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Runner-up: How the Northern Lights Got Their Name
By Ellen Boucher
Most teenagers think their parents are worrying about them unnecessarily. Princess Aurora was no exception. She remembered how angry her father had been when she had come to him one day and said, quietly, “Daddy, I want to learn how to knit.” He had ranted and raged round the castle for an hour afterwards, saying something about how he hadn't put all that work in so his daughter could put her life at risk by learning to knit.
So Princess Aurora, though possessed of a rare degree of beauty, elegance, grace, and politeness, did what any normal teenager would do. She went behind her father's back. Sneaking out of the castle early one morning, she went to Thorny Wood, following the well worn trail through the forest, marked by tatters of sparkling silk, where a dress had been too close to the bracken and been torn, until she came to an unassuming little house. It was here that her godmothers — all six of them — lived.
The Lilac Fairy was at home when Aurora knocked on the door, and, before waiting for an answer, threw it open, huffed in and plonked herself (this is something it is very difficult to do when one is imbued with vast amounts of grace) in a chair by the fire with a sullen pout on her face. Naturally, her godmother enquired of her royal god-offspring what the problem was.
“I want to learn how to knit, but father says it's too dangerous. It's not fair. Princess Blanche Neige knits, and Princess Ashputtel. They keep laughing at me because I buy my winter clothes in a shop.”
The Lilac Fairy knew why the King, and indeed the Queen, would be so overwrought about the idea of their daughter discovering yarn. She remembered the spindle-burnings when Aurora was a baby. She remembered, too, the attempt on Aurora's life made by the bitter Carabosse, who, frankly, the Lilac Fairy thought had been more annoyed that the King and Queen had thought she must be dead, because she was so old, than she had been about not getting invited to the Christening. Carabosse liked children, but couldn't eat a whole one, and she had never attended a Christening in her life. However, this was not the first time someone who had erred and over-guessed Carabosse's age had found themselves cursed. Put it this way, there was a lot of work for her sisters reversing the elderly fairy's trademark Donkey Bottom curse.
The Lilac Fairy, whose real name was Doris, which didn't suit her, had, of course, been able to change, if not totally remove, the curse, meaning that instead of being killed, Aurora would, when she pricked her finger on a spindle, simply fall asleep. Doris had explained this to the King and Queen. She had also explained that there was nothing they could do about it. Aurora would turn 16, and on that day, she would prick her finger on a spindle. She would fall asleep for a hundred years, and then a prince would awake her with a kiss. Burning every spinning wheel in the country, and forcibly exiling all the spinners, wasn't going to make a blind bit of difference. In fact, it was asking for trouble. Doris had read a lot of Greek mythology, and she knew perfectly well that prophecies of this kind were often made to come true by the people involved trying to prevent them from happening. But the King would not listen to her. She was only a fairy, what would she know? His daughter's safety was at stake!
Naturally, the King and Queen had not thought to warn Aurora of the dangers of spindles and spinning wheels. That would have been far too sensible. As a result, Doris had watched, sadly and helplessly, as the kingdom's economy took a dive into recession. As the King's Vizier tried desperately to make things better by first raising, then seriously reducing, the import taxes on textiles, and yarn. The fact was, after 15 years, the kingdom of which Aurora would one day be queen, was totally dependent on other countries because of its inability to produce fabric.
Doris, of course, said none of these things to Aurora, but smiled. Here, at last, was an opportunity to start making a change for the better. It would take a long time, but the kingdom would recover from this. She fished a pair of rosewood needles out of her knitting bag (the King's soldiers, in the midst of the spindle-burning, had mysteriously been unable to find the cottage in the forest, to take away their knitting equipment), and some lilac wool. She would have given Aurora a different colour, but she was the Lilac Fairy, and with lilac she must knit. She showed Aurora the basics, and decided as far as the ‘curse’ went, to take matters into her own hands. Carabosse was getting more forgetful by the day, and really, someone had to keep the balance of things by ensuring that curses actually happened.
Princess Aurora sneaked out every day to the cottage, and was soon addicted to knitting. She hid a ball of yarn and needles in her chambers, and knitted with them every evening after she had dismissed her maids and retired to bed. In this way, Princess Aurora reached her 16th birthday.
She awoke to the sound of preparations for her birthday party drifting up from the courtyard below (her birthday was in summer so the party was always outside). Then there was a flash of lilac light, and a shower of sparks. The Lilac Fairy appeared beside her bed.
“Get up, dear,” she said, “I've got a birthday present for you.”
