睡美人(英文原著).doc

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SLEEPING BEAUTY Revised Narrative 7/13/2006

This is the story of Sleeping Beauty… which begins “once upon a time”… once upon a time long ago. It was so long ago that even the oldest people now alive – like grandmothers and grandfathers – cannot remember it. In a special kingdom there was a King and Queen who lived in a beautiful palace. The palace had great walls made of white marble that shined in the darkest night. And around the walls were high towers with golden roofs that glowed in the sunlight.

And around the walls of the palace, for miles and miles, there were beautiful gardens, and trees that reached straight and tall to the sky. And in those great trees came many birds that would sit and sing their sweet songs all day long. And beneath those trees, deer would stroll and jump and play across the grass and among fields of flowers that seemed to hold all the colors of the world.

It was a beautiful place, a magical place. There was everything in the kingdom that the hearts of the King and Queen could wish for… except one. And that was the one thing in all the world that the King and Queen needed to make them happy. A child… a little child who would fill the palace with smiles and laughter… a child who would run and play in the sunny gardens, and pick flowers to give to her mother, the Queen.
Without this child in their lives, the King and Queen would often feel very sad.
But then a wonderful thing happened! After many years, the King and Queen got their wish! A beautiful baby daughter was born to them! She had a face as pink as a sunset. Her eyes were as blue as the sky. And her tiny mouth was as red as a rose.
“She’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” said the happy Queen.
“She’s our little princess,” said the King. “Her name will be Miranda.”

Now you might guess how glad the King and Queen were to have the little Princess Miranda in their lives! They decided to have a great party for everyone all across their kingdom. Picnics were held in every town. The bells of all the great churches rang out day and night. And every child in the countryside was given a gift to celebrate the birth of the Princess.

But the biggest party of all was in the palace! Everyone was getting ready to honor the King and Queen, and the baby Princess. Colorful banners and ribbons were placed on the walls. Bright flags were raised on the flagpoles in the towers where they flapped and waved in the summer breeze. The Queen’s maids went up and down the hallways sprinkling the shiny marble floors with sweet-smelling leaves and flower petals.

Of the many friends and guests coming to this party, the most important were seven very powerful fairies. Maybe you know a little bit about fairies, hmm? How they are magical creatures that can fly, with bodies that glow brighter than a hundred fireflies! And maybe you know that fairies are very picky about what they eat and drink, because they’re so used to the finest food that the kind of food you and I normally eat seems strange to them.
So the Queen was very anxious that the fairies would be pleased with everything about this celebration. You see, these seven fairies had been asked to be godmothers to the baby Princess, and the Queen wanted them to be happy and in the best of spirits so they would be kind to little Miranda.

It was a summer afternoon when the party began. Up in the sky above the palace, the fairies came into sight, sailing on the air like a flight of bright-winged butterflies. You see, these seven fairies were all very good fairies, and had known the King and Queen all of their lives. So when they arrived, it was like old friends seeing each other again. There were warm hugs and smiles, and much news to catch up on. But no one forgot the real reason the fairies came.
“Where is she?,” said the first fairy. “Where’s that darling Princess Miranda?”
“Over here, in the nursery,” smiled the Queen.
And when the fairies first laid their eyes on the baby Princess, they all gasped and could hardly breathe. Fairies live a very long time, and they all agreed that in their very long lives they had never seen a child as beautiful as this baby. Why, they believed the baby Princess was even more beautiful than a fairy baby.

After this, the party began in the great banquet hall. The King and Queen took their place at the grand table, with their special guests, the fairies, sitting closest to them. And as the fairies sat down, each was delighted to see that their plates, cups, knives, spoons and forks were made of gold, silver and shiny jewels. This was going to be a special day.
Just as the grand feast began, and everyone was as happy as happy could be, there was a terrible screaming sound and the flapping of giant wings, and something like a black cloud passed before the tall windows and darkened all the banquet hall so that one person could hardly see the other.
Then the great doors of the palace burst open with a horrible bang. The King and Queen shook with fear. Coming into the room was the most frightening sight! It was a twisted and wrinkled old fairy in a long trailing black gown, with her pale face almost hidden in a black hood. She had come in a flying black chariot pulled by fierce creatures with an eagle’s face and lion’s body. This was the dark fairy, Tormentilla.

