That morning the Fairy was brewing a magic drink in a cauldron.
By evening she expected guests — not ordinary ones, but very important kings and nobles, and very capricious princesses from all the surrounding kingdoms. A holiday was approaching, and everyone was trying to receive an invitation to the Fairy’s ceremonial dinner. Its fame had spread far and wide. The Fairy was always surprised when she received new requests for invitations from people long forgotten or even entirely unknown to her.
“How,” she thought, “did they find out about me and my tradition of holding soirées? Perhaps a little bird carried the news through the whole district. Yes, yes, of course, a little bird!”
It had happened the previous winter, when the Fairy was preparing another set of magic dishes. Her traditional festive cake was almost ready. First she baked large layers of different colors.
Chilled egg whites whipped with chokeberry gave the main layer the color of ultramarine. At times one saw Prussian blue in it; at times violet shades appeared.
Next came the raspberry-colored layer. But if you think one simply had to add raspberries to the dough, you are mistaken. Dough with raspberries became sticky and viscous, and acquired a brownish, not at all festive shade. No, for her festive cake the Fairy made preparations all summer. For the raspberry layer she gathered only the choicest raspberries growing in the distant forest beyond the apiary, where she went with the first rays of the sun. The raspberries had to be picked immediately after the morning dew. Then, if they were spread out on large white plates and left all day in the sun, the berries first dried quickly, then withered, and by evening turned into strange shriveled little lumps. For the festive undertaking, precisely these were needed. And here is the strange thing: once the Fairy laid the raspberries on colored plates, and nothing worked. By evening the berries were just as wonderfully round and fresh! The Fairy was so upset that that day she fed all the raspberries to the salamander who lived in the neighboring yard and guarded that yard and the little house standing there from uninvited guests. In that house lived a lonely old woman who seemed weak and defenseless. But that is not what this is about.
So, when the berries shriveled and dried, the Fairy called the little bird, who easily separated the raspberry seeds from the dried raspberry flesh. The flesh went into a large crystal jar and was used as the first ingredient for the magic drink, while the seeds were placed in a snow-white mortar (we have already said that all dishes had to be white!). Then the Fairy began grinding these seeds with a white marble pestle. The resulting powder looked quite unremarkable, of a wholly indeterminate color. Strangely, it was precisely this powder that gave the baked layer of the festive cake its rich raspberry hue.
For the next, orange layer, she needed petals of garden calendula, which retained their saturated color even when dried and crushed, and besides cured stomach colic forever. The calendula petals growing at the apiary were plucked and dried as in an ordinary pharmacy, while the stamens were laid with great care into honeycombs and left until the very eve of the holiday. When, on the morning before the feast, the Fairy took out these honeycombs, she was always surprised that in every cell there appeared a honey-and-calendula mass shaped like a star anise. It seemed that no chemical processes should create such wonders, and yet year after year little stars lay in the combs — surely some magic was involved, magic that, whether one wants it or not, appears in the simplest and most unexpected things. Every third star from every seventh row the Fairy threw into the large pot for the magic drink; the rest went into the dough for the orange layer.
But the most difficult ingredient to prepare was for the silver sponge cake. Or no, not difficult — what difficulties can a fairy have?! — laborious. To prepare a layer the color of silver, one had to knead the most intricate snowflakes, gathered the day before, into the morning milk of the white cow that lived in the yard of the lonely old woman, in whose yard the salamander lived. We have already spoken of this. Usually the snowflakes melted, mixing with the warm milk, but there was a magic secret here too. If one stirred the snowflakes into the milk to the singing of birds, the milk of the white cow turned before one’s eyes into bird’s milk, and the snowflakes preserved their crystalline transparency, passing their sparkling silveriness to the most important and beautiful layer of the cake. Of course, it is wrong to reveal one’s secrets to anyone, but nothing worked without birdsong; therefore the birds had to be called for help. Usually one small speckled bird came, the one who always helped select raspberry seeds in summer, but last time she had flown beyond the forest and the apiary to visit her beloved friend, and so another songstress had to be called. She was much larger than the usual helper, which did not matter, and she sang less melodiously, but that was still better than ending up without the most beautiful, crystal-silver layer in the cake.
It was this bird, the Fairy suspected, who spread the rumor of the cake and, above all, of the magic drink to all corners.
Yes, we have said nothing yet about the magic drink boiling in the cauldron! Yet it plays the most important role in our story. The thing was that even one sip could grant wishes. More precisely, only one wish — and it had to be about love. That was why all the princesses tried to receive an invitation to the Fairy’s dinner. Princesses, as we know, are especially capricious and difficult, and no one wanted to marry them despite the half-kingdoms or entire kingdoms offered (well, we do remember that this is a fairy tale!).
But if such a princess drank a sip of the magic drink brewed by the Fairy, by the very next morning she would receive a proposal of marriage and a ring with a diamond or, at worst, an emerald.
And so, when all the cake layers were ready, spread with whipped cream, sprinkled with nuts and decorated with berries, the Fairy turned to the drink. What did our sorceress brew it from? We have told of raspberry and honeyed calendula, but not a word about the rest! The rest is a great secret. No, not even a secret — a mystery. A magical one. Otherwise what sort of magic would it be?
The Fairy finished boiling the drink, whispered over it her usual spells, and decided to taste whether perhaps she should add a vanilla pod, as one film star advised when speaking of mulled wine on a popular cooking program. Usually the Fairy never tasted what she cooked, but here perfectionism defeated traditional common sense, and the Fairy took a sip, even closing her eyes with pleasure.
“No vanilla!” she exclaimed, and began setting elegant plates and glasses on the large table covered with a cloth of delicate shimmering lace.
In the evening everything was as always beautiful and solemn. The table was rich and decorated with flowers. Candles burned. Music played. Violins sang, harps rang, lutes suffered tenderly.
Hundreds of guests in evening dress sat down in anticipation of dinner and miracles. Each received a piece of cake and a glass of magic potion.
The princesses raised the drink to their lips and for a second pondered, trying to formulate the wish more precisely.
And at that moment all the princes and unmarried kings, all the nobles and knights, took out their prepared velvet boxes with rings sparkling with diamonds and emeralds, and... held them out to the Fairy.
“Oh, how could this happen?!” cried the stunned princesses.
“Oh, I should not have tasted the magic drink,” thought the Fairy. People are right when they say: all evil comes from television.
