The Princess Rules 2-Book Collection

The entrance to the cave was a little patch of grass and one rock leaning against another to make a doorway. Florizella dropped to her hands and knees and squeezed through. The roof of the cave was higher inside and Florizella was able to stand up and feel her way along the wall towards the back. She sat down in the darkness and thought that she was lucky to be safe and out of the rain.

Then she stopped feeling lucky, and felt instead … a Horrid Feeling.

It is the feeling you get when you think you are in a room on your own, and you suddenly know that someone else is there.

That sort of Horrid Feeling.

It is the feeling you get when you play games like What’s the Time, Mister Wolf? or Cat and Mouse, or Grandmother’s Footsteps, when you turn your back, and the other people creep quietly, quietly up on you.

You don’t need to turn round to see your friends coming closer and closer in those games. You can feel them sneaking up.

It was that kind of feeling for Florizella.

She knew that she was not alone in the cave.

She knew that there was something else in the cave too. She knew it was sneaking up on her.

As she stayed very still and listened, she could hear it breathing.

She was scared then, all right.

Prince with two s’s or not, brave or not, Florizella was very scared then. She could clearly hear soft little breaths. And, what was worse, they were coming from between her and the entrance. Whatever was sharing the cave with her and gently panting, had her trapped. And she did not have a clue what it might be.

Florizella froze as still as a statue and listened as hard as she could. Nothing happened for long, scary moments. The princess put her back to the cave wall and looked around in the darkness, straining her eyes to see.

Then she felt something extremely soft touch her foot.

She very nearly screamed and jumped, but she did not. You might hope this was because she was a brave princess who feared nothing! You might hope that she remembered the Princess Rule, which says that a princess never raises her voice except in the case of fire. But that is not true either. She did not scream and jump, she did not run away, because she was frightened rigid. She let out a tiny little mouse-squeak and stayed as still as a stone princess.

Then she heard a funny little growl and ascuffle, and something warm and heavy tumbled over her other foot.

So there were two of IT.

And they were small.

And they were light, Florizella thought, as light as … puppies. They were puppy-shaped, they made little puppyish noises, they smelled that delicious smell of warm, dry fur and clean paws, and they were playing in the dark with each other.

Florizella laughed out loud and put her hand down to her feet to feel for them. As her eyes got used to the darkness she could just see them. One, two, three, four darling little puppies with smooth grey coats and fat little bellies and big black eyes, tumbling over each other and biting each other’s tails and paws. Florizella sat down among them and picked them up and put them on her lap.

They were adorable. They tumbled on to the floor and they bit the belt on her trousers. They gnawed at the heels of her riding boots, made fierce little attacks on her twiddling fingers, and climbed all over her.

Florizella thought that they must belong to a couple of dogs lost by their owners in the forest, or perhaps a dog that had run away from home to have puppies on her own. But she didn’t think much about the mother dog at all.

And that was a mistake. A very big mistake.

Florizella sat on the floor of the cave and played with the puppies as if she were a young silly puppy herself. She didn’t think about the mother dog or the father dog once.

Until …

The entrance to the cave suddenly grew dark as the light was blocked by a great animal coming in. A great animal coming back into its own cave, to feed its young. A huge animal, so big that it had to squeeze in through the cave mouth. It smelled Florizella the moment it was inside, and it looked for her with its fierce orange eyes, and then it growled.

And Florizella, silly Florizella, looked up from playing with the puppies and saw the light blocked by the great animal and saw … not a lost pet dog … but a wolf.

Worse than that (twice as bad, to be very precise) she saw two wolves. The mother and the father wolf came into the cave and glared at Florizella sitting on the floor of their cave with their puppies on her knees.

Florizella stayed very still. She had no weapon and, anyway, she couldn’t fight two wolves at once. No one was going to rescue her as no one knew where she was. If she were going to get out of this adventure alive, she would have to do it all on her own, with skill, and a lot of luck.

‘Nice wolves,’ said Florizella nervously into the darkness. ‘Here are your puppies. See? I was just petting them.’ Carefully she put them on the floor and they stumbled on their fat feet over to their parents. The mother wolf dropped to the ground with a dead rabbit in her mouth and tore off little bits of meat and skin for the puppies. The father wolf sat on his haunches to guard them and looked at Florizella with his marmalade-coloured eyes. He didn’t take his gaze off her once. He didn’t even blink.

