Wasted Bravery

Once upon a time, there was a beau­ti­ful king­dom where everything was purple: the houses were purple, the trees were purple, the an­im­als, and even some people’s eyes and hair were purple. And this king­dom was ruled by a king and a queen who, for a long time, had had no children. 

One day, when the queen was cry­ing in the garden, a mys­ter­i­ous but­ter­fly ap­peared in front of her and said, “Don’t cry, my queen, be­cause your wish has been heard and it shall be soon answered. All you have to do is bring me the seed of your most pre­cious flower on the next full Moon.” 

So the queen did as the but­ter­fly told her and within a week, the queen was blessed with a baby. When the child was born, the king ordered a great feast and in­vited all the power­ful people he knew of. He also in­vited all the faer­ies in the king­dom to the ce­re­mony, ex­cept one, but only be­cause she spoke so softly that people mis­heard her every time and troubles arose. But the faery ar­rived nonetheless.

At the end of the feast, each of the faer­ies blessed the child with vir­tue, beauty, in­tel­li­gence and luck. When the turn of the soft-voiced faery came, she breathed, ’’When you’ll turn eight­een, you will in­jure your­self and a horse will die”, but the room was too loud, and what people thought they heard was “When you’ll turn eight­een, you will in­jure your­self and, of course, will die.” 

Un­for­tu­nately, the faery was in a hurry and van­ished be­fore those gathered could de­mand that she re­peat her damning words. People were all struck with hor­ror, but none as much as the par­ents. To everyone’s re­lief, there was still one more faery who used her wish to save the child’s life, “The child will be in­jured and will fall into a death-like sleep, and only a loyal and brave soul can save the child from death’s hands.”

The time passed by, sea­sons changed and the child grew out of the child­hood gar­ments. The ru­mor about the curse spread out so much that every­body knew about it. People even star­ted mak­ing bets on how the events would unfold.

Eight­een years later, the much dreaded day has come and people all over the world, those who thought their heart pure and brave, came to the purple king­dom to try and save the king and queen’s most pre­cious treas­ure. Now, it so happened that a young prince of his kind ar­rived in these parts. He had a mus­cu­lar body and car­ried him­self very proudly. Upon see­ing him, people would stop dead in their tracks to ad­mire him. Yes, he was that beau­ti­ful. We do not know his name, so we shall call him simply “the Prince”.

Now, the Prince was just passing by, but this tale needs a hero, so, for some un­known reason, he changed his mind and de­cided he would go to take a look at the won­der­ful purple garden he had heard so many things about. While the Prince was drink­ing wa­ter from the purple river that crossed the garden, he heard someone sneak­ing be­hind him. It was a uni­corn. An evil one. The uni­corn said in a grave voice, “How dare you drink from my river? Now, I shall spare me the time to hear your fool­ish ex­cuse and slay you!” 

The Prince was too con­fused to think and was stunned into si­lence. This en­raged the uni­corn fur­ther as he was in fact wait­ing to hear the Prince beg for his life, “How dare you keep your si­lence? I’m so furi­ous, I will not even bother with you. Your life must be pathetic anyway!”

While the uni­corn was about to leave, a young man came from be­hind the uni­corn and scare the hell out of them both. The uni­corn jumped so high, that he hit the young man with his right front hoof in the head. The strike was so strong that the boy in­stantly lost his con­science and fell into the river. 

“Good heav­ens!!! You killed him?!!” screamed the Prince, then jumped into the river after the boy. The Uni­corn, on the other hand, ran away faster than the wind. The Prince man­aged to save the boy. A big red mark bloomed on the boy’s fore­head, but he was still breathing.

“Oh, no!! My son!”, shouted a voice. The Prince then saw a man run­ning to­wards them and other ten people fol­low­ing closely be­hind. It was the king. The Prince thought that the uni­corn might have called for help the mo­ment he flew the scene. 

“Don’t worry!” said the Prince, “He’s ok…well, kind of…” 

But the king did not un­der­stand him. He was blinded by agony at the sight of his son ly­ing on the ground. ’’You mon­ster!” yelled the king then he drew his sword and thrust it right into the Prince’s very heart, killing the horse in­stantly, be­cause yes, the Prince in this story is a horse.

A mo­ment later, the king’s boy re­gained his con­science and told the King what he could re­mem­ber about the ac­ci­dent. Every­one was happy that the curse was broken. When the soft-voiced faery heard about this, it was too late to tell people that the last faery cursed the prince. The king and queen’s child, now a grown up man, mar­ried a prin­cess and lived hap­pily ever after. 

“When you’ll turn eight­een, you will in­jure your­self and a horse will die,” whispered the faery to her­self, while count­ing the money she won with the bets.

So you see, the story is not as you ex­pec­ted: the faery did not curse the prince, the king and the queen had a son, not a daugh­ter, who needed to be saved and the hero was a horse who got killed as a re­ward. Things are not al­ways as they seem, so stay open-minded. 

Comment:

This story is a post­mod­ern fairy tale be­cause it has some ele­ments be­long­ing to it like par­ody and metafic­tion. First of all, the tale was ad­op­ted after the well-known F.T. “Sleep­ing beauty”, be­ing a par­ody of it. Un­like in the old ver­sion of the tale, the king and the queen had a boy, and not a girl, show­ing the fact that not only girls need to be saved. The reader is lead to be­lieve that there is a prin­cess in dis­tress, only to em­phas­ise how people ex­pect the girls to be in trouble. Moreover, the hero in this tale is in fact an an­imal. The re­quire­ments that need to be met are the “loyal and brave soul”. An­im­als are more suit­able for the part of the hero then. 

The writer in­tro­duced her own ex­plan­a­tions in the story like “be­cause yes, the Prince in this story is a horse”, mak­ing the reader ques­tion some things. Moreover, the ex­plan­a­tion at the end of the text (“ So you see, the story is not as you ex­pec­ted …”) is a char­ac­ter­istic of metafic­tion, the au­thor turn­ing the pass­ive reader into an act­ive one.

Cor­ina Di­ana Ciocotișan