Fantasy

Once upon a time in a land now long forgotten by mankind, there
dwelt a king and a queen. Both longed for a child to bring some cheer
into their lives and to inherit the throne. For many years, it seemed
as though there would be no heir to the throne, as is the usual burden
that must fall upon kings and queens in fairy tales.

Then one fateful day, while Queen Ana was strolling in the palace
garden, she came upon a young lady sitting under one of the royal
coconut trees.

"Who are you?" demanded the Queen. "What are you doing here?"

"Why, don't you recognise me, Queen?" said the stranger, standing up.
"I am your fairy godmother, the Fairy Bee."

The Queen took a step back and scrutinised the lady. "It is you!" she
shrieked, and threw her arms around the fairy. "But I thought you were
a lot taller than this." (Indeed, the Fairy Bee reached only to the
Queen's shoulders and the Queen was not very tall.)

"Well, some fairies don't get very tall, you know... Anyway, I come to
offer you a wish."

"Only one wish? Isn't three the usual number?"

"New rules, Queen. If you're over 30, you only get one wish."

The Queen blushed. "I'm not that old!"

The Fairy Bee laughed a little laugh, obviously not believing her
goddaughter. "Now, what will you wish for? Hurry up - I haven't got all
day." She tossed her hair and gave the Queen an impatient look.

"I wish for a child," answered the Queen almost immediately. "Boy or
girl I don't care. Even if the child is as small as my thumb it
wouldn't matter."

"So be it. Come round to this tree tomorrow at noon."
With that, Fairy Bee vanished.

The next day at noon, the Queen hurried out to the coconut tree. She
found a perfectly round coconut lying on the grass. She picked it up
and ordered that it be split open very, very carefully.

When it was opened, the Queen was quite delighted and astonished to see
a little boy, smaller than her thumb, sleeping peacefully inside the
coconut. The King, whose name was Timothy, was informed of this and
soon came running to see the boy that was to be his heir.

"Isn't he a dear? I think I'll call him... Francis!" said Queen
Ana.

"He's so tiny," murmured the King, taking no notice of the Queen's name
for the boy. He couldn't help wondering how the country was to be run
by someone who was not even as big as the palm of his hand.

The trend at the time was to have a grand buffet in honour of the
firstborn and the King, not wishing to be called old-fashioned,
followed the trend and held the largest buffet ever in the country.
Special guests included the Fairy Bee, who was asked to be Prince
Francis Felix Chalcedon Friendlie's godmother.

The King's fears about his son being so tiny soon disappeared when
Prince Francis grew bigger in size as he grew older. By the time he was
17, he was quite normal. The people loved the prince for his
congeniality and good heart. The young girls of the country were
particularly smitten by the combination of the prince's good looks and
good nature.

Unknown to anyone, the Wicked Witch of the West had been cooking up a
plan of revenge. The good King &; Queen had invited everyone to
their son's buffet - even the Witch. But the Witch was seated by the
door, although she wanted a place by the window. From then on, the
Witch bore a grudge against the whole royal family. (Some historians
are of the opinion that she was actually just looking for an excuse to
do some evil and wreak some havoc on the land.)

Standing over her huge, black magic cauldron, the Witch cackled in glee
as her plan was put into action eighteen years after the Day of her
Humiliation, as she remembered it. Dancing around the cauldron of
bubbling green and purple liquid that glowed, she chanted:

"Giant squid in the sea so deep,
Little chicks that chirp and peep;
Forever and ever my spells shall keep
Prince Francis in everlasting sleep!"

When she uttered the last word of that spell, Prince Francis collapsed
there and then, causing great confusion in the palace. The King
summoned the best physicians; the Queen fell down in a faint; the
servants rushed to and fro in a most chaotic manner.

In the midst of that hubbub, Fairy Bee appeared. With a wave of her
wand, every single person in the palace sank into a deep slumber. She
looked sadly at her godson, lying on his featherbed. She said in a loud
voice (Fairy Bee never could keep her voice down), "O my dear godson, I
cannot break the Witch's spell, for it against the fairy rules. I can
only alter it - and so I shall! A hundred thousand years hence, you
will be awakened by the voice of one yet unknown! And when you wake, so
shall the rest awake."

She then magically transported him to the topmost room of one of the
palace towers and vanished.

***

A hundred thousand years passed and the palace was overgrown by weeds
and other flora, particularly Rafflesia flowers. The stench from the
numerous Rafflesias that flourished there was enough to keep any
would-be intruder away.

On the 100, 000th anniversary of Fairy Bee's alteration of the spell
cast by the Wicked Witch of the West, a young lady by the name of
Evonne happened by the area. Now by that time the world had changed
greatly and it was well into the twentieth century. As I was saying,
Evonne happened to be driving by the Forest of No Return, to give it
the local name. Sitting at the wheel of her metallic blue Proton Wira,
imported from Malaysia, she cast a glance at the forest. A sharp gleam
of reflected light caught her eye. Strange, she thought. She stopped to
take a better look. She spied the top of what looked like a turret
peeping just above the treetops. Curious, she decided to investigate
this peculiarity.

