Once upon a time, there lived a king and a queen who said every day, "Oh, if only we had a child!" but they never received one. Then, one day, a kind friend told them about this wonderful new invention called "having sex". They tried it, and—lo and behold—a magical frog appeared in their bed.

"Eeek!" Jumping out of bed, the queen clambered up onto the closest wardrobe. "Get that slimy thing away from me!"

"A little more respect, if you please," the frog said. "I am a magical messenger, come here to inform you that your dreams shall at last be fulfilled. You shall have a child!"

"And the powers that be couldn't find a more hygienic way of conveying that message than a slimy amphibian?"

"Hey, if you want doctors and pregnancy tests, move to the real world, lady! In Fairyland, you get magical frogs. Speaking of frogs, you don't by any chance know a princess who could kiss me and turn me into a handsome prince, do you?"

In answer, the king grabbed the frog and chucked it out of the window.

"Oh, darling!" Throwing his arms around his wife, he lifted her down from the wardrobe. "At last, the dearest wish of our hearts shall become reality. We shall have a son!"

The queen smiled. "Who knows, darling? It might be a girl."

"Oh, poppycock! It'll be a prince. I can feel it in my water."

What the frog had said came true, and nine months later, the queen gave birth to a little girl who was so beautiful that the king almost didn't mind she wasn't a boy. Overjoyed, he declared a holiday and ordered a great feast.

His wife immediately began to send out invitations. She invited not only their family, friends and greatest nobles, but also the most powerful fairies in the land. There were seven of them in total, and the first six invitations were sent off by royal courier immediately. But when the queen came to the seventh fairy, the one whose power surpassed that of all the other six put together, she found she could not remember the address. Quickly, she reached for her address book.

"Fairy Twinklelight, Fairy Tinkerbell...bloody hell, why did I have to file every single fairy address under 'F'? I have to get myself a new filing system!"

The queen searched and searched. But no matter how long she searched, she could not remember or find the seventh fairy's address.

"Oh well," she sighed and put the address book aside, "she probably won't mind not being invited. And even if she did, what's the worst that could happen?"

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When the day of the celebrations came, a magnificent feast was prepared in the great hall of the royal castle. The fairies were treated especially well—six golden dishes were set before them, decorated with diamonds and rubies, and heaped full of the most heavenly delicacies you can imagine. Once the dinner had disappeared into the hungry guests' stomachs and the silver cutlery into their pockets, everyone was called upon to give presents to the little princess. That day, she received many marvelous treasures.

Finally, it was the fairies' turn to give gifts.

"My magical gift to the girl," said the first fairy, waving her wand over the child's head, "shall be the gift of intelligence."

Fairy dust twinkled in the air, betraying the presence of magic. A storm of applause rose from the assembled guests.

"My magical gift to the girl," said the second fairy, taking her place and waving her wand, "shall be the gift of grace."

Another loud round of applause.

"My magical gift to the girl," said the third fairy, "shall be perfect beauty."

Beaming, a plastic surgeon popped his head out from behind the closest column: "Did someone say my name?"

Impatiently, the fairy waved him away. "Oh, bugger off! Babies are supposed to be ugly! She won't be needing you for another sixteen years or so."

Sighing with disappointment, the plastic surgeon retreated back behind the column. Nobody paid attention to him. Instead, the hall once more exploded with applause for the latest magical gift. Everyone waited eagerly for what the next fairy's present to the girl would be. To top all those wonderful magical gifts, it would have to be something truly extraordinary!

The fourth fairy stepped forward, and, with a grand air, pulled something shiny and glittering out of her pocket. "My magical gift to the girl," she proclaimed, "shall be this beautiful silver fork."

There was a moment of silence—then a small spatter of applause

"Oh, get out of the way, you old cheapskate!" Quickly, fairy number five shoved her colleague aside and pulled out her wand. Everyone sighed with relief. Now things would get back to normal.

"My magical gift to you, little girl," she pronounced, "shall be awesome superpowers!"

Silence.

Utter, complete, unbreakable silence. In that silence, fairy dust descended onto the little girl. She glowed for a moment in an unearthly light—then giggled and smiled.

