One of the first fairytales I read was about an ill king. (I haven’t read the book I found this in for thirty-odd years. And the book itself is lost to me. I may have fudged the telling.) He told his three sons that whoever would find him a cure would receive half the kingdom on the spot. So the three princes set off. At first they worked together and soon heard of an orchard of enchanted apples. Whoever ate just one bite of one of these apples would be cured of all that ailed them and their life extended twenty years.
The princes were able to find where the enchanted apple trees were. They grew only in the garden of a fairy queen. They sent many messages, missive, and gifts to the fairy queen, but she rejected them all. “If you would take an apple to spare your father’s life, you must pay life for life. One of you must serve me and be mine.”
The eldest prince was a crafty boy. He used guile and deceit to gather his power. He was favored by those nobles that viewed corruption as a virtue, and despised by the generals that saw his nature clearly. He intercepted the messages from the fairy queen, and rewrote them before presenting them to his brothers. Instead of asking a life for a life, the message appeared to ask for a sacrifice of babies instead.
“See the wretchedness of the fairy queen! How evil she is, to not only hold our dear father’s life hostage, but to demand the death of innocents as payment! Let us muster the army and assault her castle. We shall strip the orchard bare of every apple and burn it in our wake. Our father shall live, and no innocents shall perish!”
The second prince was a hefty boy. He left the arts of thinking and reason to his brothers, preferring instead the use of force and threats. The nobility disliked him for he was more crass than even the poorest of peasants. But the generals saw in him a chance for great battles of war and supported him immensely. He did not see the deception in the altered missives and jumped to the conclusion the Eldest Prince wanted. “I shall speak to our generals! The castle is not far now that we know where it is! Our spies have been to the very gates and report the walls are thin and brittle like glass. We shall have the apples in three days time, and the Fairy Queen’s life for our father’s!”
The youngest price was a delicate boy. His mother had seen how corruption had spoiled the first son, and how brutality had marred the second son, so she kept the third son close to herself. She taught him diplomacy, and the art of soothing without confrontation. The other two princes thought him a simple and naive child. The nobles thought him easily swayed, and the generals thought him weak. Only their father, the King, knew the potential of his youngest son, but he did not betray his thoughts to anyone. “There is something ill about these words. They do not match the gentleness the Fairy Queen is known for. Do not even the peasants speak of her folk paying kindness for kindness, returning the sharing of a man’s last bread by multiplying it? The Fairy Queen understands the mortality of man even though she is immortal herself. We are being deceived, brothers. Our father’s health is being used to distract us. Let us not rush into conflict from which there is no escaping.”
The corrupted nobles thought the youngest prince’s words to be that of a mere child. The generals thought him cowardly. Even his brothers talked derisively of him. “I shall go to the Fairy Queen myself, in person. Her words shall arrive on my ears, with no deception in between. I shall hear from her the truth of the price of our father’s life. All will be well in the end, you shall see.”
The youngest prince set out at once alone. He left so quickly, the guards were not able to catch up to him. He had many adventures on the way to the Fairy Queen, of which I do not remember. But these adventures delayed his arrival to her castle and made his brothers wonder if he had perished along the way.
The king’s health continued to decline, and all were certain that he would die. The eldest prince, realizing that if the King should die without naming a clear heir, the three sons would have to share the kingdom. He met with an apothecary, to arrange for a poisoned apple to be made. The poison would numb the pain of the King, and give him the appearance of becoming whole, but after a week, the King would die suddenly, as if from age. The apothecary pledged himself to the eldest prince’s goal, but warned the poison would take time to create.
In the mean time, the youngest prince had arrived at the Fairy Queen’s castle. Because of his adventures, he did not arrive clean with royal clothes, but filthy and ragged with the appearance of the poorest of beggars. Many in her court threatened to throw him out, but the Fairy Queen herself recognized the prince and had him escorted to her throne with royal flair and announcements. She offered to exchange his rags for royal threads, but he refused. What he had to say was more important than how he said it.
She received him as he was then, and bid him speak his mind. He told her of the altered messages, the plot to invade her castle, and his fears that his brothers were planning to both depose her, and his father.