Florizella sat very still and waited for them to finish their meal. Overall, she thought it was better if they were not hungry. Being stuck in a cave with six wolves is dangerous – six hungry wolves is worse. She didn’t say a word, but she couldn’t help shivering. She shivered so hard that her teeth chattered like clattering castanets. The mother wolf glanced up at the noise. Florizella gritted her teeth and tried to shiver in silence.

When the puppies had played and pulled at the meat, and eaten a little, the mother wolf sprawled out and they swarmed up to her belly and sucked milk from her. The smell of wet wolf filled the cave, and the noise was rather soothing. The cave was small and, when the mother wolf stretched out, her head rested on Florizella’s foot. Florizella froze, not daring to move, but the mother wolf took no notice of anything but her four wolf cubs sucking like little pumps and wagging their tails. The father wolf picked his way over them and sat down opposite Florizella, watching her with his unwinking amber eyes.

Florizella stayed as still as she could, waiting for him to pounce.

But he did not pounce. Instead, he turned round and round two or three times like the palace pet dog in his basket, and then he lay down beside her. Soon he was breathing steadily and Florizella could tell he was asleep.

Now the cave was very quiet. The father wolf, stretched out to his full length alongside Florizella’s leg, made her feel warmer. All four cubs were well fed and dreaming – Florizella could hear them snoring softly through milky whiskers. The mother wolf’s head rested, warm and heavy, on Florizella’s foot.

With one warm, heavy wolf on one foot, and another warm wolf stretched along her leg, Florizella wasn’t cold any more. She felt quite cosy – a bit nervous maybe – but no longer chilled. She thought she would wait a moment till they were deeply asleep and then creep out of the cave. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes for a few moments.

And then it was Florizella who fell deeply asleep.

The four wolf cubs, the mother and father wolf and Princess Florizella slept sweetly until morning.

There was uproar in the palace when Jellybean galloped in with his reinsloose, and the stirrups flapping, and no Florizella. There were search parties in all directions and diviners with wands. They were all very relieved when Florizella walked in the next morning, damp and rather smelly, and told them all about her night in the wolves’ cave. Then she begged the king and queen to outlaw wolf-hunting for the season, so that the four little wolf cubs could grow up safely in the Purple Forest. And Florizella’s mother and father – who believed in magic and in paying debts – agreed that their daughter had been spared by the wolves, so the least they could do was to make sure that all wolves were safe for a season.

Throughout the land of the Seven Kingdoms everyone was warned that wolf-hunting was illegal for the rest of the year. All the wolves – including the quite beastly ones – enjoyed a pleasant holiday eating other people’s goats, popping into hen houses and howling at the full moon.

One day Princess Florizella was in the courtyard feeding the golden carp inthe fountain pond when a trader rode into the castle yard. He was very red-faced and hot because he wore or carried all his stock. He was wearing three shirts, two jackets and four capes. His poor horse was quite bow-legged under the weight of the saddle packs. He had toys in the right-side pack, and books in the left. He had bolts of cloth strapped on the back of the saddle, a carpet rolled up in front – and spread out over the horse’s hindquarters … he had a pair of beautiful fresh wolfskins.

As soon as Florizella saw them, she let out a shriek and raced up to him and grabbed his stirrup leather.

‘Where did you hunt those wolves?’ she demanded, so fiercely that the man was quite afraid.

‘In the Purple Forest,’ he said, looking over her head to the grooms. One of them made a warning face at him, but he had travelled so far, and for so long, that he did not know this girl was Princess Florizella, and he did not know about the ban on wolf-hunting.

‘How could you!’ said Florizella, nearly crying. ‘Was it a male and a female?’

‘Yes, a pair,’ he said. ‘I trapped them by a tree that had been struck by lightning, just beside the track.’

Florizella looked at him as if he were worse than a slug.

‘That’s forbidden!’ she said furiously. ‘There was to be no hunting of wolves this season to protect a special family of wolves. They lived in a cave near that tree. I think you’ve killed them!’

The trader stammered that he had not known about the ban on wolf-hunting, but Florizella looked at him as if he were worse than a slug: a squashed slug, an old, dried-out squashed slug, until he stopped and shrugged his shoulders, and said there was nothing he could do about it. For the wolves were dead and that was the end of it.

It wasn’t the end as far as Florizella was concerned.

She felt that she owed the wolves a debt of gratitude. They could have attacked her, but instead they had shared their cave with her. They could have eaten her up, but instead they had kept her warm.

