There’s nobody left to tell her stories, to tell her not to sleep for a hundred years, to tell her not to grow her hair. to tell her not to get lost in the forest, but she already learnt that lesson. To tell her not to pretend to be a princes if she sleeps soundly through the night, to tell her not to swap her live stock for a handful of legumes.
These are the lessons she didn’t learn, that everything important comes in threes, pigs, billy goats, brothers, wishes. That often scullery maids are princesses. That sometimes apples are poisoned. That wolves and woodcutters wear each others clothes.
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