The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tales

by Gail Carson Levine

  “Er . . .” Aurora waved her wand vaguely. Then she had it. It was so simple. It was much better than Antonetta’s. She leaned over the cradle and touched Sonora on the nose with her wand. “My gift is brilliance. Sonora is ten times as smart as any human in the world.” There.

  Sonora felt something happen again, a tickle and a little shake inside her head. Then—it was done. She closed her eyes to think, really think, for the first time. She listened to the noise the tall being was making. She remembered all the noises people had made with their mouths since she’d been born. Some of the noises sounded alike. Some of them always went together.

  Now the soft being was making noises. They were words! The noises were words. She was thanking the fairy for her gift. She was hoping that Sonora (that’s me! that’s me!) would use her extraordinary intelligence well.

  Sonora opened her eyes. The soft being was her mother. She was beautiful, with her big brown eyes and those lips that liked to smile at Sonora. Of course she loved her mother, since the fairy had just given her a loving heart. Sonora wondered why the fairy had done that. Didn’t she think Sonora might be naturally loving?

  The fairy Adrianna came forward to the cradle. “My gift—”

  The door to the royal nursery flew open. Adrianna gasped. The other fairies gasped. King Humphrey II gasped. Queen Hermione II gasped.

  Sonora heard the gasps, but she could see only the things right above her, such as the pink dragon-shaped balloon that hung over the cradle. She thought, Why couldn’t these fairies have given me something useful, like the ability to sit up and see what’s going on?

  A new fairy came in. She looked like all the others. Tall, with rubbery-looking wings, surrounded by a flickering rainbow of lights. Smiling like the others had been till a second ago.

  Queen Hermione II rushed to the newcomer. “Belladonna! We’re honored.” In her mind she shouted, Don’t hurt my baby! Don’t hurt Sonora!

  The fairy looked around the room. “Pretty nursery,” she cooed in an extra-sweet voice. “Cuddly stuffed unicorn. Handsome dollcastle.” She looked in the cradle. “Beautiful baby.”

  She looks angry, Sonora thought. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that.

  Belladonna continued. “You failed to invite me to the naming ceremony of your only child. I suppose you have a reason?”

  “We didn’t invite you because we thought you . . .” The king stopped. He had been about to say they thought she was dead, but he couldn’t say that. “We . . . uh . . . thought you’d moved away. We’re so glad you could come.”

  “Can I get you some refreshment?” the queen asked. “We have some deli—”

  “I didn’t move. Nobody thinks I moved.” The fairy circled the cradle. “Some stupid people think I’m dead, but let me tell you, I’m very much alive.”

  “We have some delicious—”

  “You can’t buy me off with food. Maybe you figured the kid would get enough gifts from the seven of them.” Belladonna waved her wand at the other fairies.

  They drew back.

  Belladonna went on. “You thought you’d economize—only buy seven gold plates, seven gold forks, seven gold . . .”

  It’s true, King Humphrey II thought unhappily. We do only have seven gold place settings, but because we thought she was dead. Not because we’re stingy.

  Queen Hermione II tried again. “There’s plenty—”

  “Maybe you thought I couldn’t come up with a good gift. You thought I would run out of ideas, like Aurora here.”

  But I did think of a good gift, Aurora thought. How many people are ten times as smart as everybody else?

  Belladonna roared, “You think I’m stupid like her? Is that what you think? Hump? Herm? Hmm?”

  “Of course we don’t think you’re stupid,” King Humphrey II said.

  “I’ll show you I can think of a new and special gift.” She leaned over the cradle. “Kitchy coo.”

  Oh no, Sonora thought, wincing at the furious face. Somebody stop her! Do something!

  Everyone was silent, frozen.

  I have to do it, Sonora thought. I have to talk her out of whatever she’s going to do. “Excuse . . .” Her voice was too low. She’d never said anything before. She swallowed and tried again. “Excuse—”

  Belladonna didn’t hear. “Annadora gave the baby good health, which she will keep until my gift takes place. So my gift to the ootsy tootsy baby”—she waved her wand—“is that she will prick herself with a spindle and die!”

