Far, far away, where the North Wind sharpens its icy teeth against the cliffs, stood the castle of King Frederick. Oh, it was a magnificent castle! Its walls were hewn from granite, as gray and hard as the King’s own fist.
Inside, the castle was so quiet you could hear a spider spinning its web in the corner — though, truth be told, there were no spiders. King Frederick tolerated no living thing that failed to pay taxes. Servants walked on tiptoe, terrified of creaking a floorboard, for the floors were waxed so heavily one might slip and slide straight into the neighboring kingdom.
King Frederick himself, known as «The Iron,» loved numbers above all else. He loved them more than the scent of roses, more than a child’s smile, and certainly more than the foolish songs of a nightingale.
«A nightingale sings for free,» the King would say, frowning until his eyebrows looked like fuzzy caterpillars. «And what is free has no price. And what has no price is useless.»
He spent his days in the throne room, hung with heavy tapestries from Flanders. They depicted battles and feasts, but the threads were woven so tightly it seemed the people in the pictures had no air to breathe. Mirrors from Venice stood everywhere — enormous, in gold frames. But a strange thing happened: when the King looked into them, they reflected his crown, his velvet doublet embroidered with pearls, his signet rings… but never the happiness in his eyes. Perhaps because mirrors, as is well known, do not know how to lie.
The King would look out the window at his domain and see neither green meadows nor the silver river.
«This forest,» he would mutter, tracing a finger down a ledger, «is two hundred thousand ship masts. And this river — that is the fishing tax. And these mountains… hmph, a pity one cannot sell the snow that covers them!»
... 
