The Girl Who Wasn't Ordinary

By Heidi Henken

Heidi Henken has written a gay-friendly fairy tale and fable for children and adults alike. Raised to believe she is Ordinary by an angry troll who stole her as a baby from her true family, Princess Heartsong learns the truth from a little bird at her window. Guided by the rainbow-feathered bird, a Silver Elf and a Golden Fairy, the princess sets out to find her way home. Along the way she meets a Middle-of-the-Road Man, the Queen of the Inn Between, a theatrical ally known as The Dresser, and more, as her travels take her through the towns of Here and There, divided by attitude and red tape, the village of the Sameasyous, to a journey along the Side Track and a stop on the Wrong Track. But Princess Heartsong learns she can’t finally go home until she finds a way to heal the rainbow, which was broken on the day she was stolen. Only by conquering this final challenge does Princess Heartsong find her true identity and join her family at last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xanthippe Books
• Release date: Mar 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301184248

Book preview

~~~~

The Girl Who

Wasn’t Ordinary

~~~~

By Heidi Henken

~~~~

Xanthippe Books

~~~~

~~~~

Xanthippe Books

Seattle, Washington, USA

The Girl Who Wasn’t Ordinary – Smashwords edition

Copyright © 2013 by Heidi Henken

All rights reserved

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental.

~~~~

For everyone.

Because no one is ever really Ordinary.

~~~~

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1 A Troll, a Girl and a Little Bird

Chapter 2 The Silver Elf

Chapter 3 The Middle-of-the-Road Man

Chapter 4 The Dresser

Chapter 5 The Queen of the Inn Between

Chapter 6 Red Tape

Chapter 7 Signs of Merging

Chapter 8 Side Track

Chapter 9 Perfect Parents

Chapter 10 Where the Rainbow Ends

Chapter 11 The Glass Mountain

Chapter 12 The High Note

Chapter 13 Earthworm

Chapter 14 The Purple Princess

~~~~

~~~~

Author’s Note

What? No illustrations? What is a children’s book without pictures? Why, it’s a book for the imagination. No, The Girl Who Wasn’t Ordinary has no illustrations in this e-book version. But that, Dear Reader, doesn’t mean that the pictures aren’t there. As you read, I am sure you see in your own mind just what the Princess Heartsong, the Old Troll, the Little Bird, the Silver Elf, the Golden Fairy, and all of the other characters that the princess meets, and the strange places she travels, look like.

I thought it might be fun for you to tell me how they look in your imagination. So I have set up a facebook page online where you can post and share your own pictures of Princess Heartsong and her friends with me and each other. Like The Girl Who Wasn’t Ordinary on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TheGirlWhoWasntOrdinary .

Princess Heartsong and all of the other characters are, of course, fictional. This is a fairy tale. But there once was a real girl very much like the princess who really did sing all the songs of her heart for all to hear. And like the princess, she was not Ordinary.

And, you know, Dear Reader, sometimes even today, if you are very quiet and listen very carefully, you may still be able to hear her song.

Heidi Henken

Chapter 1

A Troll, a Girl, and a Little Bird

Once upon a time, about two weeks from last Thursday, or possibly a bit longer, there was a princess named Heartsong. Except that she didn’t know she was a princess, and she didn’t know her name was Heartsong.

The Princess Heartsong had been stolen on the day she was born by a nasty, awful, angry, horrible old troll who lived, not under a bridge, but in a very ordinary house in a very ordinary town.

In fact, the troll told Princess Heartsong that her name was Ordinary, and he called her, Nary, for short. The troll wasn’t very nice to Princess Heartsong.

Nary, come here, he’d bellow from his comfy seat on the sofa, with his enormous smelly, knobbed feet propped lazily on an ottoman. Do this! Do that! Bring me this! Clean that! Hurry, hurry!

And if she didn’t do what the old troll wanted quickly enough or well enough to satisfy him (which happened almost all of the time), the horrible troll would be even more awful to her, even though the Princess Heartsong hadn’t really done anything to deserve such terrible treatment.

But because the house was so ordinary, in the very ordinary town, and the troll had told the people of the town that Princess Heartsong was Ordinary and that everything was as it was supposed to be, the people of the town kept about their ordinary business and didn’t think to notice that something was wrong. So no one tried to stop the troll or help the little girl.

Even when the troll was at his most awful, Princess Heartsong tried not to cry. She didn’t want to give the troll the satisfaction of knowing how much he hurt her. But alone in her small space, by the small window at the back of the porch, behind the back of the kitchen, she put her arms around her own small shoulders and tried to keep her heart from breaking.

So, the Princess Heartsong grew up alone, and almost always very sad. For the troll didn’t allow her to have any playmates, either.

Her only friend was a tiny bird with many-colored feathers who came in secret long after night had fallen and old troll was in bed and fast asleep. The little bird would sit outside Princess Heartsong’s window and sing her a song.

You are not Ordinary, the bird would sing. Your name is Princess Heartsong. Someday you will find your real family. Someday you will find your way home.

The princess knew in her heart it was true, and this is what kept it from breaking all the way.

The years, very hard years, went by and Princess Heartsong grew from a baby to a fine girl who was almost a young woman; and a very, very special almost-young-woman at that. She had long brown hair and large brown eyes that had been kissed at her birth by the Golden Fairy, so that she always looked as if she had caught a sunbeam and it shone from inside of her.

All through her growing up, every night her friend the little bird would come to her window and sing, You are not Ordinary. Your name is Princess Heartsong. Someday you will find your true family. Someday you will find your way home. And no matter how cruel the terrible troll could be, Princess Heartsong believed.

Then one day, on what was actually her birthday, only Princess Heartsong didn’t know it because she had never had a birthday party, the little bird sang a different song.