F is for Fairies

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  I got a head start, but if you’re looking for the officially scheduled letter of the day, you can find my Post for C here.

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  Plus, don’t forget to see what all my fellow A to Z bloggers are up to, at the Master List.)

        One of the iconic scenes in the famous fairy tale “The Sleeping Beauty” is when twelve fairies are invited to the christening of the princess to bestow their gifts… and of course one fairy is not invited.  (Need a refresher?  Read the fairy tale here.)  I love the way there are rules to the fairies’ magic: each gets to bestow one and only one gift, and one fairy cannot simply reverse or eliminate another fairy’s gift, but you can tweak it…  But another thing that’s interesting about this fairy tale episode is that not all the gifts are listed.  In fact, all we get are virtue, beauty, and riches, until the appearance of the thirteenth fairy and her curse.  So I decided to imagine what all 13 fairies bestowed, and why.  I wrote a poem explaining each gift, and to keep things interesting I tried to use a wide variety of different poetic forms, as well.  (Originally I’d thought I’d use 13 different forms, but I have to confess that I ended up with a few repeats.)  Some of these poems are quite short, such as the very first one:

Beauty.

Tyranny of eyes

To dictate what deserves esteem.

Despot vision demands its due,

And we obey.  I must give

Beauty.

While others are longer, including a villanelle (goodness) and a couple of sonnets (sense of humor, and the final mitigation of the curse).  The block print I give you today is the Seventh Fairy.  Can you guess what gift she’s bestowing on the princess?  I’m not sure she was present at my birth, but she definitely visited my children!

        Of course F is also for Fairy Tale, the single largest section of my book.  To see more about why I love fairy tales and what I’m doing with them in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, you can read this prior post about Giving Fairy Tales a Kick.

        The moral of Sleeping Beauty is that you should be sure to invite all the fairies.  (E. Nesbit has a great short story, “Melisande,” about what happens if you don’t invite any of them!  I highly recommend reading it here.)

        Also, even with the best-laid plans, it’s good to be flexible and have a back-up plan waiting to step up if necessary.

        The great biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote, “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”  If you were a fairy, what wish would you bestow on a baby?

[Picture: The Seventh Fairy, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]