Glancing up from the cradle, fairy number five noticed everybody staring at her. Defiantly, she raised her chin and put her fists on her little hips. "What? You didn't think I'd give her something stupid and boring like virtue or obedience, did you?"

"Um..." The Queen cleared her throat. "What kind of superpowers are we talking about, exactly?"

That question, however, was never answered, for at that very moment, three thunderous knocks sounded from the door to the great hall. Everyone looked at each other in astonishment, for who would dare to disturb a king and queen's feast?

The door burst open, and there stood the seventh fairy, clad all in black as if for a funeral, her wand raised menacingly. There was a red gleam in her eyes, and a dead crow was sitting on her shoulder.

"Oh. Um...it's you." The queen tried to paint a smile on her face. Unfortunately, she had never been very good at painting. "I'm so glad you could join us after all!"

"You," the seventh fairy said with a voice that made everyone's hair stand on end, "did not invite me."

"Didn't we? Oh, but of course we did, my dear! The invitation must have gone lost in the mail."

"The Royal Mail, you mean? The one you are responsible for running?"

"Um...yes. That one."

"I see." Menacingly, the fairy stalked into the room. Her eyes swept over the six place settings at the fairy table, and it was clear she understood their meaning all too well. She had been slighted. This called for vengeance!

"I, too, have a gift for the girl," she announced.

"Um, really?" Hurriedly, the queen stepped in front of the cradle. "Really, that's not necessary! We wouldn't want to impose upon you, and—"

A gust of cold wind raced through the hall, thrusting the queen aside and clearing a path for the evil fairy. Stepping towards the cradle, she raised her wand.

"My magical gift for the king's daughter is that, on her sixteenth birthday, she shall prick her finger with a spindle, and shall instantly die from the wound. Mwahahaha!" And, still cackling insanely, the evil fairy turned into a three-headed unicorn and galloped out of the room.

All the guests were struck dumb with shock. They had never seen a three-headed unicorn before. Plus, there was also the little matter of the deadly prophecy. The king had turned pale, and his wife was trembling like a leaf.

However, in their shock, they had all forgotten that one good wish still remained unspoken. One of the fairies—the oldest one—was far smarter than the others. She had anticipated what the evil fairy might do, and so had cleverly fallen asleep after dinner and forgotten to bestow her magical gift. Now she woke up from all the ruckus, and once she had put on her magical hearing aid and heard what all the noise was about, she stood up and bowed to the trembling royal couple.

"Fear not, Your Majesties. I cannot undo what the wicked fairy has done, for she is far more powerful than I, and I think I've forgotten the spell anyway. But I can soften the fate which the princess shall have to face."

So speaking, she raised her wand. "It shall not be death that you have to endure, little girl, but a deep sleep of...hm, let's say a hundred years."

"B-but...we'll all be dead by then!" exclaimed the queen.

The fairy shrugged. "That can't be helped."

Number five gave her a kick on the shins. "Of course it can! Sleep spell, remember?"

"You do it. I'm far too old for this kind of stuff anyway."

"Oh king and queen," the fifth fairy said, "when your daughter falls into her magical sleep, you shall all sleep with her, and you shall all snore horribly. When the hundred years are up, a chosen one shall come to awake the princess, and he shall be her husband."

"Her husband?" The king's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "Now wait just a minute...!"

"Sorry, I can't. We're meeting the Snow Queen for afternoon tea. Cheerio! See you in a hundred years!"

And the six fairies disappeared in a puff of fairy dust.

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The king was not at all pleased at the prospect of a son-in-law for his three-day-old daughter. He set out to thwart the evil spell and save his dear child from the doom that threatened her.

"Have all the spindles in the kingdom collected and destroyed," he ordered his chancellor. "I want the wicked things burning by sundown!"

The chancellor cleared his throat. "But, Your Majesty—spindles are an integral part of production for almost any cloth available on the market. Without them, there would be no wool, flax, or cotton, which means there would be no clothes."

