Long, long ago, in a land made up of stories—of myths, legends, and fairy tales—there lived a king and queen, who wished with all their hearts to have a child but long believed that wish to be an impossible dream.

Imagine their surprise and joy when they found that after years and years of gradually losing hope, the queen was with child. When she gave birth to their firstborn, a daughter, the king cradled their newborn child in his arms and whispered a promise—that he would always do everything he could to protect her.

The king and queen invited all of their subjects to celebrate with them at a great feast for their daughter’s christening. As a gesture of their respect and friendship, they even invited the Faerie Folke—though they would never have dared to presume such beings to be their subjects.

Faerie was a place separate from the mortal realm, though it intertwined with it like threads woven together. Faerie was behind, before, beside, above, and below the mortal world, and faeries often went back and forth between the two realms. Some played tricks on mortals, others bestowed great boons upon those they favored… and terrible curses upon those they did not. 

Oh, what a celebration it was!

From the highest of nobility to the lowest of beggars, people came from all across the land to share in the king and queen’s joy. They all had gifts to give, from small trinkets, handcrafted with love, to priceless heirlooms. Talented artisans arrived, also bringing gifts for the princess—skilled creations that showcased their talent and homage to the royal family. Three faeries even showed up, promising to bestow special boons upon the king and queen’s daughter, which everyone took to be a sign of great favor from the Faerie Folke upon the newborn princess.

In addition to hosting a great feast at the castle itself after the christening ceremony, the rulers of the land had invited tumblers, jugglers, fire breathers, and acrobats to perform after their daughter’s christening. Musicians played, and commoners danced with lords and ladies, all united in their happiness.

A pity that such joy was not to last. 

The first two faeries bestowed the young princess with special boons of an extra measure of wisdom and grace beyond her inherent gifts. With the blessing of the Faerie Folk, the princess would grow to become a wise and discerning ruler of the land, and she would speak with tact, grace, and poise. But just as the last of the three faeries was about to give her special blessing to the newborn princess, a fourth faerie arrived at the castle, hooded, cloaked, and full of malice.

Now, the king and queen had invited this fourth faerie as well—they had invited all from the realm of Faerie (it seemed most unwise to do otherwise)—but they had not expected that she would actually come to their daughter’s christening. Just as they assumed that not everyone in their kingdom would be able to, or even want to come, they had not thought that certain folk from Faerie would attend. 

A foolish, foolish mistake. 

Perhaps it was an unavoidable mistake. If the king and queen hadn’t invited her, I shudder to think of what would have happened instead—vindictive, jealous, and spiteful being that the fourth faerie was. Perhaps, just perhaps, fate still smiled upon the young princess because the fourth faerie arrived before the last of the three good faeries gave the newborn her gift.

When the fourth faerie presented herself before the king and queen, claiming that she wished to give the princess a boon as well, they had no choice but to let her do as she wished—and pray that she would do their daughter no harm. If they objected, there was no telling what the faerie would do.

As the fourth faerie looked upon the newborn princess sleeping in her mother’s arms, she hated the child with an unfounded and profound intensity. Jealousy pierced the fourth faerie’s heart, for she saw that the child would grow to become a graceful and beautiful woman one day. And so, that wicked faerie cursed the child with an inescapable fate.

Before the princess’s eighteenth birthday, the fourth faerie promised, she would prick her thumb on the needle of a spinning wheel and fall into a deep, enchanted slumber from which she would never, ever wake.

Before the king and queen or anyone else could do much more than cry out in dismay, the fourth faerie finished speaking her curse and then vanished in a flash of fire and smoke with a cackling shriek of a laugh. She was gone. 

How quickly joy and merriment turned to sorrow and woe in but a moment. 

But not all hope was lost, for the last of the three good faeries had yet to give the newborn princess her promised boon. She couldn’t undo what had already been done—there was no removing the fourth faerie’s curse. However, she thought that perhaps, just perhaps, she could lessen the curse’s dreadful effects. She had planned on giving the child the gift of a strong will, but now, in light of the fourth faerie’s curse… 

The third faerie flew over to the sleeping princess, still held in her fearful mother’s arms, and leaned in close. She whispered words of magic and power in the newborn’s ear and then kissed her brow. The third faerie promised that one day, the fourth faerie’s curse would be broken, for no curse can endure forever. She promised that one day, the young princess would wake again. True love’s kiss would break the wicked faerie’s curse. 

