Week 9 Storytelling: "What are Good Fairies Like?"

"It's all the Sun Prince's fault," complained the Moon Prince. "If it weren't for him and that conniving mother of his, Father never would have exiled us in the first place." The Moon Prince crossed his pallid arms, his craggy bald head fuming in the midday heat.

"Come now," said the Star Prince. "This isn't an exile. Father sent us into hiding until such a time when one of us can succeed the throne." The Star Prince, ever in contrast to his half-brother, had skin like a midnight sky and a nebulous twinkle in his eye.

The Moon Prince gave his half-brother a flippant scowl. His own milky grey eyes narrowed when he said: "And who do you think we have to thank for needing to be hidden away, like a dirty little secret? If the Sun Prince's mother weren't so intent on installing her own son as king we would be able to live at court without fear of finding a dagger in our backs. We are the king's eldest. It should be you who succeeds him, by rights."

The Star Prince sighed and shook his head gently. "The issue is more complicated than all that, brother," he said. "For one, father promised the queen anything her heart desired on the day the Sun Prince was born. She wishes for her son to be king. It is not such a dishonorable wish."

"It is a wretched thing," griped the Moon Prince.

"Even so, his mother's character does not reflect on our brother. He has been nothing but kind to us. He even volunteered to join us in hiding, not fully grasping the situation. Oh, but he is innocent, brother, don't you see? How can you despise him so?"

"Bah," said the Moon Prince. "Where is our brother, anyway? We sent him out for water hours ago."

At that very moment the Sun Prince had just come upon a verdant pond, the first source of water he'd encountered in miles of overgrowth. The forest was a lush and plentiful place, yet most of its water was kept tucked away in roots and crevices.

The Sun Prince knelt beside the pond and examined his reflection in the water. His hair had a platinum sheen, his skin a coppery glow, but even so the grit and grime of life in the forest was beginning to set in. He missed his mother and father and the life he'd had at court. But he loved his brothers too greatly to part with them.

And he was parched. His bone-dry tongue scraped against the roof of his mouth in thirsty anticipation as he produced his gourd and drew it up to the water's surface.

Yet just as he was about to fill his gourd, a frog croaked in defiance from the middle of the pond. The Sun Prince studied the bizarre creature, his head tilted in confusion. The frog sat perched upon the waters surface like a fallen leaf. Before the Sun Prince had time to puzzle out this strange occurrence, however, the frog croaked again and began to rise. The water beneath the creature swelled and bubbled upward. The Sun Prince dropped his gourd when he realized the water had begun to take the form of a woman's face, as though it were trickling down her features as she emerged from the pond-though there was no woman, and the water never ceased its downward flow. All the while, the frog sat perched atop the liquid form.

"A water sprite," the Sun Prince stammered.

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"Yes," the sprite said through the frog's rasping voice. "And this is my pond you are defiling. If you wish to drink from my waters, you must answer my question first. I have but one."

The Sun Prince bowed deeply and said, "I am sorry, truly. I did not know. Ask your question and I will answer it as best I can."

"What," croaked the frog, "are good fairies like?"

The Sun Prince thought about this for a moment and finally said, "A good fairy is kindly in word and deed. A good fairy is pure in heart."

"Wrong," declared the water sprite, and the frog opened its mouth and shot its tongue across the water, pulling the prince in and swallowing him whole.

Hours later, the Moon Prince came across the pond in search of his brother. He was very thirsty, and was relieved to find the water source. But when he knelt to drink, the water sprite appeared before him and asked its question.

"A good fairy?" the Moon Prince retorted. "A good fairy knows when to keep its mouth shut. A good fairy is a leal subject to its rightful king."

"Wrong." And the water sprite swallowed him up.

Finally, the Star Prince arrived at the pond. By this point, the hour was late and the sky was awash with the dance of constellations untold. When the water sprite appeared before him and asked its question, the Star Prince did not answer right away. He sat beside the water's edge in contemplation.

"It is you who has disappeared my two brothers," he said finally. "I do not know what a good fairy is like, oh water sprite, but I know that it is certainly not like you."

At this, the water sprite began to laugh. Not the frog, but the water form itself, like the gurgle of a stream, youthful and mischievous.

"That is . . . correct," she said, and the Star Prince's brothers floated up to the surface of the pond.

The Princes filled their gourds with enough water to get them far, far away. Never again did they return to the pond of the water sprite. Though they did not know it then, that was the evening upon which their father, the King of the Heavens, passed on to the kingdom of his namesake.

Long years ahead, the Star King, as he would later come to be known, oftentimes found himself thinking on that fateful night at the pond of the water sprite. It always came to him late at night, with his queen resting peacefully beside him and his most trusted advisers, his half-brothers, asleep in their own chambers across the hall. But sleep would rarely visit the Star Prince. He would pass the nights in silent reflection, in stoic meditation. And sometimes, just sometimes, the question would drift across his mind like an incessant decades-old itch begging to be scratched:

"Just what are good fairies like?"

Author's Note:

This story was based off of the Princes and the Water Sprite, from the Jataka Tales as inscribed by Ellen C. Babbitt.

I changed several components from the original story. Some of this was simply streamlining. Instead of starting the story off in the capital city, I gave the information of the Sun Prince's Mother, the Princes' exile, and the Sun prince tagging along as backstory, instead of showing it all actually happening.

In the original story, there was no description given for any of the princes or the water sprite, so I had complete creative control over those. I tried to have each Prince's appearance embody their epithet and I tried to make the water sprite both mysterious and whimsical (and a little threatening).

But probably the biggest change I made was the Princes' answers to the question. In the original, the Sun Prince answered that good fairies are like "the sun and the moon," the Moon Prince answered "like the sky above us," and the Star Prince answered, "The pure in heart who fear to sin.The good, kindly in word and deed."

As you can see, I flipped this on its head. I wanted to have each princes answer tell us something about his personality. The Sun Prince is innocent and kind-hearted, so in my story he is the one who gives the Star Prince's original answer. The Moon Prince is self-entitled and jealous and he brushes aside the question. The Star Prince is wise, and sees through the water sprites question to realize that no matter his answer, the water sprite is not a good fairy and is going to eat him anyway. The water sprite is tickled that he realized this, and so decides to let him go.