Battling the pong that pervaded her sensitive olfactory senses, she
made her way through the woods. She soon arrived at a clearing. She was
most thankful and rather surprised to find that the odour emitted by
the huge Rafflesias had disappeared by then. She had no time to dwell
on that though, for the next moment, she realised that right before her
was a wall of stone. It was rather moss-covered and overgrown with an
array of creeping plants. Gingerly, she reached out and touched the
wall. Suddenly, part of the wall seemed to vanish before her very eyes.
Startled, she couldn't budge an inch. But she recovered after a few
short moments and gathered her courage to explore beyond the
wall.

Walking forwards, she found herself staring at a tower. A formidable
red and grey brick tower. She became even more curious. What could be
at the top of the tower? She wanted to go up and see for herself but
she could see no way to get up.

Trying to figure it out, she failed to notice five creatures, the size
of a mouse deer, crawl slowly across the grass to her. They fixed their
beady black eyes upon her. It was a few minutes before she noticed
them. She stepped back and her foot touched smallest one, causing her
to give a little shriek and turn around. Seeing that it was only a
snail, she relaxed.

"Well! It's only a snail," she began, then stopped in surprise, seeing
the other four.

The snails had cone-shaped shells that were a queer transparent bronze
colour, decorated with thin white swirls. Their soft bodies were as
clear as glass. She stared at the odd sight. The five snails surrounded
her in a semi-circle. They gazed at her, not moving nor making any
sound. All of a sudden she could hear them speaking, although they
seemed to be devoid of mouths.

"I am Yeshua," said the largest snail.

"My name is Aster," said the second in line.

"I am Konig," said the third, whose eyes were a little crooked, so
Evonne thought.

"They call me MC?," said the fourth.

*E = mc?*, thought Evonne, recalling Einstein's theory of
Relativity.

"And I am Cylie," said the smallest of the snails.

Evonne smiled at the little one. "A cute name for a cute snail," she
said to herself. Then she heard a chorus of small voices, all perfectly
in tune: *Think of a wonderful thought. Any happy little
thought.*

"Huh?" Evonne blinked at the snails. Looking around, she saw no other
living thing. She began to really doubt her sanity but she heard that
'chorus' again: *Think of the happiest things. It's the same as having
wings.*
The words reminded her of the Peter Pan movie that she'd watched in her
childhood.

She regarded at the five beings with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion
and disbelief. She sighed. "Oh all right? I'll try it." *Why am I
talking to snails,* she asked herself? *I must be completely
mad.*

Nevertheless, she closed her eyes and thought of the happiest things
she could. When she opened her eyes, she found herself rising higher
and higher into the air. She was dumbstruck. She kept going until she
reached the top of the tower. She saw an open window and peeked in. She
beheld a room richly decorated in an ornate manner, with a four-poster
bed right in the middle. On the bed lay a young man, handsome &;
elegantly dressed in deep maroon.

"What on earth?" she began, still gazing around the room in wonder. A
movement on the bed caught her attention. The young man sat up and
blinked his eyes. He turned and saw Evonne.

"May I ask, who you are?" inquired Prince Francis, looking quizzically
at her. (I am happy to state that his good manners had not deteriorated
in spite of his hundred thousand years of sleep.)

"I'm Evonne. You are?"

"Prince Francis Felix Chalcedon Friendlie, son of King Timothy &;
Queen Ana."

*What a mouthful for a name,* thought Evonne, but wisely kept her
thoughts to herself. "Why are you here?"

The Prince replied, "Honestly, I don't know. Well, won't you come in? I
daresay it's a lot more comfortable in here than to be floating out
there."

"I suppose so," answered she, and no sooner had she said that than she
found herself inside the room.

The door opened and the King and Queen rushed in; King Timothy's grave
countenance more solemn than ever and Queen Ana looking quite frantic.
Seeing Evonne there, the royal parents demanded an explanation. The
Fairy Bee materialised unexpectedly and saved all parties a lot of
trouble by doing the explaining herself.

When the explaining was done, the King looked at his son. "Well, son, I
suppose now you'll want to marry this young lady. That's the way it
always goes, isn't it?"

Prince Francis fixed his eyes on Evonne. She returned his steady gaze.
After a few seconds, the Prince turned back to his father.

"No, Father, I don't."

King Timothy and Queen Ana were most astonished by this statement. It
was most bewildering to the two royals, who were accustomed to the
traditional ways.

"Why so, son?" queried the Queen.

"Well, I don't think I'm that ready for marriage yet. Are you,
Evonne?"

Evonne shook her head. "Not just yet, I'm afraid. I'm only twenty-two -
still a bit too young to settle down," she said, with a little laugh.
"Besides, I doubt if I'm royal material," she added.

Fairy Bee, silent for a while, then chipped in. "Don't worry about it,
my dear. Your job here is done. I have other plans for my godson here
anyway."

"You do?" Queen Ana said. "What are they?"

"I have in mind a certain Princess Jaci Catherine," began Fairy Bee.
"Oh, I almost forgot about you." She turned back to Evonne. "Would you
like to go home now?"

"Back to my car would be good enough."

"So it shall be." Fairy Bee waved her wand and Evonne found the room
around her fading away in nothingness. In no time at all, she was back
inside her car.

She sat up straighter, wondering if it had all been a dream or some
sort of hallucination. When she finally decided that it was a mere
phantasm on her part, she felt a hard object in her pocket. She reached
in and pulled out a brooch of topaz. Engraved upon it were the words
"Thank you" in fancy lettering. She stared at the brooch in
incredulity. Was it really all a mere figment of her imagination? She
simply didn't know.

THE END