The Ladybug Prince’s Garden

 

            Beyond the seven lands and seven seas lived a poor cobbler and his wife. They were a simple couple who spent their nights by the fire. One night the wife stated, “I would like a little daughter very much.”

            The cobbler added, “With lips red as blood and black hair covering skin soft and velvety as milk. Limbs petite and little hands and little feet—youthful in their running and playing… I should very much like a little girl.”

            The wife sighed and nodded.

            “Tomorrow, dear wife, I shall make you a pair of shoes. By nightfall, you will wear them and a little girl shall be ours.”

            With that, he kissed his wife and went to the cellar where he did his cobbling.

He cobbled all night under moonlight and cobbled until he thought he could go on no longer. With morning light’s arrival and the sparrow’s song, he painted the shoes blood red. They were redder than the sky before a storm. He marveled at his work until nightfall, when he presented the shoes to his wife.

            “Husband! They are beautiful!” she said. “I love you!”

            She snatched the leather shoes out of his tired hands, threw them on the floor, and with one determined slippage of her fair foot, she entered the shoe and

            died. One red shoe stayed unmolested by its lonesome.

            The cobbler furrowed his brow at the dead woman with one red shoe and wondered what evil fairy was to blame. It must have been Eaenid of the Golden Boot, woman’s unhealthy enthusiasm for new shoes.

            Yet, from the unmolested shoe, a little girl with red lips, black hair, and pale skin crawled out. She ran to her father’s adoring arms. He noticed that her fingernails were blue, so she was called Bluegirl.

            When Bluegirl was six, she had sat under an apple tree on the hottest day of the year. The tree scowled at her and said, “Your nails are blue, what kind of disease is that? Go away, you’ll spoil my apples!”

            Bluegirl respected the tree’s wishes but the weather was far too hot. She wandered over to a river for a swim. At one look at her toenails, the river squirmed, “Your nails are blue, what kind of disease is that? Go away, you’ll dirty my water!”

            Bluegirl ran away in tears. The sun burned her skin redder than an apple. The ground turned sandy, trees became pincushions of cacti, and Bluegirl turned redder by the hour. When she realized she was lost, she did not know what else to do but sit and cry. Her hot tears hit the desert sand.

            “Thank you, little girl!” said a tiny voice.

            Bluegirl looked around. There was a little ladybug in the sand next to her.

            “I am drying up here. I would have been dead had you not come along!” said the ladybug.

            “You would have dried up?” she asked.

            “Oh yes. This sun is much too hot for us ladybugs. I am lost.”

            “I am lost, too!” said Bluegirl.

            “Little girl, since you have saved my life, I can grant you one wish,” said the ladybug.

            Bluegirl tried to wish for something that she wanted but all she could think and feel was her blistering skin and the sand burning her toes.

            “Please, ladybug, please make the sun never hurt me again! I never want to feel heat again!”

            At her plea, the ladybug became a prince. He stood tall and towered over the little girl. “Little girl, what you wish for is selfish. You could have wished us both to safety but did not. You could have wished wealth for your father or life to your mother.”

            Bluegirl started to cry.

            “I will grant your wish. You wish to never feel heat again? I can grant that.” The Ladybug Prince turned Bluegirl into stone. Thousands of ladybugs cooled themselves on the shadow of the statue of the crying girl.

            Once a year, the Ladybug Prince would return to age Bluegirl one more year. Each time he came back, the crying became less and less until the statue looked back at him with pupil-less eyes.

            The cobbler loved his Bluegirl so much he almost died when she did not return. He really would have died, had he not married the young widow. The widow had a son the cobbler willingly adopted, as he hoped the boy would make him forget about Bluegirl. The boy’s name was simply Jack.

            When Jack was sixteen, he ran outside on the hottest day of the summer. He sat beneath an apple tree to cool off. The apple tree snarled at him, “Go away, Jack! You always eat my apples!”

            Jack ran to the river and hoped to take a swim. However, the river threw a rapid fit and said, “Go away, Jack! You always drink my water!”

            Jack turned away from the river and the tree and walked until the ground became sand and the sky became sun.

            Jack felt himself getting faint as the heat burned his skin. All around him, he realized was desert except the insignificant shadow of a statue. He sat beneath this statue to rest for a while. He looked up at the indifferent girl and marveled at her beauty. Her nails were blue – he had never seen a statue with such a vibrant blue.

            “You are so beautiful! But your beauty cannot save me!” he wept. The statue’s shadow disappeared with the noonday sun. The thousands of ladybugs flickered away in a cloud of chattering wings.

            One ladybug did not fly away, however. Jack put his hand over this one and his massive hand left a massive shadow over the bug.

            “Thank you! I thought for sure the sun would dry me out!” said the ladybug.

            “Is that so.”

            “Thank you!”

