The Lady or the Tiger

Without the slightest hesitation he went to the door on the right and opened it. The princess's eyes were glistening with anxiety. She hoped more than anything that her plan would work.

While the Princess was looking for the secret of the doors, she had come across the King's rule book. It had nearly every answer to every situation that could happen during a trial. One of these situations caught her eye. It said that if the tiger didn't stir, the accused would stand in the arena until the last person in the audience had left. If everyone had left and the tiger was still unmoving, the accused would be asked to leave and never allowed to come back to the kingdom ever again. This gave the princess an idea.

That night, the Princess crept into the infirmary looking for something that could knock out the tiger for a good several hours. On a rickety, wooden shelf, she saw just what she was looking for. A sweet-smelling liquid sat in a small glass jar that was sealed shut with a metal screw on cap. The contents acted as chloroform and would knock out the tiger for about five hours if she gave it the right dosage.

At about 5:00am, the Princess put on her big cloak, woven with gold strands that her father had gotten for her for her sixteenth birthday. It was very chilly as she snuck out to the arena. She opened the right door where the tiger was resting. It began to stir and before it could lunge at her, she held her breath and dumped a few high doses of the chloroform onto a rag and held it up to the tiger's snout. She gave the tiger enough to hopefully keep it unconscious for a good five to six hours.

Now as the princess watched the situation unfold in the arena, she breathed a great sigh of relief. Her lover opened the righthand door and the tiger lay unconscious, it appeared to be sleeping. Many "BOOOO!"s were heard from the audience. After about fifteen minutes, almost half of the audience was gone. The lover shot the Princess a confused look, but the Princess kept a straight face and looked away, to make sure no one would catch on to what she had done.

About an hour later, at 9:00am, two thirds of the audience had left, but there was still a handful of people left. A couple people had fallen asleep but were jolted awake by a huge crack of thunder that ripped through the sky. Many of the people who were still there left so that they could get home before the rain. Lightning streaked through the clouds, lighting up the ever-darkening sky. Five minutes later it started to downpour. Mostly everyone left the stadium, and nearly twenty minutes into the storm the final crowd left. The King yelled in frustration while the Princess flashed a quick grin at her lover, who was still in shock from everything that had just happened. Guards escorted the Princess's lover outside the city walls, never for him to enter ever again.

That night, the Princess ran away to be with her lover and found him huddled under a tree about half a mile outside the city walls. She explained what she had done to the tiger and they lived happily ever after in a house they had built together in a small town that was far away from the kingdom they had previously lived in.