Kissing the children goodbye, the Princess waved to the farmer woman and headed to town.
The neighbour turned out to be kind-hearted and helped the timid Princess make arrangements with some merchants from the capital city. She gave him a coin and jumped into the next wagon. Hopefully, this was the last voyage of her adventure. She would return home, she and the Prince would marry, and would later reminisce about their unsuccessful escape with a smile. And on the wall, they would hang in a frame the paper with the map. The poetry side up, of course.
The wagon was shaky, and the Princess felt very ill. One moment she was hot, the next, chilly; she felt herself nodding off, but was tortured by thirst. When a band of highwaymen attacked the merchants, it took the Princess a lot of effort to clamber out of the cart. Her head hurt, her skin itched. One of the highwaymen recoiled from her and gestured for her to throw him her coin purse. Thus, the Princess lost her last few coins. She sat on a rock from exhaustion. Something was happening around her, but her splitting headache prevented her from understanding anything. Thank goodness no one harmed her. When she came to, the wagons were gone. The poor Princess was left on the road all alone yet again.
The Princess began to cry. She didn’t remember at all that princes and, probably, princesses were not supposed to despair. How long she sat like that, she didn’t know. Some more wagons appeared, but the Princess was too hesitant to stop them, since the highwaymen had taken her wallet. With the last of her strength, she quietly scrambled into the next cart. She was lucky that the wagon was rolling slowly and that no one noticed her. She drifted off.
She woke to someone shaking her by the shoulder roughly. When she turned her head, the person flinched away, just like the highwayman and ordered her to get out of the cart. The Princess wanted to ask for help, explain that she needed to get to the palace, but her lips were paralyzed and her voice trembled. She was thrown to the ground, near some enormous wall.
The Princess leaned against the cold stones. Her despair knew no bounds, what was expected of princes and possibly princesses, she barely remembered. She readied herself for death.
It grew dark.
Some people approached, illuminated her with a torch, and started to argue.
“How about you let me take her!” chimed in a young, clear voice. “How much?”
Some bargaining commenced. She heard a handshake. If the Princess hadn’t felt so terrible, she would have been horrified that she had just been sold.
Someone threw her over his shoulder like a sack, then threw her into a wheelbarrow, on top of some rags and it began to roll. Later, she was thrown over his shoulder again.
“You’re always bringing home useless junk, Garbage man,” creaked some old crone. “And throwing money around. Well, what shall we do with her?”
The Princess’s teeth started to chatter from fear and cold. She heard a chuckle, “First, I’ll warm her up!”
With no time to figure out whether this statement implied anything threatening, she was thrown yet again over a shoulder. She found herself in a different room. In the darkness two giant eyes appeared. Snake-like eyes!
“Look what I’ve brought you!” Another chuckle.
A smoking maw opened and closed.
The Princess was frightened.
“Please,” she pleaded, “don’t feed me to the dragon.”