by Matthew Gallagher
Part 1 2 3 4Part 
One day at a bazaar in a particularly poor little village, she met a very old woman who sat rubbing her joints. "Oh," muttered the old woman, "how my wrists ache. How my elbows ache!"
It hurt the Little Flower to see someone in so much pain, and right there on the spot she wove a lovely bracelet of lavender for the old woman. She placed it on the woman's wrist, and immediately a smile came to the lady's face.
"Goodness! My joints have not felt this good in years! What a wondrous gift you have given me!"
The Little Flower bowed and began to walk away, smiling to herself, but the old woman rushed after her with a quickness much belying her age.
"My dear, you must not leave without me repaying you for your generosity."
"Your happiness was all the repayment I need," said the Little Flower Princess. Still, the old woman insisted on giving her a gift in return. She pulled from her robe an exquisite opal that shone with all the colours of the rainbow, and placed it in the girl's hand.
"I cannot accept such a treasure as this!" gasped the Little Flower Princess. "My flowers merely grow by the roadside and I pick them while walking. But this is worth all the flowers in the Empire!"
"Your gift of healing is worth far more than that, Mikiko," replied the old woman. "Take this and keep it. Someday, you will use it to buy that which will make you most happy."
"Even the Emperor knows that gemstones cannot buy true happiness."
"Be that as it may, this opal will come in handy someday."
The Little Flower Princess bowed and began to thank her three times, but when she rose from her bow the old woman was gone!
"Meanwhile" is a term that means something is happening in one place at the same time that something you have just read is occurring. In stories such as this one, however, "meanwhile" is broadly used term. So when you read "meanwhile" it could the action could be going at the same moment, during the same day, in the same month, or even the same year! That said....
Meanwhile, the Emperor returned to the palace from his mission abroad. He stepped lively from his palanquin to the cobblestone of the courtyard and went to greet his beautiful daughters who stood in a line waiting for him.
Each one he greeted in turn, and as he did so, he gave her a little gift from his journey. To the Eldest Daughter, he gave a hairpiece in the shape of a skein of ivory and pearl geese so that it looked as if they were circling the waterfall of her hair. To Second Eldest Daughter he presented a net filled with diamonds that glittered like stars in her midnight tresses. Third Eldest Daughter received a filigreed bottle containing rare hair oil that was scented like lilac and myrrh. Fourth Eldest Daughter nearly squealed when her father gave her a special polish that would make her hair shine almost as much as her little sister's. Fifth Eldest Daughter was given a large hat made by the most exclusive milliners of a foreign land. And to Sixth Eldest Daughter, the Emperor gave earrings that would catch the brilliance of her hair and cast it anywhere she would like.
Then the Emperor came to the place where his youngest daughter should have stood. "Where is the Princess Aiko," he inquired of his Elder Daughters.
"What present did you bring for her, Father?" asked Sixth Eldest Daughter, whose eyes gleamed either from expectant envy or her new earrings (it's difficult to say which).
"Why, I gave little Aiko her gift before I left. Did she not show it to her? Her heart is so big and I thought she would miss me terribly that I gave her the Jade Green Heart that once belonged to your mother the Empress. Now, where is she?"
The Elder Princesses hemmed, and they hawed, and each looked at the wonderful gifts that their father the Emperor had brought to them. Finally, Second Eldest Daughter spoke up.
"She ran away," she said truthfully. "We found her missing several months ago."
The Emperor was quite taken aback! Ran away? Impossible! The Emperor was a ruler who understood politics and espionage, and came to the conclusion very quickly that the Princess Aiko had been kidnapped by some malevolent foreign power. He left his daughters to make a plan to recover his endangered daughter.
Try as he might, the Emperor could find no clue as to the whereabouts of his daughter. He sent investigators to many of the kingdoms that surrounded his small empire. No ruler would admit to kidnapping his daughter. The poor monarch thought and thought, until he finally decided that if she were not taken out of the Empire, she must be within. The very next morning, before the sun had even a chance to wake, the Emperor dressed himself in the simplest robe of gold he could find in his boudoir, and quietly left the palace in search of his daughter, accompanied by only a dozen retainers.
He traveled far and wide in search of Aiko, but no one that he met could tell remember seeing a princess who wore a Jade Green Heart. He began to think that the people of his Empire were intentionally keeping secrets from him! The grieving Emperor found it hard to keep hope that he would find his precious daughter.
One afternoon the Emperor and his retainers stopped for a meal in the woods. To keep it clean and shiny, the Emperor laid his robe of gold on his palanquin. Unknown to them, their camp was noticed by a band of brigands who just happened to live there. The gold of the Emperor's robe fairly made the thieves mouths water with greed.