So, while the trader was in the castle apologising to the king and queen, Florizella went to the kitchen and fetched a strong basket, lined it with a soft tea towel (which she took without asking!), whistled for Jellybean and set off for the Purple Forest.

Why did she need the strong basket and the soft tea towel?

Wait and see.

Florizella had no difficulty in finding the track, and as soon as she came to the tree that had been struck by lightning she tied Jellybean to one of the fallen branches and set off up the little hill.

Outside the wolves’ cave she stopped and called softly. If they were still alive she didn’t really want to meet them again. She wasn’t altogether sure that they would be so hospitable on a second visit.

But there was no noise from the cave except a very soft whimpering, which sounded like cubs.

It sounded like four very hungry cubs.

Florizella forgot all about being careful and plunged into the narrow entrance of the cave, blinking so that she could see in the gloom.

Four little wolf cubs came squirming up and climbed all over her riding boots. Florizella bent down and stroked them. To her horror they were not fat little creatures any more. They were thin, so thin that she could feel their sharp little ribs and the bony knobbly bits on their spines. They had not been fed for several days.

Florizella put down the basket and, one by one, lifted the skinny, squirming cubs into it. (That was what the basket was for!) When she picked it up, it was surprisingly heavy. She carried it carefully down the hill to where Jellybean was waiting.

Jellybean didn’t really like carrying a basket of wolves, but he went as steady as a rock all the way back to the castle, because he knew that Florizella had only one hand on the reins. And Florizella was lucky when she got home for there was no one in the courtyard, and no one on the stairs. She got the basket with the cubs in it all the way up to her room, and no one spotted her.

Then she went straight downstairs to the kitchen and told the cook that she was starving hungry.

‘You can have a slice of pie,’ he said, pointing to the larder. ‘There’s a nice steak-and-mushroom pie left over from lunch. Or I’m just about to take a chocolate cake out of the oven.’

‘I’ll have some pie, please,’ said Florizella, and the cook was surprised because Florizella adored chocolate cake, but was usually a bit so-so about steak and mushroom.

Florizella slipped into the larder and took the whole pie – a massive great round one. She carried it carefully up to her room and cut it into four portions and put each slice on the floor. The little wolf cubs fell on it like mad things, and in an amazingly short time the pie had gone and there were four little cubs, with bellies as tight as drums, snoozing on the carpet.

Florizella fetched a shawl from a drawer and tucked them up under her bed where they would not be noticed, and went down to her supper.

When Florizella came back from supper, she discovered that keeping wolf cubs is no easy job.

Keeping wolf cubs in secret is impossible.

They had made horrid smelly poos all over the floor, which she had to clean up with paper and a bowl of water. They had hunted her bedcover and pulled it to the floor and killed it. One of them had bitten and swung on the curtains, dragging them right off the pole. And worse than all of that … they were hungry again!

As soon as they saw Florizella, they scrambledall over her, making pitiful whines, begging for more food. Florizella looked down at them like a distracted mother and said, ‘But you’ve only just been fed!’

The cubs didn’t care. There is a reason why people say, ‘I am as hungry as a wolf,’ and Florizella understood it now. These cubs were wolves and they specialised in being hungry.

All the time.

Florizella scowled at them. She knew she would have to go back down to the kitchen. And she was wondering if the cook might not find it a bit odd.

He did.

He found it very odd indeed that Princess Florizella should have taken a massive steak-and-mushroom pie up to her room before her supper. He found it very odd that she should have brought the pie dish back quite empty. Then she had eaten a good supper – and one of the footmen had seen her sneak the chop bones off her plate into her pocket.

Now, less than an hour later, Florizella was in the kitchen again, asking for something to eat.

The cook looked at her suspiciously.

‘I have chocolate ice cream,’ he said. ‘Or cheesecake.’

Florizella adored cheesecake. She didn’t mind chocolate ice cream, either.

‘Do you have any meat?’ she asked. ‘Any of those chops left over from supper?’

‘I have twelve chops,’ he said, ‘but they’re not cooked.’

‘Oh, that’s all right!’ said Florizella hastily, thinking of the hungry little wolf cubs upstairs who would love raw lamb chops. ‘Even better!’

And to the cook’s utter amazement, Florizella went to the larder and came out with a bowl of uncooked lamb chops, and took them to her room as if she had been having midnight feasts of raw meat all her life.

The cook had an idea.

But he didn’t say anything yet.

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