Sleeping Beauty

Seven fairies were invited to a christening and given cases of gold. An eighth was forgotten, because she had not left her tower in fifty years and everybody assumed she was dead.

She was not dead. She arrived halfway through dinner, and there was no case for her.

When the gifts were given she said the princess would prick her hand on a spindle and die of it. But the youngest fairy had gone and stood behind the curtain, having worked out that somebody ought to have a gift left over. She could not undo the curse, because no fairy can undo another's work. She could only argue with it. Not death. A hundred years of sleep.

The king burned every spinning wheel in the kingdom. It made no difference. Fifteen years later the princess found an old woman spinning in a tower, asked if she could try, and fell.

So the seventh fairy put the whole household to sleep exactly as it stood, down to the dogs and her own little dog on the bed, so that nobody would wake alone among strangers. A wood grew up around the castle.

A hundred years later a king's son walked through trees that opened for him. He found a girl asleep on a bed of gold and silver and knelt down.

There was no kiss. The hundred years was simply up.