  Two

  When? Sonora wondered. When will I prick myself? When I’m eighty? Or in the next five minutes?

  “I can’t stay,” Belladonna cackled. “I must fly.” She vanished.

  Queen Hermione II snatched Sonora up and held her tight.

  Tears ran down King Humphrey II’s face in rivers. What good was it being king if fairies could do this to you?

  “It won’t happen,” the queen shouted. “I won’t let it. You’re not going to prick yourself with anything, sweetheart, baby dove.”

  Sonora wondered if her mother could prevent it. Or did it have to happen? If it had to happen, it had to happen. She’d just enjoy everything until it did. Sonora breathed deeply. Her mother smelled so good.

  The fairy Adrianna coughed. “Nobody seems to remember that I haven’t given Sonora my gift yet.”

  King Humphrey II threw himself down on his knees and clutched the fairy’s skirts. Queen Hermione II put Sonora back in her cradle and threw herself down on her knees too.

  “Please save our baby,” the king pleaded.

  “I can’t reverse another fairy’s gift,” Adrianna said, freeing her skirts from the king’s grasp. “That would cause a fairy war, and believe me, you don’t want that. I thought of making Sonora artistic. What do you think?”

  “Can’t you do anything to save her?” the queen sobbed.

  “Tutors will teach her to draw and play the harp,” the king said.

  Adrianna went to the cradle. “Let me think.” It was mean of Belladonna to kill the kid because of her parents’ mistake. “I can change Belladonna’s wish a little. She has to prick herself. I can’t do anything about that. . . . I know.” She waved the wand over the cradle. “Sonora will prick herself, but she will not die. My gift is that she will sleep for a hundred years instead of dying. Oh, this is brilliant!” The fairy beamed at the king and queen. “At the end of a hundred years a highly eligible prince will wake her by kissing her. How’s that?”

  Hmm, Sonora thought. A hundred years . . . her parents would be dead by the time she woke up! She started crying and howling and bawling. And wishing the fairy Allegra hadn’t given her a loving heart.

  King Humphrey II picked her up. “Funny baby.” He bounced her up and down. “She doesn’t cry when the fairy says she’s going to die. But when Adrianna saves her . . .” He bowed to the fairy. “Then she cries.”

  “‘I CAN’T REVERSE ANOTHER FAIRY’S GIFT,’ ADRIANA SAID.”

  “We can go to the banquet hall now,” the queen said.

  Sonora fought to catch her breath. She had to explain. “Wait,” she said finally. “Wisten!” Talking was hard without teeth. She tried again. “Listen!” There. She’d done it.

  The king’s jaw dropped, and he almost dropped Sonora too.

  “If I sleep for a hundred years, Mother and Father—” She started crying again. “Mother and Father will die before I wake up.”

  “She can talk!” the queen said.

  “And what if I have a dog or—”

  “You can talk!” King Humphrey II lifted Sonora way above his head. “The ibble bibble baby can talk!”

  And Belladonna said I couldn’t think of a good gift, the fairy Aurora thought, smirking. How many gifts make month-old babies talk?

  “Don’t let them die while I’m asleep,” Sonora begged.

  She’s right, the queen thought. But we can’t criticize Adrianna’s gift. She could get mad and harm Sonora.

  “Um . . .”
Adrianna said. If she really wanted to help Sonora, she had to fix as much as she could. “Suppose I do it this way. Suppose, when Sonora falls asleep, everybody in the castle sleeps along with her.”

  “Excellent,” the king said. “Except sometimes we’re in the courtyard.”

  “All right.” She waved her wand. “Everybody from the moat on in will fall asleep and sleep for a hundred years.” She chuckled. “Sweet dreams.”

  When the fairies left, King Humphrey II and Queen Hermione II had a long talk about the hundred-year sleep. They should have included Sonora, who would have had lots of good ideas. But Sonora was in the nursery, being rocked in her cradle by a Royal Nursemaid.

  “Maybe it doesn’t have to happen,” the queen said, brushing away a tear. “We’ll be very groggy when we wake up.”

  “We’ll issue a proclamation,” King Humphrey II said. “No spindles inside the castle.”

