Children -- Fiction; Fairy tales; Girls -- Fiction; Play -- Fiction
No one left a card with any gift, but when the fairy king came to look
them over afterward, he felt certain who had brought each one. The
gifts were these: A little embroidered gown which should make everyone
love the princess while she wore it; a gazing crystal which would
enable the princess to see one hundred times as much as anybody else
saw; certain sea secrets and sea spells; a lyre which played itself;
a flask containing a draught which should keep the princess young; a
vial of colours which hardly anyone ever sees; flowers and grasses and
leaves which could be used almost like a dictionary to spell out other
things; an assortment of wonderful happy fancies of every variety; a
new rainbow; a box of picture cards of the world, every one of which
should come true if one only went far enough; and a tapestry of the
universe, wrapped around a brand-new idea in a box.
When these things had been graciously accepted by the king, there was
a stir in the company, and sweeping into its midst came another Human
Being, one who thought that she had every right to be invited to the
christening, but who had not been invited. All the fairies shrank back,
for it was an extraordinary-looking Human Being. She was tall and lithe
and wore a sparkling gown, and her face had the look of many cities,
and now it was like the painted cover of an empty box, and all the time
it had the meaning only of those who never look at the stars, or walk
in gardens, or think about others rather than themselves, or listen to
hear what it is right for them to do. This kind of Human Being is one
who not often has any good gift to give to anyone, and this the fairies
knew.
The Vasty Hall became very quiet to see what she had brought, for no
one understood what she could possibly have to bestow upon a baby. And
without asking leave of the king or the queen, she bent over the child
and clasped on her wrist the tiniest bracelet that was ever made in the
world, and she snapped its lock as fast as the lock on a fetter, and
held up the tiniest key that ever was wrought.
“The princess,” she cried, “shall seem _different from everyone else_.
She shall seem like nobody who is or ever has been. As long as she
wears her bracelet, this shall be true; and that she may never lose it,
I shall hold her bracelet’s key. Hail to this little princess child,
who shall seem like nobody in the world!”
Now, no one present was quite certain what this might mean, but the
lady’s robe was so beautifully embroidered and sparkling, and her voice
was such a thing of loops and curves, that nearly everyone accepted the
gift as something fine after all, and the queen gave her her hand to
kiss. But the king, who was a very wise fairy, said nothing at all, and
merely bowed and eyed the bracelet, in deep thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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