Princess Vanity [a short fairy-tale]
For Eric: Your faith makes me daily hope that I will someday acheive that greatness that you already see in me. These words could not have been written without you. You are forever my inspiration.
Princess Vanity
Once upon a time in a land beyond time and myth, there lived a people who were governed in the old ways. There was a king so kind of heart and fair of face that he was beloved by his entire kingdom. The queen was a striking beauty that watched over the land and met the needs of its people. After many years on the throne and still no heir, the Queen became with child. The land rejoiced the day the princess was born. Her name was to be Britta, the exalted one, for she had been eagerly expected and lovingly received. There were many feasts in her honor and the people of the kingdom came from far and wide to visit the beautiful baby princess.
For Britta grew into a mighty beauty. By her seventeenth year, the princess had grown to be the most sought after in the country. Princes from across the sea came to beg her hand, but she always refused. Britta was too beautiful for some to stand with her honey skin, eyes the brilliance of an afternoon sun and hair as deep and rich as chestnut. None of the suitors could compare to her beauty and so she disregarded them.
Her mother warned her to be mindful of such vanity, but Britta ignored the advice and spent her days grooming herself in front of mirrors and made sure that the eatery was always polished high so she could gaze at her reflection while she ate. Twas Vanity that the kingdom came to call the princess and it was not in affection that they nicknamed her. The once well-loved princess had become a bane to her people and they mourned the passing of the good that she might have done.
Though Britta's beauty was natural, she saw her mother age and wither and feared that the same would happen to her. One day in her ventures she stumbled across an old medicine woman who sold her a small faerie.
"Keep this wee one with you and till all its magic be gone, t'will preserve your beauty from age."
The princess gladly took the little faerie and each day upon waking she took some of its magic unto herself and returned the sprite to its glass jar prison. The faerie's magic made the princess' skin glow bright and made her beauty almost unbearable to look upon which filled the vain princess with content. But the sprite grew sicker and closer to death with each bit of its magic stolen by the princess. One day Britta noticed the ill health of the faerie. "Oh, no," she said, "if you must die then so shall it be but first you must lead me to your kinsmen so that I may forever preserve my beauty!"
So the dying faerie led the princess through the dark twine of the enchanted forest and unto the dwelling of the faeries. Britta danced with delight when she gazed upon the breathtaking glade. It had been untouched by human hands and remained a true enchanted forest unlike any known to man. It was a deep hollow shaped as an oval that was surrounded by the most beautiful trees with leaves the color of light itself. The leaves were no one color, but many at once and held the eye unmovable. The grass was fresh and new as it is in the spring when the blades push their way up from the barren earth to restart life. Dancing in the air among the high flowers and shrubbery were many faeries of sheer brilliance. They wove in and out of the flora and fauna as if they were dancing to a symphony that only they could hear. The princess was in awe but still resolved to capture as many as she could for her own ends. Britta caught as many of the dancing faeries as she could imprison in her jars and set back to her castle.
Several weeks later, the vain princess had drained all her faeries of their magics. She tossed away the dead ones, collected her jars, and set off for the enchanted glade once more. Just before she reached the faerie dwelling, the princess saw the largest faerie she had ever set eyes on. It was beautiful to be sure, but was no match for the vain princess' beauty. Britta tried to capture the faerie but failed, for it flew about her in circles taunting and teasing her. The princess grew angry and was finally able to slap the faerie out of its hover. It hit the ground heartily and princess moved to imprison it but was suddenly frozen into place.
Before Britta's wide eyes the faerie grew to human size and stood before her in a glow of brilliant color. The faerie had flaming red hair that blew about her on the wings of the breeze. Her skin glowed white as untouched marble and her eyes were as green as the summer grass. Her wings were the colors of the Autumn leaves just before they fall to the ground and they blazed with the same brilliance as the rest of her. The faerie's brilliance sent spectrums of colors spinning throughout the glade and lit it with ethereal glow. Even in the sight of such radiance, the princess grew angrier still for the faerie was truly and eternally beautiful in a way that the princess would never be.
The princess began to cry and scream to be released but the faerie said, "oh, no, child. I am Alecidad, the Faerie Queen. You have murdered my children for your vanity and I seek retribution in kind." Britta sobbed and begged for her life. "Please do not kill me! I am much too beautiful to die!" Alecidad laughed and touched one elegant finger to the princess' forehead. "Your punishment, Vanity, shall be one hundred years of imprisonment within stone." Britta's sobs were soon drowned out as she turned to solid stone beneath the Faerie Queen's touch. "Now, princess, you will have only your own thoughts for company. I will keep watch over you to make sure that you find no way to escape my vengeance. Perhaps even sometimes I will speak with you to relieve your madness." With that the Faerie Queen vanished in a flash of brilliant light and the princess was left alone in the beautiful glade. "Why should this be my punishment?" she thought. "I am too beautiful to be cursed. I have committed no crime for faeries are not people governed by my father. I simply took from them what I needed to be beautiful. Do not humans take from the land what we need to survive? It is one and the same. This is unjust! It is of no matter. Someone will come for me. They shall miss my beauty and search me out. I shall not be here long at all." But weeks and months passed the princess by as she sat still in the glade and no one sought her for she was not as well loved as she once was. The king and Queen mourned the loss of their only child but the time came and went that they were dispatched by death from their thrones and the kingdom fell into the rule of a kind and neighboring country. The princess lived only in myth as being "Princess Vanity," the wretched princess who had refused the noblest courtiers and had stained the land with her beauty.
