One sunny spring morning, a
merchant asked his son and daughter to go off into the woods and pick some
flowers for their mother's birthday. They went separate ways, the brother
staying along the path while the daughter wandered to a beautiful meadow she
had seen through the trees. While she was picking wildflowers there, the girl
thought she heard the bushes rustle behind her. But when she looked, no one was
there. Thinking nothing of it, she continued to pick flowers.
Later that morning, the merchant's
son returned home. His sister was nowhere in sight. The merchant and son
searched the woods but could not find her anywhere. On their way home, they
were discussing what to do and whether they should tell the mother when who
should be standing in the doorway but the girl herself.
"Where were you?" her
father demanded.
"Picking flowers for
Mother," she replied.
"You had us worried! Never do
that again!" he told her.
She told him she was sorry and
that she would not frighten him like that again.
Over time, the merchant's son
noticed that his sister was acting quite odd. He asked her one day why she was
acting so strange.
“I’m acting the way I normally act,”
she told him. “You clearly don’t know your own sister.”
He apologized for upsetting her, holding out
his arms in an attempt to comfort her. She hugged him back, and when they
pulled out of their embrace, he locked hands with her and glanced under her
left arm for the strange birthmark his sister bore: a single golden hair. There
was no such hair on this girl. The merchant’s son knew this could not be his
sister.
That very afternoon, he asked his
father and mother for leave to go off and see the world, not telling them his
theory so as not to alarm them. They granted his request, and he rode off into
the country to seek his sister.
Meanwhile, far away, a white cat
prowled anxiously around in an enchanted tower, looking for a new escape. The
fairies of the surrounding enchanted wood had tried explaining how she was part
of a prophecy in which humans and fairies were to be united. The fairies did
not know exactly what the prophecy entailed, but they knew she was the one to
fulfill it. However much they begged her to understand, she refused, hissing
and clawing at any of them that came too close.
She had even tried to escape,
before they turned her into a cat. She had woven a ladder from the yarn they
had given her to occupy herself in her confinement. But the fairies, quickly
discovering her plot on one of their daily visits, found the ladder stuffed in her
mattress. They then turned her into a cat and undid her work so that all she
could do was paw at it. The white cat spent her days playing with the string or
licking herself, always taking longer to run her rough tongue over the golden
hair under her left foreleg.
She was homesick, constantly
reminded of her family by the half-full basket of flowers, now dried up, that
lay on the table in the center of the tower room. She passed time perched on
the windowsill, watching robins and blue jays fly by, singing joyful tunes. Sometimes
she just wanted to jump from the tower.
I wish they had turned me into a bird so that I might fly home, she
thought to herself.
The fairies are much
smarter than that, though. Otherwise I wouldn’t be stuck in here while my
family enjoys that imposter’s company.
Not many days passed before her
loneliness came to an end.
It was a day like any other if
you’re a cat trapped in a tower: sunny, with birds chirping and everything
happy and free while she was miserable and lonely. The white cat was staring
hopelessly out of the window when all of a sudden, a man appear from the trees,
riding towards her imprisoning tower on a white stallion. When he was close
enough, she mewed as loudly and forlornly as she could. He looked up and
noticed her pacing the length of the window, unable to get down.
“You poor thing!” the man
exclaimed. He dismounted and rummaged in his hunting bag for some rope, tied a
large loop at one end, and flung it up towards the window latch in the hope
that it would not only catch but that it could support his weight. As if by
magic, it only took one try and he was up and in the tower in less time than it
took to find it.
The man stayed with her in that
lonely tower, tossing the ball of yarn so she could chase it and stroking her
soft fur. He was so captivated by the sweet demeanor of the cat that he
continued to visit the tower every day. He would have taken her, but he didn’t
know who owned the cat, and he was not the kind of person to take something
that did not belong to him.
She didn’t speak at first, for
fear of frightening him away and never seeing him again. But one day, they were
both so comfortable with each other that she started talking to him. At first
he was shocked, but he cared too much about her to mind this magical quality.
He listened as she explained her situation to him, how she had been kidnapped by
the fairies and left in the tower. The only thing she didn’t tell him was about
the prophecy.
He stroked her fur to comfort her.
She purred. When he left that day, he lay awake that entire night thinking of
any means to save the white cat from this horrible treatment.
The next day, he went to visit her
again and tried to bring her out of the window with him. But the fairies had
put a spell on the tower preventing her from leaving while she was in the form
of a cat. The spell had to be broken before she could leave the tower.
So the man continued to visit her.
Eventually he realized that he had fallen in love with her and did not want to
leave her. She pleaded with him, knowing that he had duties he must attend to.
He consented, but before he left, he asked her for a kiss. “I know you’re a
cat, but you are the sweetest being I have ever met, and I love you.”
“I love you as well,” she said,
and moved closer so that he may kiss her. And when he did, she transformed back
into a maiden before his eyes! The tower started shrinking, the walls around
them falling away, until they were standing on the ground, her hands in his, with
a pile of stones lying next to them. He knelt down on one knee and asked her to
marry him, and she could only nod and cry.
At this time, the merchant’s son
happened to ride up to that very spot. “Sister!” he exclaimed, dismounting and
running up to her.
“Brother!” she said, doing the
same. And so it was settled. He brought his sister and her fiancé back home
where the imposter, seeing the spell broken, disappeared altogether. Everything
was explained and the wedding date was set.
When the wedding came, even the
fairies showed up to bless the happy couple. It was discovered that the
handsome young man was part fairy, so that the union between him the merchant’s
daughter did indeed fulfill the prophecy.