The Ugly Princess
In the world of Faerie, it is commonly known that women, all women, are more beautiful than sunsets. There are those who joke that her beauty is interchangeable with this other her, or that her beauty and her beauty can be measured against one another as better or worse, but no one from Faerie would ever admit to such follies. Every single woman you meet is the most beautiful woman you will ever see, in and of herself.
Sometimes, queens forget this. When a queen forgets her own beauty, she becomes terribly jealous of beautiful women of lesser stature, irrationally so. This mistake has even befallen Faerie queens, and I am sure you have heard stories of such women who, forgetting their perfect loveliness, have struck out at other beauty. Remembering these stories will, I am sure, behoove you in approaching the following tale.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time is a terrible way to begin stories, since the time has not gone anywhere but is certainly right at that moment. So let me tell you what is happening back then, though in conventions of speech, in the distinctionless space of Faerie.
A queen and a seamstress, on the same day at the same moment in the same castle, gave birth to two princesses. One was a princess in the sense of social rank, but the other in the sense that all fairytellers ascribe to little girls, if they know their business. It so happens that the queen was more lovely to the eye than was common, and the seamstress, in the detestable parlance of the common, quite ugly, both in their respective measures of extremes to where words quite fail me.
Strangely enough, the queen’s daughter was uglier than the seamstress, and the daughter of the seamstress was markedly more beautiful than the queen. The queen was so happy to have her daughter, she smiled and laughed and held her close, and at once set herself to raising the princess.
The seamstress was also happy, and not a little smug over her daughter’s superior beauty. Whenever the queen asked for a dress for her daughter, the seamstress would make it a little off, to augment her daughter’s ugliness. Then she would make a more beautiful dress, and give it to her own daughter. So it was that the daughter of the seamstress looked more regal than the daughter of the queen. And since the queen wanted to have fun with her child, she was very kind to her and did not demand as much as is usually asked of princesses. The seamstress, however, vainly impressed royal manners on her daughter, until she was as valorous as the queen of Olympus, in behavior.
The majority of fairies in Faerie land are by and large good creatures, far more so in proportion than people among humanfolk. Nonetheless, there are those who are wicked whose hearts have turned from the truth of beauty to the half-truths of gain. Some of these imps designed after a time to steal the queen’s daughter; I do not know why they did this, if it was mischief for some larger scheme or whether they sought only after the deed’s evil for itself; either is just as likely. In any case, they snuck one night into the nursery, and stole a child.
Of course, wickedness dulls the wit and hard intellects lose insight, and so they took the wrong child. The seamstress was horrified that her child was stolen, her beautiful little girl, and a great cry went through the land the next day. High and low, every spot in the kingdom was searched, but the beautiful girl seemed lost forever.
One day, the queen said to her child, “It is terrible, what has happened to your friend,” for the girls had become best of friends, wisely seeing each other’s beauty.
The girl smiled. “No harm will come to her.”
“How do you know this?” wondered the queen.
“She is beautiful, and harm does not come to the beautiful,” asserted the girl firmly.
“My dear,” said the queen without thinking, “harm has not come to you.”
“And I,” said the girl, patiently, “am beautiful.”
She had a sloped forehead and crooked teeth, a nose far too large and a chin far too small, and her eyes were wide a part and a bit smallish, and one ear was noticeably larger than the other. Her smile, though, was unashamed, as well it should be.
A few nights passed, one midnight hour in a fit of madness the seamstress burst from her bed, took up the princess and stole out into the night with her in one of the royal carriages. The princess was calm and controlled, asking to be released but not crying or screaming. Dignity was built into her soul, as it is in every soul, only that she saw it and would not relinquish it for anyone. That was the heart of a true princess.
“Please release me.”
“No!”
“Why?”
“I know fairies have taken my daughter. I will take to them your ugly face, and take back my beautiful girl, for surely it was the princess they wanted!”
“It was a princess they took.”
The seamstress could not fathom these words, but kept running. Finally, they were deep in a dark, muddy wood, one well known for its wicked fairies. Leaping from the carriage with the girl in her hands, she held the hapless princess aloft and sung out.
“This is the real princess! Here, this is her! Give me back my girl, and take what you wanted.”
There was no answer. They waited, the seamstress shouting, but no one came. Acting out of herself, the seamstress cast the girl into the mud, climbed into her carriage, and was off.
The little girl waited patiently. She slept a little, and when a fairy’s glow awoke her, she yawned and stretched, and smiled at the little creature watching her.
“Hello, little girl.”
“Hello, little fairy.”
“You are very beautiful,” said the fairy.
“Thankn you, same to you, lovely creature,” said the girl, standing and giving a little curtsy. “Many think that I am ugly, even my mother, but I know they are wrong.”
The fairy smiled. “You belong deeper in Faerie. Your friend is there too, with better fairies than those who stole her.”
The princess sighed. “If I go, the seamstress will be happy, but my mother will be grieved. If I stay, the seamstress will be maddened, but my mother will be happy.”
“Your friend is too beautiful for humans,” said the fairy. “They only see what they want to. It is better for her in Faerie, where they see her whole beauty. But she will be happier with you there.”
“My face is ugly,” admitted the girl with one little tear.
“Impossible,” laughed the fairy. “There is no such thing, in Faerie or in humanland, as a girl with an ugly face. There are only fools with ugly eyes.”
The princess smiled, and took the fairy’s little hand. “Very well. I will come with you.”
I am certain that both beautiful princesses lived in Fairie happily. The queen exiled her seamstress, and all of her beautiful subjects were released and replaced with ugly servants. She knew in her heart that her child was safe, and would one day return with Faerie deep in her eyes.
