Reimagined Fairy Tales: The Twelve Dancing Princesses

This is a lightly revised version of a writing class assignment to reimagine a classic fairy tale in a flash fiction piece. It's based on the original "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". The original's ending felt somewhat unfinished to me, so I wrote my retold version as an epilogue-of-sorts.

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In the castle, there is a grand bedroom with twelve beds, each of which had belonged to one of the princesses who lived there. All are made up with clean sheets, pristine and untouched, save one. A young princess sits on its edge, writing in her diary with a shaky hand.

I told you so. I told you, but you wouldn’t listen. You never listened. We had a gift, and you threw it away. You took what we had for granted, and thanks to you, we lost it.

She pauses and lifts her head to look around the empty room, blinking away angry tears as old memories flood through her mind.

You've said that you’re happy now, that your new husband is kind and you have everything you want in your new life as the future queen, but what about the rest of us? Did you truly think we would be happy too, getting married off one by one to princes from neighboring kingdoms? You told us it was time to wake up from the dream, time to return to the real world. But it wasn’t a dream; it was as real as you and me. Have you so easily forgotten? Or is it easier to pretend it was only a fantasy when you know you can never return? You may have convinced our sisters to let go, but I still recall everything.

Do you remember how it all started? How you found mother’s old spellbook and talked us into experimenting with magic, in the hopes of finding a way to escape the mundanity of everyday life? You were always so good at talking people into things. And we succeeded, against all odds. We walked from this very room into the kingdom of the Fairies, and danced the night away in the middle of the woods, where the trees glittered with silver and gold, until a few of their hunters stumbled upon us by chance. Do you remember how furious they were at seeing humans mysteriously appearing in the heart of their realm, how they insisted on bringing us before their king and queen? How when we met them, you convinced them that we were harmless, merely seeking somewhere we could be free of the burdens of our daily lives?

Do you remember what the Fairy Queen told us that first night? How she took pity on our desire to have a place of sanctuary, and gave us a charm, in the form of a silver pendant, that could open the path between worlds, though only after sundown, with the condition that we must return home by first light or remain in their realm forever? How she made it clear that we must never allow anyone to discover where we disappeared to every night, leaving no trace but our worn-out shoes the next morning? It was you who made the promise to abide by her terms, and it was you who broke them.

For nearly a year, everything was perfect. Then came that fateful night; I tried to warn you something was wrong, and you didn’t listen. You let a man follow us into the Fairies’ land, three times no less, before the truth was revealed to all. When father found out, he took the charm that let us travel there, and mother’s books, and locked them away so we could never go back. Since then I’ve watched each of my older sisters, starting with you, abandon the hope of recovering that magic we once shared, and content themselves with the mundane lives we once longed to escape.

Yesterday father announced I was to be engaged as well, with the wedding planned in six months’ time. You’ve told me time and time again I’ll be happy too if I can just “grow up” like you did, but I know better. You’re not as happy as you claim; none of you are. But I’m not going to let your carelessness be the end of the life that I loved.

The princess stops again and glances out the window, where the evening light is rapidly fading. She writes the last lines hastily, before it’s too dark to see her words.

Do you know what I did, sister? I broke into the castle vault where father’s old things are stored. I found the fairy charm, still there after all this time. The Fairy Queen may not be willing to give you a second chance after you broke your word, but if she was kind to you back then, I believe she will be kind to me now. I know you'd try to stop me if you knew what I was doing, but by the time you see this it will be morning again, and I'll be long gone. Consider this my farewell, though not a fond one.

At last, the princess sets her pen down, and leaves her diary open on the foot of the bed. She collects a bundle she packed earlier that day, including several spare pairs of shoes, and clasps the chain of the pendant-charm around her neck. She walks into the center of the room, recites the words she knows by heart, and claps her hands. In the floor a staircase opens, leading downward toward a distant glow. She takes one final look at the home she had shared with those closest to her, who each left to go their own ways. They made their choices, she thinks, and now I’m making mine. Then the princess descends the spiral stairs, her steps lighter than they’d been in a long time.

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