Feminist Fairy Tales

by Barbara G. Walker

One day when he found the three little pinks going about their business among the roses, he threw a tantrum. “I told you three to knock it off!” he yelled. “I ordered white, red, or yellow roses only. Now you get some new colors or get out.”

  “You can’t throw us out,” said Candy defiantly, in her piping voice. “We’ve lived in this garden for nearly three centuries. It’s our home. We were painting flowers pink here when your pink baby bottom was still in diapers. Just who do you think you are?”

  “I’m her majesty’s head gardener, that’s who,” Florian Wolf snarled. “And this garden is going to be what I say it’s going to be, no more and no less. You’ll find out that it doesn’t pay to talk back to me.”

  With that, he swatted the fairies aside and proceeded to pull up all the pink-tinted roses by the roots. He threw them on the ground and stamped on them.

  At first the three little pinks stood still, watching this desecration with horror. Then they recovered their wits and acted. Each one snapped a thorn off one of the rosebushes. Buzzing with anger, they flew at Florian Wolf’s face and scratched him with all their might. Whenever he batted one away, the other two kept up the attack.

  As last Florian retreated, bleeding from a dozen little scratches and roaring with rage. From the safety of the greenhouse doorway, he shook his fist at the fairies, dancing up and down in his fury.

  “You pinks will be out of this garden by tomorrow’s sunrise,” he shouted. “If I find one of you, or one pink flower anywhere after that, I’ll net you, pull your wings off, and feed you to the pigs. You’ll make nice morsels for them, all right.”

  The fairies were appalled. “What a violent person!” Pearl exclaimed.

  “I don’t know how the flowers can tolerate him,” said Shell.

  “Of course we’re not going anywhere,” said Candy. “We’ll find a way to solve this problem.” They clustered, discussing the situation.

  “Should we ask for help from the fairy queen, or the mortal queen?” Shell asked.

  “Neither,” said Candy. “We can fight our own battles. But first we have to move our sleeping places. He knows where our cobweb hammocks are. We have to leave them and build ourselves some houses for protection.”

  “What a good idea,” Pearl cried, clapping her hands. “I’ve always wanted to build a house.”

  “Let’s separate and build houses in new spots,” Shell suggested. “Then we’ll meet at midnight by the big oak.”

  “And then,” said Candy, “we’ll paint everything in the garden pink. That’ll show him.”

  Giggling with mischievous delight, they flew off in different directions to establish their new homes.

  Pearl went to the oriole, whose nest she admired, to ask about materials and construction methods. Flattered by a fairy’s request for advice, the bird cocked her head up and down in order to look wise. Then she said, “By far the best building material is straw. You can find plenty of it in the hayloft of the royal stables.” So Pearl flew off to collect straws. She began to build her house on the lowest branch of a large dogwood tree that bore pale pink flowers.

  She didn’t know that she was observed by Florian Wolf’s pet rat, Racer, who lived in the stables. Racer was kept well fed on table scraps, because he was a champion runner. He had won a lot of money for Florian when the gardeners, stable hands, and other servants bet on rat races.

  Because rats know everything, Racer knew about the altercation between his master and the pinks. And because rats are adept at concealment when they want to be, Racer easily kept out of sight when he followed Pearl to find out what she was doing with the straw. He watched as she worked busily, humming as she wove the straws and happily saw her house grow. It seemed to her the most beautiful house ever. It needed just one more touch to make it perfect: to be painted pink all over. This was soon done.

  Shell went for building advice to her friend the beaver, who said, “The best building materials are twigs. A house of twigs will trap other debris and will soon become watertight.” So Shell gathered piles of twigs and built her house under a pink rosebush, where she felt protected by the thorns. She colored most of the twigs pink to match the roses above.

  Candy consulted the mud wasps, who were always constructing houses. They said, “Bricks made of clay are the only good building materials. Interlock the bricks in your walls. If the clay is well dried and bonded, not even the heaviest rain will wash it away.”

