The official naming ceremony was in full swing in the Nothing-but-Pink Ballroom.
Dozens of good fairies fluttered around showering vacuous compliments on each other. Guests of the more solid sort ate and gossiped. The courtiers busied themselves doing nothing. The King and the Queen sat on their golden thrones and preened. Princess Allegra lay in her rose-pink cradle, unimpressed and uninterested.
The chairs in the ballroom were delicate affairs. Even the most substantial of them could accommodate only a tiny fraction of Minister Gauntz, the Minder-Minister of the naming ceremony. His task was to check each potential fairy-wish against a list and ensure proper gifts were given in appropriate numbers.
“Fairies are as airy inside as they are outside, Your Majesty,” Chief Minister Lugubriyos had perorated at the Royal Council. “They possess infinitesimal brains. This absence of grey-matter, coupled with a surfeit of goodwill, makes them repeat the same gift in different variations, with disastrous results.”
His Majesty wrestled with this pronouncement, his mental exertions reflected in his facial contortions. “You mean like my niece Amberlina, who got red and black and gold and silver hair?” he hollered, banging his fist on the table. “Gauntz, you better make sure those nitwits don’t do the same to Allegra. If she turns into a freak, we won’t be able to marry her off.”
A herald announced gift-giving time and the fairies formed a chattering row. Except Fairy Pinky, who flew away and perched behind a mound of roses unnoticed by everyone.
The first fairy blessed the baby with beauty. When the third fairy tried to do the same, Minister Gauntz interrupted with a polite cough. “Mmmm, how about artistic hands, miss? Or perfect health? Maybe a good memory? Or the ability to understand animal-tongue?”
The last fairy finished giving her gift and Gauntz heaved a sigh of relief. He was about to go in search of a strong drink when the doors of the ballroom burst open and a nightmarish vision in yards and yards of black tarlatan and live-moth trim swept in.
Fairy Ingeniosa was world-infamous for her curses. She made all other evil fairies in every tale ever told seem like your average bad-tempered aunt. She never appeared at naming ceremonies she was invited to and always turned up at ones she was not invited to. All royal parents lived in dread of Fairy Ingeniosa invading their baby’s naming ceremony; yet an amazing number of them managed to forget her name when they compiled the guest list.
Allegra’s parents had an excuse. They had heard that Ingeniosa was away. That was why they brought forward the naming ceremony. But Ingeniosa knew everything and wanted to be where she was not wanted. That was one of her dearest pleasures.
Ingeniosa strode to the cradle and peeked at the baby. Her searing stare would have shriveled a giant. It once made a dragon cry. Allegra just gazed back, eyes wide with wonder.
The fairy was discomposed. In her long career of cursing royal offspring, she had never met a baby who stared back; they just howled. She looked again and felt an unaccustomed stab of pity. This baby had intelligence, a quality rarer than certifiable lunacy in families royal. For a royal lady expected to do nothing more arduous than play the harp not too discordantly, sew uselessly, dance tirelessly and gossip discreetly, intelligence was not just a superfluity. It was an impediment to her progress in life.
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Ingeniosa knew about the gravity of brains. She had a higher IQ than the wisest sage in the land. But brainy fairies had an option, to embrace black and scatter curses. Brainy princesses – or princes - had none. To live and die as miserable misfits would be their fate.
Last evening Ingeniosa had consulted her favorite tome, The Complete Guide to Manias and Phobias, and decided on sciophobia as a suitable curse for Allegra. A future queen terrified of every shadow, including her own, had seemed amusing. But curses are to balance fate’s lopsided scales somewhat. One didn’t curse those born into misfortune. As the urge to curse evaporated, Ingeniosa considered glaring at the assembly and vanishing in a puff of malodorous smoke. But such craven conduct would have done irreparable damage to her reputation. From palaces to hovels it would be said that the dreaded Ingeniosa had gone soft. They’d titter and pity.
There was no choice. She’ll have to curse this accursed baby. Ingeniosa cast her mind about and found an answer: Dromomania, with a Ingeniosaesque twist. She cleared her throat and screeched, “This princess will run away when she is sixteen. She will become a vagabond and roam the world in search of herself. She will know neither home nor rest, until she dies.”
In her hurry to vanish Ingeniosa forgot to emit her trademark cackle. She remembered that omission only when she was curled up in her favorite armchair, immersed in Dragon Brunelles’ The Joys of Experimentation. She drained her mug of marshmallow infused hot chocolate wondering whether anyone noticed, and realized to her surprise, that she didn’t give a damn.
***
In the pink ballroom, pandemonium reigned. The King screamed. The Queen fainted. Courtiers tripped over each other, trying to pacify the King and revive the Queen.
And Fairy Pinky flew from behind the roses to claim the centre stage.
No one noticed her at first. She shouted for attention but her voice vanished in the tumult. In desperation she flew to the King and pulled his nose. The tug made him stop in the middle of his litany of profanities. The royal eyes were so misted with blind fury he thought Pinky was a mammoth fly, until she screamed in his ear. “I haven’t given my wish. I guessed someone had forgotten to invite Fairy Ingeniosa. So I saved my wish for later, just in case.”
Amidst sighs of relief and cries of gratitude, Pinky flew to the cradle. Silence blanketed the ballroom, the kind of silence in which one can hear the sound of butterfly wings or even of the moon rising. Pinky waved her wand, and cried, “The Princess’s search will not be endless; it’ll come to an end when she finds herself and she will find herself when she loses herself.”
Afterwards, many wondered whether Pinky could have made her wish less enigmatic, such as, “The Princess’s search will come to an end when she falls in love with a handsome prince.” Some accused Pinky of adding a riddle to a puzzle. Others argued that Pinky should be praised for introducing the possibility of closure to an open-ended curse. Fairy Pinky, when inquired about the matter, had no satisfactory answer to give.
The Royal Council met in an emergency session and concluded that marrying Princess Allegra off before her sixteenth birthday might negate the curse. The Council also decreed that the Royal Stationer be incarcerated for not printing a special invitation card for Fairy Ingeniosa and the Royal Messenger be dismissed for not delivering it.
The Queen ordered that Allegra be kept cloistered within the palace and the grounds. The King proclaimed disclosure of the story of the curse a capital crime. The prospect of being hung, drawn and quartered silenced even the most garrulous tongue. And Allegra, who knew a lot about far off lands and long ago happenings, grew up ignorant of her own prelude.