The Halcyon Fairy Book Read online

  “You are right, Princess,” said Grabugeon, coming forward, “to love such a faithful slave as Patypata; she is of more use to you than I am, I offer you my tongue and my heart most willingly, especially as I wish to make a great name for myself in Goblin Land.”

  … okay. This is taking a weird turn. Grabugeon appears to have some peculiar agenda. Is the monkey a goblin spy? Why are goblins impressed by offering to give up your organs?

  “No, no, my little Grabugeon,” replied Miranda, “I cannot bear the thought of taking your life.”

  “Such a good little dog as I am,” cried Tintin, “could not think of letting either of you die for his mistress. If anyone is to die for her it must be me.”

  Oh, barf.

  And then began a great dispute between Patypata, Grabugeon, and Tintin, and they came to high words, until at last Grabugeon, who was quicker than the others, ran up to the very top of the nearest tree, and let herself fall, head first, to the ground, and there she lay — quite dead!

  It is a bad day when your followers begin committing suicide to spite each other.

  The Princess was very sorry, but as Grabugeon was really dead, she allowed the Captain of the Guard to take her tongue; but, alas! it was such a little one — not bigger than the Princess’s thumb — that they decided sorrowfully that it was of no use at all: the King would not have been taken in by it for a moment!

  “Alas! my little monkey,” cried the Princess, “I have lost you, and yet I am no better off than I was before.”

  “The honor of saving your life is to be mine,” interrupted Patypata, and, before they could prevent her, she had picked up a knife and cut her head off in an instant.

  Right, I’m off to get some gin.

  And hey, even leaving aside all the unpleasant overtones to this and going straight for the practical, how the hell do you cut your own head off with a knife?

  But when the Captain of the Guard would have taken her tongue it turned out to be quite black, so that would not have deceived the King either.

  WHAT. THE. HELL.

  “Am I not unlucky?” cried the poor Princess; “I lose everything I love, and am none the better for it.”

  … more gin. This requires more gin.

  Okay. I’m going to leave the black tongue thing because I cannot even figure out how to deal with it — I mean, where do you even GO from there?! — but on a purely psychological note, the princess is really … off … here.

  For my money, there are a lot of perfectly appropriate responses to having two friends commit messy suicide in front of you. I would have accepted screaming, wailing, sobbing, curling in fetal position and rocking, swearing, cursing god, and deciding to go back to bed for a month. Any of those would have been fine. This is not fine. Maybe the King was on to something.

  “If you had accepted my offer,” said Tintin, “you would only have had me to regret, and I should have had all your gratitude.”

  Tintin’s being a bit of a dick about this whole thing.

  Miranda kissed her little dog, crying so bitterly, that at last she could bear it no longer, and turned away into the forest. When she looked back the Captain of the Guard was gone, and she was alone, except for Patypata, Grabugeon, and Tintin, who lay upon the ground.

  Wait — hang on — how did the dog die? What? Did the Captain of the Guard kill him and take the dog’s heart and tongue? This can’t be a small dog, if it’s got a human-sized heart, and the King will have to be pretty dense not to recognize a dog’s tongue from a human one and dude, this whole sequence is just majorly messed-up.

  She could not leave the place until she had buried them in a pretty little mossy grave at the foot of a tree, and she wrote their names upon the bark of the tree, and how they had all died to save her life.

  Have you ever tried to dig a grave for a human and a human-sized dog, with your bare hands, in tree-root filled soil? Not gonna happen. (We’ll assume the monkey was negligibly sized.)

  That’s a very large piece of bark, or she is writing very, very small.

  If the king is trying to kill you, do you maybe think that right outside the palace is perhaps not the best place to write the full accounting of how you’re deceiving him? This is like the huntsman in Snow White getting his stag taxidermied, wall-mounted, and then hanging a little sign around its neck saying “Used Its Heart To Fool The Queen.”

