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Once upon a time, in a Kingdom very far away, there was a little girl named Princess Celise. Now, Princess Celise was a very strange little girl. Where most little girls asked for ponies or kittens for their birthdays, Celise asked for a pet rat. She got it, of course, as she got everything she ever wanted. She named him Buttons and taught him to dance. With dolls, usually, as there were no other dancing rats for him to pair up with. He could dance every dance imaginable. Tango, foxtrot, salsa, rumba; you name it, he could dance it. But his speciality was the waltz. Celise showed Buttons' dances to everyone. Great and small, old and young, everyone she met got a chance to view his dancing. But whenever he started to dance the waltz, she would hold out her little hand and ask for one gold piece to pay for the privilege of watching her pet rat dance the waltz.
Don't you mean her large hand?
No, I do not. For you see, the royalty actually have very dainty hands, as they are very dainty themselves. They just seem large to common folk such as you and me as they carry the air of authority and are always imagined to be holding great sums of money.
Anyway, Celise would hold out her dainty little hand and ask for the princely sum of one gold piece-
You mean princessly.
I suppose I do. She would hold out her hand and ask for the princessly sum of one gold piece, which she invariably got, for she was the Kingdom's sweetheart and nobody wanted to disappoint that sweet little face. She would clutch it tightly and as soon as Buttons was done with his dancing, she would run straight off to her room and deposit it in her piggy bank. In this manner, her piggy bank grew at an astonishing rate of about ten gold pieces a day. That is more than you or me would ever see in a lifetime.
It is not surprising then, that her piggy bank would end up overflowing on a regular basis. This was perfect for Celise, as at the start of every week she would take her overflowing piggy bank down to the marketplace to see what marvels and wonders the merchants had brought to the capital. She made no show of who she was when she was out in public, but neither did she go to any lengths to disguise herself and all the merchants, even the strangers who had never before stepped foot in this town, always knew who she was. They kept their best stock to one side to show her when she came down, and would make sure to bring things they thought she might like. Toys, trinkets, pretty perfumes, even a few exotic pets (although she never bought any of these, Buttons was the only pet she ever wanted). Anything that they thought Princess Celise would be intrigued by, they would bring.
What did she get?
She collected many strange things from these market visits. I'll not tell of them, for it would take hours and I mean for you to be asleep soon. Suffice to say that she collected more things each week from the market than we could ever dream of receiving on even a name-day, and each one prettier and more exotic than the last. And likely worth more than this house.
Now, there is one thing she bought from that market that I will tell you about, for that is what this story is about, and that was the last thing she ever bought from there.
She had merchants fawning around her that week, vying for her attention from the moment she stepped into the marketplace, as they did every week when she visited. And that week, as she did every week, she chose a merchant out of the throng and followed him back to his stall to see his wares. It was very unfortunate for Celise that that week she happened to choose a man who most would consider evil. He was new to the city, so he wasn't widely known as a bad man, or else he would never have been allowed to get near Celise. As I've said, she was the Kingdom's sweetheart and there was not a man in the city who could bear to see harm done to her; most would in fact die to save her from the smallest of harms.
But this one man could not only bear to see it done, he did it himself. I do not know the why of it, but he did. And he managed it in such a way that she never even realised it was him. He showed her his wares, beautiful things meant for enticing princesses, much like all the other merchants had done, and she suspected nothing. She bought the prettiest, most interesting things he had and headed for home, entranced and enchanted with her new possessions.
But what did she get?
I would not be able to tell you which of her possessions she got from that man specifically, for the most part. Nobody would. She stowed them away in her room when she got back, with all the other wondrous things she owned, and promptly forgot about most of them. As she did each week. There was one, though, this time, that she held onto. One that was simply too enchanting–and I mean that in every sense of the word–for her to put down and forget about. It was a toy rat. A beautifully hand-crafted toy rat, the most realistic she had ever seen.
She showed it to Buttons, in the hopes that he might dance with it instead of dolls, as that would certainly enhance his performances. But the real rat shied away from the toy, cowering in the corner of his cage and baring his teeth. Celise could not understand his behaviour, as this toy rat was certainly the most life-like toy rat in the world. It could almost pass for a real rat, and how could Buttons be afraid of his own kin? She left the toy rat in the cage with Buttons, hoping he would get used to it in time, and wandered off to do the things that princesses do when not playing with pets or shopping at marketplaces.
She returned to Buttons' cage in the morning to feed him, and was pleased when she saw that the real rat no longer appeared to be afraid of the toy. When both her and Buttons had finished their respective breakfasts, she carted him off as she always did, to find someone for him to dance for.
But no matter how she enticed him, no matter what songs she got the musicians to play, Buttons would not dance. She tried everything she could think of, even taking the toy rat out of his cage, thinking maybe it was his fear that was stopping him. But nothing worked. He never danced again.
Celise was never the same after that. Convinced that her rat was no longer her Buttons, that somehow he had been replaced, she raged against everyone in the palace, accusing everyone she could think of, throwing her beautiful toys and trinkets out of her window in frustration, including that beautifully lifelike little toy rat that had started all of this. She lost her place as the Kingdom's sweetheart and became known instead as a troublesome child. She raged at that, too, at the unfairness of it all, for she was convinced that she was in the right and that this rat was not her Buttons.
She was right, too. Buttons survived the fall from her window, and spent the rest of his life dancing the waltz in the slums of the city, entertaining everyone he could, and never asking more for it than a crumb of cheese.