Once upon a time—when time was more speculative than it is today—a king and queen had no children. The lords and ladies at court watched the night skies for signs and the townspeople from shipwright to innkeeper offered prayers and charms to the realm’s gods because the court and castle were dour, grey and unhappy indeed.

The king and queen seldom ventured outside the castle walls because nature’s cycles were rich and profligate. Across the parklands and throughout the forests, bluebells, roe deer, and red kites were blessed with young past human understanding.

The royal couple consulted astrologers, crossroads spirits, and the legendary faerie in the great forest. They carried talismans, drank teas, and chanted strange combinations of awkward incantations during the blue hours and holy days. Yet no answers came.

The queen considered herself sorely lacking as the barren years grew in number like stacked-up like rushes grown foul with use. The king felt cursed for the frivolities of his youth. Desperate, the couple went to a solitary goodwife and upon the winter solstice they drank together her bitter coction of herbs prepared over an unnatural fire.

 

So it begins. You’ve been there before…a girl child is born…she’s a fetching one…but a faerie is inadvertently slighted…a curse is pronounced…ultimately she sleeps for one hundred years waiting for the kiss that will wake her up into the world.

What handsome prince wouldn’t want to kiss a young woman so beautiful, so pure. . .

But wait!

In “Waking Plain,” my new Kindle faerie tale, the sleeper is a young prince.

They say he’s as dull as dishwater, and that is kind.

The castle is a wonderment as always. So, too, the faeries and their magic. Even the great forest surrounding the wonderment of a castle is enchanted with four-legged animals and winged creatures and flowers and trees and sunshine that are grand beyond the understanding of everyday men and women.

But if the sleeper isn’t beautiful, who will kiss him? Perhaps it’s kinder to the young man–not to mention, the world itself–to let him sleep.

I don’t mean to imply that the classic tale of “Sleeping Beauty” is sexist, only to say that it’s more realistic to ponder how it would be for an everyday kind of guy–you know, the one who would be the last one chosen for a team during recess–to wait for eternity, if not longer, for the woman of his nightmares to kiss him and re-awaken him for all to see.

They would prefer not to see him, of course, but they might, just maybe, in this faerie tale in a mirror.

–Malcolm

Inasmuch as “Waking Plain” is a Kindle faerie tale (or as Amazon calls it, a “fairy tale”), that is where you will find it, and not for a who’s-fooling-whom 99¢ but for an entire $1.00. That extra penny is your payment to the faerie world for allowing this story to be told.