The three villains had moved away from the door and Bright Shimmer could finally escape. She crept out of the room and began a swift flight out of the castle and into the gardens where she found a single bluebell that hadn't been cleared out after her mother's supposed death. She took the flower in her beak and flew through the window of her father's room. He was still sitting in the same position staring at the wall. She walked up to him and passed the bluebell to him. He accepted it easily and she was surprised, for that was the first time she had seen him move since she left. She remembered that the mirror said he would wake from his spell with laughter, so she started thinking of ways to make either her or her father laugh. She told jokes looked at funny pictures, she did everything she could think of. But she couldn't get her or king Daren to laugh. She stopped and started thinking. She mumbled the words of the poem that the mirror had recounted.
Bright Shimmer heard a noise behind her and whirled around. Behind her, Daren had stood up and was looking around.
She realized that she didn't need laughter she needed to say, "Pure and simple laughter." That was the key phrase! And it had worked! Her father was standing lucidly in front of her, and now he was speaking, as if to the air.
"Why, I have the most peculiar feeling." He pondered, still looking around, "like…" he got no further for right at that moment Grenta and her two colleagues burst through the door.