Cinderella by Roald Dahl

I guess you think you know this story.
You don't. The real one's much more gory.
The phoney one, the one you know,
Was cooked up years and years ago,
And made to sound all soft and sappy
just to keep the children happy.
Mind you, they got the first bit right,
The bit where, in the dead of night,
The Ugly Sisters, jewels and all,
Departed for the Palace Ball,
While darling little Cinderella
Was locked up in a slimy cellar,
Where rats who wanted things to eat,
Began to nibble at her feet.

She bellowed 'Help!' and 'Let me out!
The Magic Fairy heard her shout.
Appearing in a blaze of light,
She said: 'My dear, are you all right?'
'All right?' cried Cindy .'Can't you see
'I feel as rotten as can be!'
She beat her fist against the wall,
And shouted, 'Get me to the Ball!
'There is a Disco at the Palace!
'The rest have gone and 1 am jalous!
'I want a dress! I want a coach!
'And earrings and a diamond brooch!
'And silver slippers, two of those!
'And lovely nylon panty hose!
'Done up like that I'll guarantee
'The handsome Prince will fall for me!'
The Fairy said, 'Hang on a tick.'
She gave her wand a mighty flick
And quickly, in no time at all,
Cindy was at the Palace Ball!

It made the Ugly Sisters wince
To see her dancing with the Prince.
She held him very tight and pressed
herself against his manly chest.
The Prince himself was turned to pulp,
All he could do was gasp and gulp.
Then midnight struck. She shouted,'Heck!
Ive got to run to save my neck!'
The Prince cried, 'No! Alas! Alack!'
He grabbed her dress to hold her back.
As Cindy shouted, 'Let me go!'
The dress was ripped from head to toe.

She ran out in her underwear,
And lost one slipper on the stair.
The Prince was on it like a dart,
He pressed it to his pounding heart,
'The girl this slipper fits,' he cried,
'Tomorrow morn shall be my bride!
I'll visit every house in town
'Until I've tracked the maiden down!'
Then rather carelessly, I fear,
He placed it on a crate of beer.

At once, one of the Ugly Sisters,
(The one whose face was blotched with blisters)
Sneaked up and grabbed the dainty shoe,
And quickly flushed it down the loo.
Then in its place she calmly put
The slipper from her own left foot.
Ah ha, you see, the plot grows thicker,
And Cindy's luck starts looking sicker.

Next day, the Prince went charging down
To knock on all the doors in town.
In every house, the tension grew.
Who was the owner of the shoe?
The shoe was long and very wide.
(A normal foot got lost inside.)
Also it smelled a wee bit icky.
(The owner's feet were hot and sticky.)
Thousands of eager people came
To try it on, but all in vain.
Now came the Ugly Sisters' go.
One tried it on. The Prince screamed, 'No!'
But she screamed, 'Yes! It fits! Whoopee!
'So now you've got to marry me!'
The Prince went white from ear to ear.
He muttered, 'Let me out of here.'
'Oh no you don't! You made a vow!
'There's no way you can back out now!'
'Off with her head!'The Prince roared back.
They chopped it off with one big whack.
This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,
'She's prettier without her head.'
Then up came Sister Number Two,
Who yelled, 'Now I will try the shoe!'
'Try this instead!' the Prince yelled back.
He swung his trusty sword and smack
Her head went crashing to the ground.
It bounced a bit and rolled around.
In the kitchen, peeling spuds,
Cinderella heard the thuds
Of bouncing heads upon the floor,
And poked her own head round the door.
'What's all the racket? 'Cindy cried.
'Mind your own bizz,' the Prince replied.
Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! she thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?

The Prince cried, 'Who's this dirty slut?
'Off with her nut! Off with her nut!'
Just then, all in a blaze of light,
The Magic Fairy hove in sight,
Her Magic Wand went swoosh and swish!
'Cindy! 'she cried, 'come make a wish!
'Wish anything and have no doubt
'That I will make it come about!'
Cindy answered, 'Oh kind Fairy,
'This time I shall be more wary.
'No more Princes, no more money.
'I have had my taste of honey.
I'm wishing for a decent man.
'They're hard to find. D'you think you can?'
Within a minute, Cinderella
Was married to a lovely feller,
A simple jam maker by trade,
Who sold good home-made marmalade.
Their house was filled with smiles and laughter
And they were happy ever after.

The Prince to Snow White by Polly Peterson

(in response to Snow White and the Prince by Delia Sherman )


Did you think that I found you

by chance, Maiden?

