Princess Kriszti would have given half her country for a slimming pancake. She would have given the most beautiful emerald from her treasury for it, a bracelet, a ring, a shirt with a special label, anything! She even advertised in the Kings’ Journal:
“Half my country, the most beautiful emerald in my treasury, a bracelet, a ring, a shirt with a special label, anything for the man who makes me lose my appetite for pancakes.”
Princess Kriszti had a compelling reason to hate the pancake: she herself was the compelling reason. For she was as round as a stove, as wide as a haystack, and as thick as the great blackberry tree of Rácpácegres.
And why was this?
It was because she absolutely loved pancakes. She woke up with pancakes, she went to bed with pancakes, pancakes were everything to her.
So all the doctors, charlatans and chiropractors came to the door. One tried injections, another tried incantations, another tried pancakes with wagon grease to make her disgusted.
“I can’t believe it,” said Princess Kriszti, and she ate three hundred pancakes full of wagon grease, ignored the injections, and the incantations had no effect on her, like a cloud at the end of summer — still pancakes, and more pancakes.
“Make me hate pancakes!” Princess Kriszti cried, somewhere between a jam-filled pancake and a honey pancake. “I want to be as slim as a reed,” she said, while she swallowed a cottage cheese pancake, “as light as a spring breeze,” she said while she swallowed a cocoa-filled pancake. Yummy.
It seemed like no one could help with Princess Kriszti’s fierce passion, when the very last candidate, a big, fat man with a limp — I think he was limping because his Achilles’ tendon was hurting — came from the forest and said:
“Dear Princess Kriszti, you don’t have to hate pancakes, on the contrary, you can eat as much as you want, but you have to eat from my invention, because everyone knows that I, the genius mastermind inventor, have invented the pancake that makes you slim.”
So said the big, fat, sore-legged man — and self-proclaimed mastermind inventor.
Princess Kriszti fell into his arms with delight.
“Oh, my saviour!” she sighed. “Give me the slimming pancake!”
“Just a moment,” said the huge man, untangling himself from her arms, and from his pocket he produced some kind of pulley and a long piece of string. He threw the whole thing up to the top branch of a very tall tree, and pulled the string a little.
“Now that’s good,” he said.
He put the pancake on the end of the string in the pulley and pulled it up to the top of the tree.
“Here, Princess Kriszti, eat it.”
“But how?” said Princess Kriszti, frightened.
“Climb up and get it! I swear, by the time you’ve eaten your thousandth pancake, you’ll be as thin as a reed and as light as a spring breeze.”
“Brr-krrr-outch, kretch, srr,” branches cracked, as Princess Kriszti sighed, snorted, gasped, huffed, puffed, and panted as she climbed up the tree.
That was some climbing! Like a shower of rain, Princess Kriszti’s sweat was pouring down. I bet she lost about ten pounds by the time she reached the top of the tree. She caught her breath, and swallowed her pancake.
“I’m not coming down from here again,” she said in a huff. “Pull up another pancake!”
“No, no way,” said the inventor confidently. “But when you get down, see what you get! A pancake with jam!”
“Oooooh,” said Princess Kriszti, and she started down puffing, crunching, hissing and huffing. Zirr-zirr went the branches, hiss-hiss went the leaves.
And down below, yum, pancake with jam!
“Here we go, please,” grinned the inventor, and with his ingenious device he was already pulling the next pancake up the tree.
But Princess Kriszti, instead of climbing, turned black, went white, turned green and burst out like a giant geyser.
“You rascal, you cunning trickster!” she cried. “And you, and your slimming pancake! You don’t think I’m going to let myself be poked by the branches, let myself be bruised by the bark, and torment my dear body by climbing!”
“Lawmen, come out! Give him twenty-five strokes!!”
The big inventor could see, without being a genius, that this was no joke, so he swung his heavy body and as fast as his heels would carry him towards the forest from where he had come. Behind him, the lawmen waved their sticks.
The poor inventor ran as fast as he could, and muttered as he ran:
“But you can’t reach your goal without climbing and getting bruised by branches. Also, a little running might not do any harm,” he added, and galloped through the trees as fast as his legs could carry him.
And so it was that Princess Kriszti is still as round as a stove, as wide as a haystack, and as thick as the great blackberry tree of Rácpácegres.
Whereas the poor big, fat and sore-legged inventor! He had just lost ten pounds before the lawmen stopped chasing him. He looked at his slimmer body in the reflection of a river, gasping with delight, and said:
“Well, the slimming pancake is a great invention after all!”