by Jane Yolen
Princess Miserella was not pleased. She stamped her foot.
“Do that again,” said the fairy, taking a pine wand from her pocket, “and I’ll turn your foot to stone.” Just to be mean, Miserella stamped her food again. It turned to stone.
Plain Jane sighed. “My first wish is that you change her foot back.”
The fairy made a face. “I like your manners, but not your taste,” she said to Jane.
“Still, a wish is a wish.”
The fairy moved the wand. The princess shook her foot. It was no longer made of stone.
“Guess my foot fell asleep for a moment,” said Miserella. She really liked to lie. “Besides,” the princess said, “that was a stupid way to waste a wish.”
The fairy was angry.
“Do not call someone stupid unless you have been properly introduced,” she said, “or are a member of the family.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” said Miserella. She hated to be told what to do.
“Say stupid again,” warned the fairy, holding up her wand, “and I will make toads come out of your mouth.”
“Stupid!” shouted Miserella.
As she said it, a great big toad dropped out of her mouth.
“Cute,” said Jane, picking up the toad, “and I do like toads, but . . .”
“But?” asked the fairy.
Miserella did not open her mouth. Toads were among her least favorite animals.
“But,” said Plain Jane, “my second wish is that you get rid of the mouth toads.”
“She’s lucky it wasn’t mouth elephants,” mumbled the fairy.
She waved the pine wand. Miserella opened her mouth slowly. Nothing came out but her tongue. She pointed it at the fairy.
Princess Miserella looked miserable. That made her look beautiful, too.
“I definitely have had enough,” she said. “I want to go home.” She grabbed Plain Jane’s arm.
“Gently, gently,” said the old fairy, shaking her head. “If you aren’t gentle with magic, none of us will go anywhere.”
“You can go where you want,” said Miserella, “but there is only one place I want to go.”
“To sleep!” said the fairy, who was now much too mad to remember to be gentle. She waved her wand so hard she hit the wall of Jane’s house.
The wall broke.
The wand broke.
And before Jane could make her third wish, all three of them were asleep.
It was one of those famous hundred-year naps that need a prince and a kiss to end them. So they slept and slept in the cottage in the wood. They slept through three and a half wars, one plague, six new kings, the invention of the sewing machine, and the discovery of a new continent.
The cottage was deep in the woods so very few princes passed by. And none of the ones who did even tried the door.
At the end of one hundred years a prince named Jojo (who was the youngest son of a youngest son and so had no gold or jewels or property to speak of) came into the woods. It began to rain, so he stepped into the cottage over the broken wall. He saw three women asleep with spiderwebs holding them to the floor. One of them was a beautiful princess. Being the kind of young man who read fairy tales, Jojo knew just what to do. But because he was the youngest son of a youngest son, with no gold or jewels or property to speak of, he had never kissed anyone before, except his mother, which doesn’t count, and his father, who had a beard.
Jojo thought he should practice before he tried kissing the princess. (He also wondered if she would like marrying a prince with no property or gold or jewels to speak of. Jojo knew with princesses that sort of thing really matters.) So he puckered up his lips and kissed the old fairy on the nose. It was quite pleasant. She smelled slightly of cinnamon. He moved on to Jane.
He puckered up his lips and kissed her on the mouth. It was delightful. She smelled of wildflowers. He moved on to the beautiful princess. Just then the fairy and Plain Jane woke up.
Prince Jojo’s kisses had worked. The fairy picked up the pieces of her wand. Jane looked at the prince and remembered the kiss as if it were a dream.
“I wish he loved me,” she said softly to herself.
“Good wish!” said the fairy to herself.
She waved the two pieces of the wand gently.
The prince looked at Miserella, who was having a bad dream and enjoying it. Even frowning she was beautiful. But Jojo knew that kind of princess. He had three cousins just like her. Pretty on the outside. Ugly within. He remembered the smell of wildflowers and turned back to Jane.
