the Princess from the evil Prince. As the Princess wept for her gardener, her friend, her King, her Savior, she knew for the first time what it was to truly, unconditionally love someone. For greater love hath no King than this that a King would lay down His life for His Princess.
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