  “No needles,” Queen Hermione II added. “Nothing sharp. Maybe if anything pricks her she’ll fall asleep.”

  “No knives. No swords. No toothpicks. We’ll build a shed and keep everything in there.”

  “Belladonna didn’t say when Sonora would prick herself,” the queen said. “She could be fifty when she does it.”

  “No prince will marry her if he knows she’s going to nap for a hundred years,” the king said. “He could be out hunting, and when he comes home, nobody greets him. They’re all fast asleep.”

  The queen agreed. “Besides, the servants would panic if they knew. The whole court would leave.”

  They decided to keep the hundred-year sleep a secret. They didn’t think of telling Sonora to keep it a secret too, because they kept forgetting how smart she was. But they didn’t need to tell her because she already knew. She’d figured it out ten seconds after Adrianna gave the gift. Now, while she lay in the darkened nursery, she was thinking it all over instead of sleeping. She’d save sleeping for her hundred-year snooze.

  The fairy’s gift would come true, Sonora decided. If her head could change shape and if she could become plump just because of a fairy, not to mention getting smart twice, then of course she’d prick herself and sleep for a hundred years.

  Sonora also figured out that her parents would try to keep the gift from happening by hiding the spindles. But wherever they were hidden, she’d find them and take one. She wasn’t going to prick herself by accident at the worst possible moment. No. She would do it on purpose when the time was exactly right.

  Three

  The Royal Nursemaids couldn’t get used to Sonora. It was so strange to change the diaper of a baby who was reading a book, especially a baby who blushed and said, “I’m so sorry to bother you with my elimination.”

  In her bath, Sonora never played with her cute balsa mermaids and whales. Instead, she’d remind the Royal Nursemaids to wash behind her ears and between her toes. After the bath, she’d refuse to wear her adorable nightcap with the floppy donkey ears. She’d say it wasn’t dignified.

  The king and queen had trouble getting used to Sonora too. The king hated to watch her eat. It was unnatural to see a baby in a high chair manage a spoon and fork so perfectly. She never dribbled a drop on her yellow linen bib with the pink bunny rabbits scampering across it.

  There were hundreds of things that the queen missed. Sonora never tried to fit her foot into her mouth. After her second word, “wisten,” she never said another word of baby talk. She never drooled. She never gurgled. She refused to breastfeed. She admitted that it was good for her, but she said it was a barbaric, cannibalistic custom. Queen Hermione II wasn’t certain what a cannibal was, but she was embarrassed to ask a little baby, even though she knew Sonora would be perfectly polite about it. Even though she knew Sonora would be delighted to be asked.

  But then again, in some ways Sonora was exactly like other babies. She had to be burped like anybody else, although other babies didn’t go on and on about how silly they felt waiting for the burp to come. And most babies didn’t cry from shame when they spit up on someone.

  Because of her loving heart, Sonora also cried whenever anybody stopped holding her. Queen Hermione II could explain that her lap was falling asleep from holding Sonora and the heavy volume on troll psychology Sonora was reading. It didn’t matter. She cried anyway. It didn’t matter either if King Humphrey II said he had to meet with his Royal Councillors. Sonora cried anyway. And when the king said she was too young to help decide matters of state, her loving heart and her brilliant mind were in complete agreement—she had a temper tantrum.

  She learned to crawl at about the same time as other babies, although she was more of a perfectionist about it than most. She set daily distance goals for herself, and she only crawled in perfectly straight lines and perfectly round circles. After a day of crawling practice, she once told her father that she enjoyed watching “the miracle of child development” happening to her.

  Although her overall health was excellent, sometimes she got sick just like other children. Except other children didn’t diagnose their own diseases or tell the Chief Royal Physician what the treatment should be. And other children got well faster than Sonora, because other children listened when their parents told them to go to sleep. Sonora wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t sleep.

  Most nights, sick or well, she’d crawl into the royal library. She could memorize five or six books in a typical night. Fairy tales were her favorites. The more she knew about fairies, she reasoned, the better off she’d be.

