“A night with Her Highness is all I ask,” the frog stated with a telltale burp, its watery eyes bulging in appreciation of the rosy flesh left exposed both above and below the fluffy towel with which the royal bather attempted to cover her modesty.
This was not the answer the Queen had been hoping to hear. So far, she had washed in the blood of pregnant women, eaten afterbirths for breakfast, stood upon her head after performing her marital duty, and endured onions stuffed within her person. Granted, she might have been desperate for a child, nevertheless, she did have her limits. The mere thought of this slimy green creature huffing and puffing on top of her set her flesh to crawling. Bad enough to have to endure it from her husband, the King. “I think not, frog.”
The frog shrugged its shiny shoulders, apparently nonplussed by the Queen’s reaction. Over the years it had grown accustomed to these rebuffs, therefore it always made certain to have a backup plan in place. “I ask then for a simple reward. A mere pittance.” And perhaps it was a pittance, for the frog requested that the royal household supply it with a lifetime’s supply of spirits. According to the amphibian grapevine, the castle cellars were stocked full of fine port and brandies and even several kegs of ale, which should surely see the frog into its golden years. Seeing no alternative, the Queen agreed to the creature’s terms, whereupon the frog disappeared with a gaseous splash into the sparkling blue river as quickly and unexpectedly as it had first appeared.
Being of a practical nature, the King refused to give credence to such a prophecy. As a result, it took quite a bit of convincing for him to relinquish the precious contents of his cellar to a frog, who, rather than coming in person, had dispatched a team of amphibious cohorts to the rear door of the castle to collect this special honorarium. His Highness watched solemnly as the bottles and kegs from his cellar vanished down-river upon a caravan of lily pads. Expecting nothing in return, the King himself was astonished when the frog’s prophecy actually came to pass. For nine months later his wife gave birth to a baby girl so beautiful he wept with joy each time he looked upon her perfect, pink form.
To wish the infant well in her new life, the proud father ordered a feast to outrival all feasts, inviting friends and relations from near and far, along with the local wise women, whose presences were considered an absolute must upon such occasions. As one might have imagined, the guest list grew and grew until no more guests could be accommodated. Because the household had remaining to it only twelve place settings for what should have been thirteen wise women, this meant that one would need to be left out. In the single-mindedness of his joy, the King failed to anticipate that something so ostensibly minor would be interpreted as a major snub.
The festivities were celebrated with great lavishness, with food and drink aplenty and laughter and good cheer all around. When it came time for the wise women to present the child with their gifts, the first gave virtue, the second beauty, the third wealth, the fourth grace—and on it went until the infant girl had been given everything her parents could have wished for her. As the twelfth wise woman stepped up to the royal crib to offer her gift, a disturbance arose as the uninvited thirteenth elbowed her way inside the grand hall. She felt most vengeful on this day, having taken considerable offense at the absence of her name from the King and Queen’s guest list. As number thirteen, she had experienced a lifetime of being the odd one out. Even at home, when her twelve colleagues paired off each night to their respective bedchambers to bill and coo beneath the bedcovers, she would be left on her own to entertain herself…and without so much as the comfort of a bed to do it in. Ergo this latest exclusion was the last straw.
Forgoing the respectful bow demanded of all those who came before the royal couple, the thirteenth wise woman marched directly up to the happily gurgling infant and put forth her gift, saying, “In her fifteenth year of life, the King and Queen’s daughter shall prick her finger on a spindle and die.” Whereupon she spun about on her heel and departed, leaving the guests gasping and clutching their throats in horror. Indeed, she was quite pleased with herself, having no fondness for the royals, let alone their pampered progeny.
The wise woman who had been interrupted hastened forward in a panic. Although she could not cancel out the curse that had just been wished upon the child, she might be able to alleviate some of its sting. It was also a matter of pride, since she had no affection for the thirteenth member of her group and would not have liked for the woman to get the last word. The twelve had grown weary of number thirteen’s endless rantings and ravings about abolishing the monarchy and creating a state in which the producers possessed both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. Why, if such a system actually came into being, where would that leave wise women like herself?
