Once Upon a Marigold...

There are many beautiful love stories in the world. From The Princess Bride to Ted Dekker's Immanuel's Veins to Dean Koontz's The Husband. Each one is a tale of fighting for your true love. They are all wonderful, but there is one that outshines them all. It is Jean Ferris's Once Upon a Marigold.

I always wanted to see the blue room of Ed's crystal cave.

This story begins with the finding of a small boy lost in the woods. The man who finds him is a troll named Edric, who has a tendency to use expressions wrong ("What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the eager beaver") and two dogs named Beelzebub and Hecate (Don't let the names scare you off; they're sweethearts). The boy, whose name is Christian, tells Ed that he ran away from home because there were too many rules. He says that he wants to be an inventor, so he has to be messy, and his parents didn't allow that. Though Ed wants to take him home, he doesn't know where that is and ends up adopting Christian as his unofficial son.

Christian grows up into an intelligent, brave young man. He learns from reading books, experimenting with things in the forest, and listening to Edric's teachings. A telescope is his only connection with the outside world, and he uses it to watch the castle past the forest and across the river. King Swithbert's castle. Looking through this telescope his entire life as he is growing up, Christian comes to know the royal family of that kingdom, even if they don't know him. He watches the beautiful triplets and their younger sister grow up, watches the older girls' joint wedding. They are his only friends besides Ed, Cate, Bub, and Hayes Centaur, King Swithbert's hunter. It isn't until Christian is a teenager that he decides to make contact by sending a carrier pigeon across the river to the youngest princess, who is reading while sitting on the wall around her castle. His first message simply says, What are you reading?

Princess Marigold is a lonely girl with a curse. If she touches anyone while she is upset, she will know what they are thinking. This has caused everyone in the world to grow distant, avoiding her touch, with the exception of her sweet old father, who has something like Alzheimer's. Other than the king, her only friends are Topsy, Mopsy, and Flopsy, her dogs. When she gets the message from across the river, she is thrilled and scared, but she sends one back. Greek Myths - Marigold.

With this, their correspondence begins. He signs every message with -C and tells her that he is nervous about giving his name. She doesn't really mind, though she is a little put off at first. Over time, they become each other's "bulwarks", as they say. Best friends.

Then comes the day that Christian decides to leave home and go out into the world. Where does he go? King Swithbert's castle to work as a servant. The princess doesn't know his name, and he is too nervous to approach her, worried that she will be appalled to find that her best friend is a servant boy. Still, they do meet, and he listens to her talk, something that no one ever does. Soon, she discovers who he really is, and he discovers something darker. A plot formed by the queen to marry off her daughter or kill her.

As Marigold is pressured to choose between an airhead and a dolt for marriage, her sisters and their husbands return home for the wedding, Christian is arrested as an enemy of the kingdom, and Edric (and the dogs!) is brought from his cave to the dungeons of the castle. The brave young man will have to rescue his princess from a forced marriage (or death), save her father from being poisoned, and build a contraption to do it all with. Between the dogs, the princesses, and the trolls, there is a deep and beautiful love story centered around the truth that marriage is a joining of best friends forever.

(I found this online. Pretty cool, huh?)