As she fell into legend, Britta's solitude began to take its toll on her. Where once she proclaimed innocence to herself, the years had given her much time to think on her actions. As she daily watched the glade faeries dance and laugh and love around her, she realized that they were in fact a people worthy of respect. Their beauty was something that she would never have been able to capture, no matter how many of them she had killed. But the princess was lonely and the free faeries taunted her. Then some sixty years after Britta's imprisonment and the complete absence of other humans, a carpenter from the old kingdom found his way into the hidden glade. The princess rejoiced in silence at the company of another human being. The carpenter noticed immediately the statue of the princess and thought it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He came to visit her day after day and the princess cried to herself that she could not speak to him. He was no great beauty by any means but she adored his company and anticipated his daily visit to the glade.
One day Alecidad visited Britta and taunted her with the carpenter. "He is plain by human rights, is he not princess?" The princess, forlorn and hopeless replied, "He may not be beautiful Alecidad, but he cares for me. I would give anything to speak with him just once. To have someone hear me would be the end of my sadness." Alecidad smiled and landed on the princess' shoulder. "Well, my lady, you may speak with him anytime you like. However, each time he hears your voice, a piece of your beauty will fade away and your image will age. That is the cost, are you still willing to pay it?" The princess cried tears of stone and sighed. "Yes, Queen Alecidad, I would forfeit my beauty, the thing that cost me life, to speak with this man." The Faerie Queen laughed in triumph and granted the princess' wish.
The next day, when the carpenter came to visit the princess, he was startled when he heard a voice in his head that was not his. "Welcome kind sir. I thank you for the company. My name is Britta. Have you a name?" The carpenter thought he had lost his mind but the princess' voice was so solid in his mind that he knew it really must be she who was speaking to him. "Hello, m'lady. I am called Alvaro, noble guardian in the old tongue. Are you really speaking to me in my own mind?" The princess laughed and to Alvaro it sounded like bells and he laughed with her. Britta told Alvaro of her fate and her crimes against the faeries. He sat in the glade with her each day until the sun went down and returned before the sun was new each morning.
With each visit, Alvaro noticed the princess' image had aged a little more since the day before. He asked her of this oddity and she grew sad. "Alvaro, I must suffer my punishment for my trespasses but I was so lonely that I wished to speak with you. The Faerie Queen granted my wish but at a price-the loss of my so prized beauty. But the love of my beauty has been replaced by you, my dear Alvaro. I shall eventually age away and be nothing more but to have spent this time with you will have made my suffering worth while." Alvaro wept at the thought of losing the princess and vowed that he would stay with her until the end of his days.
He began building a small cottage in the glade beside the princess so that he could be with her always. After some time had passed and the wrinkles of age had covered Alvaro's plain face and cracked the stone princess, the sun rose on the first day of the one hundred and first year of Britta's punishment. Queen Alecidad came to the glade and lit atop the princess' shoulder. "Well, dear Britta, your one hundred years have come and passed. You are free to live the rest of your days. You may even stay here in this glade with Alvaro if you wish. I only hope that this fate has refined you to the ways of love and compassion." The faerie lifted from the stone princess and she was stone no more.
Where once the beautiful Britta had stood trapped in stone now stood and old woman. Alvaro woke from his sleep and ran out in to the glade to the princess and embraced her fiercely. "My love," he said, "You are finally real to me!" The Princess wept with Alvaro as she hugged his aged body to hers. They laughed and cried together and for the first time they gazed into one another's eyes. The princess' skin had faded from its honey color, her eyes were blue with cataracts and her hair was no longer chestnut but silver. Britta looked up into Alvaro's eyes and blinked through her tears. "My dear Alvaro, do you love me still now that I am old and aged?" He kissed her forehead lightly and smiled. "Of course, my princess; Twas never your beauty that I loved you for but your mind and your repentant heart."
And so it was that Alvaro the noble guardian and Britta the stone princess lived happily together for many more years. On the day that death claimed them-for one could not live without the other-the Faerie Queen, Alecidad, so inspired by the repentant princess, constructed a tomb of humble beauty and it produced a fountain that smelled of honey, chestnut and pine. And there carved into the center of the tomb read the words: Beauty is a never ending quench but drink of love and beauty will never end.
The End.