She told him the price of the apples. A life for a life. If the youngest prince were to take an apple from her orchard, he must pledge to return to live the rest of his life with her in her court. He agreed, and pledged himself to her requirement.
She had him cleaned and dressed in the finest of clothes. A carriage with the swiftest of horses was summoned. She led him to the orchard, where he picked the smallest of apples. When she asked why the smallest, he replied that if any apple would save his father’s life, then why take the greatest of her treasures, when the smallest would do. Because of his answer, she plucked a second apple herself and added it to his own. Because she plucked it and gave it to him, there was no price for him to pay.
She asked if he was concerned his brothers would try to stop him. He said he was. She plucked a third apple and added that to his bounty as well. “Should you be wounded, even unto death, a bite will cure you and restore you. But once you take of that bite, throw the apple away. For should you eat further of that apple, it will return the wound but you will not die from it. And should you eat all of the apple, you shall turn to stone and be dead to the world. For nothing is truly immortal, only the terms of our deaths differ.”
Now the enchanted apples were as red as blood and as bittersweet as wisdom. The prince wrapped them carefully and thanked the Fairy Queen. He promised to return the moment his father was cured. He entered the carriage, and sped back to his father’s castle.
In the mean time, the apothecary had finished creating the poisoned apple. But the apple’s skin was warped and black from the evil that it carried. It had the scent of decay and was ill to the touch. The eldest prince knew there was no way to trick his father to eating of it. So he went to a goldsmith, and told the goldsmith a deceiving story of trying to preserve his mother’s last token of love. The goldsmith, thinking the story to be true, gilded the apple with gold foil, filling in the sunken areas with perfumes such that the apple appeared to be whole and sweet.
The youngest son and the eldest son arrived at their father’s throne room at the same time. Here was the eldest, covered in dust from travel and bearing a gilded apple. Here was the youngest, covered in the delicate array of the Fairy Queen’s court, and bearing plain apples. Both claimed to have the cure. Both accused the other of treason and wanting the King’s death.
The eldest called on the guards to seize the youngest, claiming the finery was proof of his betrayal. The middle son, called for both the other princes to be seized. “I know I am dumb, and the ways of thinking men can turn away the truest of swords. But now it is my turn to speak, and I shall speak with my sword!”
The middle son cut one of the Fairy Queen’s apples in half. The flesh inside was a fair color, and the scent refreshed all that it touched. He then cut the gilded apple in half. The flesh was black from rot and the putrid scent of the poison caused many to gag.
“What poison that kills an apple would cure a man? Would it not be evident that a healthy apple causes health, and a diseased apple cause disease?” He took a second apple from his younger brother and brought it to the King. “Eat this one, father, and be restored.”
The King ate one bite from the apple, and was restored to full health on the throne. He started to take another bite, but the cry from his youngest son stopped him. “The Fairy Queen said to take only one bite, lest the greed for eternal youth damn you to eternal pain!” The King listened to him and threw the bitten apple into the fire. He called for his eldest to be thrown into the gaol, but he escaped the guards. Snatching the last apple from the youngest son, he fled.
The King offered to crown the youngest son with half the kingdom, but he replied he had to pay the Fairy Queen’s price. He had to return to live out his life in her court. “Crown my brother here, instead. He thinks himself dumb, but with quick thought he has uncovered what was truth and what was lie. Let him have good counsel around him and the kingdom will thrive.”
The youngest was sent back to the Fairy Queen to live out his price. She fell in love with his innocence, and after making sure he was physically whole, bade him to eat two bites of one of her apples, granting him the lifespan of her own kind. He served as the intermediary between the Fairy and the Mortal until men forgot the Fairy Queen was real.
The eldest was found in the castle grounds later, he had devoured the stolen apple down to the core and had turned to stone because of it. The middle son, now crowned King of his own kingdom, had the statue moved to outside the castle gates, where it served as a warning to all that would defy the natural law of the world.
~~~
And that’s the first story I heard of a gilded apple. When I learned of Eris later, that only made this first one even more important to me. I wish I could tell you what book I first read the tale in. But I’m sure after all these years, my version differs drastically from the original.
~bows~