Did you believe

I was drawn to your crystal casket,

like a hummingbird to its nectar,

by the allure of ruby lips,

the gaze of azure eyes?

The mirror told your mother,

at forty,

what she already knew,

not in her heart,

but in her spleen.

"Take her into the forest,"

she commanded,

"for her heartbeat plays

the music of my mortality,

and must be stopped."

Still the mirror

told her true.

She was the fading flower —

a fresh blossom

opened in you.

Ragged she came,

and gnarled and stooped,

hoping by this guise

to fool fate,

to quell the crone within.

Her apple froze you fast —

a talisman

to keep time

from touching her.

Alas, to no avail.

You shall have

your mother's love.

Indeed, you have it now,

even as you

usurp her place.

Did you think that I found you

by chance, Maiden?

You are beautiful, sublime,

yet not so lovely

as our daughter will be:

your mother's daughter's child —

her immortality.

Snow White to the Prince by Delia Sherman

I am beautiful you say, sublime,

Black and crystal as a winter's night,

With lips like rubies, cabochon,

My eyes deep blue as sapphires.

I cannot blame you for your praise:

You took me for my beauty, after all;

A jewel in a casket, still as death,

A lovely effigy, a prince's prize,

The fairest in the land.

But you woke me, or your horses did,

Stumbling as they bore me down the path,

Shaking the poisoned apple from my throat.

And now you say you love me, and would wed me

For my beauty's sake. My cursed beauty.

Will you hear now why I curse it?

It should have been my mother's — it had been,

Until I took it from her.

I was fourteen, a flower newly blown,

My mother's faithful shadow and her joy.

I remember combing her hair one day,

Playing for love her tire-woman's part,

Folding her thick hair strand over strand

Into an ebon braid, thick as my wrist,

And pinned it round and round her head

Into a living crown.

I looked up from my handiwork and saw

Our faces, hers and mine, caught in the mirror's eye.

Twin white ovals like repeated moons

Bright amid our midnight hair. Our eyes

Like heaven's bowl; our lips like autumn berries.

She frowned a little, lifted hand to throat.

urned her head this way and then the other.

Our eyes met in the glass.

I saw what she had seen: her hair white-threaded,

Her face and throat fine-lined, her eyes softened

Like a mirror that clouds and cracks with age;

While I was newly silvered, sharp and clear.

I hid my eyes, but could not hide my knowledge.

Forty may be fair; fourteen is fairer still.

She smiled at my reflection, cold as glass,

And then dismissed me thankless.

Not long after the huntsman came, bearing

A knife, a gun, a little box, to tell me

My mother no longer loved me. He spared me, though,

Unasked, because I was too beautiful to kill.

And the seven little men whose house

I kept that winter and the following year,

They loved me for my beauty's sake, my beauty

That cost me my mother's love.

Do you think I did not know her,

Ragged and gnarled and stooped like a wind-bent tree,

Her basket full of combs and pins and laces?

Of course I took her poisoned gifts. I wanted

To feel her hands combing out my hair,

To let her lace me up, to take an apple

From her hand, a smile from her lips,

As when I was a child.

Boys and Girls Together by Neil Gaiman

Boys don't want to be princes.
Boys want to be shepherds who slay dragons,
maybe someone gives you half a kingdom and a princess,
but that's just what comes of being a shepherd boy
and slaying a dragon. Or a giant. And you don't really
even have to be a shepherd. Just not a prince.
In stories, even princes don't want to be princes,
disguising themselves as beggars or as shepherd boys,
leaving the kingdom for another kingdom,
princehood only of use once the ogre's dead, the tasks are done,
and the reluctant king, her father, needing to be convinced.

Boys do not dream of princesses who will come for them.
Boys would prefer not to be princes,
and many boys would happily kiss the village girls,
out on the sheep-moors, of an evening,
over the princess, if she didn't come with the territory.

Princesses sometimes disguise themselves as well,
to escape the kings' advances, make themselves ugly,
soot and cinders and donkey girls,
with only their dead mothers' ghosts to aid them,
a voice from a dried tree or from a pumpkin patch.
And then they undisguise, when their time is upon them,
gleam and shine in all their finery. Being princesses.
Girls are secretly princesses.

None of them know that one day, in their turn,
Boys and girls will find themselves become bad kings
or wicked stepmothers,
aged woodcutters, ancient shepherds, mad crones and wise-women,
to stand in shadows, see with cunning eyes:
The girl, still waiting calmly for her prince.
The boy, lost in the night, out on the moors.