Sleeping Beauty and the Castle on the Hill
A bedtime story to read aloud, about five minutes, told with the Story Path tiles: the castle on the hill, the tower and the wood.
Once upon a time, in a castle at the top of a hill, a king and queen had a baby girl. They were so happy that they threw a feast, and invited the wise women of the land to bless her.
One gave her kindness. One gave her laughter. One gave her a voice like a blackbird's. But one wise woman had not been invited, and she swept in cross and cold.
“When she is fifteen,” said the uninvited one, “she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall down.” Then she was gone, and the whole hall went quiet.
But the last wise woman had not given her gift yet. “I can't undo that,” she said softly, “but I can soften it. She won't fall down for ever. She will only fall asleep, for a hundred years.”
So the king had every spindle in the kingdom gathered up and burned. The princess grew up kind and laughing, singing like a blackbird, and she never once saw a spindle, because there weren't any.
Or so everyone thought.
On the morning she turned fifteen, the princess went exploring. She climbed a winding stair she had never noticed before, up and up, to the very top of the old tower with the flag.
In the little room at the top sat an old woman, spinning. Whirr went the wheel. “What's that?” asked the princess, and she reached out to touch it.
Prick. And the princess yawned, and lay down on the little bed in the tower room, and fell fast asleep.
And all through the castle, everyone else fell asleep too. The king on his throne. The cook by the oven. The cat by the fire, and the doves on the roof, and even the flies on the wall.
Around the castle a wood began to grow. Thick, tangled, prickly, with brambles and briars, higher every year, until all you could see of the castle was the flag on the very top of the tower.
Many travellers tried to get through. But the briars held on tight, and every one of them had to turn back.
Then, on the very day the hundred years were over, a young traveller came along the path. And as he stepped into the wood, the briars burst into flower, and opened, and let him through.
He walked past the sleeping cook and the sleeping cat, and up the winding stair, to the little room at the top of the tower.
The princess opened her eyes. She stretched, and smiled. And all through the castle, everyone woke up too: the king, the cook, the cat, the doves, and even the flies on the wall.
They had a feast that night, the biggest the castle had ever seen. And this time every single wise woman in the land was invited. The End.
The End