“Is it some yarn?” Aurora asked, excited, leaping out of bed.
“No, something much better,” said Doris.
As Aurora put on her dressing gown, Doris moved aside from where she had been standing, to reveal a large ... something ... covered in a sparkly lilac cloth. Aurora was beside it in an instant. She looked excitedly at Doris, who gestured with her hand to indicate she should take off the cover. Aurora threw the cloth aside and her look turned from excitement to puzzlement. Before her was some kind of wooden contraption. There was a big wheel, and a pedal, and a bit to hold, that much she could tell.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It's a spinning wheel.”
“A what now?”
“You use it,” said Doris with a smile, “to make your own yarn.”
Princess Aurora squealed with excitement, and sat down on the stool next to the wheel.
“Show me!” she cried, bouncing on the stool.
Doris's sister Ada, also known as the Fairy of the Crystal Fountain, had gifted Aurora with the ability to turn her hand to any craft, and so up until the point where Aurora accidentally pricked her finger on the spindle, she had been doing very well. Being able to turn your hand to any craft doesn't mean you'll get it right first time.
Doris used a simple levitation spell to move Aurora onto the bed and arrange herself neatly. Then she removed the lilac cover that had fallen on the floor, and turned the roving Aurora had been spinning with to a glittering black. One had to keep up appearances, after all. She called the King and Queen, and loudly bemoaned the fact that she hadn't been able to prevent Carabosse from being as bad as her word. Then she put the castle to sleep, surrounded it with a thick forest with lots of undergrowth, and then quietly put the rest of the kingdom to sleep and made it impossible to find.
She went back once a week to dust and do the hoovering (vacuum cleaners hadn't been invented but she was, after all, a fairy), making sure everything was nice for when they woke up.
After 100 years had passed, a young prince, having just had an argument with his father about how knitting wasn't a proper manly pursuit, was stomping through a forest in a vast sulk, when an elderly lady dressed all in sparkly lilac appeared before him and told him to come with her. He was so surprised he couldn't say no, and she led him through the woods and to the strangest sight he had ever beheld. A whole kingdom, sleeping! Cattle asleep in the fields, men and women all dozing. The fairy assured him they had been asleep for 100 years, and though the prince had heard stories that there was, somewhere, a land deep in slumber and waiting to be awakened, he hadn't listened to them since he was a boy — and now he was 16 and obviously grown up, he told everyone loudly that he didn't have time for such things (but secretly missed hearing stories as he went to sleep). The woman in lilac led him to a surprisingly clean castle, and upstairs, where he found a sleeping beauty in the midst of that wood, with a pair of knitting needles poking out from under her pillow. He needed very little encouragement to kiss her.
Aurora awoke to find a rather handsome young man with a crown, whom she hadn't met before (surely she had met all the princes by now?) sitting by her bed.
“What are you knitting?” he asked her.
She saw the set of DPNs sticking out of his belt.
“What are you knitting?” she asked.
Princess Aurora and her new friend didn't get married, but they did go out for a few years, in which time they set up a Royal Knitting Group so that Aurora could meet all the other local princesses (since, after all, her former friends had grown old and passed away while she was sleeping), and when they parted, parted as friends. The princes didn't join at first, but then they realised it was a good way to meet girls. Aurora married another prince from the knitting group, and naturally knit herself some beautiful accessories for her wedding dress (she didn't knit the dress — she liked knitting, but she wasn't crazy). She and her husband were very happy together, and had beautiful, creative (and yarn-obsessed) children.
Meanwhile, Aurora and Doris put in a lot of work getting the textile industry going again in the kingdom. They taught everyone who had time to do so, how to spin, and how to knit. They got one of the other fairies to show people how to weave.
Aurora was in heaven, being able to knit openly. She knitted all kinds of exciting things but was especially proud of her brightly coloured shrugs and sparkly bodices (much more comfortable than a corset, and warmer), and of the cuddly crown she made for her father to wear in the winter months. She learned how to spin without injuring herself, and then — the delight! — learned how to dye her own yarn from the Fairy of the Silver Lake (the water in the lake was great for bringing out dye colours). Soon she became known as the Rainbow Princess, because she made all her own clothes, and of course, dyed them. She didn't care what other people thought, but instead dyed yarn and roving in every colour of the rainbow. She sold them to the other princesses, who always got very excited when there was a new colourway.
Thus it came that when the Northern Lights first appeared in the skies over the kingdom, with their multitude of colours, there was really only one name the people could use to describe them — the name of their multicoloured Queen. Aurora.
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