Fifteen years had passed since the princess' unfortunate birthday. The Princess was, at that stage, not the world's most beautiful woman, but she was very close up there. She stood at rank twelve, but when she laughed as she looked out her window, her rank rose, for the laugh had made her all the more beautiful. She then stood as the world's seventh most beautiful woman in the world.
It was a warm and sunny day that the King and Queen had gone to one of their houses for pleasure, and the young Princess happened to divert herself by running down to the woods near the castle with her nursemaid, for she had seen some funny looking stumpy men marching down, carrying axes.
"They look like mythical creatures I read in my fairy book!" she whispered to her nurse, Nurse, who smiled and said, in a motherly, condescending tone,
"They were pixies, my dear, pixies."
"Leprechauns," Princess Red Snow corrected her. "Is the old legend true, Nanny? Were I to chase a rainbow and find gold at the foot of the rainbow, would it be that the leprechauns had left it there?"
"You wouldn't need it, my dear," said Nurse, patting her arm. "Our castle may be in deficit, but we have power, and money is nothing to power. Come back to the castle."
"But I have never been more than thirty steps from home!" cried Princess Red Snow, almost indignantly, and 'twas a sweet, perfect indignant voice with which she cried. "I'm sixteen- in other countries I could move out of the castle! We are but nine and twenty steps from the castle gate- may we not venture further?"
The Good Nurse looked at her charge and sighed. Whenever the Princess looked at her with those pleading eyes, she could never resist. "Yes, dear," she said.
Princess Red Snow smiled her slow, blossoming smile, and daintily took a step nearer the stumpy men.
"This is it," she murmured, and her cheeks glowed like the setting sun, a light in her eyes.
"This is what?" Nurse asked her.
"If I take one more step- I'll be farther from home than I have ever been before."
Nurse slipped her arm around the Princess' shoulders.
"You wanted to come," she reminded her gently, and the Princess smiled once more, and continued the walk. After all, had she not wished to pursue the leprechauns?
Upon closer inspection, the Princess laughed even as something pierced her heart. Leprechauns, indeed!
"Why," she laughed to a bird nearby, "they're nothing more than dwarves!"
One of the dwarves gave her a sour look, and she bit her lip and looked back to the castle.
"Come, my child, we should head back up," her nursemaid whispered to her, "we have ventured far enough today"- but she merely laughed.
"Nanny, come a little further," she begged, and her nursemaid acquiesced, though she had a very bad feeling about it.
Suddenly, an old woman hobbled from out of the bushes. The stumpy men saw her, the blood draining from their faces, and they scurried under the ground. But the old woman had no concern for them. She turned and saw the Princess, and grinned- a wicked, toothless grin. Nurse gasped and grasped the Princess' arm. The Princess screamed. (And a pretty near perfect scream it was, too.)
She was Ancient, with warts and moles of all sorts over her seemingly bloodless face. Her hair was straggly, and she smelt strongly of sulphur.
"Old woman!" squealed the nursemaid, when her voice returned to her. "Feel free to flee!" But she felt not half as brave as she sounded, and the Ancient Woman paid her no attention. Instead, she looked at the Princess.
"Is this the Princess?" she crooned, grinning evilly. "The one they call 'Red Snow'?"
The Princess nodded, frozen.
"I have a present for you, my dear. Don't be scared!" With that, she whipped out a beautiful, large, shiny apple, handed it to the Princess, and hobbled away.
It was a luscious fruit, and the Princess felt as if there was a magnetic pull as the apple came closer, and closer to her mouth-
"Don't eat it!" squealed the nursemaid, but it was too late- the princess had already taken a bite- and whereby chance, poison, or the curse of the Wicked Witch of the North, Julietta Rebekah Leonora Aldith Charlotta Louisetta Regina had swooned and fallen.
The old woman gave a wild laugh, and returned to the Land of Oz, where she would later end up being melted by a bucket of water. (She was, as you have probably guessed by now, the Wicked Witch of the East.)
Nurse called for help, and carried the Princess up to the castle. The Queen took to hysterics, and had to be fed a blackbird pie laced with sedatives. The King took over and ordered his daughter to be carried to the highest room in the tallest tower, to be dressed in her finest clothes, and laid upon a bed embroidered with silver and gold.
"After all, that old witch will pay for what she's done," he mumbled. (Kings never speak quite so royally as we fancy, at least not in private.)
Princess Julietta Rebekah Leonora Aldith Charlotta Louisetta Regina looked not a bit less beautiful for her swooning- indeed, her enchanted sleep had made her more beautiful, so that her rank of being seventh most beautiful woman in the world shot up immediately to number one. The King commanded that they should not disturb her, but let her sleep quietly till her hour of awakening was to come.
The Good Faerie who had cast this enchantment of drowsiness quickly spirited the tower away in the dead of night, where it stood, amidst a forest, for years under the misty moonbeams that wafted through the window onto the sleeping princess.