  So Candy toiled very hard, blistering her tiny pink hands, to build a brick house next door to the mud wasps. She chose a spot by the stump of an azalea bush that Florian Wolf had cut down because he disliked its brilliant hot-pink flowers.

  When the three fairies met at midnight, they first visited one another’s new houses, admiring the pink straw and pink twig houses especially. Candy was a bit crestfallen because her house was not pink, but she explained that making and laying bricks was extremely hard, slow work, and she had not had time for cosmetic considerations. At least her house was sturdy.

  “Now,” said Pearl, “we’ll really go to work.”

  The three pinks explained their situation to all the other flower-painting fairies, who already knew most of the story anyway, and obtained their permission to paint every single flower in the garden pink before the rising of the sun. They even pinkened a quantity of leaves for good measure. When Florian Wolf awoke that morning, his eyes were greeted by a blaze of pink as far as he could see.

  Florian’s face grew even pinker than the most vivid verbena. He stormed out of his door, flinging it back so hard that the hinges cracked. “I’ll kill those little pink pests,” he growled, setting off toward the grotto where he knew they hung their cobweb hammocks.

  On the way, he met the queen, taking her early morning constitutional around the garden. “Why, Florian, what a good idea,” she remarked, as he dropped to one knee before her. “It’s fun to have an all-pink garden for a change, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Florian said through clenched teeth.

  “I like it, Florian. Let’s keep it this way for a while.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Perhaps next month you can change the dominant color to purple. For royalty, you know.”

  “I’ll try my best, Your Majesty.”

  “All right, Florian. Dismissed.”

  She walked on, and Florian Wolf was left kneeling in the path, bristling with suppressed wrath. “I’ll kill those conniving fairies anyway,” he muttered. “Defy my orders, will they? We’ll see about that.”

  He burst into the fairies’ grotto and found it deserted, the cobweb hammocks tattered and useless. “All right, where are they?” he asked himself. Then he noticed Racer weaving back and forth between him and the door.

  Racer understood human language fairly well, but he knew Florian didn’t understand rat language at all; so he had to resort to broad pantomime, like a theatrical dog, to get a meaning across to his master. He finally made Florian Wolf realize that he could find the missing fairies. “Go on, then,” Florian commanded, indicating that he was prepared to follow Racer and proud of himself for having comprehended the crude sign language of a dumb animal.

  The rat led him to Pearl’s straw house, whose pink color shone brightly against the bark of the dogwood tree. “Come out of there, you nasty little pink popinjay,” Florian yelled. “Here comes big bad Wolf to say it’s time for you to feed the pigs.”

  “You can’t make me come out,” Pearl shouted defiantly. “This is my house.”

  “Oh, yeah? I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your silly house away,” Florian cried. He puffed up his chest and blew. Straws began to flutter and then slipped away one by one. Holes appeared in the walls, revealing a terrified Pearl crouching within. As her roof disappeared, she made a sudden galvanic leap and flew straight up, out of Florian’s reach. Then she set off as fast as she could go, to the house of her sister Shell.

  Racer was fast enough to keep up with the fairy’s flight, so he
followed and found the twig house under the rosebush. He saw Pearl knock at the door and enter and heard the two fairies barring the entrance with stout sticks. Then he raced back to his master, to repeat the I-know-where-to-go pantomime until Florian understood.

  Led to the twig house by Racer, Florian shouted, “Look out, fairies! Here comes the big bad Wolf to turn you into pig meat! Now come on out before I stomp that ramshackle little mess you call a house into kindling!”

  “Just you try, big bad Wolf,” Shell called back.

  Florian tried, but the thorny stems of the rosebushes grew so thickly over the twig house that he couldn’t reach it. So he desisted, and snarled: “I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house away.” He puffed up his chest and blew until his eyes popped and his cheeks turned cyclamen pink. Sure enough, the twigs blew apart and the two fairies were revealed, clinging together in fear.

  “Quick, make for Candy’s house,” Shell whispered to her sister. The fairies flew up, barely escaping Florian’s quick snatch. Again the rat followed them and discovered the location of Candy’s house. Again he raced back to Florian Wolf and led him on the path.