  On nights when she didn’t feel like reading, she’d lie in her crib and think up questions. Then she’d answer them. For example, why did bread rise? She knew about yeast, but yeast wasn’t the whole answer—because why did yeast do what it did? The whole answer fit in with Sonora’s Law of the Purposeful Behavior of Everything Everywhere. Bread’s purpose, she knew, was to feed people. It rose so it could feed as many people as possible. The reason jumped out at you when you thought about it correctly.

  She decided that when her hand was big enough to hold a pen comfortably, she’d write a monograph on the subject.

  Sonora didn’t learn everything by reading and thinking. She also learned from the people around her. As soon as she could walk, she followed the Royal Dairymaids everywhere and asked them a million questions about milking. She watched the Chief Royal Blacksmith and asked him questions. She spent days in the kitchen with the Chief Royal Cook, until the Chief Royal Cook wanted to pound Sonora on her Royal Head with the Royal Frying Pan.

  Once she found out everything the Royal Dairymaids knew about milking or the Chief Royal Blacksmith knew about smithing or the Chief Royal Cook knew about cooking, Sonora would get to work. She’d read every book there was on the subject. Then she’d think, and soon she’d come up with a better or faster way to milk or smith or cook or do anything else.

  She’d be very excited. If it was the middle of the night, she wouldn’t be able to wait until morning to talk about her discovery, so she’d wake her parents up. This was always a disappointment. The king and queen were too sleepy to listen, and sometimes they were grumpy about being awakened. The king even raised his voice once, when she woke him to say she’d found a way to grow skinless potatoes, which would save hours of peeling.

  Sonora would imagine the joy her improvements would bring the Chief Royal Farmer or the Chief Royal Cook or the Royal Dairymaids. But she’d be wrong—they were hardly ever pleased. They liked doing things the way they were used to, and they didn’t like being told how to do their business by a Royal Pipsqueak no bigger than a mosquito bite.

  “SHE FOLLOWED THE ROYAL DAIRYMAIDS EVERYWHERE AND ASKED THEM A MILLION QUESTIONS.”

  Sonora couldn’t understand it. She knew that the purpose of dairymaids was more than to milk cows. They were people, and people had lots of purposes. If her brain hadn’t told her that, her loving heart would have. But part of their purpose was to get milk from cows, so she couldn’t understand why they didn’t want to do it in the best way possible.


  In fact, nobody was nearly as interested in what Sonora knew as she wanted them to be. Even her mother wasn’t. Often, while the queen wrote out menu plans, Sonora would talk about her latest research.

  And for the thousandth time the queen would wish that Aurora had thought of a different gift. A simple one would have been fine, Queen Hermione II would think. An excellent sense of smell would have been good, or a pretty singing voice, which didn’t run in the family. She and Humphrey II both sounded like frogs.

  Then the queen would try not to yawn. What was the child telling her now? How to build the fastest sailboat in the world? But Biddle was landlocked, and even its lakes were small. A slow sailboat could cross the biggest one pretty quickly. Queen Hermione II’s eyes would close then, and her handwriting on the menu would wobble.

  And Sonora would feel terrible, even though she’d know her mother didn’t mean to hurt her feelings.

  It would be the same with the king. He’d be deciding which squires were ready to be knighted, for example. Meanwhile, she’d start telling him about a book she’d read, a book that had been in his library forever without his ever wanting to read a word of it.

  He’d say, “Sonora, sweet, we’re not as smart as you are. We can’t think about knights and dwindling—um, dwindling what? What’s dwindling, cutie pie?”

  “Dwindling unicorn habitats.”

  “That’s right, darling. Tell us about it later when we’re not so busy.”

  Sonora would leave then, knowing that her father hoped she’d never mention a unicorn to him again—with or without a dwindling habitat.

  A new proverb sprang up in Biddle. Whenever a Biddler asked a question that nobody could answer, someone would say, “Princess Sonora knows.” Then somebody else would say, “But don’t ask her.”

  And everybody would laugh.

  Four

  When Sonora was six, she read every book she could find on the art of picking locks. Then, on a dark night, she stole out of the castle and went to the shed that held the spindles and the other sharp things. The moment had come for her to get her very own spindle so she’d be able to prick herself when the time was right.