The original Twelve dancing Princesses
(for Amina L. Forest ;) )
This ties in to my story torn slippers. I do know how to put it in as a prologue, but it would kinda screw up the story for me currently.
Once upon a time, there was a king with twelve daughters. His queen was dead, and his daughters were cold and distant to everyone. They slept together in a long hall, and the King locked them in every night. He was very protective.
One day, he noticed that all the slippers were worn through by morning, every morning, every slipper. His daughters wouldn't answer when he asked, so he sent out a proclamation saying that whoever found out the secret in three nights would win the Princess of his choice and become heir to the throne.
((Here the story splits; there are two possibilities))
((First possibility)) A soldier who had fallen out of his luck discovered a sign with this proclamation and wondered whether to compete. An old lady (sometimes suspected to be a witch) saw this and gave him a magical cloak which made him invisible. She also warned him that the princesses put a magic sleeping potion into the drink.
He followed the royal cobbler to the palace and then went to the king to compete. The King was dubious, but the eldest princess, sick and tired of princes, won him over. The soldier avoided the wine at dinner and spied on the princesses through the door adjoining his room to theirs, and followed them to the underground palace they went dancing in each night with twelve princes with the help of the invisibility cloak. Though there were occasional signs of his presence, the eldest waved them off, though the youngest was frightened.
He didn't let on immediately that he knew their secret, but rather got to know the princesses better and followed them again. Finally, on the morning of the thrid day, he told their secret, and the King let him choose one of the daughters. He was not young, so he chose the eldest, with whom he had fallen in love with anyway.
((second possibility)) One day, a young farmer had a vision of the deceased queen, telling him to go to the palace and solve the mystery. He went, but didn't compete. Instead, he worked as a palace gardener, because he felt too lowly to compete. His job was to make bouquets for each princess every morning.
The youngest princess wanted to know who was making the bouquets, and the two felt an attraction which was stomped out by the older sisters.
The gardener discovered a little gold flower growing among the weeds, and tended to it. He wanted to give it to the youngest princess, but then discovered it gave him the ability to be invisible. He followed the princesses out one night, and took one branch from each section of the forest leading through the underground kingdom to the palace(gold, silver, diamond branches). He then, the next day, put the silver branch in the youngest's bouquet, the next day the gold, and the day after that the diamond branch.
The youngest told her sisters, who then wanted to put the gardener into prison, but the youngest protested, so instead they sent him a suit and asked him to come along officially. He did, and enjoyed himself imensely, but then, as the evening drew to a close, the sisters offered him wine which would make him stay in the kingdom forever. At the last moment, the youngest knocked it out of his hand and the spell on the sisters that had made them come to the underground kingdom was broken. The gardener and the princesses went to the king the next morning, and the gardener and the youngest were married.
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