The Beginning of a Beautiful Slumber

'I've got a story I want to tell you,' Christopher intoned, with clean palms outstretched. 'One about revenge.'

 

Alice and Arthur looked at each other briefly, before she spoke back to the object of their confusion. 'This is not like you,' she spoke with the sing-song lilt of a child who knows a secret.

 

Christopher smiled back to them both, then turned away to a book shelf behind him, and pulled down a copy of Sleeping Beauty, and laid the first page open in front of them both, and began reading from it, this is what he spoke: 'There was once a wonderful and beautiful kingdom, green and verdant, with no worries or frets. Soon, the king and the queen of this land were blessed with a baby girl. The king's friend, the ruler from the neighbouring kingdom, looked down at king and his child, and asked if he could marry his young son to the girl. The kings and queens agreed within the moment, to join their kingdoms not just under a vow of friendship, but also the marriage of their children.

 

'To commemorate this event, there was a massive feast held, with knights, lords, ladies and gentry from both kingdoms coming together to celebrate this. Three fairies appeared early in the tidings, and spent many hours with the young girl. Soon, one fairy spoke, it was Flora, the most loving of the three, and she said “this child is indeed beautiful, but when she grows she will be the most beautiful in the land”; next came Fauna, the most careful of the three, presented her gift as she said “she never cries, but she will not be silent for long for she will sing with the most heavenly of voices.”

 

'But then, the dark fairy Maleficent appeared, and mocked the court, standing tall and thin as a shadow in front of all the bared spears and swords of the men. Upon hearing she was uninvited intentionally, she provided her blessing: “the princess will indeed grow in strength and beauty, beloved by all who know her, but before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel. And die!”

 

'In a single puff of dark smoke, she was gone.'

Christopher closed the book. Alice began to pull excitedly at the sleeve on Arthur's arm, repeating over and again 'He's changing the story!'

 

Shrugging aside his friends grasping arm, Arthur spoke. 'And how are you going to change it? The original text contains the most classic of battles, the brave knight battling the most fearsome dragon, and saving his true love from the mighty jaws of darkness.'

 

'Well,' Christopher said after a brief pause, 'these changes will have to wait, for I must first take the princess into her death, to when she awakens, one-hundred years henceforth.'