"So what? Let people walk around naked! I hear it's the latest fashion down south, since that Emperor Whatshisname started the trend."

"As you wish, Your Majesty."

"Anyone found harboring a spindle after sundown today shall be hanged. Do you hear me? Hanged!"

The chancellor was about to point out that the hemp for the hangman's ropes was also made with a spindle—but then he caught the look on the king's face and hurriedly bowed, turning away and scurrying out of the room.

For the next fifteen years, everyone but the members of the kingdom's textile industry lived happily and content, although it did get a bit drafty in winter. All the good fairies' wishes came true. The princess grew into a beautiful, lively, intelligent girl with frightening superpowers, who, while growing up, behaved with such care and good sense that the royal castle was only destroyed three times in total.

"Don't worry," said her loving father after she had once more reduced the place to rubble. "We needed to redecorate anyway."

"Can we paint the castle pink this time?" she asked, gazing at him with big puppy-dog eyes. "Please?"

"Pink? Oh, well...I don't know..."

"Please? Please, please, please, please, please, pleaaase?"

"All right." The king sighed. "I'll talk to your mother."

As the princess grew up, she learned how to use her extraordinary powers. Mostly, she used them to beat up people who deserved it, and there were a lot of those. In her spare time, she took jobs as an assassin to hunt down the realm's enemies and supplement her pocket money. The enchanted kingdom soon became the realm with the lowest crime rate ever achieved before a happy ever after, and trolls, vampires and giants knew to stay far, far away from this kingdom, for it was protected. Even wicked witches were too scared of the princess to set a foot inside her country's borders.

Thus, the years passed and the princess's sixteenth birthday approached. The king and queen took additional precautions and told the princess to stay in her room for the whole day. The princess had spent all last night wrestling with giants at the border, so she wasn't disinclined to take a little nap. Lying down on her bed, she soon fell asleep and started snoring like a whole company of woodcutters. Meanwhile, the king stationed a thousand guards around the princess.

"Protect her!" he ordered the captain of the guards. "Protect her at all costs until the danger is passed."

"Don't worry, Your Majesty," said the captain of the guards, absent-mindedly patting the three-headed unicorn that was passing by in the direction of the princess's chambers. "No wicked fairy will ever get past us!"

About five minutes later, the princess awoke from a knock at the door.

"Come in," she called, and a little old woman dressed all in black entered the room. She was carrying a strange wooden object with a sharp end.

"Who are you?" the princess demanded.

"Oh, just a harmless old woman," the old woman said, creeping closer.

"Harmless? You've got a horn sticking out of your forehead!"

"What? Damnit! That changeback-spell is so unreliable!" The evil fairy snapped her fingers, and the unicorn-horn disappeared.

The princess was a clever little girl, and she was fairly sure that horned women who come creeping into your bedroom unannounced are not to be trusted. Jumping up from the bed, she slowly retreated towards the window.

"Look, little girl." Grinning, the evil fairy held up the object in her hand. The princess could see now that there was some sort of long, incredibly thin object wrapped around the sharpened stick. She had never seen anything like it in her life. "Look what I've got here. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"It's a spindle. Do you want to take a closer look?"

"No! Definitely not."

"Heck! I thought children were supposed to be curious little bastards."

"I've been blessed with magic intelligence. But I don't really need that to see that you're up to no good. Guards! Guards!"

Heavy footsteps started thundering down the corridor. The evil fairy sighed.

"All right...if you want to make this hard, by all means."

She leapt forward and jammed the spindle into the princess's finger. Instantly, the girl keeled over onto her bed and started snoring louder than ever before. The footsteps of the guards ceased as they began to sway and drop to the floor, where they, too, fell into a deep, magical sleep. The magic spread like ripples in a pond, extending over the entire castle. The king and queen fell asleep on in the throne room, and so did the chancellor, who had just been reporting to them. The clerks went to sleep, and the cooks and the kitchen maids and all the other servants. The horses in the stables slept, and beside them the dogs, and above them the pigeons on the roof and the flies on the walls. Even the fire that was flaming in the hearth slept, for which it was quite grateful, because fires don't often get an opportunity for an afternoon nap. Neither did the wind—but now it slept, too, and nothing in the castle moved.

