Extract from Halja’s Gate
“And I am a real princess now. Like my daddy always said I was?”
The queen smiled. “I think you were always a princess, Helen. And with everything that has happened to you, you could be nothing else.”
The girl nodded. She gave her new mummies a big smile that looked like it was nine parts sugar and one part trouble. Everybody knows that smiles like that often turn out to actually be nine parts trouble.
“I’m Princess Helen!” she shouted out. Then she stopped and frowned. “No, I don’t like that name anymore.”
“You don’t? Well, it is your name. Trust me on this. I always get people’s names right.”
The girl met the queen’s eyes. “Well, I’m changing it! I’m not Helen anymore.”
And the queen, who had great magic and the power of naming, felt the change and understood that this was indeed true.
“Do you want to guess what it is?” said the little princess.
“You’ve shortened it,” said the queen a little surprised and not entirely happy. But she knew that changing it back would be wrong, so she put her hand gently on the girl’s head. “Child, thus do I name thee. Thou art Hel.”
And the sweet smile she got back was simply all trouble. But possibly the best kind.
