Behind the Curtain: The Puppet Princess


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          The pageant wagon creaked into town on a gust of red-brown crisped leaves.  Renato, the carpenter’s son who was commissioned to fix its warped beams, became as enraptured by the puppet play as the children sitting in front of the stage.  A princess outsmarted a troll on a bridge, released a magic sword from a stone, and tamed a dragon whose open mouth unfurled a red velvet tongue, thus saving the village. 

            When the play ended Renato followed Guiseppe, the puppet master, into the cluttered workshop behind the stage.  Renato was drawn to the doll-like princess puppet which Guiseppe placed reverently on a stand: an exquisitely carved face, painted soft blue eyes and delicate pink lips. 
            “Do you remember my daughter Guilietta?” Guiseppe asked.
            Renato, fingers slipping through the puppet’s silken blond hair, remembered playing hide-and-seek with a girl through the grove where his father cut wood, remembered more the deep thrum of his heart she evoked, as no other had since.
            “She died of sickness years ago.  I carved this puppet to represent the woman she could have been.” The old man hesitated. “That is her hair.”
            Renato snapped his hand away, knocking a tangle of broken puppets from a shelf.
            “You must understand, she was all I had left… I could not bear to live without my child…”
            Renato, struck by the old grief still sharp in the master’s tears, collected the broken puppets, all princes.  “Can I fix these for you?” he asked kindly.
            Guiseppe smiled sadly. “I wanted to find true love for her.  I carved them but would find them broken by nightfall.  So I wrote plays that made her the hero. My strong, wise daughter.”
            Impulsively Renato said, “Let me try.”
            The next morning he found a perfect branch in the grove.  He carved all day in Guiseppe’s workshop with the princess next to him, and then dug for an outfit in the fabric pile.  Once finished, he lightly touched Guilietta’s hair again, whispering, “I think I lost my true love.” He snipped some of his hair and attached it to the prince puppet’s head.
            Guiseppe returned at nightfall to find the prince holding his daughter’s hand.  “Guilietta,” he exclaimed, “you have found him! I will write a new play!”  He leaped over the sprawled body on the floor as he gathered up parchment, ink, and quills.  “I will write you both your happily-ever-after!”

(400 words)
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This is my first-ever piece of flash fiction. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!
Special thanks to Anna Meade (@ruanna3) for running this contest from her fantastical blog, Yearning for Wonderland.  Both her and Sophie Moss (@SMossWrites) have written amazing flash fiction that electrified my interest in this literary form.  Also thanks once again to Diane Reed (@DianeJReed), who does not even know that she sprinkled fairy dust yet again into my computer via her tweets.  I first saw this contest through one of her re-tweets, and then she described me, along with several of my writer friends, as "Keepers of Fairy Tales" with the picture below.  That phrase opened the gate (or should we say, raised the curtain) to this story.

Enter this gate if you dare (by scrolling below it) to see the rules for the contest and the links to the other writers and their entries. All the world's a stage...and these stories have memorable players! Make sure you read them...with the lights on.  Happy Autumn, Happy All Hallow's Eve!

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