The Princess and the Snow Goose

Once a time there was a princess, who was sitting and looking out the windows of the castle at the winter’s first snowfall. The windows opened onto what just a few months ago had been a beautiful flower garden, humming with insects. Because the princess lived in a very distant land, I can’t tell you the names of the flowers and, unless you know much more than the average person, you wouldn’t recognize them either. At this point, it didn’t matter anyway, as only the brown stalks and a few drooping leaves remained. Now the snow was falling, for the first time in many months the view was clean and fresh, and the princess found it much more interesting to gaze out the window than attend to her tea and cake.

The princess was the only child of the king and queen and the entire future of the kingdom depended on her. Inside the castle she was given everything she desired – the finest food and clothes, expensive gifts, private tutors who were the best in their fields. But she was never allowed to leave the castle. The princess would have traded everything she had to be allowed to run on the forest paths, smell the pine trees, and swim in the roaring river at the bottom of the garden. But all she could do was study in books about all the animals and plants she could see outside. The king and queen liked this as most of the people in the kingdom lived in the forest, depended on the animals and plants for food and clothing and made their houses out of wood – the princess was learning things that would help her understand and support her subjects better, without the risk of breaking her leg or running into an actual wolf or bear.

Overhead, white geese had started flying south in V’s. The princess was reading a lot about geese these days – for instance, she had learned that the parents would often take turns at the front of the V so their children could fly more easily behind them. The hunters would not care about details like that – they would be busy shooting as many as possible in order to fill their larders for the winter. The princess tried to look carefully at each bird, hoping to remember what made it unique and look for its safe arrival in the spring, but even with her sharp eyes they all looked the same from this far away.

Suddenly, a goose landed on the far side of the garden, skidded towards her on the snow across the lawn, and came to a stop on the stone path just outside the window. It was a young goose, its white plumage still mixed with muddy brown feathers, had been shot in the wing and was still alive. A hunter must have hit it far over on the far side of the river as the princess had not heard any sound and indeed no hunter would dare to shoot this close to the castle. The goose must have tried to carry on flying, slowly dropping and landing on the garden’s slope.

As you may have guessed, the princess had for once been left completely alone with her tea and cake. The guardian who had been watching her had realized, as soon as the snow started to come down, that she had left her windows open and wanted to make sure to keep the weather out. The princess had been strictly warned about leaving the castle, but she knew the goose was likely to end up on the palace’s dinner table if anyone else found it and decided she had to save it. Unfortunately, the only door out into the garden was firmly locked, and the princess was not the type of person to use an expensive sugar bowl to break the window, so she ran into the next-door bathroom and wriggled in her finery out of a small, high window, dropping onto the snow-covered path outside.

But as the princess looked around, she saw the goose was being carried off by a rust-coloured fox, tail high in the air, leaving a trail of the goose’s blood as it ran. The princess quickly followed, kicking off her tight slippers and running barefoot in her fluffy, lacy pink dress.

The slope became even steeper as they approached the river and the princess half slid through a line of bare trees as the fox scampered between boulders and roots and turned sharply to the left just before arriving at the stream. At that moment, another fox darted from behind a tree, grabbed the goose out of the mouth of the first fox, and started running hard back uphill, leaving the castle to the left. The fox she had been following darted over the edge of the streambank, presumably disappearing into its burrow. “So this is what they call a wild goose chase,” thought the princess, “they are taking turns trying to confuse me”, but made a half-turn as sharply as she could and now started racing after the second fox that was carrying the goose uphill. By now, her feet were freezing cold, raw and bleeding from running across the cold, sharp stones. They had almost come to a road leading from the castle gates when a group of guards raced past – everyone was normally very attentive to the princess and they must have already realized she was missing. The fox, which had intended to cross the road into a larger area of forest, was forced instead to bank left again towards the castle and first tried to skate across an ice-covered pond that lay in its way. The ice was just starting to form, though, and wasn’t unable to support the weight of the fox, which fell through. It released its grip on the goose, which (thanks to its hollow bones, as the princess knew) skidded across the unbroken ice and came to rest at the foot of the castle wall.

Now, the princess was also trapped outside the castle. As we have mentioned, she was much too well brought up to pick up a frozen rock and use it to break a window, and she couldn’t very easily climb back through the high bathroom window from the outside. Plus, she had just picked up a half-dead goose and, kind-hearted as she was, had also fished a half-frozen fox out of a pond. So the only option was to walk in her bloody bare feet right up to the castle gate. Once inside the portcullis, she instructed the guards to put the fox next to a warm fire and, once it had recovered, give it a chicken from the castle pantry that it could carry back to its mate and, very likely, a litter of little foxes in the burrow next to the river. She also asked for a large box so that she could carry the goose back to her room. As we know, the princess was granted whatever she wished inside the castle. Once back in her room, she lined the box with a blanket, placed it next to her own fire and fed it some oats, after which both the goose and the princess slept peacefully until the morning.

You can imagine what a scolding she received from the king and the queen the next day. “You could have fallen into the river, broken your leg and drowned,” said the king. “Your dress is ruined, your shoes are lost, and your feet are a bloody mess,” said the queen. The princess was forced to agree that indoors was the safest place for her, and gave up hope of ever being allowed to enjoy the sunshine, fresh air, and a peaceful walk with more suitable shoes.

Although they had been so brief, it was the princess’s exploits outside the castle walls that became the talk of the kingdom. Everyone knew she had caught a wild goose with her bare hands and outran not one but two foxes with her bare feet. From that day on, she was called the Winter Fox (an animal that was rarely seen in the far north of the kingdom in years of heavy snow) and everyone was sure that when her time came, the kingdom would flourish under the kindest and bravest ruler ever seen.

The goose recovered from the cold, but its wing never healed and it never flew again. It dearly loved the princess who had saved it from the hunters, the palace kitchen, and the foxes and stayed in the princess’s room, reminding her of life outside the palace as she grew up. The goose itself had lived outside, knew what it was really like, and was happy to have a soft bed, a warm blanket, plenty of food, and no one shooting at it. But it still remembered and missed its family and let the princess know they were safe each time it saw them flying over the castle in the spring, when the flowers were starting to bloom, and in the winter when the snow was starting to fall.