  When Florian came to Candy’s brick house, the mud wasps were buzzing around it in such numbers that he dared not reach toward it with his hand. One of Florian’s chronic problems was an acute allergic reaction to wasp stings. He tried to conceal this, regarding it as a weakness. Nevertheless, he gave wasps a wide berth. So he contented himself with threats and demands that the three fairies give themselves up.

  “Get lost, big bad Wolf,” Candy shouted from within. “You can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do. This is our garden, not yours. You work with the fairies or you don’t work at all, lamebrain.”

  Enraged, Florian screeched, “I’ll get you yet, all of you! I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and right through your wasp army I’ll blow your house down.”

  Again he filled his chest and blew such a hurricane that the wasps were hurled back against their own clay walls. Nevertheless, no matter how hard he blew, the little brick house stood firm. In his rage he failed to notice that the wasps were becoming very irritated indeed.

  At last the wasps reached the end of their patience and passed the attack signal among themselves. Flying under the whistling wind stream from Florian’s mouth, they charged at his arms, hands, legs, shoulders, torso, and neck. In seconds he was covered by buzzing, venomous tormenters. His roars of rage turned to screams. He writhed and rolled on the ground, crushing some of the wasps, but others persisted. Not until he was reduced to a huddled, whimpering lump did they leave off and return to their nests. The three little pinks came out of their brick house and waved gaily as the wasps came home one by one, dipping their wings in passing salute to the fairies.

  Florian Wolf managed to drag himself back to the main garden shed before he collapsed, swelled up like a sausage and turned bright pink all over. The queen’s own physician attended him and barely saved his life. The doctor ordered him to give up gardening forever, because one more wasp sting would undoubtedly kill him.

  Florian went to work indoors, for a seed-catalog company. He was replaced in the royal gardens by his former apprentice, a clever young man who understood the advantages of working with the fairies. The royal flower beds flourished, more colorful than ever, with pink represented as well as any other color.

  Pearl, Shell, and Candy kept busy at their usual jobs. They found that they enjoyed living together in Candy’s brick house, so they stayed there. During the following spring they added two new wings and painted the whole exterior pink.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mythic traditions the world over speak of man’s best death as a consummation to be found in the arms of the Goddess. In India the dakinis or death priestesses comforted the dying with loving embraces. Scandinavian Valkyries seem to have been similar Goddess surrogates, as were Persian houris, giving rise to the Islamic belief in sexual angels whose love would eternally reward warriors killed in battle. Roman philosophers longed for a death in “coming to Venus.” During the Middle Ages, classical statues of the old Goddess were sometimes viewed as deadly to young men, especially monks.

  Fairy gold was another name for vain hopes, or false treasure found by the cold gray light of dawn to have evaporated or turned into worthless tinsel. In this new story, however, the treasure is as real as the hero’s immolation. Both, in a way, turn out to be blessings.

  He saw the figure of a nude woman, sculpted of marble and painted with rich, lifelike colors.

  Once upon a time there was a poor shepherd lad named Winsom, who lived with his widowed sister, Lissom, and her two children in a cottage on the wild fells. Brother and sister had always been close, since they had been orphaned at an early age and had been raised in a workhouse, where their only protective support was each other. Lissom had married a good man, but soon after the birth of their second child he had been “taken by the fairies.” In the fells country, “taken by the fairies” meant a special kind of death. Not far from the shepherd’s cottage was a steep, deep ravine known as Fairy Gorge. It was so narrow that a long-legged man might jump across the top if he dared. At the upper end, a stream plunged down a drop of more than a hundred feet into the dark depths of the gorge. Some people professed to hear prophetic fairy voices in the waterfall’s echoing roar.

  The banks leading down to the gorge were slick and slippery, especially in damp weather. Quite a few sheep and cattle and even some people had ventured too near the drop and had slid down into the depths. Their bodies usually were found washed up on a bank far downstream. That was the fate of Lissom’s husband.