But all around the castle there began to grow a hedge of roses with wicked thorns, which became higher and higher with every passing year, until at last it swallowed up the castle, growing all over it, so that there was nothing of it to be seen but the very tip of the tallest tower in which the sleeping princess lay. The tale of this Sleeping Beauty, for so the princess was henceforth called, spread far and wide. From time to time, handsome princes came and tried to get through the thorny hedge to win the beautiful princess. There was just one problem: none of them knew anything about weed control.

"Damn! Damn and blast! Bloody roses! Why do they all have to have thorns?"

Uttering a few more curses, the latest prince disentangled himself from the hedge and, wrapping the tattered remnants of his cloak around himself, rode off as fast as his horse would carry him. A young gardener, who had been watching the scene from his nearby house, shook his head. He had seen hundreds of princes come and try to hack their way through the hedge with their swords. None of them understood the roses, understood their beauty and their magic, and how one could easily get past them using Tinkerbell & Sons' Extra Wacky Weed Killer.

Not that the young gardener had any desire to do so. Unlike the foolish princes, he did not believe the old legend of the Sleeping Beauty in a hidden castle. He only tended the roses, and occasionally disentangled a prince.

But, one day, a particularly persistent prince came to the castle. When the roses would not let him through, he became angry, for there had never been anything in his life that he wanted and could not have. So he ordered his men to dig a tunnel below the magic hedge of thorny roses, and when it threatened to collapse under the power of the spell, he fetched a wicked witch to hold it up. Thus, the prince entered the sleeping castle and, after wandering through endless silent hallways, found his way to Sleeping Beauty's chamber, where he did something he would never have gotten away with, had she been awake.

"It is true!" the wicked prince called out to his men as he climbed out of the tunnel, buttoning his fly. "There really is a girl in there!"

"What shall we do, Your Highness?" asked the captain of his guard. "Shall we fetch her? Do you wish to marry her and live happily ever after?"

The prince gave a dismissive laugh. "She's asleep, for heaven's sake! There's only one thing she's good for, and that is already taken care of. Let's get home. I have a ball to attend."

And they rode off, back towards the prince's kingdom.

But what they did not know was that the gardener had been listening in from behind a tree on every single word—and it wasn't hard to guess the prince's meaning. Horrified, he rushed to the hedge. But the tunnel had collapsed by now. Quickly, he fetched his whole year's supply of Tinkerbell & Sons' Extra Wacky Weed Killer. If there really was a girl in there, and that bastard of a prince had done what he thought he'd done...

It took the young gardener a hundred and fifty-seven cans of weed killer, two machetes and a lot of scrapes and bruises, but finally he managed to hack his way through the hedge and enter the castle. What he saw there was enough to freeze him with horror. A frightful silence reigned over all; the image of death was everywhere, and there was nothing to be seen but the outstretched bodies of dead men and animals. But then he saw the color in the men's cheeks, and saw their chests rise and fall with breath.

They were only sleeping.

"So it is true," he whispered—and without wasting another second he rushed of, in search of the girl. He found her in the highest tower chamber of the castle—and the condition he found her in made him want to kill that bastard of a prince! But he was only a humble gardener, armed with nothing but a pitch fork, and the prince was dozens of miles away by now. So instead, he fetched a blanket to cover the sleeping girl and sat down beside her, talking to her in a gentle voice all night long, hoping that enough would filter through to let her know she was safe now.

The very next day, he put "CAUTION! Poisonous" signs up all around the rose hedge. After that, not a single prince dared to venture into the castle. But the gardener was not kept away. He went into the castle every single day after finishing his work. Sometimes he brought the sleeping girl a vase full of roses. Sometimes he would sit for hours by her bedside, reading aloud from his favorite gardening manual. He could have sworn that whenever he began reading to her, her posture relaxed a little, and a sad little smile touched her lips. But she never woke up. She never even once lifted an eyelid. The young gardener, on the other hand, could not take his eyes off her, although she snored like drunken dwarf. Thus, the time passed, until...

