There was once a king and queen who had wished for a child so long that when at last a daughter was born to them, the whole kingdom rejoiced. The king held a great feast, and to it he invited the wise fairies of the land, that they might each give the child a gift. There were thirteen fairies in the kingdom, but the king had only twelve plates of gold, and so one was left uninvited.
One by one the fairies came to the cradle and gave their gifts: beauty, and grace, and kindness, and wit, and a voice like water, and all that a child could wish for. Eleven had spoken when the great doors flew open, and in came the thirteenth, uninvited and unforgiven.
“Since I was forgotten,” she said, “here is my gift. On her fifteenth birthday the princess shall prick her finger on a spindle, and fall down dead.” And she turned and left before anyone could stay her.
The company stood frozen. But the twelfth fairy had not yet given her gift, and though she could not undo what was spoken, she could soften it. “She shall not die,” said the fairy gently. “She shall sleep instead, a hundred years, and all the castle with her, until the spell has run its course.”
The king, hoping to cheat the curse altogether, ordered every spindle in the kingdom burned. And so the princess grew, beautiful and kind and beloved, and knew nothing of spindles at all.
But curses are patient things. On her fifteenth birthday the girl wandered the castle alone, into rooms she had never seen, up a winding stair to a little door with a rusted key still in the lock. She turned it, and inside sat an old woman at a spinning wheel, the last one left in all the land, working away as though a hundred years had never touched her.
“What is that,” asked the princess, “that turns so merrily?”
“Spinning, my dear,” said the old woman. “Would you care to try?”
The princess reached out, and the spindle pricked her finger, and at once she sank down upon a bed that stood nearby, fast asleep.
And the sleep spread out from her through all the castle. The king and queen, just come home, slept where they stood. The horses slept in the stable and the doves upon the roof, the fire on the hearth and the cook with her hand raised to box the kitchen boy’s ears, and the boy too. The very wind dropped and was still. And around the walls there grew a hedge of thorns, thicker and higher with every year, until the castle was lost from sight and only its highest tower showed above the briars.
The years went by, and the tale of the sleeping princess passed from grandmother to grandchild, and many a bold prince tried to force the hedge and win her. But the thorns held them fast, and none came through.
Now at the very end of the hundred years, a prince came riding who had heard the old story from a shepherd. And as he reached the hedge, the hundred years were spent, and the thorns were done at last, and where he set his hand there bloomed a way of roses that opened before him and closed softly behind.
He passed the sleeping horses and the sleeping doves, the still fire and the cook and the kitchen boy, and climbed the winding stair, and came to the little room where the princess lay. And she was so lovely in her sleep that he bent and kissed her.
At that the spell broke. The princess opened her eyes and smiled up at him as though she had been expecting him all along. And through the castle the sleep lifted all at once: the king and queen stirred, the horses stamped, the doves preened, the fire leapt up, and the cook boxed the kitchen boy’s ears so soundly that he howled. And there was such a wedding after as the kingdom had not seen in a hundred years and a day.
What is fated may be softened by a kindness, though it cannot always be undone, and even the longest night gives way at last to morning.