Touching the infant’s forehead, the twelfth wise woman offered what she hoped would be a remedy. “The King and Queen’s daughter shall not die, but shall fall into a deep sleep to last one and ninety-nine years.” Not given to take the pronouncement of any wise woman lightly, the child’s father issued a proclamation commanding that all spindles in the kingdom be destroyed forthwith, convinced that by doing so, he had outsmarted the vicious gate-crasher.
As the little Princess grew older, each gift that had been given her by the wise women befell her. She would be beautiful and kind, clever and virtuous, musical of voice and light of step. Yet as each of the twelve gifts came to pass, it was inevitable that so, too, should the thirteenth.
During their daughter’s fifteenth year of life, the King and Queen found themselves called away on urgent court business. This would be the Princess’s first occasion to be alone without the watchful eye of a parent upon her, and, having an enterprising nature, she planned to take full advantage of the situation. The custodial eye of her father had become stifling over the years, and it frustrated her that she had been prevented from participating in activities her young peers so freely enjoyed. Why, other princesses her age were already keeping company with handsome suitors, whereas she was still keeping company with dolls! Although her first thought was to invite a prince or two to the castle, the servants had been ordered not to let anyone pass through the gates, especially young men with a special gleam in their eye.
With no other form of amusement available, the bored Princess embarked upon an investigation of the majestic structure that had been her home since the moment of her birth and from which she was never allowed to leave. She entered every chamber and parlor and opened every door, as well as every lid and drawer. Not even the den of a dormouse could be kept from her. The Princess’s explorations eventually led her to a crumbling old garret in a part of the castle that had long ago fallen into disuse. She ascended the narrow stone steps winding around the tower, each dusty footfall bringing her closer and closer to an arched door located at the top. The rusted iron of a key had already been set into the lock, inviting her inquiring fingers to give it a turn. And this she did, dispensing an expert clockwise flick. The door creaked open upon antiquated hinges, revealing a room of diminutive proportions. Inside, the hooded figure of a man dressed from head to toe in black sat before a distaff.
“I bid thee greetings!” hailed the Princess. “May one inquire as to the nature of thy labors? For it appears most interesting.”
“I am spinning flax,” replied the man without looking up.
Stepping closer the better to examine the apparatus, the Princess noted that the spindle had been placed conveniently in the spinner’s lap. It was long and sturdily constructed, the topmost portion containing a tiny hole through which the finished threads came out. The man operated the device by moving his hands up and down in a brisk, steady motion. Since her arrival, he appeared to be applying himself to the task with greater vigor than before. Fascinated—for she had never observed anyone spinning—the Princess grabbed hold of the rapidly bobbing spindle and attempted to spin a thread herself. Yet no sooner had she touched it than she experienced a strange fluttering in her belly that made her g
o quite woozy. Within moments she collapsed onto a straw pallet that had been set beneath the soot-covered window, falling into the deep sleep foretold by the twelfth wise woman, who had apparently been successful in counteracting her colleague’s lethal spell.
For rather than pricking her finger on a spindle and dying, the young Princess had fallen asleep by touching a prick.
Upon the King and Queen’s return and their discovery of the events that had transpired in their absence, the wise woman who had spared their only child’s life by altering her predecessor’s spell was immediately summoned. Powerless to rouse the sleeping Princess, wise woman number twelve did the next-best thing. Ergo the very same state befell the parents as well—as it would the whole rest of the court, along with horse and hound alike. Even the flies spiraling about the kitchen became affixed to the walls in a buzzless slumber. The fire in the hearth gave one last sickly sputter as the pheasant roasting upon the spit stopped turning. The red-faced cook fell asleep over a mound of chopped parsley, his ravishment of the scullery maid not yet having reached its blissful conclusion. Beyond the thick stone walls of the castle the wind stopped blowing and the river ceased to flow, freezing into a gelatinous ribbon of blue. Not a leaf stirred in a tree. The twelfth wise woman had placed everyone and everything into a deep sleep so that when the Princess awakened in one hundred years’ time, she would not find herself in a house of death.