Fate cannot be cheated, but the king and queen were desperate. The king asked for volunteers from among the bravest and most valiant of their knights to ride into Faerie and find the wicked faerie. Perhaps if she were dead, her curse upon the princess would be undone. Twelve and twenty knights rode into Faerie hunting that wicked faerie, and the king himself rode with them. 

None of them came back.

After several months passed, it was clear that the king and their knights had met a tragic end at the hands of the wicked faerie; the queen was heartbroken. Grieving the loss of her husband and desperate to save her daughter, she ordered that every spinning wheel in the land should be destroyed. She was determined to prevent the fourth faerie’s curse from coming to pass. If there were no spinning wheels in the land, her daughter couldn’t possibly prick her thumb on one. The queen even swore her people to secrecy, ensuring that the princess would never hear of what happened on her christening day, or how her father truly died.

Years passed, and the princess grew, all the while never knowing the terrible curse bestowed upon her by the fourth faerie. She did wonder from time to time why their country had no spinning wheels and focused solely on handweaving their textiles and using large looms. It seemed terribly inefficient. And she did wish that she could have met her father, who tragically fell in battle with a roving band of marauders from across the seas. But other than that, she was none the wiser at her mother’s futile attempts at cheating her fate. 

As the princess grew, she was indeed wise and graceful beyond her years, just as the first two faeries promised when they bestowed their special boons upon her. As for the third faerie’s blessing… well, whether that would come true remained to be seen. Did true love even exist? If it did, would it find the princess? Only time would tell. 

As fate would have it, as the fourth and wicked faerie foretold, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, the young princess wandered the halls of the castle. She often liked wandering the castle—it had many rooms and hallways that she explored at length in her youth.

That night, she made her way to a tall tower in the castle that she… couldn’t remember ever exploring. A room above a room, all dusty and full of cobwebs, devoid of furniture—save for a simple spinning wheel. 

The princess felt drawn to the spinning wheel for some inexplicable reason. She walked over to it slowly, as if in a trance, and she reached out to touch it. Immediately, she pricked her thumb on the needle of the cursed spinning wheel. As she did, she heard the boom of thunder and a distant, echoing shriek of a laugh. The fourth faerie’s curse could not be denied. With that, the young princess fell into a deep, enchanted slumber along with the rest of her kingdom.

This, of course, was problematic and unexpected for many reasons. Perhaps one of the most obvious was that with everyone in the kingdom now in a deep, enchanted slumber, the kingdom was defenseless—ripe for the taking by foreign powers. 

Fortunately, the queen still had friends among the Faerie Folke. The three good faeries, who had originally blessed the young princess all those years ago, used their magic to convince vines and thorns and brambles to cover the land, protecting it and its slumbering people from foreign invaders. 

Nature was only too happy to oblige—growing wild and free was what it wanted to do, after all. Left unchecked and coaxed to even greater lengths by the good faeries’ magic, the vines and thorns and brambles grew unnaturally fast. Magically fast. Bespelled, the vegetation awakened and defended the sleeping kingdom from all harm and danger. 

Foreign powers couldn’t march their armies through the thick and thorny brambles and foliage. And when they tried burning a path through, the vines and thorny branches came alive, wrapping around those who would harm them and their sleeping charges. Foreign kings and queens learned through painful experience and much devastating loss to their forces that the slumbering kingdom was to be left untouched. 

Months passed. Months turned to years, to decades, to centuries. The legends and intrigue around the enchanted, slumbering kingdom grew. And still, all the while, the entire kingdom slept in its enchanted slumber. It would only awaken when its princess awoke with true love’s kiss.

But how could true love ever find its way through all the brambles and thorns? Even if someone somehow could, how would they even know to kiss a princess sleeping on the stone floor of a room above a room in a tall castle tower? The queen had sworn her people to silence about the matter—no one outside of the kingdom even knew of the third faerie’s promised boon, which was the only way to break the fourth faerie’s curse. 

No, now all hope did seem truly lost for the sleeping princess and her people. But as this is a story told in a land made up of stories—of myths, legends, and fairy tales—all hope is not lost. It never is in stories such as these.

After seven and a half centuries passed, and the vines and thorns and brambles grew thick and nearly impassable, wild and free after hundreds of years protecting their slumbering charges, a lone knight from a far-distant realm dared brave the enchanted wood. Across the centuries, other brave and questing knights had attempted to do the same, for honor and glory despite the danger. Obviously, none had succeeded. 

