The Halcyon Fairy Book

by T. Kingfisher

  He was probably weeping uncontrollably while he said this.

  So they again sent a messenger to the thicket, and begged so prettily for the loan of the gilded porch-door of which the attorney had told them that they got it at once. They were just setting out again, but now the horses were not able to draw the coach. They had six horses already, and now they put in eight, and then ten, and then twelve, but the more they put in, and the more the coachman whipped them, the less good it did, and the coach never stirred from the spot. It was already beginning to be late in the day, and to church they must and would go, so everyone who was in the palace was in a state of distress. Then the bailiff spoke up and said: “Out there in the gilded cottage in the thicket dwells a girl, and if you could but get her to lend you her calf I know it could draw the coach, even if it were as heavy as a mountain.” They all thought that it was ridiculous to be drawn to church by a calf, but there was nothing else for it but to send a messenger once more, and beg as prettily as they could, on behalf of the King, that she would let them have the loan of the calf that the bailiff had told them about. The Master-maid let them have it immediately — this time also she would not say “no.”

  “No,” hasn’t been her problem. It’s the “Yes, of course I’ll marry you — GOTCHA!” that I’d worry about.

  Then they harnessed the calf to see if the coach would move, and away it went, over rough and smooth, over stock and stone, so that they could scarcely breathe, and sometimes they were on the ground, and sometimes up in the air and when they came to the church the coach began to go round and round like a spinning-wheel, and it was with the utmost difficulty and danger that they were able to get out of the coach and into the church. And when they went back again the coach went quicker still, so that most of them did not know how they got back to the palace at all.

  I’m starting to wonder where she got this calf. It wasn’t one of the things she packed, as I recall, so apparently there was just a magic calf laying around the house. Possibly having been gilded.

  When they had seated themselves at the table the Prince who had been in service with the giant said that he thought they ought to have invited the maiden who had lent them the shovel-handle, and the porch-door, and the calf up to the palace, “for,” said he, “if we had not got these three things, we should never have got away from the palace.”

  The King also thought that this was both just and proper, so he sent five of his best men down to the gilded hut, to greet the maiden courteously from the King, and to beg her to be so good as to come up to the palace to dinner at midday.

  “But whatever you do, don’t propose to her! No good will come of it!”

  “Greet the King, and tell him that, if he is too good to come to me, I am too good to come to him,” replied the Master-maid.

  So the King had to go himself, and the Master-maid went with him immediately, and, as the King believed that she was more than she appeared to be, he seated her in the place of honor by the youngest bridegroom.

  The King is not an idiot, even if he apparently beat his sons with weasels during their childhood.

  When they had sat at the table for a short time, the Master-maid took out the cock, and the hen, and the golden apple which she had brought away with her from the giant’s house, and set them on the table in front of her, and instantly the cock and the hen began to fight with each other for the golden apple.

  Now I’m seeing her with two gold chickens stuffed under her clothes, sitting down to dinner. “Excuse me, ma’am, but did your brassiere just … cluck?”

  “Oh! look how those two there are fighting for the golden apple,” said the King’s son.

  “Also, do you normally throw gilded fowl on the table during nice dinners?”

  “Yes, and so did we two fight to get out that time when we were in the mountain,” said the Master-maid.

  So the Prince knew her again, and you may imagine how delighted he was. He ordered the troll-witch who had rolled the apple to him to be torn in pieces between four-and-twenty horses, so that not a bit of her was left, and then for the first time they began really to keep the wedding, and, weary as they were, the sheriff, the attorney, and the bailiff kept it up too.

  Okay, there’s a LOT freaky with this ending. For one thing, we established earlier that the troll-witch was the bride’s sister, right? So she’s expected to party down after her sister was just drawn and quartered? Was this light entertainment before the cheese course? Fine, okay, people routinely get horribly murdered at the end of fairy tales, just to make sure that everything comes out properly, but I’ll point out that a) apparently they now have troll-witches as in-laws, and b) the late troll-witch’s great sin is making the prince forget the Master-maid, whereas the Master-maid herself has killed an old woman, taken her house, beaten three members of the community half to death, and engaged in illicit transportation of fowl. (And probably stole a boat, too. You can’t tell me that she got that boat by legal means! There’s a trail of gilded corpses on the way to that boat, mark my words!)

  And the sheriff, the attorney, and the bailiff, who can barely walk and could be forgiven for bursting into uncontrollable screaming at the sight of the Master-maid, are limping through the ceremony as well? Yeeesh. If the troll--witch had still been available to make them forget her, I bet they’d be fighting over that apple like … well … golden chickens.

  I give this fairy tale major props for having a competent and empowered heroine, but … well … dude.

  The Crystal Casket

  Here’s an Italian version of “Snow White” that, in my opinion, focuses on the REALLY important question — namely, what in the name of God was Prince Charming doing mooning after a corpse? (The Disney version really glosses over this point. I will accept that one may wish to kiss one’s dead loved ones one last time, but there’s a far cry between that and riding around kissing random dead girls in the woods.)

