A New Fairy Story

Earlier this year, I wrote some new fairy tales for Lush's Christmas products. I thought you might like to share so here's one. If you like them, I'll follow up with some others. Please feel free to read it to any handy children, and to pass it on, just remember to say where it came from. Thanks.

The Star Sweetie

By Sarah McCartney
Once upon a time, before there were so many streetlights in the western world, we could all look up at the sky and see millions of stars every night. (Except when it was raining, when you look up to the sky and just get raindrops in your eyes.) There are more stars in the sky and there are grains of sand in the world, more than we can possibly imagine stretching further away than even the smartest scientists can comprehend. Most of them are enormous balls of fire, bigger than our own sun, but a handful are very small indeed. A long time ago, one night when it was dark, one of the tiniest stars got a bit bored with hanging around in the sky and decided to visit the earth.The physics was rather complicated but to cut a long story short the star floated down towards the Earth's surface and steered itself towards Yorkshire, for no particular reason except it had always rather admired the cliffs at Whitby.

Not having much control over its flight path in the Earth's atmosphere it slightly lost its balance and tumbled through the open window of a seaside sweet factory. Fortunately, it landed softly in a barrel of icing sugar, jumped out, tripped over and fell into a bucket of the most deliciously scented sweet flavouring, specially blended for a batch of sugar candies which were going to be given away at the town hall Christmas party the following evening. After its journey, the little star was a bit tired and it fell asleep.

The next morning all the workers arrived at 6 a.m. start their preparations for the Christmas party. Before the star had had a chance to wake up and remember where it was, it had been put inside a gift box and tied up with ribbon.

That evening, when the Lady Mayoress opened her presents, everyone was very impressed when a sugary star shot out of the box and lit up the whole town hall with its incandescent light. The owner of the seaside sweet factory pretended that he had been planning this all along, but refused to give away the secret. The little star loved all the attention it was getting, but felt a little bit claustrophobic in the town hall after the freedom of the infinite night skies. At midnight when the doors opened to let everyone go home, tired but happy and full of chocolate, the star zoomed out and straight up, off into the sky.

It's difficult to see these days, with so much artificial light coming from the earth, but if you look carefully sometimes you can see a pink star and now a slight whiff of candy in the sky. That's him, swooping in to take a closer look and wondering whether to come back and light up another party.

© Sarah McCartney 2009.