Jude’s Fairy Tale

There was once a great king and queen who ruled over a beautiful country filled with snowy mountains, rolling forests, and peaceful farms. The king and queen had a son who they loved more than anything in all the world. 

One day, when the son was nine years old he was playing in the palace gardens. At the foot of a tree he found a new and beautiful beetle he had never seen before. As he reached down to pick up the shining insect it pricked him on the finger and flew away. Over the following days the prince grew gravely ill. The king and queen called the royal doctors, but they could do nothing to help the young boy. As the days passed into weeks, the boy's parents were desperate for anything that might save his life. They sent messengers to the far corners of the kingdom promising great rewards to anyone who could heal the prince. 

Many people came to the palace with potions, herbs, ointments, or magic spells they claimed would heal the boy. They came on horses, mules, carriages, large dogs, hot air balloons, ostriches, or on foot. One even arrived on the back of a small dragon. The steady stream of those claiming to have the answer overwhelmed the palace, and left the boy no rest at all. But nothing worked, and the prince continued to grow more ill. 

During these difficult days, there was another nine-year-old boy who lived with his older sister on a small farm far away from the beautiful palace. His name was Luke. Luke was clever and honest and hard working just as you would expect a younger sibling to be. The older sister was mean and greedy and lazy, just as you would expect an older sister to be. Their parents had died many years before, just as you would expect of the parents in stories like this. 

One day as Luke was playing in the woods he saw a fox growling at something on the ground. The fox jumped round and round, and then finally snapped, coming up with what looked like a bird in its mouth. Luke’s kind heart went out to the poor bird and he yelled at the fox and ran towards it. The fox scurried off, dropping its prey. 

Luke bent over where the fox had been and to his surprise he saw a delicate fairy stretching her wings, shaking out her shining silver hair, and bowing deeply to the boy. “Thank you for saving me from the fox, I am your servant and in your debt.” 

Luke was delighted to finally see a real fairy. “How wonderful!” he laughed. “You’re so tiny.” He got down on his stomach with his chin on the ground facing the fairy. “Are you hurt?” 

“I am fine,” said the fairy, “thanks to you. And now, is there anything I can do for you to show my gratitude?”

The boy thought for a moment, and being a kind and generous boy who thought of others before himself, he said “Yes, there is. The prince is gravely ill. Can you give me something to make him well?” 

The fairy replied “This is no difficult matter for me:

If healing the prince is what you seek,

Take three of what flies but cannot speak,

Add two men on a little stool, 

Then wrap it all in a fairy’s spool. 

Give this to the prince before he dies, 

And that poor little boy will open his eyes.”

And with that, the fairy disappeared in a puff of light and sparkles. 

Luke made his way home slowly, mulling over what ingredients the riddle could be referring to. When he arrived home he told his sister all about what had happened and repeated the instructions for the medicine that could heal the prince. His sister was extremely excited.

“If we heal the prince, they’ll surely shower us with gold! They’ll give us castles and land, and make us important nobles! I can already picture myself sitting as a royal advisor to the King!”

As they sat pondering, there was a knock on the door. They opened to find an old woman who they did not recognize. “Hello dearies, I wonder if you might be able to share a little kindness with an old woman who has not eaten yet today?” Luke sprang up and welcomed the woman in. “You’re welcome to pass some time with us, but I’m afraid we haven’t much to eat. We have only this one loaf of bread we were going to share for dinner, but you’re welcome to split it with us.” The woman thanked him and the three of them divided the loaf of bread and ate. The sister was not happy that her portion was smaller than it would have been had the old woman not showed up. When Luke invited the woman to stay the night, the woman said that she must be moving on, and opened the door to leave. Just as she was vanishing out into the night she turned and said “I can’t help but notice that lumpy log next to the fireplace. It looks very much like two frogs on a toadstool eating the spinning seeds of a maple tree, covered in cobwebs”. And with that she was gone. The children rushed outside to follow the woman, but she had vanished. They searched around the house and down the path, but there was no sign of her. 

When they returned to their house, Luke and his sister sat a few seconds in silence contemplating the woman’s odd final words before both leaping up at once. 

“Two frogs on a toadstool? That’s the two men in the riddle!”

“The seeds of a maple tree- those little seeds that spin through the air when they fall down from the branches! They fly but cannot speak!”

“And a cobweb, that’s a perfect fairy spool!”

And with that, Luke and his sister set about making the potion they were sure would heal the prince. Luke thought only of saving the poor boy’s life. His sister thought only of the reward they would receive. Once the potion was ready, they set out for the palace. They traveled for days, over mountains, across rivers, through small towns and large ones, until finally they arrived at the palace. When they told the guards their reason for presenting themselves at the palace, they were shown into a majestic hall where the king and queen sat on magnificent thrones staring at the young boy who dared approach. 