  There are no dwarves, but there are fairies and an eagle, which is something. There is also an unsettling pre-echo of the whole Real Doll thing. It’s a bit worrisome and gets more so as time goes on.

  The original is from Italian Popular Tales translated by Thomas Frederick Crane (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1885).

  THERE was once a widower who had a daughter. This daughter was between ten and twelve years old. Her father sent her to school, and as she was all alone in the world commended her always to her teacher. Now, the teacher, seeing that the child had no mother, fell in love with the father, and kept saying to the girl, “Ask your father if he would like me for a wife.”

  This she said to her every day, and at last the girl said, “Papa, the school-mistress is always asking me if you will many her.”

  This here is the set-up to a Disney movie all on its own.

  The father said, “Eh! my daughter, if I take another wife, you will have great troubles.”

  At least he’s aware of it.

  But the girl persisted, and finally the father was persuaded to go one evening to the school-mistress’s house. When she saw him she was well pleased, and they settled the marriage in a few days.

  Dad’s earlier prescience seems rather weird now. “Well, gonna suck for you. But hey, I’ll get married in a couple days anyway!”

  Poor child! How bitterly she had to repent having found a stepmother so ungrateful and cruel to her! She sent her every day out on a terrace to water a pot of basil, and it was so dangerous that if she fell she would go into a large river.

  While I try to start out sympathetic to our heroines, I gotta say, a lot of other heroines have to do REAL work. I water my basil occasionally, and it takes about thirty seconds. Basil is not noted for attacking gardeners, pushing them into rivers, or even being particularly frost-hardy. The only way this seems plausible is if it’s a sort of Cat’s Eye inch-around-the-building-on-the-ledge situation, and that renders the basil less than useful for cooking.

  One day there came by a large eagle, and said to her, “What are you
doing here?” She was weeping because she saw how great the danger was of falling into the stream. The eagle said to her, “Get on my back, and I will carry you away, and you will be happier than with your new mamma.”

  This is already much cooler than a pack of dwarves. Do dwarves fly? No, they do not! You never saw Snow White tooling around the treetops on Grumpy’s back, now did you?

  After a long journey they reached a great plain, where they found a beautiful palace all of crystal; the eagle knocked at the door and said, “Open, my ladies, open! for I have brought you a pretty girl.”

  If this were one of the other types of fairy tales, the next line would be “Fire up the oven!”

  When the people in the palace opened the door, and saw that lovely girl, they were amazed, and kissed and caressed her. Meanwhile the door was closed, and they remained peaceful and contented.

  Let us return to the eagle, who thought she was doing a spite to the stepmother. One day the eagle flew away to the terrace where the stepmother was watering the basil. “Where is your daughter?” asked the eagle.

  Clearly the inching-along-the-ledge thing was exaggerated. If it was really all that bad, you’d move the damn basil to the front porch, but the step-mom is still out on the terrace with a watering can. Also, the eagle appears to be female.

  “Eh!” she replied, “perhaps she fell from this terrace and went into the river; I have not heard from her in ten days.”

  Meanwhile, somebody’s gotta water the basil.

  The eagle answered, “What a fool you are! I carried her away; seeing that you treated her so harshly I carried her away to my fairies, and she is very well.” Then the eagle flew away.

  The stepmother, filled with rage and jealousy, called a witch from the city, and said to her, “You see my daughter is alive, and is in the house of some fairies of an eagle which often comes upon my terrace; now you must do me the favor to find some way to kill this stepdaughter of mine, for I am afraid that some day or other she will return, and my husband, discovering this matter, will certainly kill me.”

  Or you could, y’know, move the damn basil and tell your husband she was carried off by a freaky talking eagle. Dear old dad is obviously not monitoring the situation closely. Seriously, people, it’s the cover-up that kills you every time ...

  The witch answered, “Oh, you need not be afraid of that; leave it to me.”

  What did the witch do? She had made a little basketful of sweetmeats, in which she put a charm; then she wrote a letter, pretending that it was her father, who, having learned where she was, wished to make her this present, and the letter pretended that her father was so glad to hear that she was with the fairies.

  Let us leave the witch who is arranging all this deception, and return to Ermellina (for so the young girl was named).

  I take back what I said. Watering basil may be the least grueling task set to a fairy-tale heroine, but anyone named Ermellina has suffered a great deal already.

  The fairies had said to her, “See, Ermellina, we are going away, and shall be absent four days; now in this time take good care not to open the door to anyone, for some treachery is being prepared for you by your stepmother.”

  But it was not so. The fairies went away, and the next day when Ermellina was alone, she heard a knocking at the door, and said to herself, “Knock away! I don’t open to anyone.”

  She is also smarter than Snow White. Plus Snow only got little happy singing bluebirds, and Ermellina gets an eagle.

  But meanwhile the blows redoubled, and curiosity forced her to look out of the window. What did she see? She saw one the servant girls of her own home (for the witch had disguised herself as one of her father’s servants). “O my dear Ermellina,” she said, “your father is shedding tears of sorrow for you, because he really believed you were dead, but the eagle which carried you off came and told him the good news that you were here with the fairies. Meanwhile your father, not knowing what civility to show you, for he understands very well that you are in need of nothing, has thought to send you this little basket of sweetmeats.”