  And then she began to think where she could go for safety — for this forest was so close to her father’s castle that she might be seen and recognized by the first passerby, and, besides that, it was full of lions and wolves, who would have snapped up a princess just as soon as a stray chicken.

  See above on the inadvisability of sticking around writing bark eulogies.

  So she began to walk as fast as she could, but the forest was so large and the sun was so hot that she nearly died of heat and terror and fatigue; look which way she would there seemed to be no end to the forest, and she was so frightened that she fancied every minute that she heard the King running after her to kill her. You may imagine how miserable she was, and how she cried as she went on, not knowing which path to follow, and with the thorny bushes scratching her dreadfully and tearing her pretty frock to pieces.

  You’ll forgive me if I’m still hung up on the freaky competitive suicide pact and not all that worried about her frock.

  At last she heard the bleating of a sheep, and said to herself: “No doubt there are shepherds here with their flocks; they will show me the way to some village where I can live disguised as a peasant girl. Alas! it is not always kings and princes who are the happiest people in the world. Who could have believed that I should ever be obliged to run away and hide because the King, for no reason at all, wishes to kill me?”

  When he’s that kind of king, he’s just that kind of king, honey.

  So saying she advanced toward the place where she heard the bleating, but what was her surprise when, in a lovely little glade quite surrounded by trees, she saw a large sheep; its wool was as white as snow, and its horns shone like gold; it had a garland of flowers round its neck, and strings of great pearls about its legs, and a collar of diamonds; it lay upon a bank of orange flowers, under a canopy of cloth of gold which protected it from the heat of the sun. Nearly a hundred other sheep were scattered about, not eating the grass, but some drinking coffee, lemonade, or sherbet, others eating ices, strawberries and cream, or sweetmeats, while others, again, were playing games. Many of them wore golden collars with jewels, flowers, and ribbons.

  This has taken an unexpected turn.

  Miranda stopped short in amazement at this unexpected sight, and was looking in all directions for the shepherd of this surprising flock, when the beautiful sheep came bounding toward her.

  “Approach, lovely Princess,” he cried; “have no fear of such gentle and peaceable animals as we are.” “What a marvel!” cried the Princess, starting back a little. “Here is a sheep that can talk.”

  “Your monkey and your dog could talk, madam,” said he; “are you more astonished at us than at them?”

  This is the only logical thing anyone says in this entire story.

  “A fairy gave them the power to speak,” replied Miranda. “So I was used to them.”

  “Perhaps the same thing has happened to us,” he said, smiling sheepishly.

  *groaaaan*

  “But, Princess, what can have led you here?”

  “A thousand misfortunes, Sir Sheep,” she answered. “I am the unhappiest princess in the world, and I am seeking a shelter against my father’s anger.”

  Dude, quit whining. You’re not even in the top ten unhappy princesses. The girl from Donkeyskin would have a lot to say about that, and the Goose Girl is probably still talking to a severed horse head on a wall.

  “Come with me, madam,” said the Sheep; “I offer you a hiding-place which you only will know of, and where you will be mistress of everything you see.”

  “I really cannot follow you,” said Miranda, “
for I am too tired to walk another step.”

  The Sheep with the golden horns ordered that his chariot should be fetched, and a moment after appeared six goats, harnessed to a pumpkin, which was so big that two people could quite well sit in it, and was all lined with cushions of velvet and down.

  I keep seeing snatches of other fairy tales here, like the pumpkin carriage, and wondering if d’Aulnoy was taking them or if they got taken from her. Probably this is doctoral thesis material for somebody.

  The Princess stepped into it, much amused at such a new kind of carriage, the King of the Sheep took his place beside her, and the goats ran away with them at full speed, and only stopped when they reached a cavern, the entrance to which was blocked by a great stone. This the King touched with his foot, and immediately it fell down, and he invited the Princess to enter without fear. Now, if she had not been so alarmed by everything that had happened, nothing could have induced her to go into this frightful cave, but she was so afraid of what might be behind her that she would have thrown herself even down a well at this moment.

