The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tales by Gail Carson Levine Page B

Sonora never played with her cute balsa mermaids and whales. Instead, she’d remind the Royal Nursemaids to wash behind her ears and between her toes. After the bath, she’d refuse to wear her adorable nightcap with the floppy donkey ears. She’d say it wasn’t dignified.
    The king and queen had trouble getting used to Sonora too. The king hated to watch her eat. It was unnatural to see a baby in a high chair manage a spoon and fork so perfectly. She never dribbled a drop on her yellow linen bib with the pink bunny rabbits scampering across it.
    There were hundreds of things that the queen missed. Sonora never tried to fit her foot into her mouth. After her second word, “wisten,” she never said another word of baby talk. She never drooled. She never gurgled. She refused to breastfeed. She admitted that it was good for her, but she said it was a barbaric, cannibalistic custom. Queen Hermione II wasn’t certain what a cannibal was, but she was embarrassed to ask a little baby, even though she knew Sonora would be perfectly polite about it. Even though she knew Sonora would be delighted to be asked.
    But then again, in some ways Sonora was exactly like other babies. She had to be burped like anybody else, although other babies didn’t go on and on about how silly they felt waiting for the burp to come. And most babies didn’t cry from shame when they spit up on someone.
    Because of her loving heart, Sonora also cried whenever anybody stopped holding her. Queen Hermione II could explain that her lap was falling asleep from holding Sonora and the heavy volume on troll psychology Sonora was reading. It didn’t matter. She cried anyway. It didn’t matter either if King Humphrey II said he had to meet with his Royal Councillors. Sonora cried anyway. And when the king said she was too young to help decide matters of state, her loving heart and her brilliant mind were in complete agreement—she had a temper tantrum.
    She learned to crawl at about the same time as other babies, although she was more of a perfectionist about it than most. She set daily distance goals for herself, and she only crawled in perfectly straight lines and perfectly round circles. After a day of crawling practice, she once told her father that she enjoyed watching “the miracle of child development” happening to her.
    Although her overall health was excellent, sometimes she got sick just like other children. Except other children didn’t diagnose their own diseases or tell the Chief Royal Physician what the treatment should be. And other children got well faster than Sonora, because other children listened when their parents told them to go to sleep. Sonora wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t sleep.
    Most nights, sick or well, she’d crawl into the royal library. She could memorize five or six books in a typical night. Fairy tales were her favorites. The more she knew about fairies, she reasoned, the better off she’d be.
    On nights when she didn’t feel like reading, she’d lie in her crib and think up questions. Then she’d answer them. For example, why did bread rise? She knew about yeast, but yeast wasn’t the whole answer—because why did yeast do what it did? The whole answer fit in with Sonora’s Law of the Purposeful Behavior of Everything Everywhere. Bread’s purpose, she knew, was to feed people. It rose so it could feed as many people as possible. The reason jumped out at you when you thought about it correctly.
    She decided that when her hand was big enough to hold a pen comfortably, she’d write a monograph on the subject.
    Sonora didn’t learn everything by reading and thinking. She also learned from the people around her. As soon as she could walk, she followed the Royal Dairymaids everywhere and asked them a million questions about milking. She watched the Chief Royal Blacksmith and asked him questions. She spent days in the kitchen with