Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 10

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 22-08-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood

My darker version of Briar Rose continues….

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The Download link is faster! 8.25 exciting minutes.

Roses, Briars, Blood: Part Ten

As the priests tied Princess Mirabelle to the stake, the rabble, raising their fists, screamed curses at her. From her senses spinning with  fear, all she could see was a sea of contorted black holes spewing waves of pollution into the air.

“This is a mistake! I am Princess Mirabelle!” she cried as the ropes went around her waist.

As the smoldering brands were being laid at her feet, the Princess marveled that these villagers could have been no more than infants in the Sorceress’s time. Many of them had not even been born, yet they acted as though they had been harmed by the Sorceress personally, had been present at her exile.

**********
Such is the power of tales, she mused as the Executioner lit the scrawny kindling, that they believe the dead past can still harm them.

“Sorceress!, Witch! Now we will watch you die!”

As she stood bent and wild eyed, the Prince of her dreams rode by on his ornately caparisoned white horse. He sneered her as the flames bloomed at the edges of the pyre.

“Now I shall go and find the real Princess Mirabelle,” he shouted over the crackling of the flames. “I’ll see what you have done to her, you Witch!”

The Prince charged off in the direction of the forest followed by his entourage of fifty armed men.

The heat grew stifling and the Princess closed her eyes against the brightness of the flames. Her heart fluttered in dread of the fire singing her hair and licking her bare feet.What would happen when it reached the hem of her shift? And as she trembled and cried, she heard the sound of voices singing her name.  The dancing flames grew taller, and as they danced, they became Nine Ladies who mysteriously walked out of the inferno to encircle Princess Mirabelle.

Mira…Mira…Mira….belllllle. Do not be afraid. Did you not know that you are immortal?

“Oh, please!” the Princess murmured. “Take me out of here. It is a terrible mistake.”

Suddenly, a wand of fire swept up the back of her dress, and the ropes that held her to the stake broke. Princess Mirabelle crumpled down and would have fallen fell face first into the blaze if something hadn’t lifted  her up in time.

The power of flight is still yours, Princess Mirabelle. Had you had forgotten it?

She was floating in the air looking down at the drunken, leering crowd that danced in a ring around the high, snapping fire, celebrating her death, as the Sorceress’s body was consumed in the conflagration.

I am not the Sorceress. She is dead. Now I must go back to the castle before the Prince gets there. I must show him who I really am…

The nine ladies accompanied the flying Princess back to the Sorceress’s castle.
As they flew over the forest, she saw the Prince and his entourage had passed into the region of winter, and were fast approaching the first of the ring walls whose stones were barely to be seen under its cowl of snow, and the wild tangling branches of the briar roses.

At the sight of the wall. Prince Agramant reined in his steed and stood up in his stirrups.

Under a trellis of briars he was able to see the structure of the castle gate. Disconcertingly, he also saw bones hanging on the wall, whose ripped and ravaged silk doublets and satin cloaks flapped like the flags of Princes in the bitterly cold wind, catching on the thorns of the blood red briar roses .

Impatient, and jealous that others had tried to assail his rightful Bride, the Prince shouted at the gate.

“The enchantment is over! The Wicked Enchantress is dead, burned to a crisp, and her soul damned into Hell. Let me in, in the name of God!”

And slowly, the gate was filled with light. And as the light grew, the roses that hung upon it began to sizzle and burn as if they too were subject to the fire. Now the gate stood open, and the dazzled Prince went through.

********

As she watched the Prince pass through, in that way, from one gate to another, as he made his way up the mountainside toward the castle, Princess Mirabelle’s anxiety increased.

“We must hurry! If he gets into the tower before we do, he shall awaken the sleeping Princess, and thinking she is me, will marry the Sorceress!”

Now the Princess felt as though she was flying through syrup, and wondered if the Sorceress was already awake and trying to prevent her getting to the tower in time. Then she remembered that there was a great force field around the castle, proving the enchantment of that place was not quite over yet.

“We must stop him!” the Princess cried as she watched the Prince trot up the the paved parapet that sloped up to the door of the tower.

She turned to see if the Nine Ladies were still with her and found, to her dismay, that she had merely been talking herself. Suddenly, a loud roar split the air like thunder! Princess Mirabelle spun around and, in  her utter terror, almost lost altitude.  An enormous dragon was coiled around the turret where the Sorceress slept, spewing flames at the Prince as he climbed towards the entrance. The Prince’s horse reared, bucked him to the ground, and swiftly galloped back down the parapet. The Prince stood up and pulled out his sword to face the monster. It seemed to laugh at him as a flame licked the sword and it fell to the ground like melted wax.