The King turned pale, and the Queen almost fainted. Even the seven good fairies found it hard to be brave. Tormentilla was a spiteful fairy who lived all alone, far away from everywhere and everyone, in a black stone castle in the middle of a dry and dead desert.
“Someone forgot to invite me to this party for the little Princess,” hissed Tormentilla. “And that makes me very very angry.”
The poor Queen had been so happy and so busy that she had forgotten all about inviting this dark fairy. So she and the King did all they could to make Tormentilla feel welcome. They had a chair brought up to the banquet table, and told the fairy over and over again how sorry they were to not have invited her.
But nothing… nothing could make Tormentilla happy now. She would eat and drink absolutely nothing, no matter how delicious it was. The evil fairy just sat there with a hard and unhappy look on her twisted face. She gave angry, jealous looks at the other fairies’ jeweled cups and dishes.
The fun was gone from the party, and everyone hurried through the banquet as quickly as possible. Then… it was time for what was supposed to be a joyous thing… time for the fairies to give their presents to little Princess Miranda.
The maids brought the cradle of the tiny sleeping Princess into the room.
The first fairy stepped forward and said, “She shall always be as good as gold.”
The second fairy said, “She shall be the cleverest Princess in the whole world.”
The third fairy smiled at the child and said, “She shall be the most beautiful.”
The fourth fairy sprinkled magic dust and said, “She shall be the happiest.”
And for her gift, the fifth fairy said, “She shall have the sweetest voice that was ever heard.”
The sixth fairy floated to the side of the cradle and said, “Everyone shall love her.”
Then suddenly the wicked old fairy Tormentilla pushed them all aside. She stood beside the cradle, glared at the sleeping baby, then shook her black crooked stick at the King and Queen. “And this is my gift,” she howled. “The day will come when your Princess will prick her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel and die!”

The Queen fell to her knees and begged Tormentilla to call back her words and remove the curse. The King offered the evil fairy half of his kingdom.
But the old woman just turned and walked away, laughing all the way to the door as she left.
There was a terrible silence in the palace now. Only the crying of the Queen could be heard. But then, from behind a curtain, stepped the seventh fairy. She had hidden herself, knowing that Tormentilla might do something mean. So now the seventh fairy went to the King and Queen, and put her arms gently around them.
“Don’t cry, dear Queen. While I don’t have the right magic to undo Tormentilla’s wicked curse, I can promise you that your daughter will not die. Rather, she will fall into a deep sleep for a hundred years. But one day a Prince will come and wake her up with a kiss.”

So the King and Queen dried their tears and thanked this kind fairy for her good gift. The fairies left and returned to their world. The King immediately made a law that every spinning wheel, which is very much like a sewing machine, should be destroyed and put away. And no more should be made. In this way the King believed that there would be no chance of the Princess pricking her finger on a needle.

So the years went by. Just as the King and Queen had dreamed, they now had a beautiful child to run and play in the palace and gardens. And the happiest thing was that the promises of the six fairies had all come true. As the girl grew into a young woman, she had become the best and the prettiest and the cleverest Princess in all the world, and everybody loved her.
By the time Princess Miranda was almost eighteen years old, the evil words of Tormentilla were almost forgotten.

Now the King and Queen wanted to give something very special to their daughter on her eighteenth birthday, which was just a few weeks away. They decided to give her the surprise gift of a very beautiful horse which was owned by another king who lived in a nearby country. So the King and Queen set out on a trip to buy the horse, leaving the Princess behind at the palace with her ladies-in-waiting.
Now, you might think there’s a lot a person could find to do in a large old palace. But when you’ve lived there for so many years, as Princess Miranda had, it can get boring pretty fast. Oh, for the first day or so the Princess would play games in the gardens with her ladies, or would spend time redecorating her room. But then she missed her parents and became restless, and began exploring all of the tower rooms and out-of-the-way attics that a palace has. It was like an adventure.

