Page 12 - Tree of Happiness

“Queen, you must go throughout the kingdom and without threats or bribes, you must raise an army of peasants. You must then take your army to the Black Forest and ...”. The Elf paused and the Queen finished the sentence.
“And run off the dragon,” she said in a hushed tone. “Yes,” replied the Elf, “and run off the dragon.”
As you might imagine, the Queen was very upset and said so in very vivid terms. To which the Elf smiled and replied,
“You don’t have to do it. But if you don’t, I can’t give you the Key.” “Well then,” snarled the Queen, “I guess I will just have to do it!”
The Queen then went back to the castle and assembled all of her advisors. She was determined to get into the Tree of Happiness no matter what it took. She therefore began to tell her assembled advisors of her plans. “I want to build a road, a wide road covered with stone from one end of the kingdom to the other."
Her advisors looked at each other in disbelief. The Queen wanted to do something that had never been done before. This was very different and they were quite uncomfortable.
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