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   An  Adoption  Fairy Tale

Once a king and queen ruled over a magnificent kingdom.
Their subject loved them, their castle shone like the sun, and there was
never any famine or drought. They knew they were very lucky.
Yet, something was missing.

One morning the queen woke up with a pain in her heart. It was
a steady ache that filled her with sadness.
"I have a pain in my heart," she say to the king. "It is a hurt that will
not leave."
"I feel it, too,"the king said. " It feels as if my heart is tearing in two."

So the king queen called in doctors and scientists, wise men and
medicine women. The healers made them drink special teas, breathe in
orange herbs, recite rhyming poetry, and wear metal bracelets, but nothing
worked. The pain remained, and grew worse each day. The king and queen
began to lose hope that their suffering would end.

One day an old peddler wheeled his cart of trinkets into the kingdom.
Hearing about the king and queen's he requested an audience.
"It's as I thought," the man said when he saw them. "There is a red thread
being pulled from your hearts!"
"A red thread?" The queen gasped. "Where?"
"I see nothing," the king said.
"Try on my spectacles, " the peddler said, holding out his wire frames.
"You will see."

And sure enough, when the queen put on the
glasses, she could see a brilliant red thread coming
from her heart. It ran around the room, out the
castle door, and far beyond. With every move she
made, the thread pulled and twisted, causing her
pain.
The peddler found another pair of spectacles
for the king. The king, too, saw a thread coming
from his heart. The two threads had knotted
together into one thick strand.
"We must cut the thread, " the king declared.

But no scissors, knife, or blade could cut the thread, any more than
they could cut a beam from the moon.
"What should we do?" the queen cried in anguish.
"You will have to follow the thread," the peddler told them. "You both
must find out who or what is pulling on the other end."

So the king and queen packed a basked of food and wine and left the
kingdom in the care of the quwwn's sister. They folllowed the red thread out
of the castle, and their subjects waved farewell.
Even though the king and the queen were sad to leave their kingdom,
each step they took lessened the pain in their hearts.

It was a long and difficult journey. Snow fell, and sharp rocks made
holes in their shoes. The king and queen shivered in the cold, and their fine
clothes ripped from wear. Kind birds flew to help them untangle the thread
from tree branches.
But the king and queen continued. They knew following the red thread
was their only cure. As they traveled, the thread grew shorter.
 
Yet when the thread led them to the shore of a vast sea, they almost
despaired. But the thread tugged at them, so they bought a boat and began to row.

With every stroke of the oars, they wondered what was
pulling the thread.
Was it a ferocious beast or a cruel magician? What would
they do when they met whatever was on the other end?

The king and queen finally reached the shore of a faraway land. The red thread
guided them to a small village.
The people stared at them; they were so strange, with their clothes ripped to
rage, hair trangled, and faces as pale as the moon. But the villagers smiled a greeting,
for they were a friendly people.
The king and queen, however, took little notice of anyone. The end of the red
thread was within their sight. They ran to a small bundle in front of an old house.

When they reached the bundle, both
stopped in amazement. Inside the bundle
was a baby!
She was laughing and playing and
tugging at the  red thread tied around
each of her ankles. She looked up
at the king and queen and smiled.

"Whose baby is this?" the queen asked." Who does she belong to?"
Her words were strange to the villages,  who chattered a language that
the king and queen could not understand. Finally a wrinkled elder pushed
herself forward.
The elder's bespectacled eyes followed the short red threads connecting
the king and queen to the baby. Her face broke into a broad smile.
"This baby," the old woman said, "belongs to you."

So the king and queen took the baby home to their castle, and she became
the princess of the kingdom. They never felt the pain in their hearts again.
Instead, they were filled with joy and happiness. They never found out how the
red thread had conneccted them to their daughter, but they knew why. And that
was all that mattered.
The king and queen searched for the old peddler to reward him for his help.
But he had moved on to the next kingdom. He had heard the king and queen
there were suffering from a pain in their hearts.

***There is an ancient Chinese belief that an invisible, unbreakable 
    red thread connects all those who are destined to be together. 
    by-Grace Lin