  This might save trouble.

  So, without hesitation, she followed the Sheep, who went before her, down, down, down, until she thought they must come out at the other side of the world — indeed, she was not sure that he wasn’t leading her into Fairyland. At last she saw before her a great plain, quite covered with all sorts of flowers, the scent of which seemed to her nicer than anything she had ever smelled before; a broad river of orange-flower water flowed round it and fountains of wine of every kind ran in all directions and made the prettiest little cascades and brooks. The plain was covered with the strangest trees, there were whole avenues where partridges, ready roasted, hung from every branch, or, if you preferred pheasants, quails, turkeys, or rabbits, you had only to turn to the right hand or to the left and you were sure to find them.

  … sooooo the magic sheep lives in an underground orchard with meat hanging from the branches. No, sir! Nothing weird going on here!

  In places the air was darkened by showers of lobster-patties, white puddings, sausages, tarts, and all sorts of sweetmeats, or with pieces of gold and silver, diamonds and pearls.

  Like I said … rains of lobster-patties. And puddings. And diamonds. Depending on where in the orchard you go, this could either be near fatal or very, very messy. And what happens to the lobster-patties? Do they just lay around on the grass? Does this whole section stink of rotten fish, or is there some cleanup sheep who comes through with a rake every few hours?

  More importantly, how much absinthe was going around the salon that “wonderous” = “rain of lobster-patties”?!

  This unusual kind of rain, and the pleasantness of the whole place, would, no doubt, have attracted numbers of people to it, if the King of the Sheep had been of a more sociable disposition, but from all accounts it is evident that he was as grave as a judge.

  Keeping his people out from under hurtling gold projectiles tends to keep you grim.

  As it was quite the nicest time of the year when Miranda arrived in this delightful land the only palace she saw was a long row of orange trees, jasmines, honeysuckles, and musk-roses, and their interlacing branches made the prettiest rooms possible, which were hung with gold and silver gauze, and had great mirrors and candlesticks, and most beautiful pictures. The Wonderful Sheep begged that the Princess would consider herself queen over all that she saw, and assured her that, though for some years he had been very sad and in great trouble, she had it in her power to make him forget all his grief.

  “You are so kind and generous, noble Sheep,” said the Princess, “that I cannot thank you enough, but I must confess that all I see here seems to me so extraordinary that I don’t know what to think of it.”

  As she spoke a band of lovely fairies came up and offered her amber baskets full of fruit, but when she held out her hands to them they glided away, and she could feel nothing when she tried to touch them.

  This is never adequately explained and seems strangely nightmarish.

  “Oh!” she cried, “what can they be? Whom am I with?” and she began to cry.

  At this instant the King of the Sheep came back to her, and was so distracted to find her in tears that he could have torn his wool.

  “What is the matter, lovely Princess?” he cried. “Has anyone failed to treat you with due respect?”

  “Oh! no,” said Miranda; “only I am not used to living with sprites and with sheep that talk, and everything here frightens me. It was very kind of you to bring me to this place, but I shall be even more grateful to you if you will take me up into the world again.”

  Take me to a place where the weather does not turn to seafood, I beg of you!

  “Do not be afraid,” said the Wonderful Sheep; “I entreat you to have patience, and listen to the story of my misfortunes. I was once a king, and my kingdom was the most splendid in the world. My subjects loved me, my neighbors envied and feared me. I was respected by everyone, and it was said that no king ever deserved it more.”

  He’s modest, too!

  “I was very fond of hunting, and one day, while chasing a stag, I left my attendants far behind; suddenly I saw the animal leap into a pool of water, and I rashly urged my horse to follow it, but before we had gone many steps I felt an extraordinary heat, instead of the coolness of the water; the pond dried up, a great gulf opened before me, out of which flames of fire shot up, and I fell helplessly to the bottom of a precipice.

  “I gave myself up for lost, but presently a voice said: “Ungrateful Prince, even this fire is hardly enough to warm your cold heart!’