  Winsom was careful to pasture his sheep well away from Fairy Gorge, but one day he lost a lamb that wandered in that direction. It was a special, perfect lamb, born of the herd’s finest ewe. Winsom and Lissom were sure that it would grow up to be a prizewinner, and Winsom was determined to recover it.

  On approaching the gorge, he thought he heard the lamb’s bleating above the noise of the water. He cautiously leaned over the edge and peered down. Yes, the lamb was bleating down below, apparently in the waterfall. Its cries were loud and lusty, so Winsom assumed that it was not seriously hurt.

  He hurried back to the cottage to fetch a long rope and to tell Lissom what he planned to do.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said, clasping her hands nervously, “not the Fairy Gorge! I don’t want to lose another loved one to that awful place!”

  Winsom quickly kissed her cheek and told her not to worry. He hurried off with his rope. After putting knots in the rope at intervals, he tied one end to his waist and passed the other end around a tree near the top of the waterfall. He let himself down into the gorge, finding small footholds in the rocks as he went. The lamb kept bleating below, apparently behind the curtain of falling water.

  Near the bottom of the gorge, Winsom found a flat rocky platform that extended through the waterfall. He untied his rope and walked through the water, following the lamb’s cries. He found himself in a natural cavern. A dim light filtered down through crevices in the rocks, revealing to Winsom something in the cavern that was not natural.

  First he saw his lamb, standing in a small rivulet, apparently unharmed. Then he saw behind it the figure of a nude woman, more than life sized, sculpted of marble and painted with rich, lifelike colors. She stood in a white flowstone grotto, on a marble dais with mysterious carved lettering around its rim.

  Winsom couldn’t read, but even if he could, he wouldn’t have understood those letters, from the alphabet of an ancient, long-dead language. But what they said was: “All Hail to Our Holy and Blessed Goddess, Mother of the Universe, Bride of God and Man.”

  Winsom thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He approached in awe and reached out to touch the delicately peach-tinted marble arm. He thought he saw a flicker of motion in her lustrous painted eyes, a shift in the wavy golden locks that fell over her shoulder, as if a breeze had lifted her hair. He saw her finger poin
ting to a hollow behind the dais. Had that finger been pointing before? He wasn’t sure.

  He looked into the hollow and saw an ancient chest, its weathered, punky wood still bound by straps of tarnished brass. Through crevices in the wood he saw a glint of gold. He lifted the creaking lid and sat back amazed at the sight of the treasure within: goblets, plates, bowls, vases, rings, chains with medallions, all carved in gleaming, imperishable gold.

  He took one gold ring to prove to Lissom that he had discovered this untold wealth. He returned to the beautiful statue and knelt before her, pressing his forehead to her hand. “Thank you, lovely queen,” he said. He thought her hand grew warm, like living flesh, at his touch.

  As he clasped the marble hand, the gold ring slipped down over his finger and stuck fast.

  Reluctantly tearing himself away from the luminous painted gaze of the Goddess, he wrapped the lamb in his cloak, tied it against his body, and returned through the waterfall to make the arduous climb out of the gorge. Several times he thought he might lose his grip and was glad he had had the foresight to tie sustaining knots.

  He hurried home to restore the lamb to its mother and to tell Lissom about his wonderful discovery. Her eyes widened at the sight of the glittering gold ring on his finger.

  “We’re rich, dear sister,” he cried. “Rich beyond our wildest dreams! The fairy queen herself has given us a golden treasure that will keep us for the rest of our lives.”

  Lissom found his story hard to believe at first, but the gold ring on his finger convinced her. “Winsom, we must hide this ring and not tell anyone where you found it,” said Lissom.

  He tried to pull it off for her, but it refused to pass over his knuckle. “That’s odd,” he said, “because it slipped on very easily.”

  “Never mind,” said Lissom. “Just keep your gloves on, or your hand in your pocket, if you meet anyone. Now we must plan how to remove the treasure and how to sell it gradually, piece by piece, according to our needs.”