“I love you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
So they lived happily ever after in Jane’s cottage. The prince fixed the roof and the wall and built a house next door for the old fairy. They used the sleeping princess as a conversation piece when friends came to visit. Or sometimes they stood her up (still fast asleep) in the hallway and let her hold coats and hats. But they never let anyone kiss her awake, not even their children, who numbered three.
Moral: Let sleeping princesses lie or lying
princesses sleep, whichever seems wisest.
The Undine
AQUA EST MUTABILE. Water is changeable, female, mutable. The gods of the sea are male, but the sea herself female. Restless. Changing.
So the prince thought as he stared over the waves, the furrows becoming mountains, the mountains tumbling down into troughs. Female into male, male into female. Changing.
He pushed his scarlet hat to the back of his head because the feather tickled his cheek. Women were in his thoughts all the time, as bothersome as the feather on his skin. Flickering, always flickering, on the edge of thought. He could not leave women alone. He was to be married within a week.
He had never met his bride; that was not the courtship of royalty. But he had seen a portrait of her, a miniature done by a painter whose pockets were even now lined with gold from the girl’s father. Such paintings told nothing truly, not even the color of hair. His own portrait, sent in return, showed a handsome youth with yellow curls, though in fact his hair was more the color of a sparrow’s belly, buffy and streaked. The lies of kings are lightly told.
“I will not mind,” he thought to himself. “I will not mind if she is less than beautiful, as long as she is not too changeable. As long as she is not under the water sign.” He longed for stability even as he sought change, a king’s wish.
But a messenger arrived that night who was one of his own. Under the cover of darkness the messenger confessed, “It is worse than we thought, my lord. She has a face the very map of disease, with the pox having carved out the central cities. Her nose is mountainous, her chin the gift of ancestors. A castle could be built on that promontory.”
The prince sighed and dismissed the news-bringer. Then he began to pace the castle battlements, staring out across the crenellations to the sea beyond. His father’s father had built wisely; one face of the castle was always turned toward the ocean. It was a palace for sailors and every room was full of the sound of waves.
The prince leaned out over the wall and breathed in the salt spray. A wife whose face put a mountain range to shame. How could he—who loved the seascape, who loved beauty in women above all things—abide it? He longed suddenly for an ending, a sea-change from his situation, but he had neither the heart for it nor the imagination. Princes are not bred to it. He sighed again.
It was the sigh that did it. It reeled out as eagerly as a fisherman’s line and cast itself into the sea. What woman can resist the sound of a man’s sigh? He had caught many maidens on it, many matrons as well. But this time it was the daughter of a sea-king who was caught on that hook.
She rose to his bait and sang him back his sigh.
Now, it must be remembered that the songs of mermaids have a charm compounded of water and air, the signs of impermanence. That is both their beauty and their danger. Many men have been caught, gaffed, reeled under, and drowned by the lure of that song.
Rising only to the edge of her waist
—for she knew full well how the sight of a tail affects mortal men—the mermaid showed the prince her shell-like breasts, her pearly skin, the phosphorescence of her hair. She held a webbed hand over her mouth, her fingers as slim as the ribs of a fan. Then she pulled her hand away, displaying her smile. She was well trained in the arts of seduction, as was he. Royalty abounds in it.
The prince leaned out over the castle wall, his legs on land but his arms and head over water. As amphibious as she, he gave himself to her, though he was not his own to give. It was a promise as mutable as water, for the lies of kings are lightly told.
We have all been warned of such bargains. That promise worked its own kind of magic, and the undine rose from the waves on legs, her scales washed away by the prince’s rote of love. But magic has consequences, as any magic-maker knows. The undine half expected the worst—and got it. Her new legs bit like knifepoints into her waist. Still, it was no worse than the pain of menses; even seamaids are slaves to the tides. She smiled again and walked gingerly ashore.
