Sleeping Beauty

A hand was raised in midair. Its fingers were spread, about to touch the shoulder of a boy who stood beside the kitchen fire. The man's mouth was still open, as if he had meant to say something and never got to finish it. But the hand did not come down. The mouth did not close. Under the pot, a log still glowed red with coals, yet it did not burn one bit further. The meat on the spit still sizzled, yet it did not cook one bit more. The whole kitchen hung suspended halfway, like a breath not yet let out.

That moment stayed just so, without the slightest movement, for one hundred years.

A hundred years is a very long time. It is longer than a whole human life, longer than the age of the oldest grandparent in any family. In that many years, three or four generations could be born one after another and grow up just outside the castle walls, and still the hand would hang in the same place, never once coming down. Why should such an ordinary moment be held for so long?

The Brothers Grimm, two German scholars, wrote this old story down in a book of fairy tales.

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen who longed for a child. Year after year they waited, and still their wish went unanswered. Then one day, as the queen was sitting in her bath, a little frog spoke up with news. Before the year was out, it said, she would give birth to a daughter. The prophecy came true. The baby was born healthy and lovely, and the whole palace was overjoyed.

The king held a great feast to celebrate. He invited guests from far and wide, among them the fairies of the kingdom, so that they would bless the child with good things. But the palace had only twelve golden plates, and the kingdom had thirteen fairies. So the king could invite only twelve of them. There was no plate for the thirteenth fairy, so she was left off the guest list.

When the feast was over, the fairies stepped up to the cradle one by one and gave the princess wonderful gifts. One gave virtue, one gave beauty, one gave riches, and there were many other good things too, everything a person could wish for in this world. Eleven fairies had given their blessings. Only the twelfth fairy still stood there, about to speak.

At that very moment, the doors of the great hall flew open. The thirteenth fairy, the one who had not been invited, walked in amid the astonished murmurs of the whole court. Without a word of greeting, she went straight to the cradle. Her voice was full of anger at being slighted, and she pronounced a cold curse. When she turned fifteen, the princess would prick her finger on a spindle and fall down dead on the spot. Having said this, she turned her back and left, without so much as a glance behind her.

The whole room fell silent with fear. But the twelfth fairy, who had not yet given her blessing, stepped forward. She did not have the power to undo the wicked curse completely, but she could soften it. Gently, she said that the princess would not die. She would only sink into a deep sleep, lasting exactly one hundred years.

Loving his daughter dearly, the king sent an order across the kingdom. Every spindle was to be gathered up and burned, not a single one spared. The princess grew up surrounded by her parents' love, just as the eleven fairies had wished for her. She was kind, beautiful and gentle, so much so that everyone who met her came to love her.

Then came the day she turned fifteen. That day, the king and queen both happened to have business that took them away from the castle. The princess was left at home alone. Curious, she wandered through all the rooms she had never set foot in, until she discovered a narrow spiral staircase. It led up into an old tower she had never noticed before. She climbed, and the higher she went, the quieter it grew. At the very top of the stairs was a small door, with a rusty key still sitting in the lock.

She turned the key, pushed the door and stepped inside. In the tiny room, an old woman sat alone, busily spinning her flax. The old woman had lived apart for a long time and had never heard of the king's order, so she still had her spindle. The princess watched the spindle whirl and was delighted beyond words. She asked the old woman to let her try it, just once. The moment she touched it, the sharp point of the spindle pricked her finger. At that very instant, the princess fell down and sank into sleep.

That sleep did not stop with her. It spread through the whole castle in a single breath. The king and queen had just come back into the great hall. They and all the courtiers standing around them sank down at once and fell fast asleep right where they stood. Out in the stables, the horses suddenly stood still, their heads bowed. The dogs in the courtyard lay motionless and no longer wagged their tails. On the roof, the pigeons tucked their heads under their wings and did not stir. Even the flies on the wall stopped flying and stayed put, as if they had been painted there. The fire in the kitchen stopped flickering, and the meat on the spit stopped sizzling halfway. And the cook froze just like that, at the very moment he was raising his hand to say something to the kitchen boy beside him. His hand hung in midair and could no longer come down. Outside the castle, even the wind fell still, until not a single leaf on a branch trembled.

Before long, a hedge of thorns began to grow around the castle. Every year it grew a little taller and a little thicker, until it covered the walls and the tiled roofs. In the end no one could see even the flag on top of the highest tower. People began to pass along the story of a beautiful princess sleeping soundly behind that wall of thorns. They called her by the name the Brothers Grimm later wrote down: Dornröschen, little rose among the thorns.

Hearing the story, many princes came from distant lands, determined to push through the hedge of thorns and reach her. But the hedge would not open a path for anyone. The sharp thorns caught hold of their cloaks and blocked them at every step, pushing back one man after another. In the end every one of them had to give up and go home empty-handed, though not one of them was hurt. A few years later, another group of princes came to try. They too went home like those before them, and not one could get through. Little by little, the tale of the sleeping princess no longer sounded like a call to adventure. It began to sound like a warning: do not waste the effort, that hedge will open for no one.

The years went by like this until a full hundred years had passed since the day the princess pricked her finger on the spindle. Just then, in another kingdom, a prince happened to hear an old man tell the whole story, including how those who came before had been forced to turn back. The old man urged him not to risk it for nothing. But the prince decided to set out anyway. He wanted to see the truth of it for himself.

As he came near the hedge of thorns, something strange happened. It was the very moment the hundred years were complete, not a moment early or late. The hedge that had stopped so many before him suddenly burst into large flowers. The flowers parted on their own, opening a path just wide enough for him to walk through, safely and without a single scratch. Then they closed behind him into a hedge again, just as before.

He crossed the silent castle courtyard. He saw the horses standing asleep in the stables, the dogs lying still in the yard, and the pigeons on the roof with their heads tucked under their wings. In the kitchen, the cook still held his hand raised, and the fire still glowed red but burned no further. Yet something seemed to be changing quietly around him. A coal suddenly gave off a little warmth. A feather stirred on the roof. It was as if the whole castle were slowly beginning to wake. He went on, up the spiral staircase, to the little room at the top of the tower, and pushed open the door, which stood ajar.

In the room lay the princess, so beautiful that he stopped short and could not take his eyes off her. He stepped softly closer and knelt beside the bed. At that very moment, just as the hundred years came to an end, the princess opened her eyes on her own. They opened slowly, like someone waking from a long sleep, and not because of anything he had done. She saw a stranger kneeling beside her. She was not afraid at all, only curious, and she gave a small smile. The prince smiled back, said a soft hello, and held out his hand. The princess laid her hand gently in his, and the two of them stood up together.

As the two of them went down the stairs together, the whole castle woke, all in one breath. The king and queen, still in the same spot in the great hall, stirred and woke. The horses in the stables neighed loudly and stamped their hooves. The dogs leaped up, barking with joy. The pigeons on the roof lifted their heads from under their wings, preened their feathers and flew off. The flies on the wall went on crawling as if they had never stopped. The kitchen fire flared up, and the meat on the spit sizzled once more until it was cooked. And the cook, after exactly one hundred years, finally lowered the hand that had hung in the air. He finished what he had been saying, as if no silence had ever come between.

Outside, the wind rose again too. It set every leaf on the branches trembling, just as it had before everything stopped a hundred years earlier. The wedding of the prince and the princess was held with great splendor soon afterward, and music rang throughout the palace. And the hand that had hung in midair in a silent kitchen for a hundred years was busy again now, like every other hand in a castle coming back to life. Never again would it have to stand still and wait.