Sodewa Bai and the Golden Necklace

When the princess Sodewa Bai was born, a wise woman looked at her and said a strange and solemn thing. “This child’s life is not held inside her, as ours is,” she told the king and queen. “It is held in the little golden necklace she was born wearing. While the necklace is around her neck, she will be well and happy. But if ever it is taken from her, she will fall into a sleep as deep and still as death itself.”

So Sodewa Bai grew up never once removing her golden necklace, and she was as kind and lovely a princess as the kingdom had ever known. In time she married a good prince named Rowjee, and came to live in his palace.

But the prince already had a first wife, an older queen, and that queen was eaten up with jealousy of the gentle new princess everybody loved. She watched, and she waited. And one night, while Sodewa Bai lay fast asleep, the jealous queen crept into her room, unclasped the little golden necklace from her neck, and carried it away to hide.

In the morning, Sodewa Bai would not wake. She lay still and pale and cold, and no one in the palace could rouse her. The whole kingdom mourned, and the prince was heartbroken.

And yet, here was the strange thing. Each night, when the palace had gone dark and quiet, Sodewa Bai would stir, and open her eyes, and live and move and speak again for a few short hours, before the dawn came and she sank back, still as stone. For the jealous queen, you see, dared only wear the stolen necklace by day, and set it aside each night as she slept.

It was the prince who finally noticed. Grieving and sleepless, he kept watch by his still wife one night, and was astonished to see her wake. “How can this be?” he begged her. “By day you are lost to us, and by night you return?”

“My life is in my golden necklace,” she whispered, “and someone has taken it. Find it, and bring it back to me, and I will never have to leave you again.”

The prince searched, quietly and carefully, until he found the necklace hidden away among the jealous queen’s things. He clasped it gently back around Sodewa Bai’s neck. And from that moment she was well, and warm, and wide awake, and never fell into that terrible sleep again. The jealous queen was sent far from the palace, and the prince and Sodewa Bai, and in time their little son, lived long and happily together.