...as told
by the Star Child, to his daughter, who told it to her daughter the
Spanish Princess, who told it to her granddaughter, who is telling it
to her son Cyril...
The night was the
coldest yet of a frigid winter. The woodcutter was out in the woods
that night, when he saw what looked like a star falling from heaven. It
seemed to land not half a mile away. He hurried over, hoping to find
treasure. What he found nestled in the snow was a small child, wrapped
in a cloak of gold tissue. The poor woodcutter had pity on the child,
and though he had many children of his own, and barely enough food for
them, he took it home with him and raised the Star-Child as his own. I
am that child, and this is my story.
As I grew, my beauty
increased greatly, as also did my pride. I became hardened and evil,
teasing and taunting my friends in the village, boasting of my own
beauty and deriding their plain features. Some of them grew to hate me.
Others who played with me soon became as cruel and thoughtless as I
was.
One day the woodcutter came
running to me, excited and out of breath. He told me that my birth
mother had come. I was so excited I could hardly speak, but I ran after
him. I thought myself better and more beautiful than anyone else, and
so I expected that my mother would be some sort of princess, beautiful
and graceful. I walked into our little home and saw a tiny
beggar woman hunched in the corner, so ugly that it was painful for me
to look at her. I am ashamed to say that I treated her with utter scorn
and contempt. I told her that I wished never to see her again. I hated
myself for having an ugly mother, and hated her for being ugly, and for
forcing herself on me. I turned my back on her and heard her leave the
house weeping.
The next day my friends
would not come near me, but ran away in fear. Horrified, I looked at my
reflection and found that I had become not just as ugly as my mother,
but far, far uglier. I saw myself and wept. First I wept at my sheer
ugliness. I had taken such great pride in my beauty. But eventually my
tears turned to tears of shame, as I realized that this ugliness was
only a reflection of who I truly was. I had rejected and mocked my poor
mother, and had treated my kind adopted parents with scorn and
derision. It was in that moment that I realized I must leave and seek
my mother and her forgiveness.
Three years I wandered the
earth, searching high and low. Everywhere I turned, people fled from my
ugliness and refused me food and shelter. I slept on the hard ground,
and ate almost nothing. Every day I was reminded of my horrifying
appearance, and of the inwardly ugly person I had been my whole life. Finally I came to a
great city, where I was seized and sold as a slave to a cruel African
man. He bound me and gave me crusts of bread to eat and stale water to
drink. He said he had a task for me.
The next morning, he sent
me to a walled garden outside the city. Hidden somewhere in that garden
was a piece of white gold. I had to find the gold and bring it
back
by sundown, or pay for it with my life.
I found the gold after an
entire day of searching. Approaching the city just as the sun was going
down, I was relieved to be escaping with my life. Then a leper outside
of the gate called out to me, asking for alms. I told him I only had
one piece of money, and it would cost me my life to give it away. He
continued to plead earnestly with me, and finally I took pity on
him and gave him the gold piece, convinced that to die at the hands of
my master would be a relief from this life of suffering.
As I passed the gates of
the King's palace they opened in front of me. A guard came out and
bowed before me, welcoming me as royalty. I was confused, saying I
was just a poor beggar. He showed me my reflection and I saw that all
my former beauty had returned, and more. Just then I caught sight of my
mother standing by with the leper I had helped. I rushed over to her
and threw myself at her feet, begging her forgiveness and weeping tears
of joy and shame. She told me to rise and I saw them both transformed.
They were tall and stately, dressed in robes of royalty.
"This is your father whom
you have helped," said my mother.
"This is your mother, whose
feet you have washed with your tears," said my father.
They brought me inside the
palace and established me as King, and we lived happily after!
--
And they did live happily,
said Cyril's mother, and the Star-Child was a wise and just ruler. But
he lived only seven years more, long enough to get married and have a
child, the mother of the Spanish princess. His suffering had been so
great, and his trials so severe, that he did not live long. And the
rulers after him were cruel and tyrannical.
"Oh, mother, what a story!"
Cyril exclaimed. "The Star-Child must have been a very beautiful
person! But where did his cloak come from? Who had it before him? Are
there any more stories?"
Well, Cyril's mother
replied,
before the beggar-mother wrapped her child in the gold cloak, it had
belonged to her grandmother. Her story is about a fisherman who sells
his soul...
Author's Note:
This story was also really long, and was very difficult to abridge
because of its strong plot elements. The opening paragraphs of the
original story are about the different animals in the wood and the way
that they respond to the extremely cold weather - the wolf growls and
grumbles, the woodpecker philosophizes, etc. There are also two
woodcutters, and they talk about whether or not they should keep the
child. One of the main differences between my version and Wilde's is in
the task of searching for gold in the garden. In Wilde's story, the
star child goes to the garden three days in a row, getting a piece of
white, yellow, and red gold. Each day he gives the gold piece to the
leper, and the first two nights, receives a beating from his master,
and the last night is threatened with death. The first day, the star
child frees a hare from a trap in the garden, and in return the hare
helps him find the gold piece every day. I also changed the story to be
in first person, from the Star Child's perspective, in order to make it
consistent with the first story. I increased his lifespan to seven
years as king, instead of three, to give him time to have a daughter,
so he has someone to tell his story to. Also the quotes from the king
and queen are nearly word-for-word from Wilde's original - I only
updated the language. Mainly, my version of the story
was aiming to be brief, and to change the perspective to tie into the
frame tale as a whole.
Bibliography:
"The Star-Child," by Oscar Wilde. From The House of Pomegranates, 1891.
web source: SurLaLane
Fairy Tales.
image: The Star Child. web source: ArtsyCraftsy.
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