Yet even in slumber the King’s fervent protectiveness of his daughter continued unabated, for he had earlier arranged with the wise woman further warranties against harm’s coming to the young Princess. A protective hedge of thorns began to encircle the castle, growing higher and thicker until every stone and turret vanished behind it. Not even the royal banner waving from the castle roof could be glimpsed. Indeed, the King would sleep a peaceful sleep, secure in the knowledge that no man could possibly succeed in getting through the deadly hedge—and thus getting to his precious daughter.
Over the years, amazing tales came to be heard in the surrounding countryside about a beautiful Princess who could not be awakened, such accounts inspiring many a passing prince with an ear tuned to the local chatter to fight his way through the hedge of thorns. Alas, such herculean efforts were generally to no avail. The moment anyone put a foot through the hedge, the prickly brambles came together, intertwining and interlacing around the struggling figure and holding it fast. Generations of promising young potentates suffered a miserable end in this lethal enclosure, which only made the story of the sleeping Princess travel farther and encourage still more adventurous sons of kings to meet the challenge of this thorny barricade.
As for the occasional few who managed to defy death by reaching the little garret room where the famous Princess lay in slumber, their successes went unreported and their fates remained a mystery. At the intrusion, the Princess would come briefly awake—for she had always been a troubled sleeper—only to discover her visitor seated at the distaff spinning flax. Indeed, she would be amazed at the variety of spindles to be had. Some were long, some short, some fat, some thin—yet each needed to be worked with a vigorous and relentless pumping of hands. Wishing to master the art of spinning, the accursed Princess seized hold of the bobbing spindle so that she might spin a thread herself…whereupon she fell back into a deep sleep all over again.
A number of births and deaths occurred before a prince from a very poor kingdom happened by. While stopping off at a tavern for a tankard of ale, he overheard an old peasant talking of the hedge of thorns and the castle, behind whose walls of stone a princess—or so it was said—had lain in sleep for nigh on a hundred years. The peasant had been told many stories by his grandfather about the sons of kings who had forfeited their lives battling to get through the deadly copse in their desire to locate the Princess, as well as stories of those who had disappeared in the process, their fleshly remains likely having been picked over by the castle’s hungry ravens. “Perhaps I shall succeed in reaching the Princess, for I am not afraid,” announced the visiting Prince, downing the last of his ale with youthful bravado.
Naturally, the old peasant sought hard to dissuade this naïve newcomer, who knew naught of the terrible dangers awaiting him at the castle. But no amount of pleading from the peasant or the other patrons had any impact upon the Prince, who hoped to achieve fame and fortune by becoming what he believed would be the first man alive to cast his eyes upon the legendary Princess’s sleeping form. The descriptions of the daughter of the King and Queen had greatly piqued his interest, therefore he was most keen to be the one to finally awaken her. Undoubtedly her parents would be so grateful they would make him their son-in-law—a situation that should please his father, who made no secret of the fact that he regarded his son as little better than a ne’er-do-well more interested in chasing butterflies than accruing wealth for the kingdom.
All the while, the one hundred years’ sleep the twelfth wise woman had conferred by amending the evil thirteenth’s sentence of death was reaching an end. As the Prince approached the castle, rather than the cruel hedge of thorns he had been led to expect, he was greeted by a colorful myriad of blossoms. Like the thighs of a waiting lover, they parted willingly at his approach, granting him permission to pass through to the other side unharmed. Finding himself inside the hushed courtyard, he made his way toward a side entrance to the castle without the slightest mishap. It was all so easy that he could not understand what all the fuss was about, and he wondered how it could be that so many before him had failed in their attempts to reach the Princess.
The entrance the Prince had selected led him to the kitchen, where he came upon the stout figure of the cook, who had fallen forward with his head resting against the chopping table, the pile of parsley before him having dried to a dusty green powder. Beside him a scullery maid remained bent over with her skirts hiked up to her waist, her fingers clutching the feathers from the crumbling bones of a guinea fowl she had been in the midst of plucking. Continuing on into the grand hall of the castle, the Prince next encountered the members of the court, along with the majestic presences of the King and Queen themselves, who slumped sidewise in dreamless dormancy upon their thrones, their chins crushed against their chests from the weight of their crowns. At their feet lay the royal hounds, their sleek forms curled into tight balls. Indeed, it certainly appeared that he had come to the right household.
