The Golden Heart

The Golden Heart by Violet Jacob

The Golden Heart follows a lonely little boy who slips from his father's fishing smack one night and is carried through the sea by a talking fish eager to show him wonders. The fish leads him to a desolate rock where a captive Princess sits guarded by a monstrous cormorant, held prisoner by a vengeful witch who once stole her from her royal father's palace. She possesses a Golden Heart, a talisman that can guide and counsel any man bold enough to accept it, though taking it guarantees great suffering. Years earlier one suitor refused the gift upon hearing this warning and sailed away. The fish and boy then encounter a magnificent ship belonging to a masked Prince, so hideously ugly that he hides his face and roams the seas with only his devoted crew for company. When the fish, tired of his passenger, abandons the boy in the water, the Prince rescues him, hears his tale of the Princess, and sails toward the rock. There he accepts the Golden Heart despite its warning of hardship, vowing unwavering obedience to its counsel. Guided by the Heart's instructions, the Prince spends a night watching the cormorants, then swims into their cave to steal three magic feathers from their nest—granting invisibility, night vision, and the power to understand bird speech. Eavesdropping on the mother cormorant, he learns the secret password and hidden passage into the witch's underground lair. He infiltrates her cavern while she sleeps, steals her enchanted shoe, and uses it to open the rock and reach the Princess. When the returning cormorant attacks him, he kills it with his sword. The Golden Heart then instructs him to fashion the dead bird's wings into a magical means of flight, and he escapes with the Princess back to his ship. The Prince, Princess, and boy sail to her father's kingdom, where the old King welcomes his long-lost daughter with overwhelming joy and offers the Prince anything he desires. The Prince asks for the Princess's hand, and she accepts, though she has never seen his face. On an evening before their wedding, walking together in the palace garden, she begs to see him unmasked just once. He reluctantly removes the mask; the sight so horrifies her that she faints and afterward cannot bear to continue with the marriage. Anguished but resigned, the Prince releases her from her promise and prepares to depart. Desperate to help, the King consults the Golden Heart again, learning of a legendary healing plant that blooms only once every thousand years, in a remote marsh beyond a vast desert reached through the Great Gates at the world's edge. Its berries, crushed and applied to the face, restore perfect beauty and health, but only one person may benefit each millennium. The Prince sets out alone, promising the little boy he will return. After an arduous eleven-week journey—crossing the desert on cormorant wings after losing his horse, using his stolen feathers to spy on birds bound for the marsh, and enduring the eerie enchantment of the pool where the plant grows—the Prince finally locates the flowering plant and waits for it to mature. Just as it is ready to harvest, another traveler arrives: a dying, impoverished man who has journeyed two years across the same desert seeking the same cure, driven by love for his wife and children who await his return. Recognizing the impossibility of their shared claim, the Prince asks for time alone to think. Wrestling with temptation—he could simply kill the weaker man and claim the plant unseen—he instead recalls the Princess's original warning about the burden of the Golden Heart, and reflects on the stranger's family awaiting him. Choosing sacrifice over self-interest, the Prince yields his claim entirely, giving the dying man the plant and the chance at life and reunion with his family. Resigned to remaining disfigured and loveless, the Prince weeps by a still pool—and is astonished to see reflected in the water not his old, ugly face but one of noble, transcendent beauty. The Golden Heart's voice explains that this new face is the visible expression of his honor, courage, and self-sacrifice, greater than any earthly reward. Transformed, the Prince journeys home. The little boy, keeping his customary watch from the palace tower, spots him returning and rushes to greet him. Learning that the Princess has pined miserably since his departure, the Prince tests her love by returning to her still wearing his mask. She receives him with unrestrained joy despite believing his face unchanged, declaring she can bear anything except losing him again. When he finally removes the mask to reveal his transformed, beautiful countenance, she is stunned into believing herself unworthy of him—but he refuses to let her go, and the tale closes on their reunion and the promise of their marriage.

By Violet Jacob · First published 1904 · Genre: Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Romance · 12,730 words

First lines

The night lay clear upon the North Sea, but now and then a soft wind came floating by; it whistled through the rigging of a fishing smack in which a little boy lay under a tarpaulin, peeping over the side of the boat down into the water below.

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The Golden Heart is listed on Textopian as a novella by Violet Jacob, dated 1904 CE.

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Tags

Scottish literature · historical fiction · romance · family drama · rural life · Scottish Highlands · social class · inheritance · love and duty · tradition · community · identity

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