Example stories · Princesses · Ages 8 to 10

Princess Maren and the Nightflower Spring

A read-aloud bedtime story, about 5 minutes.

In the kingdom of Aldermoor, when the sun went down, the village did not need torches. Instead, every path glowed soft silver blue, lit by thousands of tiny Nightflowers that grew along the garden walls and cobblestone streets. The flowers had bloomed that way for as long as anyone could remember, fed by a hidden spring deep in the Old Grove.

Princess Maren loved the Nightflowers best of anything in her kingdom. She loved walking the glowing paths after supper, checking on the animals, waving to the bakers closing their shops. But three nights ago, the flowers near the village square had started to dim. Two nights ago, the flowers along Miller's Lane had gone dark completely. Tonight, even the flowers outside the castle gate looked pale and tired.

"The spring must be running low," said the royal gardener, an old man named Thistlewood, scratching his chin. "Someone ought to go and see what's happened to it. Trouble is, none of us know the way through the Old Grove anymore. It's been years."

"I know the way," said Maren. "Grandmother showed me once, when I was small."

King Halric frowned at his daughter. "The Old Grove is a long walk, and it will be dark before you're halfway there."

"The Nightflowers will light my path," said Maren, "as long as they last."

Her father considered this, then nodded slowly. A princess of Aldermoor was raised to solve her kingdom's problems, not simply worry about them. "Take Bramble with you," he said, "and be home by moonrise tomorrow."

Bramble was Maren's shaggy gray pony, sure footed and unbothered by much of anything. Together they set off down the dimming path, past the wilting flowers of Miller's Lane, past the edge of the wheat fields, and into the cool shadow of the Old Grove.

The deeper they went, the darker the woods grew, until only a few faint, gasping Nightflowers marked the trail at all. Maren kept close to Bramble's warm side and hummed the tune her grandmother used to hum, to keep her feet steady and her heart calm.

By the time the moon rose fat and orange over the treetops, Maren heard it, a sound she hadn't expected. Not silence. Not danger. Just water, splashing and busy, somewhere ahead.

She followed the sound to a wide clearing, and there she found the spring, or what should have been the spring. Instead of trickling out toward the village as it always had, the water was pooling into a broad, still pond. And right across the middle of that pond sat an enormous, tidy dam of sticks and mud and neatly gnawed logs.

Maren had read enough books to know exactly what had built it.

Sure enough, a fat brown beaver poked its head up from the water, whiskers twitching, and regarded Maren with mild curiosity before slapping its tail and diving back down.

"Oh," said Maren softly. "You didn't mean any harm at all, did you? You just wanted a home."

She sat on a mossy stone at the pond's edge and thought about it properly, the way her father thought about kingdom matters at his big oak desk. The beavers needed their pond. The village needed its spring water flowing free, to keep the Nightflowers alive. Tearing down the dam would ruin the beavers' lodge. Leaving the dam would let the flowers die out one street at a time.

There had to be a way for both to keep what they needed.

Maren walked the edge of the pond until she found a low, mossy dip in the ground, just past the end of the dam, where the earth sloped gently away toward the old streambed. She knelt down and began digging with a flat stone, scooping out mud and roots, widening the little channel bit by bit.

It was slow, cold, muddy work, and more than once she thought about giving up and riding home to fetch help instead. But she thought of the dark path behind her, and the dimming flowers along Miller's Lane, and she kept digging.

Slowly, water began to trickle through the channel she'd carved, finding the old streambed, picking up speed as it went. Within the hour, a thin silver ribbon of water was flowing steadily out of the pond and back down toward the village, while the beaver dam sat undisturbed, holding just as much pond as the beavers needed for their lodge.

Maren sat back on her heels, muddy and grinning, and watched the water run.

By the time she and Bramble started back down the trail, the Nightflowers nearest the grove were already stirring, opening their pale petals to drink from the returning spring. With every mile toward home, more flowers glowed to life along the path, lighting her way step by step, the way they always had.

She reached the castle gate just as the whole of Miller's Lane was blinking back to its soft silver blue, and found her father waiting up for her, relief plain on his face.

"The beavers just needed a little help sharing," Maren told him, too tired and muddy and pleased with herself to say much more.

That night, tucked into her own bed at last, Maren could see the Nightflowers glowing steadily outside her window, calm and constant as breathing. She thought of the pond, and the dam, and the little channel she'd carved with her own two hands, and she let her eyes close, warm and proud and ready for sleep.