After undertaking an exhaustive and fruitless search of the castle proper, the Prince next moved in what he believed to be the direction of the turret he had observed from outside, a process of elimination indicating that it would be here that the sleeping Princess could be located. His heart pounded with a sickening force as he climbed the winding steps, his footfalls muffled by the thick coat of dust blanketing the worn stone. The silence in the castle was so profound that the sound of his breath rang out like the clanging of church bells. The door of the little garret stood part of the way open, as it had for the past one hundred years, and the first thing the Prince saw was the abandoned distaff. Behind it upon a straw pallet lay the figure of a young woman. Her pale limbs were sprawled every which way as an incoming ray of sunlight from a small window illuminated her motionless form. He knew instantly that she had to be the daughter of the King and Queen.
Tresses of burnished copper formed a frame for the perfect ivory oval of the Princess’s face, spilling across the sun-faded brocade of the pillow supporting her head. The delicate blue-tinged lids of her eyes remained tightly closed against the intruding shaft of light, making it appear as if she had just lain down for a nap. The scattering of dainty freckles adorning the bridge of her nose overflowed onto her cheeks, although they would not reach as far as her lips, the pale pink of which reminded the Prince of a blush not yet come to fruition, prompting an invisible glaive to pierce his heart and the region directly below his belly. A gown of a diaphanous silk draped the young Princess’s sleeping form in elegant folds, the lustrous threads clinging to her curves so precisely that one might have thought a t
eam of silkworms had spun the garment expressly for her. Two gentle hillocks rose outward from her torso, the serene rise and fall of her respiration causing the tender pink nibs at their peaks to etch graceful swirls into the garment.
With great care, the Prince lowered his weight onto the straw-filled pallet. Although awakening the Princess had been his original intent, he now desired for her sweet slumber to continue without interruption. Pinching the finely sewn hem of her gown between trembling fingertips, he slid it slowly and deliberately upward, his knuckles grazing the soft warm flesh his bold actions uncovered. It would not be a particularly lengthy journey, the garment having only been cut to knee length. It had likely been intended for use as a nightdress and was, as such, not a suitable item of attire to be worn in the company of others, especially young sons of financially strapped kings who rarely had the funds to enjoy the pleasantries of female companionship.
A pair of gracefully rounded thighs came into view, their pale ivory as smooth and polished as an Oriental carving. Concerned that she might awaken and discover him in a position of compromise—for he suspected that his furtive movements might be deemed inappropriate and possibly deserving of an affronted slap to the cheek—the Prince kept an attentive eye on the steady up-and-down movements of the Princess’s chest, which had quickened ever so perceptively since his arrival. The translucent hem continued its steady ascent, offering to the incoming sunlight and the Prince’s eager eyes the entirety of the sleeping figure’s thighs as well as the discreet V located at their crest. All at once he cried out in delight as the pearly silk of the gown uncovered a little pink butterfly.
A pair of gossamer wings began to slowly unfold, as if readying themselves for flight. However, no such enterprise would be forthcoming, for it appeared that the fragile creature was being held back by two fuzz-covered pods, which had closed fast around its struggling body. Perhaps it had alighted upon this predatory plant and, like the many ill-fated sons of kings who had endeavored to break through the prickly hedge of thorns outside the castle, found itself hopelessly and helplessly trapped. Not wanting to cause damage to the delicate wings, the Prince placed his thumbs against the sericeous surfaces of each pod and pried them gently away from each other. To his surprise, they yielded quite easily, revealing an interior as smooth and pink as their faltering victim and unmarred by even a hint of fuzz. Once the Prince had gotten them separated as far as they could go, he noticed yet another reason for the creature’s plight. Indeed, no wonder it could not fly, since the means that should have propelled it had been weighed down with moisture.
In Sleeping Beauty's Bed Page 22