It was evening in the castle. The young gardener had just finished reading and was about to return to his house. The moon shone through the window onto the bed, and it made the Sleeping Beauty appear more unreachable and otherworldly than ever before.

"Oh you..." Shaking his head, he stepped closer to the bed and gazed down at her. She just lay there, lifeless, and yet so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes away. "I wish I knew who did this to you."

Impulsively, he bent down, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Good night, Sleeping Beauty."

Her eyes snapped open.

The young gardener's chin dropped. "Wha—"

He didn't get any farther than that. In an instant, she had her hand around his throat. He flew through the air and, with an impact that drove the breath out of his lungs, crashed onto the bed beside her. A moment later she was on top of him—a circumstance he would ordinarily not have objected to. Except, the situation wasn't very romantic due to the knife she was holding at his throat.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now!" she hissed.

"Um...I don't want to die?" the young gardener suggested.

"A better one!"

He thought very hard. "Err...I'm a generally nice person?"

"Nice? Nice? After what you did to me? I was asleep, but I felt it! And you dare call yourself nice?"

The realization dawned on him, then: she had never seen the face of her attacker! Oh God! Had she been trapped in a magical half-sleep these past months, believing that stinking sack of goblin shit was still in her room, and was...?

"That wasn't me!" he protested. "I saw when he left, and heard him brag about what he did to you, so I came to investigate. I never believed the legend of an enchanted girl in the castle of thorns. But now..."

The girl—no, the princess, for that's what she was—raised a royal eyebrow. "But now you believe?"

"Girls with big knives are hard to argue with."

"You're smart. I think I like you."

"Th-thanks."

"But if I find out you've been lying to me, I'll gut you and use your intestines as a washing line, understood?"

"Yes, Your Highness!"

"I'm going to let you get up now. Don't make any sudden moves."

"As you wish, Your Highness! Your word is my command, Your Highness!"

Letting go of him, she rose and glanced around. In the dim moonlight, she could just make out the vase of fresh flowers on her bedside table, next to the book entitled How to Grow Magic Pumpkin Coaches—a Fairyland Gardener's Guide. For some reason, the sight of the book made her feel warm inside.

"You..." She hesitated. "You've been reading to me."

"Yes, Your Highness."

There was a pause.

"Thank you. And..."

"Yes, Your Highness?"

"No need for the 'Your Highness'."

"Yes, Your High—"

She raised a finger, and the young gardener shut his mouth. He felt that, taking into consideration that she still held the knife, this was the wisest policy to pursue.

"So," he asked cautiously, "you really are an enchanted princess?"

"Princess, yes. Enchanted no longer, thanks to you."

The young gardener sidled over to the window. Outside, the courtyard was still littered with sleeping bodies.

"Then why aren't all the other people waking up? Why isn't your father storming in here, demanding to know what has happened?"

The princess shrugged, marching over to a dusty knapsack in the corner and slinging it over her shoulder. "Oh, I've always been an early riser. Dad on the other hand...well, he and the rest of them will probably take another three or four years to wake up."

The young gardener nearly toppled out of the window. "Three or four years?"

"Don't worry." She patted him on the shoulder and pulled two curved sheaths with wickedly sharp daggers from behind the headboard of her bed. "We've got plenty to do in the meantime."

"W-we?"

"Of course. From the looks of it, you've stuck with me this far." She gestured at the vase of flowers and the book—then met his eyes. "Do you want to stop now?"

"No." The word was out of the young gardener's mouth before he could think about it—which was probably a good thing. Because if he thought about it, he would think about the meaning of those daggers and the deadly look in the girl's eyes, and might be tempted run for the hills screaming in fear.

"Good. Because we," she said, fastening the sheaths to her leather belt, "have a prince to kill."

It only took the young gardener a moment to understand. He felt his fists clench in anticipation.

"You want revenge."

"Of course I do." She put a hand on his shoulder and met his eyes with ones so beautiful, he simply could not resist them. "The only question is—are you with me?"

He hesitated for just a moment, then...