“Young man, you are brave indeed to have come all this way. Why do you believe your medicine will heal the prince?”

At this Luke told the tale of the fairy and the riddle and the mysterious woman who had appeared to them. 

The king and queen were delighted with this answer and strode down from their thrones to hug Luke and order that the elixir be administered to the Prince immediately. They put Luke and his sister in a beautiful guest room with the softest bed either of them had ever slept in. 

The next morning they awoke to the sound of running in the hallways and general clamour throughout the castle. Soldiers burst through the door and dragged the children out of their room and down to the dungeon. The prince had not been healed by the elixir, and his condition had worsened overnight. 

As the children sat on the floor of their cold damp cell weeping at their misfortune, who should appear but the fairy from the woods! Luke was furious and demanded to know why the fairy had tricked him. 

“My dear, I didn’t trick you, I gave you exactly what you asked for- a way to heal the Prince.”

“Well he’s not healed, he got worse, and now we’re stuck in this dungeon!” roared the sister. 

“Did you do the magic as I told you- the men, and the flying and the spool and all that?” asked the fairy. 

“Yes yes, of course, we did. The two men are frogs, that’s obvious. Then the maple seeds- those little spinning ones. And then we wrapped it all in cobwebs just as you said. And we’re in this dungeon and I fear I’ll never be showered with gold and land and titles for saving that little scoundrel’s life!” The sister was now quite exasperated. 

The fairy looked confused and said, “My darling, that’s not right at all. The things that fly but cannot speak are grasshoppers, the two men on a stool were two dung beetles and the fairy’s spool is an acorn. We wrap our thread around acorns.” 

Now Luke spoke up. “Then why did that old lady show up out of nowhere and say that stuff about frogs and cobwebs and maple seeds right when we were trying to figure out the riddle!?” 

“It does sound like a dreadfully unfortunate coincidence” the fairy lamented. 

Now Luke was getting angry. “And why did you even give me a riddle? Why not just tell me how to make the medicine? Also grasshoppers don’t fly and they make a squeaking noise so in a sense they kind of talk. That’s a terrible clue.” 

“Come come, you and I both know that’s not how the magic works. I can’t just tell you the answer, you need to come up with it yourself. The readers of this story need to believe in your intrinsic goodness, that you somehow earned the gold. We can’t have young no-account peasant children all of a sudden given gold and living in estates. There must be a Reason for these things. And that Reason is your own character, your wisdom, your inherent goodness. Goodness must be rewarded, not luck.” 

Luke’s sister chimed in. “That makes sense, we have to understand how good and smart we are and how much we deserve the gold.”

“Well, sort of..” said the fairy, hesitatingly. “How this is really supposed to play out is that Luke here solves the riddle, makes the potion and then heads to the castle. You, inspired by your own greed and self-centeredness would then steal the potion, race to the palace, and try to claim the reward, then through some happenstance I hadn’t worked out quite yet it would be revealed what happened. The prince would be healed, Luke would get the reward, and you would be locked in the dungeon or turned into something unpleasant.” Luke nodded calmly while his sister gritted her teeth and shook with rage. And without saying another word, the fairy disappeared. Just then the jailer arrived with their thin gruel and murky water. 

Luke spoke up. “Excuse me sir, but I think I know what went wrong with the potion. If you could just bring me three grasshoppers, two dung beetles and an acorn…” but before he could finish the guard was gone and the door clanged shut. And with that our story is almost finished. But before we go, you’d probably like to know what happened to everyone. 

Luke eventually did manage to collect three grasshoppers, two dung beetles, and an acorn by standing on tiptoes and reaching his arm out of the tiny dungeon window. By this time he had made friends with the castle cat. He smeared the concoction on the cat’s nose and told him to go nuzzle the prince. The cat did, and the prince was healed, so Luke was released. He returned home and when he did, he discovered that the lumpy log next to the fireplace really did look almost exactly like two frogs on a toadstool eating the seeds of a maple tree, covered in cobwebs. He lived a long and happy life, because, of course he did. He’s kind and thoughtful and intelligent and is the main character in this story. We can’t have him rotting in prison can we? 

Meanwhile his sister was also released from prison and wrote a story about a beautiful and wonderful and intelligent girl who was unjustly imprisoned because of her idiot younger brother who didn’t know the difference between a cobweb and an acorn. The story was published, became a huge hit, the sister rose to the heights of fame, and lived the rest of her life in luxury. At least she did until the fairy showed up one day and turned her into a newt. Which is exactly what she deserved. 

And that, dear reader, is the end of this tale.