The prince ran down to greet her, leaving bootmarks in the sand. If he had asked, she would have even danced before him and never felt the pain. Some women believe lies—even the ones they tell themselves. Especially those.
The undine put her hand in his, and he shivered at her touch. Her hand was cold and slippery as a fish; the webbing between her fingers pulsed strangely against his skin. There was a strong sea scent about her, like tuna or crab. But her chin and nose were small, her eyes as blue as lagoons, and fathomless. He smiled his watery promise at her and gestured toward his room. He did not speak, knowing that mermaids have no tongues, forgetting in his human way that they had ears. Still, in love, gesture can be enough.
She followed him, knife upon knife, smiling. The prince took her to his room by a hidden route, the steps up to it smoothed by the passage of many dainty feet. Each step up was another gash in her side. She gasped and he asked her why.
“It is nothing,” she signed, holding her waist. Her mouth was open, gasping in the air, and she was momentarily as ugly as any fish. But the moment passed.
He did not ask again. Some men believe lies—especially if it is to their convenience.
His room was like a ship’s cabin, the waves always knocking at the walls. He locked the door behind them and turned toward her. She did not ask for ceremony. His touch was enough, rougher on her skin than the ocean. She enjoyed the novelty of it. She enjoyed his bed, heavy with humanity. Lying on it, her knife legs no longer ached.
Her touch on him was water-smooth and soothing. He forgot his marriage. He was always able to forget the demands of royalty in this manner. It was why he forgot so often—and so well.
But those demands are as constant as clockwork. The week ticked away as inexorably as a gold watch and the monstrous bride was shipped across the waves.
She resembled an armada, rough-hewn and wooden, with a mighty prow and guardsmen in her wake. Noisy as seagulls, her attendants knocked on his door. He was forced by tradition to attend her. The undine he left behind.
“I love you. My love is an ocean,” he whispered into her seashell ear before he left.
But she knew that such water was changeable. It was subject to tides. Hers was at an ebb. She no longer trusted his sighs. As soon as the door shut, she left the bed. The knifepoints were as sharp as if newly honed. The mirror on the wall did not reflect her beauty. It showed only a watery shadow, changing and shifting, as she passed.
The salt smell of the ocean, sharp and steady, called to her from the window. Looking out, she saw her sisters, the waves, beckoning her with their white arms. She could even hear the rough neighing of the horses of the sea. She left two mermaid tears, crystals with a bit of salt embedded in them, on his pillow. Then painfully she climbed up onto the corbeled windowsill and flung herself back at the sea.
It opened to her, gathered her in, washed her clean.
The prince found the crystals and made them into earbobs for his ugly wife. They did not improve her looks. But she proved a strong, stable queen for him, and ruled the kingdom on her own. She gave him much line, she played him like a fish. She swore to him that she did not mind his many affairs or that he spoke in his sleep of undines.
She swore, and he believed her. But the lies of kings are not always lightly told.
Great-Grandfather Dragon’s Tale
1.
“LONG, LONG AGO,” said the old dragon, and the gray smoke curled around his whiskers in thin, tired wisps, “in the time of the Great-Grandfather of All Dragons, there was no Thanksgiving.”
The five little dragons looked at one another in alarm. The boldest of them, Sskar, said, “No Thanksgiving? No feasting? No chestnuts on the fire? Hasn’t there always been a Thanksgiving?”
The old dragon wheezed. The smoke came out in huge, alarming puffs. Then he started speaking, and the smoke resumed its wispy rounds. “For other animals, perhaps. For rabbits or lions or deer. Perhaps for them there has always been a Thanksgiving.”
“Rabbits and lions and deer!” The little dragons said the names with disdain. And Sskar added, “Who cares about rabbits and lions and deer. We want to know about dragons!”
“Then listen well, young saurs. For what was once could come again. What was then could be now. And once there was no dragons’ Thanksgiving.”
The little dragons drew closer, testing their claws against the stone floor of the cave, and listened.
