When I met the pretty shepherdess alone in the woods, I asked her if she feared the robbers.

“No,” she answered. “I have nothing for them to steal.”

“Ah, but you have a heart,” I said. “What would you do if that were stolen?”

She didn’t know what I meant. Her heart had never been stolen. “I have heard that without a heart one cannot live, and if it is broken one must die. I should be sorry not to live, even though I am poor.”

“You are quite right to take care of your heart, pretty one,” I said. “But tell me, have you supped?”

“No, madam. My brother ate all the supper there was.”

She would lose heart soon enough, I thought. And I was not about to let that happen.

Queen of the Woods in Felicia and the Pot of Pinks, Blue Fairy Book. Illustration by Kay Nielsen.