  “‘Who complains of my coldness in this dismal place?’ I cried.

  “‘An unhappy being who loves you hopelessly,’ replied the voice, and at the same moment the flames began to flicker and cease to burn, and I saw a fairy, whom I had known as long as I could remember, and whose ugliness had always horrified me. She was leaning upon the arm of a most beautiful young girl, who wore chains of gold on her wrists and was evidently her slave.

  “‘Why, Ragotte,’ I said, for that was the fairy’s name, ‘what is the meaning of all this? Is it by your orders that I am here?’

  “‘And whose fault is it,’ she answered, ‘that you have never understood me until now? Must a powerful fairy like myself condescend to explain her doings to you who are no better than an ant by comparison, though you think yourself a great king?’

  “‘Call me what you like,’ I said impatiently; ‘but what is it that you want — my crown, or my cities, or my treasures?’

  “‘Treasures!’ said the fairy, disdainfully. ‘If I chose I could make any one of my scullions richer and more powerful than you. I do not want your treasures, but,’ she added softly, ‘if you will give me your heart — if you will marry me — I will add twenty kingdoms to the one you have already; you shall have a hundred castles full of gold and five hundred full of silver, and, in short, anything you like to ask me for.’

  “‘Madam Ragotte,’ said I, ‘when one is at the bottom of a pit where one has fully expected to be roasted alive, it is impossible to think of asking such a charming person as you are to marry one! I beg that you will set me at liberty, and then I shall hope to answer you fittingly.’

  I will give the prince credit for thinking on his feet here.

  “‘Ah!’ said she, ‘if you really loved me you would not care where you were — a cave, a wood, a foxhole, a desert, would please you equally well. Do not think that you can deceive me; you fancy you are going to escape, but I assure you that you are going to stay here and the first thing I shall give you to do will be to keep my sheep — they are very good company and speak quite as well as you do.

  “As she spoke she advanced, and led me to this plain where we now stand, and showed me her flock, but I paid little attention to it or to her.

  “To tell the truth, I was so lost in admiration of her beautiful slave that I forgot everything else,

  Oh my god, you’re a moron. Look, I real
ize common wisdom has it that men think about sex seven hundred times a day or some ridiculous number like that, but you couldn’t go ten minutes, with an evil fairy standing in front of you, without tuning her out to fantasize about her slave girl? Dude. How can you possibly have run a kingdom?

  and the cruel Ragotte, perceiving this, turned upon her so furious and terrible a look that she fell lifeless to the ground.

  “At this dreadful sight I drew my sword and rushed at Ragotte, and should certainly have cut off her head had she not by her magic arts chained me to the spot on which I stood;

  That faint thudding sound is me banging my head quietly on my desk.

  all my efforts to move were useless, and at last, when I threw myself down on the ground in despair, she said to me, with a scornful smile: “‘I intend to make you feel my power. It seems that you are a lion at present, I mean you to be a sheep.’

  “So saying, she touched me with her wand, and I became what you see. I did not lose the power of speech, or of feeling the misery of my present state.

  “‘For five years,’ she said, ‘you shall be a sheep, and lord of this pleasant land, while I, no longer able to see your face, which I loved so much, shall be better able to hate you as you deserve to be hated.’

  “She disappeared as she finished speaking, and if I had not been too unhappy to care about anything I should have been glad that she was gone.

  “The talking sheep received me as their king, and told me that they, too, were unfortunate princes who had, in different ways, offended the revengeful fairy, and had been added to her flock for a certain number of years; some more, some less. From time to time, indeed, one regains his own proper form and goes back again to his place in the upper world; but the other beings whom you saw are the rivals or the enemies of Ragotte, whom she has imprisoned for a hundred years or so; though even they will go back at last. The young slave of whom I told you about is one of these; I have seen her often, and it has been a great pleasure to me. She never speaks to me, and if I were nearer to her I know I should find her only a shadow, which would be very annoying.