Silverspun Stories: Volume 4, Five Enchanting Tales

By Francesca Thoman and Candace Stuart-Findlay

Silverspun Stories Volume 4 has five more enchanted tales for your delight!

Stories of Mysterious Beasts that are full of loving kindness, a Master and an Apprentice who solve a mystery, a courageous rabbit who works to save a friend, a wise and kind prince who loves the people in his kingdom, and a young knight who goes on an unus

• Language: English
• Publisher: Empowered Whole Being Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798218507558

Francesca Thoman

Francesca Thoman has been writing children's books that are engaging, thoughtful, humorous, magical, and delightful for over a decade. Writing of magic and mystery, wonder and delight, she tells enchanting stories with heartfelt messages of kindness, strength of character, courage, and wisdom.

Book preview

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

Once upon a time, there was a bright, large kingdom ruled over by wise King Merton and Queen Amanda. The lands were fertile, the climate pleasant and the King knew enough not to interfere when something already worked well. This King and Queen also had a son, Prince Kai. Now, the King knew it wasn’t a good idea for kings to try to live forever. So he did what he could to help his son learn how to be a King before he died.

Prince Kai spent a lot of time with the people of the kingdom, sometimes obviously and sometimes in disguise. But the King knew that if Kai shared his life with the people, the people would soon love the Prince and Kai would come to love the people.

And indeed, the Prince came to esteem and care for all the people of the Kingdom. He valued the wheelwrights and bakers; teachers and clerks; clerics, gardeners, glassmakers; nannies, nurses, doctors, and even lawyers. So when it came time for Kai’s coronation he wanted to celebrate this love and friendship in a very special way.

One day in early summer Prince Kai gathered a crowd in the market square and said, Today my father has announced my coronation. He wants to abdicate and crown me King now when it’s easy to make the change and I have time to learn what I need to know about ruling this fine land. This way, when he steps down he will be able to celebrate his good years here with my mother, Amanda.

When the crowd stopped cheering Prince Kai went on, "But I already know I cannot be a King without all of you and I want to think of you every day. So with the help of my father’s skilled Magicians, I am going to make a dinner table. It will be an extraordinary table that will be big when it needs to be and small when it needs to be.

‘This way, I can eat all of my meals on it with the King and Queen and then with my friends in the court and another time with my friends from the town. But even more than that: I will ask the Magicians to make the table large enough so that when we have feast days, everyone in the kingdom will be able to eat with my father, mother, and me.

"So to celebrate my coronation I would like you to help me add things to this table. I want every one of you to bring something you have made, though it can’t be anything alive. I would never trap any live thing within our beautiful table!

"And, because of the craft of the kingdom’s good Magicians, other than that it won’t matter what kind of stuff you bring. It doesn’t have to be forks or bowls or cooking pots: it just has to be the best thing you have made or something that someone in your family made that has been passed down to you.

Wheelwrights can bring wheels, Bakers can bring bread, and Teachers can bring something their students have learned. Clerks can bring their neatest columns of figures, and Cooks share their recipes. They will all be part of my table!

Well, Prince Kai’s request went through the land like happy laughter. There was not one of the people the Prince hadn’t helped or encouraged at least once. So storytellers worked on their very best stories. Fishers chose their best hand-made rods and reels for him. Horse traders brought their best secrets about caring for horses. Potters brought the best pots they had ever made; children brought drawings and stories and the rules for new games.

All of this took some time, of course. And there was a little competition here and there. But everyone was going to bring something.

Even Janet was going to make something to bring to the table. She was just a poor cottage child. Her parents had died so suddenly that she had been left all alone and had to learn to manage as best she could. After all, the kingdom wasn’t perfect, just unusually well run.

However, like both her parents, Janet had always been good at carving things out of wood and had supported herself this way after they died. Since she couldn’t operate the lathe in the workroom, she made spoons and napkin rings, letter openers, and cunning little boxes with her small woodworking tools.

So she decided to make the Prince a beautiful soup bowl because if you have to, you can do without a lot of stuff. But eating your soup without a bowl can be quite undignified. And she knew that while you can always beg soup from anyone even if all you had were a stone to make soup from, it is so much better if you can bring your bowl for the soup too. Janet didn’t like to impose herself on other people and she thought that begging imposed on people much too much, especially when it was carried to extremes.

So Janet chose her best piece of hardwood, a large branch from the old cherry tree that her parents had cut down just before they died, hoping to make some wonderful things with it. She’d taken one of the branches and kept it because she wanted to make something for her mother. And when her parents died Janet had put the wood away, wanting to forget.

But by now the fruitwood was dry and well seasoned. She whittled and worked, sanded and polished until she had carved a most graceful and elegant bowl. She even added bits of other, darker woods here and there to enhance the delicate pattern of the fruitwood grain. The bowl was perfectly balanced with two flat handles so it would be easy to carry to a table.

When Janet was completely satisfied that she had done her best, she wrapped it in one of her cleanest and softest bits of cloth. Packing a lunch, she set off down the road towards the castle with the bowl in her backpack.

On the way, she passed some of the others on the road, all of them bringing something. And nearly all of them, truth to tell, were showing off. Sadly, too many people thought that unless theirs was the very best of the best of all, then what they were bringing wouldn’t be acceptable. Of course, this wasn’t true. However, there was this rumor and some people got a little anxious, including Janet, even though she was not the type to show off in the first place. She had never seen any need to brag about anything. She was always just doing what