Jarrah Moore lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is currently studying fairy tales as part of her Honours in History. Her fiction has previously appeared in Flash Me Magazine and AntipodeanSF.

In a certain time and place there lived a king's daughter who was more beautiful than any other in the world. So lovely was she that when a messenger rode back to the king of a far off kingdom with her portrait, saying "Sire, you sent me to find a lady fit to be your queen, and I have found this portrait," the king had only to look at it to fall instantly in love with her.

Jack looked at the photograph for a moment, startled, and then shook the envelope to see if there was anything accompanying it. A white card fell out. He picked it up, his eyebrows rising as he took in the telephone number but no name. He turned it over but the reverse side was blank. The number was the only message. He picked up the photograph again, startled once more by the gorgeous expression in her eyes: half defiance, half wistfulness.

The king sent to every kingdom he knew for news of this beautiful maiden. At last he received word from the land where her father ruled. "Good king," the letter ran, "the maiden you have been seeking is my youngest daughter. To my sorrow, she has vowed to marry no man unless he complete three tasks, set by herself; which no man has been able to do." The king rode out immediately, vowing that he would succeed where others had failed.

He looked at the phone, and his fingers twitched. This must be some kind of hoax, surely. He could confront them, when he called. He looked down at the card again, and then firmly pushed it away. Of course he wasn't going to call. That would be crazy. She wouldn't be anything like her photo.

When the king reached the princess's land she asked him to bring her a pair of silken slippers, made with neither needlework nor any kind of seam. The king brought the slippers to her the next day, and she frowned, and took them from him unwillingly.

He woke sometime after midnight that night, unable to forget the photo. He told himself firmly that it was just a trick. Somebody was trying to make a fool of him.

On the following day she asked him to find a rose grown without water or sunlight. He brought the rose to her two days later. She looked angry and jerked it from his hand.

He set the card on his desk the next morning, with the photograph next to it, and looked at the girl's face until he could see it with his eyes squeezed shut; but he couldn't decide what she was thinking. He told himself that it was a scam. If he called, somebody would be sure to try to extract money from him.

Next she asked him to bring her the head of a fearsome monster which terrorized the villages of her father's kingdom. In three days he brought the monster's head to her. She wept, and hid her face, and would not take it.

He threw the card away after a week. But he kept the photograph, pinned to a cork board in his office. Sometimes people asked him who she was. He shrugged and told them he didn't know.

The king carried the princess back to his own land, and he never noticed that his lady did not smile. One day her nurse asked her, 'Why do you look about you with such sad eyes, Highness?' The young queen answered her in a low voice: 'When my lord courted me, I hoped another would ride up to claim me. I sent a message, and I held out for as long as I could. But he did not come.'