Long, long ago began the old dragon the world was ice and fire, fire and ice. In the south, great mountains rained smoke and spat flame.
In the north, glaciers like beasts crept down upon the land and devoured it.
It was then that the Great-Grandfather of All Dragons lived.
He was five hundred slithes from tip to tail. His scales shimmered like the moon on waves. His eyes were black shrouds. He breathed firestorms, which he could fan to flame with his mighty wings. And his feet were broad enough to carry him over the thundering miles. All who saw him were afraid.
And the Great-Grandfather of All Dragons ate up the shaking fear of the little animals. He lived on it and thrived. He would roar and claw and snatch and hit about with his tail just to watch fear leap into the eyes of the watchers. He was mighty, yet he was just one of many, for in those days dragons ruled the earth.
One day, up from the south, from the grassy lands, from the sweet lands, where the red sun pulls new life from the abundant soil, a new creature came. He was smaller than the least of the dragons, not even a slithe and a half high. He had no claws. His teeth were puny and blunt. He could breathe neither fire nor smoke, and he had neither armor to protect himself nor fur to keep himself warm. His legs could only carry him from here—to there. And the old dragon drew a small line on the rock face with his littlest toenail.
But when he opened his mouth, the sounds of all beasts, both large and small, of the air and the sea and the sky, came out. It was this gift of sound that would make him the new king.
“Fah!” said little Sskar. “How could something that puny be a king? The only sound worth making more than once or twice is this.” And he put his head back and roared. It was a small roar, for he was still a small dragon, but little as it was, it echoed for miles and caused three trees to wither on the mountain’s face. True, they were stunted trees that had weathered too many storms and were above the main tree line. But they shivered at the sound, dropped all their remaining leaves, and died where they stood.
The other little dragons applauded the roar, their claws clacketting together. And one of them, Sskitter, laughed. Her laugh was delicate and high-pitched, but she could roar as loudly as Sskar.
“Do not laugh at what you do not understand,” said the old dragon. “Look around. What do you see? We are few, yet this new creature is many. We live only in this hidden mountain wilderness while he and his children roam the rest of the world. We glide on shrunken wings over our shrunken kingdom while he flies in great silver birds all over the earth
.”
“Was it not always so?” asked the smallest dragon, Sskarma. She was shaken by the old one’s words.
“No, it was not always so,” said the old dragon.
“Bedtime,” came a soft voice from the corner. Out from behind a large rock slithered Mother Dragon. “Settle down, my little fire-tongues. And you, Grandfather, no more of that story for this night.”
“Tomorrow?” begged Sskarma, looking at the old one.
He nodded his mighty head, and the smoke made familiar patterns around his horns.
As they settled down, the little dragons listened while their mother and the old one sang them a lullaby:
Firelight and firebright,
Bank your dragon flames tonight.
Close your eyes and still your roar,
Sleep is here, my little saur
Hiss, hiss, hush.
By the time the song was over, all but little Sskar had dropped off. He turned around and around on the cave floor, trying to get settled. “Fah!” he muttered to himself. “What kind of king is that?” But at last he, too, was asleep, dreaming of bones and fire.
“Do not fill their heads with nonsense,” said Mother Dragon when
the hatchlings were quiet.
“It is not nonsense,” said the old dragon. “It is history.”
“It is dreams,” she retorted. In her anger, fire shot out of her nostrils and singed the old one’s nose. “If it cannot feed their bellies, it is worthless. Good night, Grandfather.” She circled her body around the five little dragons and, covering them, slept.
The old dragon looked at the six of them long after the cave was silent. Then he lay down with his mouth open, facing the cave entrance as he had done ever since he had taken a mate. He hardly slept at all.
2.
In the morning, the five little dragons were up first, yawning and hissing and stretching. They sharpened their claws on the stone walls, and Sskar practiced breathing smoke. None of the others was even close to smoke yet. Most were barely trickling straggles through their nose slits.