"Yes."

She squeezed his shoulder. "Good."

"But how are we to get revenge against the son of a king?" the young gardener wanted to know. "He has power we can only dream of!"

"That," the princess said, "you can leave to me."

Then she kicked a hole in the wall, grabbed the gardener by the scruff of the neck, and jumped out of the tower into open air.

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"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

"Stop screaming, will you?"

"Aaaaaaaaahrg! Noooo! Aaaaaaaaah!"

"If you stop screaming for just a moment you might notice that we are not falling."

"Aaaaaaa—what? We aren't?"

"No."

And indeed, they were not. They were flying high above the ground, the clouds and stars whizzing past above them, the wind whipping through their hair. The young gardener looked up at the princess with awe and suspicion mixed in his gaze.

"Are you a wicked witch?"

"No." She grinned. "Something even better."

"Where are we going? The prince's castle?"

"Soon. There's someone else I have to settle a score with first."

And as she spoke, the towers of a castle appeared out of the clouds in front of them. Lightening pierced the clouds and tried to grasp the two of them with white hot claws, but the princess was far too fast to be caught. She whirled and danced through the air, while the young gardener did his best not to decorate the castle walls with vomit. Finally, they shot between the last few bolts of lightning and landed on the stronghold's tallest tower, where the evil fairy stood, in the middle of preparing her latest wicked spell.

"You!" she exclaimed. "You're supposed to be asleep!"

"Surprise, surprise," said the princess and stabbed her through the stomach with her dagger.

"Argl!" said the fairy and toppled off the tower.

"I claim this castle," the princess called over the thunder, "in the name of my father the king and my mother the queen! All evil spirits depart, or I will kick your ass!"

There was a last defiant rumble of thunder—then the storm quieted and the sun broke through the clouds in the most beautiful sunrise since the first dawn of Fairyland.

The young gardener stepped towards the princess, a grin on his face. "You," he told her, "are fabulous."

She grinned back. "I know."

With a bow, he extended his hand. "Shall we?"

The girl swept him up in her arms and they shot up into the sky. This time, the young gardener didn't scream. Instead, he whispered directions into the princess's ear. Together they flew across mountains and rivers, past snoring dragons and dancing giants until they finally arrived at another castle, this one even larger and more luxurious than the fairy's stronghold. As they approached, they could hear the sound of wedding bells and cheers all around.

"Sounds like the prince is about to tie the knot."

"I've always wanted to crash a wedding. Shall we, oh princess?"

"We shall, oh...what do you do for a living again?"

"I'm a gardener."

"A gardener? Well, you'll know how to use this, then." And, diving down towards the road, she snatched a pitchfork out of the hand of a startled farmer. A moment later, she was up in the air again, and heading for the palace.

There was indeed a royal wedding going on. The wicked prince had found a girl to marry. True, she wasn't really fairy tale material, and he had to work hard to squeeze her feet into glass slippers, but her father was rich, old and about to kick the bucket—the ideal combination in the prince's eyes. As he strode down the isle of the church, he felt quite pleased with himself. What could possibly stand in the way of his happily ever after?

Crash!

The big stained glass window above the altar exploded, and a flying monster that looked like a two-headed hermaphrodite armed with a pitchfork shot into the church. The lords and ladies of Fairyland were used to a lot—giants, werewolves, vampires—but this was a bit too much! Yelping and screaming, they rushed towards the doors.

The strange creature split apart in mid-air. The girl—for it was a girl—slowly sank to the floor, while the boy with the pitchfork dropped with a splash into the baptismal font.

"Remember me?" Drawing her daggers, the princess started towards the wicked prince, who stood frozen in shock beside his bride-to-be.

"You? You're supposed to be asleep!"

"I hear that a lot," she replied and stabbed him through the heart. He gave a last gurgle and fell over, dead as a doornail.

"Good riddance!" The princess patted the gape-mouthed bride on the shoulder. "You can thank me later."

Then she wiped her blade and turned towards the baptismal font, where the young gardener was on his feet by now, fending off three royal guards with his pitchfork.