The knight’s arms and armor were decorated with images of green vines and branches, and moss grew upon his shoulder plates and the mottled cloak on his back. His hair was graying, and his beard was long. A kite shield, emblazoned with a blooming myrtle tree, was slung over his shoulder. As the knight approached the enchanted wood, he hesitated for a moment and then strode forward, walking into its deadly embrace with his sword still sheathed.

The thorns and brambles let the knight pass, unhindered, as if they knew the knight’s intent and judged his motives to be pure of heart and free of malice and ill will.

From the far edge of the sleeping kingdom, the green knight traveled, deeper and deeper into the heart of the enchanted wood, toward the capital and the castle where the vines, thorns, and brambles were thickest and strongest and oldest. As he walked, he passed the inert forms of the kingdom’s citizens where they lay bespelled in slumber: workers along the roads and thoroughfares, farmers in the fields, guards on their patrol in the towns and cities, children where they had been playing—even the animals and insects and birds of the forest lay fast asleep, as if time itself had frozen in the kingdom cursed by the fourth faerie.

After weeks of travel through the enchanted wood, the knight finally made his way to the capital. He slowly approached the castle where once there was such reverie and celebration at a young princess’s christening. He did not stop but made his way resolutely into the castle itself, as though walking through halls he once knew very well. But how could he? The kingdom had been in an enchanted state of slumber for centuries. Though his hair and beard were graying, the knight looked barely a day over fifty.

The knight wandered through the castle, as if compelled to search through each room until he found what he was looking for. In each room, he paused but did not tarry for long. At last, he made his way to a room above a room in a tall castle tower. A dusty, cob-webbed room that held a cursed spinning wheel and a sleeping princess upon the floor. Her golden hair spilled around her shoulders.

Standing in the doorway, the green knight looked down at the sleeping princess, wonder in his gaze. Tears brimming, he approached slowly, hesitantly, seeing her for the first time in many, many years. She did not know him, of course, but he knew her from long, long ago. The knight knelt at her side, gathered her gently in his arms as he had done long, long ago, and bent over to kiss the sleeping princess’s forehead. The words of the third faerie’s promised boon almost echoed in that room above a room. 

One day, the young princess will wake again. True love’s kiss will break the wicked faerie’s curse.

As fate would have it, as the third faerie promised, true love’s kiss did break that wicked faerie’s curse. And the young princess did awaken. Because she did, the rest of the kingdom did as well.

The princess’s eyes fluttered weakly as she opened them slowly to find herself in the green knight’s arms. Looking up at him, she beheld the face of a man she didn’t recognize or remember ever meeting, but who had been there the day she was born. He had cradled her in his arms then and promised that he would always do everything he could to protect her. He had failed her in so many ways. And yet, he was finally able to accomplish what no one else had been able to do after centuries in the mortal world.

Her father, the king, long-lost in the realm of Faerie, had finally come home and broken the fourth faerie’s curse with true love’s kiss.

Time moves differently in Faerie. Spend a day in Faerie, and a decade can pass in the mortal world before one realizes it. In the case of the king, he and his twelve and twenty knights had ridden into Faerie in search of the fourth faerie. They spent over two decades in Faerie before they finally found her. When the king finally smote her ruin, he alone remained of the brave and valiant knights who went with him into Faerie. He’d been trying to find a way back home ever since. Through much danger and toil and trouble, he struggled. He never gave up hope. He had made a promise. And he intended to keep it. That meant he had to get back home to his family, no matter what. 

When the king finally found a doorway to the mortal realm through which he could return, he discovered that centuries had passed, and that his kingdom was now spoken about in hushed whispers in far-off provinces. He knew at once that he had been too late—the fourth faerie’s curse had come true, even though his gleaming blade had put an end to her wicked ways.

With nothing else to do, the king made his way back to his slumbering kingdom. The thorns and brambles, recognizing the green knight for who he truly was, thanks to the faeries’ magic that awakened them, let the king pass. And when he finally found his sleeping daughter, his fatherly kiss, true love’s kiss, finally broke the fourth faerie’s curse and woke his daughter—and the rest of his kingdom—up again.

Some fairy tales speak of love lost and love found. Others speak of true love’s kiss breaking curses, but so often, we think that such means must always be a romantic love between a prince and a princess. But true love is seen in many myriad ways. And there are few I know as powerful as a father’s love for his daughter, except, perhaps, for a mother’s love for her.

What else is there to say about this story from long, long ago? With nothing else to say, let me write these final words:

Long, long ago, a king and queen lived with their daughter in the kingdom that once slumbered in a deep, enchanted sleep. And they were all very, very happy together. The End.