Excerpt from Goldilocks And The Three Beasts:
My name is Ginny. Actually, my full name is Princess Amelia Genevieve Constanza Emmanuella, but my family call me Ginny. I have other names too, if you listen to the scandalous gossip among the servants and the villagers. Little Miss Flirt, Princess Tease, Lady Naughty. These names are slanderous, well, fairly slanderous, and they are careful not to be too open with their wicked talk. The one name I am prepared to accept is Goldilocks.
Servants are not particularly imaginative, and so you can probably guess how I got that name. If I am honest, I got bored of my hair long ago. Once you’ve heard one royal relative gushing over how shiny and curly and silky your gorgeous blond locks are, you’ve heard them all. One day I am going to dye my hair, the same way that the maids do, using ink, but I’m going to choose red or perhaps green. My father would freak, but then, he does that on a fairly regular basis anyway.
My father is the King. That has its benefits. I mean, I am a Princess, which is fun. I have an enormous wardrobe full of stunning dresses, and I will never have to spend even a second working for the rest of my life. He doesn’t even seem that keen about trying to marry me off to the first dopey prince who comes along, which is a refreshing change. All of my princess friends have ended up married or engaged to ‘eligible’ princes and have to spend their time embroidering or arranging banquets or sitting around on thrones pretending to be interested while courtiers drone on and on.
Well I’d rather run away and live in the woods than end up with a fate like that. And fortunately, thanks to an amazing experience that happened to me just a few weeks ago, I know just the place where I can stay. It is cosy, friendly, and so relaxed that the ‘people’ who live there don’t even like me to wear clothes when I stay. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It all started one day when my father got angry with me. This happens quite regularly, but on this particular occasion, he was really furious. In fact, he turned bright red, like an old beetroot. I had never seen him quite that cross. And it was all over nothing. Well, almost nothing.
But before I tell you about it, I have a little confession. Only a small one. I think it is probably fair to call me a flirt. I mean, I don’t always mean to be, but it just sort of happens. But can I help it if men and women seem to think I’m beautiful or desirable or whatever.
I first realized it at one of those dreary balls that my father has. It was two or three years ago, and it was the first time I had been out in public all dressed up. All of the men – even the gross old men who were like great grandfathers or something – were staring at me. It was weird and creepy but I got used to it, and I even started to kind of like it. In fact, I used to make flirting my hobby. After breakfast, and after I’d spent an hour or so brushing my hair, I used to play flirty pranks on the servants.
Sometimes I’d go wandering through the castle with no bra under my silky dress. My breasts are pretty big now, round and heavy with perky nipples, so it’s kind of obvious. I would make a point of staring at any servant I caught looking at me, to see how long they would dare to gawp at my chest. That was fun. So was flirting with the gardener, asking him to show me all of his tools. Oh and that day when I wore the see-through dress that showed off my naked butt when I turned to stand in a certain way. I walked all the way through the servants quarters and the kitchen wearing that. I even wiggled my ass a little as I left each room, just for fun.
But one day I kind of went too far. I was lying in bed, wearing my lacy night dress, when the maid Maddie came in to clean the room. As I watched her, feeling kind of bored, I began to realize that Maddie was kind of hot. She was pretty, with a slender little body and a shy look in her eyes and as she bent over to clean the floor I got a naughty idea in my head. I ordered her to come and sit with me on my bed. She was kind of shy, but she did what I asked and then, without any hesitation, I kissed her, full on the lips, right there on the bed! I don’t know why I did it; I just felt an uncontrollable urge to feel my lips on her, and as I have found, I am not very good at dealing with uncontrollable urges.
Unfortunately, just as our lips were locked and I was breathing in her fragrance and thinking that it would be a good way to live to be kissing Maddie forever, the door to my room was flung open, in walked my father and, well, you can imagine the rest.
Poor little Maddie was confined to kitchen duty, while I got an hour-long lecture and then told that I had to stay in my room for the rest of the day. I knew he was serious, because this time, he locked the door. Fortunately, locked doors don’t stop me from having fun.
I was determined to escape from my room. All I had to do was use the old knotted bedsheets trick and I would be able to slip down the side of the tower, into the meadow behind the castle and then into the woods. I would spend a few hours there, wandering around, gathering mushrooms and climbing trees, and then sneak back into the castle later.
So after an hour or two getting ready – a Princess has to look her best, even when she’s escaping from a castle – I knotted five bedsheets together, fastened them to a hook on my wall and climbed out of the window. In less than a minute I had slid all the way down to the meadow beyond the castle walls and regaining my feet, hurried through the long dry grass towards the dark forest, slipping into the cover of the trees where no-one from the castle could see me.
