Once upon a time, a king and queen had a baby daughter. They were so happy that they held a great feast and invited all the fairies in the kingdom to bless the child.

There were seven fairies. Each one came to the cradle and gave the princess a gift. One gave her beauty. One gave her grace. One gave her a voice like music. One gave her the ability to dance. One gave her kindness. One gave her wit.

But before the seventh fairy could give her gift, the doors of the great hall burst open. In swept an eighth fairy — old, angry, and uninvited. No one had seen her in fifty years, and she had not been sent an invitation.

"You forgot me," she hissed. Then she pointed one bony finger at the baby and spoke her curse. "Before she turns sixteen, the princess will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel — and she will die!"

The queen screamed. The king went pale. But the seventh fairy stepped forward. She had not yet given her gift.

"I cannot undo the curse entirely," she said. "But I can soften it. The princess will not die. Instead, she will fall into a deep, deep sleep — and she will sleep for one hundred years, until she is woken by the kiss of a prince who truly loves her."

The king ordered every spinning wheel in the kingdom to be burned. For sixteen years, no one spun a thread.

The princess grew up beautiful, kind, and graceful — everything the fairies had promised. And for sixteen years, she was perfectly safe.

On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, the princess was exploring a part of the castle she had never visited. She climbed a narrow spiral staircase in an old tower and found a small room at the top.

Inside sat an old woman with a spinning wheel, humming to herself. The old woman had not heard the king's command, for she lived alone in the tower and spoke to no one.

"What are you doing?" asked the princess, who had never seen a spinning wheel before.

"I'm spinning thread, my dear. Would you like to try?"

The princess reached for the spindle. The sharp point pricked her finger — just one tiny drop of blood — and she fell to the floor in a deep sleep.

The old woman cried for help. Servants came running. They carried the princess to the finest bed in the castle and laid her down. But nothing could wake her.

The seventh fairy heard what had happened. She came to the castle and cast a gentle spell over everyone inside — the king, the queen, the servants, the guards, even the dogs and the horses. They all fell asleep too, so that when the princess woke, she would not be alone.

Then a great hedge of thorns grew up around the castle, thick and tall, until the towers could barely be seen above it.

Years passed. The castle was forgotten. The hedge grew wilder. A hundred years came and went.

Then a young prince from a faraway land heard the old story of a sleeping princess hidden behind a wall of thorns. He rode to the hedge. And when he stepped forward, the thorns parted before him like curtains, because the hundred years were up, and the time had come.

He walked through the silent castle. Everyone was asleep — cooks in the kitchen, guards at the doors, birds on the windowsills.

He found the princess lying in her bed, as peaceful as if she had just closed her eyes. She was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. He knelt beside her and kissed her gently.

The princess opened her eyes. She looked at the prince and smiled.

"I've been dreaming about you," she said.

All through the castle, everyone woke at once. The king yawned. The queen stretched. The dogs barked. The cooks went back to their soup, which was still warm.

The prince and the princess were married that very day, and the celebration lasted a week.