"Princess!" he called. "We need to go! We need to leaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

His feet suddenly left the ground, and he and the princess once more shot towards the skies.

They returned to the enchanted kingdom and the Castle of Thorns. The king was still happily snoring on his throne, his crown lopsided on his head and drool trickling out of the side of his mouth. Beside him, the queen had cuddled up into a ball on her throne, her thumb in her mouth.

"Um..." The young gardener glanced from the king to the queen and back again. "What do we do now?"

"Well," the princess sighed, dragging her finger through the thick coating of dust that lay over the royal insignia, "tidying up would be a good start."

Thus, the princess and the gardener embarked on the epic task of cleaning up one hundred years' worth of dust, dirt, and pigeon droppings. Whenever they were not cleaning, they were cutting the hedge around the castle, and soon their efforts showed remarkable success: they were able to cut down the hedge from seven hundred and seventy-seven to a laughable three hundred and thirty-three feet, and even managed to keep a corridor open through which they smuggled in food and water from the outside.

"This," the gardener panted, dropping a pile of firewood next to the fireplace, "is not exactly how I imagined life in a fairytale castle."

"Are you complaining?" the princess asked and, with a smile, grabbed him by the shirt to draw him closer.

He couldn't help smiling. He never could when he looked at her. "No. No, not at all."

"Good," she said and kissed him.

Eventually, the king and queen did wake up. They were overjoyed to see that their daughter was awake and well, and when they were finished hugging and kissing her, the king demanded, "And where is the handsome prince that released you from the spell, my dear? I can't wait to meet him! He must be a truly great warrior and monarch, to defeat such a malignant magic!"

Not-sleeping-anymore Beauty cleared her throat.

"Um, Dad? Maybe you should sit down."

"Why? I want to shake the hand of the prince who rescued my daughter. You there, young gardener! Yes, I mean you skulking around at the door! Run and fetch him, will you?"

The princess leaned over to the young gardener. "Do you think there's any chance we can put him back to sleep again?"

"I don't think so."

"Oh well. I suppose we'd better tell him."

At first, the king was not very pleased to hear that his daughter's prince charming was a weed wimp and earthworm chaser. But after the young gardener explained to him that His Royal Majesty still had a three hundred and thirty-three feet tall wall of thorns around his castle—which he, the gardener, would be happy to take care of free of charge—the king began to see the benefits of having an experienced botanist as a son-in-law.

"All right, you two," he growled. "Do it! Get married! But that hedge had better be gone by Christmas. I want the view from my throne room back."

Thus, the marriage of the young gardener with Sleeping Beauty was celebrated in glorious pomp and splendor, and although the bride had a tendency to snore, they lived happily ever after, while the wicked prince rotted in the ground, providing food and fertilizer for many happy earthworms.

And the moral of the story is: no means no.

And another moral: morals don't always need to be funny.

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My dear Lords, Ladies and Snoring Princesses,

I hope you enjoy the first story of the third batch of my fairy tales?

The entire third batch, under the title of "WARNING! Fairy Tales 3" is already available to purchase both as an ebook, via all the big ebook vendors (Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords) as well as in paperback form, at Amazon. I'm also working on making the paperback available via other routes. Here's the cover of the published edition, showing Snoring Beauty's magnificent castle:

And now a little note for all lovers of fairytale history! The rest of you please plug your ears and close your eyes ;-)

As you will probably have noticed, the above story is based on variations of "Sleeping Beauty". Three variations, to be exact: Sun, Moon and Talia, written by the Italian poet and writer Giambattista Basile in 1634, and The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by Charles Perrault, as well as Little Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm, with the latter two both being loosely based on the Basile version, or on oral retellings of that tale. The most startling difference between the Basile version and the other two—which you probably already noticed in my tale, because I retained this part of the original—was that in the original, Sleeping Beauty wasn't kissed awake, but raped while in a magical sleep. For that, I think, it was high time that the prince got his comeuppance. Fairy tales that take a clear stance on this issue are far too rare.

Yours Truly

Sir Rob (purveyor of deadly magical weedkiller)