  Ermellina had not yet opened the door; the servant begged her to come down and take the basket and the letter, but she said: “No, I wish nothing!” but finally, since women, and especially young girls, are fond of sweetmeats, she descended and opened the door.

  I don’t even know if it’s worth commenting on specific episodes of sexism in fairy tales any more. There are too many. Instead, I think I’ll stare out my window for a minute. There’s a white-throated sparrow and a couple of doves out there at the moment. No eagles at the time of this writing.

  When the witch had given her the basket, she said, “Eat this,” and broke off for her a piece of the sweetmeats which she had poisoned. When Ermellina took the first mouthful the old woman disappeared. Ermellina had scarcely time to close the door, when she fell down on the stairs.

  When the fairies returned they knocked at the door, but no one opened it for them; then they perceived that there had been some treachery, and began to weep. Then the chief of the fairies said, “We must break open the door,” and so they did, and saw Ermellina dead on the stairs.

  Her other friends who loved her so dearly begged the chief of the fairies to bring her to life, but she would not, “for,” she said, “she has disobeyed me.”

  I initially thought that the chief of the fairies was being a bit of a hard-ass here, but when you think about it, you know this isn’t her first heroine. She’s probably been through this a dozen times in the last few centuries, and after the first couple, I imagine you get pretty stern. Raising the dead can’t be a cakewalk even if you’re a fairy. The first couple were probably “Oh, you poor dear! Let me save you from your own stupidity!” but after awhile, you get to “I told you not to open the door! How many times do I have to tell you people never to open the door?! No resurrection for YOU!”

  But one and the other asked her until she consented; she opened Ermellina’s mouth, took out a piece of the sweetmeat which she had not yet swallowed, raised her up, and Ermellina came to life again.

  We can imagine what a pleasure it was for her friends; but the chief of the fairies reproved her for her disobedience, and she promised not to do so again.

  Once more the fairies were obliged to depart. Their chief said, “Remember, Ermellina: The first time I cured you, but the second I will have nothing to do with you.”

  “Seriously, kid, I can raise the dead once a month, no more. I was going to go rez a very nice lady with three small children who did good work in the community, but noooo, YOU had to go open the door. This time I’m off to save some lepers. Learn from your mistakes.”

  Ermellina said they need not worry, that she would not open to anyone. But it was not so; for the eagle, thinking to increase her stepmother’s anger, told her again that Ermellina was alive.

  Whatever you might think of Snow White’s bluebirds, at least they didn’t go start shit with the Queen.

  The stepmother denied it all to the eagle, but she summoned anew the witch, and told her that her stepdaughter was still alive, saying, “Either you will really kill her, or I will be avenged on you.”

  The old woman, finding herself caught, told her to buy a very handsome dress, one of the handsomest she could find, and transformed herself into a tailoress belonging to the family, took the dress, departed, went to poor Ermellina, knocked at the door and said, “Open, open, for I am your tailoress.”

  Ermellina looked out of the window and saw her tailoress; and was, in truth, a little confused (indeed, anyone would have been so).

  “Gee, the last time somebody disguised themselves as somebody I knew, but surely this could never happen again!”

  The tailoress said, “Come down, I must fit a dress on you.”

  She replied, “No, no; for I have been deceived once.”

  “But I am not the old woman,” replied the tailoress, “you know me, for I have always made your dresses.”

  WHAT old woman? Who me
ntioned an old woman? Where do old women come into this? The last one was disguised as a servant girl.

  Poor Ermellina was persuaded, and descended the stairs; the tailoress took to flight while Ermellina was yet buttoning up the dress, and disappeared. Ermellina closed the door, and was mounting the stairs; but it was not permitted her to go up, for she fell down dead.

  Let us return to the fairies, who came home and knocked at the door; but what good did it do to knock! There was no longer anyone there. They began to weep. The chief of the fairies said, “I told you that she would betray me again; but now I will have nothing more to do with her.”

  “We’re all invited to a party at the leper’s house, though!”

  So they broke open the door, and saw the poor girl with the beautiful dress on; but she was dead. They all wept, because they really loved her. But there was nothing to do; the chief struck her enchanted wand, and commanded a beautiful rich casket all covered with diamonds and other precious stones to appear; then the others made a beautiful garland of flowers and gold, put it on the young girl, and then laid her in the casket, which was so rich and beautiful that it was marvelous to behold. Then the old fairy struck her wand as usual and commanded a handsome horse, the like of which not even the king possessed. Then they took the casket, put it on the horse’s back, and led him into the public square of the city, and the chief of the fairies said, “Go, and do not stop until you find someone who says to you, “Stop, for pity’s sake, for I have lost my horse for you.”

  This is oddly specific. I always wonder how much lee-way there is in these things—does the horse get to stop if he finds someone who says “Stop, for god’s sake!” or “Stop, for the love of bunnies!”?