            “You’re welcome.”

            “In fact, since you saved me, I am going to grant you one wish!”

            Jack looked at the bug bitterly. “A wish? You say?”

            “Yes! Anything you want!”

            Jack lowered his hand, “And what good would riches or love give me if I am stuck in the middle of a desert? In a few hours, I will be dead. I have saved you and now you can fly away. Tell me, bug, how am I going to fly away? Am I going to wish for ladybug wings?”

            Jack smashed that ladybug into the sand.

            At that very moment, the sand became lush grass, the rocks became flowers, and trees blocked the sun completely.  A pond appeared near the statue and Jack drank from it. Her indifferent eyes watched him and eventually he watched back. There were no more ladybugs near her. The garden was completely indifferent to her.

            When Jack went home, he could not stop thinking about her blue nails.

            Jack frequented the garden with the statue. He thought she had grown a liking to him, though he couldn’t bring himself to believe it fully. Her gaze reflected upon him as he slept under the trees or smoked his pipe by the flowers. Many days passed this way.

            The cobbler had asked his stepson, one day, if he had found a bride. “You are no longer home anymore,” he said, “Is there a girl?”

            Jack shook his head. “No, father,” he said. “I cannot find one.”

            “Then where are you going for hours a day?”

            Jack replied, “I cannot lie to you, father, I found a garden, a marvelous garden.”

            Jack told the cobbler about the garden, the desert, and the ladybug. When Jack mentioned the statue with the blue fingernails, the cobbler insisted that Jack show him the garden.

            The cobbler wept when he saw the statue. He recognized it immediately as his beloved daughter. He embraced the statue and kissed it. Bluegirl simply stared ahead, as she had done for the past ten years.

            “I never want you coming near this garden again!” yelled the cobbler. “I never want you to lay a hand on her!”

            It distressed Jack to see the cobbler lamenting over the statue, attractive as she might be. He told the cobbler to go home to his wife. Dinner should be ready by now. She would not want to see him in this state. It would confuse her. “Let’s go,” he said.

            The cobbler was no longer normal after that. He would go to the garden every night, after he finished his work, and sit with the statue. The young widow asked her son, “Where is my husband going every night? Do you know?”

            Jack answered, “I am not sure, but I have a good idea.”

            Jack led his mother to the garden and sure enough, the cobbler was there, talking with the statue. The young widow was furious at her husband. She told Jack to go home and get her cleaver.  If he did not, she would kill both him and the cobbler. Jack loved his adoptive father but still obeyed, teary eyed.

            In his sad walk home, he sang softly:

 

                        “My mother will now kill my father

                        while a statue still claims my love

                        all because of a silly ladybug.”

 

            As Jack sang this, a fairy heard him and said, “Are you the boy in the garden? The one who killed the false Ladybug Prince?”

            Jack nodded.

            The fairy held a great knife and handed it to him. “Give this to your mother. Tell her to push the statue over, gather all of the rubble, and put it inside her husband.”

            Jack was horrified. “No! Why would I do such a thing?”

            “It is the only way to remove the curse. You will understand soon enough.”

            Jack took the knife and the fairy disappeared. He stood in the trail, awkwardly holding the knife, completely unconvinced. He realized he did not have a choice since if he did not do what his mother wished, she would kill him also. He knew his mother well.

            Jack walked back to the garden and timidly handed her the knife. “I did not find the cleaver, so I brought this knife instead.”    

            “That will do,” his mother said.

            A few swift stabs to the neck and slashes to the stomach did the trick. The cobbler was in ruins on the grass. The wife walked over to the statue and said, “Son, she is no prettier than I, right?”

            “No, mother. Not at all.”

            “And her nails are blue. Can you imagine blue nails? Horrible!”

            “Yes, mother. Horrible.”

            “I can’t believe he would be with her instead of me! Why would he do that?”

            “I don’t know, mother.”

            Jack remembered what the fairy had said. He had nothing to lose at this point, so he made a suggestion:    

            “Mother, if you tip the statue over, she will break. Her beauty will no longer threaten yours.”

            Jack’s mother liked this idea and pushed the statue over. It broke cleanly into sizable pieces.  Jack remembered what the fairy said and made another suggestion:

            “Mother, if you hate this statue enough, you should cut your husband’s stomach even wider and stuff the stones inside.”

            His mother congratulated him on his creative thinking (which must have come from his mother’s side) and did exactly as he said.

            Almost as soon as she had done this, the body of the father became Bluegirl. Jack fell in love with her instantly. The garden returned to desert, however, and burned to death the young widow. Jack and Bluegirl made it home safely and lived happily ever after.

