One of Queen Pirouette’s earliest memories was when her father brought her a new pet. It was a faun. She was already the “mother” of an extensive menagerie of animals: horses, dogs, cats, tropical fish and even a parrot. She loved them all, but the faun was by far her favorite. She named it Faun, which was both accurate and easy to remember. She remembered how her parents had laughed when she told them its name.
How she wept a few days later when the men came home from a large hunting party. While them caught and killed the prey, it was the women’s duty to butcher and salt the meat. When she was ushered into the cookhouse to learn the art of meat preparation, she became distraught. She thought of her precious Faun, how he would lick her hands when she fed him. Now she was supposed to take a butcher knife and open up a doe that could easily have been the little one’s mother.
“She’s too tender-hearted for this kind of work,” said her nanny who shook her head as she tried to comfort her charge. “Let’s go pick some flowers, my little dove.”
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