Fairy Godmother

'Me?' squeaked Elena, 'But — '

'Hush. And watch, and listen, and learn.'

As Elena fidgeted and fretted, the other magicians gave their gifts, all, to her mind, singularly useless. What good was 'hair as gold as sunlight,' and 'the voice of a lark,' to someone who was probably going to die on her sixteenth birthday, unless an untrained Apprentice could figure out a way and muster the power to turn the curse of a very powerful Sorceress?

Finally the last of the Fair Folk gave her gift — 'the grace of a swan on the water' — and, with utter predictability, Madame Arachnia appeared, the crowd drawing back from her, that shadow hanging over her, a cold wind coming with her.

Except that — she wasn't alone. That young man was still with her. And the shadow that surrounded her seemed thinner, the cold wind not so much icy as merely cool — and the expression on her face was one of —

Bewilderment?

The King and Queen clutched each other's hands, trying to put on a show of bravery, and failing utterly. Arachnia stood before the cradle, uncertainty in her very pose. She looked down at the baby, looked into the eyes of the King and Queen, and then —

— then looked back at the young man, who gazed at her with trust, worship and tenderness.

'On the morning of her sixteenth birthday — ' Arachnia began, her voice rolling across the crowd in sepulchral tones. But then — she stopped.

'Her sixteenth birthday — ' she began again, but now her voice was not so threatening. In fact, it sounded hesitant. She looked back at the young man.

He smiled. She tried to turn towards him, but something was holding her there. The struggle between Arachnia and this invisible force was palpable, visible, and it was making her angry.

She turned back towards the cradle and gathered herself together. She drew herself up. She pointed at the infant in the cradle — but when she spoke, instead of threat, the voice was full of — irritation.

The tone said, I know I have to do this; I feel The Tradition forcing me into it. I don't have a choice, but pardon me if I just go through the motions.

'On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, the Princess will awaken with her hair so knotted it will look as if birds had been nesting in it!'

There was a halfhearted little rumble of thunder. The shadow passed for a moment. Arachnia turned back to the young man with a look of triumph. He held out both hands to her; now it was she who was drawn as steel to a lodestone, and they walked away from the King and Queen and Princess and right out the door together, as if no one else existed.

But then the shadow gathered again, the cold fell heavily on the room, as The Tradition gathered all of its strength to warp that ineffectual curse into something horrible. Elena felt the potential of the curse still hanging over everything, and she knew The Tradition and what it could do — if the curse wasn't quickly countered, it would descend in some ghastly form that no one could anticipate, no matter how weak the actual curse might seem to be. She grasped her wand in a sweating hand, and stepped forward, the youngest of them all, and her mind was working frantically. How to turn the curse into a blessing? How to take all that power of The Tradition and turn it against itself? She had to be clever; had to give The Tradition what it wanted. That was not only a curse, but a reward for someone worthy.

The poor little Princess would have to endure something, and at the same time, the end of the tale had to provide something for another person that she had to 'name' —

What could you do with hair that was horribly knotted and keep it from tangling around someone's throat to choke off her breath? It had to be something that would cost some pain, for The Tradition demanded pain for a curse — who could untangle something hopelessly snarled?

It came to her, and as she stepped forward towards the infant's cradle, she was carefully phrasing her counter, hoping no one noticed how her hands were shaking. She gathered all of the power she could see swirling around her in a rainbow skein of magic; prayed it was enough, and waved her wand three times over the baby's cradle. Shining motes of power followed the circling of the star on the tip of her wand, and spiraled down into the sleeping infant.

'The Princess will awaken with her hair binding her to her bed, so knotted that she cannot move.'

There. That was surely enough of a curse to satisfy The Tradition.

'Scissors will be blunted, knives useless, and not any of her handmaidens will be able to loosen so much as a single knot. All will seem lost.'

There was the despair that was needed.

'Nor will magic avail the day. No man's hand will free her.'

That left things open for a girl, a female, anyway. The Tradition liked these little, sly loopholes.

'But a rescuer will come; noble by nature, not by birth, gifted with patience and common sense, drawn by pity and not hope of reward. With her own two hands, the rescuer will free the Princess from the prison of her own hair, and win her freedom and her friendship.'

Just like the popping of a soap-bubble, the dreadful potential vanished. Elena almost wept with relief.

Now everyone sighed, some with relief that matched Elena's, some not understanding what had happened, laughing nervously at the apparently absurd 'curse.' Only the magicians among them moved forward to congratulate the new Apprentice on a clever counter, for only they realized that The Tradition had been poised to make the Princess strangle in her own hair, or be smothered by it, or take some other dreadful form. Now it, and all of its potential, had been bound into a harmless, yet logical form. The Princess would live, and there would be a 'happily ever after' for the nameless rescuer, some humble girl somewhere who would have the patience to untangle the Gordian-hair-knot when everyone else had given up.