                       

 

Analysis:

 

In writing all those fairytales this year, I noticed major plot lines that kept repeating over again. Well, I consider them as themes. Those are: the conflict between parent and child, the conflict between a couple that is courting, the passiveness/lack of control of the female to her fate, and the pride and superficiality of the female. I tried to include all of these themes. To a lesser degree, I added the oedipal complexes such as the overzealous adoration of the father to his daughter and, to an even lesser extent, Jack’s submissiveness to his mother. I will reference these themes more in my explanation of where I’ve taken my story elements -- which happens to begin right now:

 

The statue: I suppose you can say this is rooted in the Pygmalion myth, in which he created a statue and fell in love with her. There are some differences, though. The main difference is that Jack did not create the statue. I like the statue imagery instead of the sleeping girl to represent the passive female because of the dehumanizing element. I feel that is what is being done to these girls – they are being objectified. No shock there. I feel petrifying the girl gives no illusion of a fair damsel in distress. For her, I felt it was more respectful since she had the ability to gaze back at her voyeur, while the sleeping girls did not. Also, petrifaction is always done under some misfortune, such as under Medusa’s gaze. Unlike Pygmalion’s myth, the statue was once a girl. I would like to think she has more in common with the heroes that fell while trying to kill Medusa.

 

The Ladybug Prince: The Ladybug Prince represents nearly all of the animals and shape shifters that are common in all the tales. I had in mind the wish fulfilling animals (I believe there was a cow and a fish in the versions) from the Cinderella stories. However I made the wish fulfillment false and the Prince took more the form of the Wolf through his lies. Like the wolf from the Riding Hood tales, the ladybug was subdued with the help of a friendly man (Jack). Why a Ladybug, of all insects? Well, I added some masculinity in the statue, by giving her vision (or the appearance of vision) to level the gender playing field. I leveled it some more by giving the wolf the effeminate name of “Ladybug Prince.” Ha. Also, his reasoning for turning her to stone (about selfishness) is hardly justified, but in fairytale logic, it seems fine since punishing a woman for nearly anything is justifiable. Relating it to a woman’s vanity or selfishness adds credibility.

 

The Cobbler’s Red Shoes and his Wife: Red is always the color for want of a child and the entire process. The prick of the finger as in the Sleeping Beauty or the Snow White tales for example. Shoes are always representative of a gift to a righteous demise. Shoes are given to Snow White’s stepmother who dances herself to death. Shoes are given to the bird in the Juniper tree, which is one step in the process of killing the stepmother. So, metaphorically, the wife asks her husband to give her something that will cause her eventual end. The wife loves the shoes and this is presumed to be vanity -- a crime punishable by death in fairytale logic. I followed the “set up” idea I perceived in the Bluebeard tale – an impossible test followed by an unavoidable fate. Not fair, but that’s the way things are.

 

Jack’s mother and Bluegirl’s Father: I had the prince’s wife from Sun, Moon, and Talia in mind, the one who was being cheated on. Although not initiated until her son brought it up, she represented vanity as seen in Snow White’s stepmother. Because of this, she had to die. Though, later, she takes the role of the hunter from Little Red Riding Hood since she cuts open the stomach of the incestuous father and fills him with stones. Bluegirl’s father is like that of Cinderella’s father in that he wants his daughter. I tried to make him speak about her physically a lot. I don’t know how obvious I was, I don’t exactly have the stomach for that sort of thing. So, another powerful woman here, righteous in a twisted way (for killing the incestuous father), but she too had to die. No women heroes, here.

 

Bluegirl: Obviously a twist on Bluebeard. There is always some kind of elevation that happens in fairy tales. The character starts off either poor/beaten/lonely ends up with either love or wealth or both. Bluegirl’s misfortune is her deformity, the blue nails. For me, Bluebeard represented a seduction by something very wrong. It seemed fitting to keep the blue nails on the statue since the seduction of a statue is not natural. I wonder if I am the only person to think of Bluebeard as a seductive character. Also misfortunes and traps surround the statue just as they surround Bluebeard.

 

Jack’s song: Speech is how the plot moves in fairytales. It is how all spells are cast and fates determined. Song, I feel, is an elevated form of speech, and as an elevated form it should attract an elevated being…a fairy. The bird’s song should have attracted a fairy, maybe, in the Juniper Tree. Maybe. I think I wrote the song better this time.

 

I didn’t do anything too structural here. Maybe I made the events seem a bit staged and artificial, but sometimes I feel that is how they are in the fairy tales. The above themes I mention are all ones I have covered in my interpretations and ones I find important. Reinterpreting the texts has given me a view I would not have gained otherwise, I think. The bare diction used in fairytales is most beneficial, I think, in expressing the complicated themes of gender, entrapment, love, etc. What I mean to say is, writing this tale would have been a daunting task if writing in lofty diction. I don’t know if what I’ve discovered in rewriting the fairytales themselves has manifested in the actual above tale, but I hope at least it was entertaining.