Vol.9, No.48,
2006 The Salmon King - A Fish Tale From B.C. By Elizabeth Symon
A long time ago in a castle under a faraway sea lived a king, a salmon king, King Chinook, a widower who had one daughter, the beautiful Princess Raun.
One day King Chinook fell in love, and married the scheming Holia, a widow with two daughters of her own. He took them to live with him in his castle under the sea.
But alas, his days were numbered, and Princess Raun was left fatherless and in care of her stepmother, Queen Holia. She was banished to the servants’ quarters, and when an invitation arrived to a Ball in honour of the coming of age of Samlet, a neighbouring Prince, Raun was told she was not included.
Poor Princess Raun wept as the three set off in their finery for the distant palace, unaware of the presence of the wisewoman fish of the sea.
“You shall go to the Ball, Raun,” she said, “in shining scales, and in a sea-urchin coach drawn by six gleaming sea-horses. But you must be home before the tide turns, or you will all be changed back into what you were before.”
So Princess Raun went to the Ball, and Prince Samlet danced with no one else but her, but as the ball room began to fill with the water of the rising tide, he found his partner gone.
The frantic Prince rushed to the palace entrance way, but saw only a sea-urchin and six sea-horses, and beyond them the crested waves and a rising sea.
Undaunted, however, he followed the slow progress of the sea-horses, now normal size again, and at last found himself at the faraway castle where Princess Raun lived. He persuaded her to return with him as his future bride to his own underwater home, and their descendants are to be found there to this day.
