Cursed Bunny(55)

What he had meant by the blind fish and how she was to find a sea in the middle of the desert—these were mysteries she could not fathom. And as she exhausted herself walking, the princess began to forget about any talk of fish.

She had brought with her some water and dried fruit when she set out from the palace, but that had been long finished by the time she reached the golden ship. The sandy dunes continued to change their shapes, endlessly appearing and reappearing before her. The princess was certain she would meet her death in the desert before she reached the palace.

11

The desert nights were cold. The same winds from the day blew during the night. If she tried to rest, sitting for a moment on the sands, the dune next to her would slowly but threateningly move toward her. If she did not want to get buried, she would have to get up and keep walking.

All feeling left her body as her legs mechanically propelled her forward. Each time she made a step, her foot sank into the sand.

She missed the grassy plains. She missed the flat and wide horizon uninterrupted by high sand dunes. She missed the hard and arid land, the grasses and tumbleweeds that thrived on it. Riding horses over that hard and wide earth, the hoofs striking against the firmness …

The princess tripped over something firm and hard.

She sank into the sand. Quickly, she managed to raise herself out of danger, and she shook herself off and spat the sand out of her mouth before turning around to see what it was that had tripped her.

It was a large, bulky object protruding from beneath the sand.

In the time she had walked to the golden ship and then from it after disembarking, the princess had never felt anything hard about her feet. She crouched before the object and began to dig it out.

The night deepened. The princess, not even knowing what she was excavating, moved her hands without feeling anything. Other than thirst, hunger, and the cold. The thirst … More than anything else, she was thirsty. Her arid homeland also had precious little water, but because she had been a princess, she never had to know how terrible thirst could be. The princess was thirsty enough to want to drink the sand she was shoveling away with her bare hands. Drink the sand …

Just before she was about to drink in the sand she had scooped up in her palms, she quickly came to her senses.

12

The princess wept. Her throat was so dry that it felt like it was splitting into pieces and there was not a drop of liquid in her body, but amazingly there were still tears coming out of her eyes. Leaning against the huge thing she had been digging out, the princess let her tears flow. She was scared, cold, and unbelievably thirsty. I’m going to die in the desert, she thought. She would never see the morning again. Or the sunrise. Never again would she behold the blind prince desperately waiting for her in the palace, the grassy plains she had been born and raised on, her parents. She would die, sink into the sand, and her body would never be found. The thought made her cry even harder. Her tears became wails, and the princess threw herself upon the mysterious object in the middle of the desert, screaming her grief out into the desert night underneath the stars.

The bulky thing she had been leaning her forehead on was soon drenched in her tears.

She continued to cry.

The object her forehead was leaning against moved.

She threw herself back in surprise. Her tears stopped.

A giant fish was flailing in the sands.

The princess was so shocked, she started stumbling backwards before falling on her behind.

The thing protruding from the sand was the head of a fish. Even in the dim light of the moon, she could clearly make out the milky film clouding over a single eye.

“When the rains fall on the desert, release a blind fish into the sea.”

The princess came to her senses. She immediately began to dig out the flailing fish from the sands.

Just a moment ago she had been exhausted and crying, but a strength she had not known she possessed now flowed through her. She furiously attacked the sand, first exposing the gills, then the backfin, and soon the body. After she had excavated the tail, the princess cautiously touched the fish’s eye. With the gentlest brush of her fingertips, the thin, hard film over the eye shattered into flakes.

The fish swung its tail widely. It launched itself from the sands into the cold night sky. The moment it leaped for the sprinkling of stars against deep indigo, the princess heard a sound as if the night sky, clear as glass, was shattering.

Rain began to fall.

Water poured from the cracks in the sky. The princess got to her feet as cold, fresh water drenched her whole body. She opened her mouth to the rain and drank it all in. Even when her thirst was quenched many times over, she spread her arms to the sky and kept drinking in the rain, dancing with joy.

The blind fish had returned to the vast sea, and rain fell from the desert sky.

The princess was elated. Her fear of death, her homesickness, it was all forgotten. Who she was, why she was in the middle of the desert—she was so overjoyed that she forgot it all.

And the princess woke from her sleep.

Far away, she saw the gates of the palace.

13

The palace was bustling by the time the princess had returned. There was a festival going on in the courtyard, and soldiers gathered before the gate.

“The curse has been lifted! The prince can see!” shouted the soldiers as they ate and drank to their hearts’ content. “God has willed for the curse to be lifted; this is a sign that we should kill the sorcerer!”