"This must be a very rich man indeed!" said the leader of the brigands. "Surely it will be worth our time to sack their retinue and take all their goods and jewels." So the band of forest bandits disguised themselves as shrubs and stealthily made their way to the Emperor's camp. How the monarch and his retainers were taken by surprise, just as they had begun to eat their patê! The leader of the band demanded to know who to whom this camp belonged. The Emperor looked this way and that, for he knew that if the bandits had knowledge that in their hands was the Emperor himself, the entire kingdom fate of the entire kingdom would be at stake!
One of the Emperor's men spoke up. "This camp is mine. I am Shijo, a wealthy merchant who is on holiday." The Emperor was pleased that his retainer had learnt his part so well after only a few rehearsals. Shijo went to the robe of gold and began to don it, but the leader of the bandits took it from him and wrapped himself in it.
"Now this camp is mine!" said the leader. "And all its riches!" He made a motion, and the Emperor and his retainers were trussed together while the brigands plundered their camp.
Meanwhile, (there's that word again!) the Six Eldest Princesses were tearing their hair out at the palace. Well, not literally tearing out their hair, as their hair was the one thing they cherished above all else... but they sure were fretting a lot! Now both their littlest sister, of whom they had been so jealous, and their father the Emperor were missing. Who was to rule the Empire? They found that they could not even run the palace staff. They fought with each other day and night, which made the handmaidens and the footmen of the palace quite uneasy. Several of them left everyday to seek employment elsewhere. Finally, all that was left in the palace were the sisters themselves. One morning they all met in the chamber of the Eldest Daughter to discuss what to do. They began bickering as usual, this time more from hunger than anything else, as the cooks had left the palace, too. As their voices began to rise, Eldest Sister looked at each of them.
And then she spoke.
And what a voice she had! It roared like the waters gushing through a waterfall! The other princesses nearly fell off their silk cushions, for they had never heard their Eldest Sister speak before.
"We must go to the Well of Shitagawa and retrieve the Jade Green Heart!" she shouted. "Then we will be able to find our father the Emperor and make aright the wrong we have done!"
The other sisters nodded that this was indeed a good idea, and after their hearing returned from being damaged by their sister's voice, they went as one to the palace courtyard.
The well that stood there was very old and dank and dark. Water had not been drawn from it in a hundred years, and moss grew around its edge, making it slippery. There was no longer a line that allowed descent to the bottom, where Shitagawa lived. The princesses looked at each other, and began to question how to best approach this problem.
"We could invite Shitagawa to a great feast in the palace," offered Sixth Eldest Sister. "Then when he is full of food and asleep, take back the Jade Green Heart."
"We have no cooks to prepare such a feast," reminded Third Eldest Sister.
"We could entice him to come up with gold and jewels from the treasury," suggested Fifth Eldest Sister.
"The keeper of the vault has long gone with the other members of the household," said Fourth Eldest Sister.
"We do have gifts with which we can trade Shitagawa for the Jade Green Heart," Second Eldest Sister quietly said. And with that, she took off the net of diamonds that made her midnight tresses sparkle. Her sisters took the presents their father had given them, and held them over the edge of the well.
"Shitagawa, he who lives at the bottom of our well! We have gifts for you."
"What gifts have you this time, daughters of the Emperor?" came a small raspy voice from the bottom of the well.
"We have a skein of geese who will stay with you and keep you company; stars from the sky to light up the darkness; scents from the forest; polish to soothe your skin; a bonnet that will beautify you; and mirrors to catch the light from the sun above, that you might illuminate your world down there. All these we have for you, if only you will return the Jade Green Heart we have given to you."
The Sisters waited in anticipation as Shitagawa thought over their proposal. At last, the raspy voice came from the depths of the well. "Bring to me these gifts, and I shall return to you the Jade Green Heart, which I have come to love."
"You must send up the Jade Green Heart and we will throw down our gifts!" cried the Sixth Eldest Daughter imperiously.
"Bring the gifts down, that I might see your beauty, as I have none in my darkness."
The Sisters once again looked at each other. Finally, they decided to comply with Shitagawa's wishes.
As the lightest, the Fifth Eldest Sister was chosen to enter the well, carrying the gifts and wearing her sister's earrings. These caught the light that shone from Sixth Eldest Sister's hair so that Fifth Eldest Sister might see the sides of the well as she descended. Third Eldest Sister let down her scarlet hair into the well so that Fifth Eldest Sister could be lowered by her sisters.
At last she reached the bottom of the well. She found that though it was muddy and damp, the well had ceased to be of any use a long time ago. She turned around. There, in the light that shined from the mirror earrings, she saw Shitagawa for the first time. He was a giant bullfrog, bigger than the Emperor's palanquin! Shitagawa smiled at the princess.
"Thank you for letting me see such beauty. It has been a long time."
"You... aren't going to eat me, are you?" asked the princess fearfully.
"Oh no. I ate about three years ago, and one such as me does not need food very often."
He handed her the necklace, and accepted the gifts from the Princesses. Fifth Eldest Sister bowed three times and then grabbed hold of her sister's hair. The rest of the Princesses pulled her out of the well. In her hand she carried the Jade Green Heart.
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