Then one day, Princess Miranda went to the oldest part of the palace. She made her way up a narrow winding stairway into a tall tower. There, at the top of the steps, was an old wooden door. And behind that door was coming a winding and squeaking sound. The curious Princess lifted the latch of the door and pushed it open. There, before the tower window was a little white-haired old woman seated at a spinning wheel as she made cloth. The Princess just stood and stared. Since her father had ordered all spinning wheels destroyed, the girl had never seen one before in her life. So why was this one not destroyed, you wonder?

It’s because this poor old woman had lived in the tower for years. And no one remembered she was there to tell her. And even if someone had remembered, the old woman would not have been able to hear them because her hearing was gone.

“Tell me something,” the Princess asked. “What are you doing there? Why does that wheel spin and go whirr, whirr, whirr? And what do you do with that needle?” But, of course, the old woman just kept on working and didn’t look up because she couldn’t hear anything at all.
The Princess went over to the old woman and gently put her hand on her shoulder. Scared and surprised, the old lady jumped.
“Goodness!,” she said. “Deary, deary me! You gave me a scare. And who might you be, my pretty young darling?”
“I’m the Princess Miranda, daughter of the King and Queen.”
But no matter how loud she said it, the old woman couldn’t hear her. So then the Princess began pointing to the spinning wheel, and soon the old woman understood that the young woman wanted to see if she could sit there and work it.
The old woman nodded and laughed, and got up from her seat to let the Princess take her place. But no sooner had Princess Miranda begun the spinning wheel than she pricked a finger on the needle. And just as Tormentilla had said, the Princess sank down into a deep sleep. But that wasn’t all that happen!
A little bird had been sitting in the tower window and singing a sweet song. But now its song stopped, and the bird’s head dropped over as it also went into a deep sleep. All of the people in the courtyard fell asleep.
Even the dear old lady standing at the side of the Princess stopped in mid-word and fell asleep where she stood.
All throughout the palace the same thing was happening. The maids and ladies-in-waiting closed their eyes and fell into a deep slumber. Knights, soldiers, and even their horses stopped in the middle of whatever they were doing and went to sleep.
The King and Queen were returning to the palace at that very moment and, wouldn’t you know it, they went into a deep sleep even as they were asking about their daughter.

At the same moment that the Princess pricked her finger, and everyone in the palace came under the spell, a great darkness came over the kingdom and its once-beautiful gardens. It was as if it were suddenly night. But what was really happening was a most terrible thing.
Magic woods, brush and vines sprung up all around the palace. The branches were thick and filled with sharp thorns and prickly plants. Vines twisted around so much that the smallest animal, even if it had not been asleep, could have crawled through it. The harsh, thorny woods grew so thick and so high that they hid even the tallest towers of the castle. No one could see it anymore. And no one traveling around these woods could imagine that such a once-beautiful palace lay behind them.

And so the years passed… many, many years… a hundred years. So much time that the palace, and its sad story, were almost forgotten. It was little more than a bedtime story for children.

One day, the son of a king from a nearby country passed that way as he was hunting with his men, horses, and dogs. He was a prince, Prince Florimond. And he was known in his homeland as a good, brave, and honest man. The Prince was so excited about the hunt that he took a different path and became separated from everyone else. Soon, he saw that he was lost in a country he had never been in before. The more the Prince tried to find his way back, the more lost he became.
Finally, Prince Florimond came to a woodcutter’s cottage and stopped to ask for directions. But the Prince couldn’t help but notice a road which led into thick woods ahead.
“Tell me,” asked the Prince. “What lies beyond those woods?”
“A sleeping beauty,” said the woodcutter. “There’s a legend that inside those woods is an enchanted palace where lies a beautiful Princess who has been sleeping for a hundred years.”
“And will she ever wake up?,” asked the Prince.
“Ah, yes,” said the woodcutter. “But only when she is kissed by a prince.”

At that moment, Prince F