As the Nine Ladies in the form of a dragon, for she knew that was who it was, held the Prince at bay, Princess Mirabelle was able to float through the tower window and into the chamber where her nemesis lay, in all her golden glory, waiting for the Prince’s kiss.

********

To be continued…The last installment comes next!

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Roses, Briars, Blood is in 11 parts

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 9

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 20-08-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 9

My darker version of Briar Rose continues…

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To Download mp3, Click the Title Below: 11:04 minutes

Roses, Briars, Blood - Part Nine

Princess Mirabelle shimmered in a sorcerous gown of liquid red silk, as she went to the tower window.  She gazed longingly over the steep forest. There were little horse trails winding among the trees that led up the snow dusted castle walls. But whoever rode those trails to the castle would never get in, for the gate was buried under the thick, luxuriant cascades of deep, dark red briar roses.

Beyond the forest, across the river, as the crow flies, was a Kingdom. Its turrets and towers poked up above the trees. Princess Mirabelle wondered what riches such a place held. She wondered about the inhabitants, were they awake or asleep?  Were any of them Princes?

She was compelled to climb the stair to the top of the tower for a better view. There was a bell up there. She did not fancy bells, for she associated them with her captivity and the long sleep she feared would overcome her again. Rather, she loved the air, and the wide sky. The Princess walked around the parapet that encircled the turret with her arms reaching toward the sky. All around the castle was forested mountainside lit up by threaded waterfalls. Rows of circular curtain walls fell away from the base of the castle, down the hill of trees, all of them covered with roses. Marveling at such rich growth of life, excited by her freedom, the Princess stood upon the parapet raising her rams like wings as if join the flock of crows that swirled around her in the sky. Suddenly she toppled over. Falling, she marveled at how the ground came towards her until, something lifted her up and she found herself moving  through the air in the direction of the setting sun.

*******

The beautiful Sorceress lay in the coffin of Princess Mirabelle’s sleeping body. She dreamed of flying over the forest to the Old Kingdom where they slept out their one-hundred years of enchantment. She tried to lift her fingers, but they would not move.  Perhaps she should have timed her switch better, but then she had grown old and would not have lived much longer. Now she lived between death and life, waiting for the Great Clock to fill the castle with its clanging at the end of time, waking her for another incarnation, or better yet, waiting for the embrace of a handsome Prince.

Princess Mirabelle set her feet down on a snowy cobbled clearing in a forest that grew inside the ringwall of a castle that was hauntingly familiar. There seemed to be no one about. It was as silent as one of her dreams but for a sudden whistling whirlwind of snow that swept her skirts above her ankles, freezing her bare skin.

She glanced around, overcome with a strange sadness, for the once majestic buildings were overtaken by great trees whose roots broke through the walls, cracked open the foundations, merged with the corners of the masonry, and thrust branches out of windows like invading giants. The Princess found a yawning portal, its once stout double doors breached open and hanging from their hinges like broken wings. She went inside hurried along by a snowdrift at her back.

The short passage led into the great hall where a waxworks banquet was taking place — or so it seemed, for all the figures had stiffened into postures that no living person could have held for very long. This was especially true of a few contorted acrobats whose taunt, muscled flesh showed through tattered silks and satins worn through by the elements.

At the head of the banqueting table was a King caught in the midst of an excited conversation with the empty space beside him. His face was shockingly familiar in a way the caused tears to start in Princess Mirabelle’s eyes. She fled from that place out into the forest. The trees had come so close to the doors of the palace that it would not be long before they got inside.

It was with a shock that Princess Mirabelle discovered that all she had to do was think of a place that she wanted to go to be lifted into the air and moved in its direction. This was why she was suddenly looking down at the river, and crossing over it to the Kingdom Beyond the River. As she got closer to it, signs of life struck her with such brilliance that she almost halted in midair and began to fall.

This is where the Prince is, thought Princess Mirabelle. I can feel it.

The village around the castle was a great tumult, for the citizens of that Kingdom were at war with each other. Princess Mirabelle did not understand such things so she ignored them. All she could think of was the Prince, and how she had longed for him all through her mysterious sleep. She set down on a grand staircase and almost floated in her hurry up to the gallery. Several magnificent rooms opened out along the corridor, but never the right one, for they were all empty. Finally she came to a closed door at the end of the passage. Almost ignoring the barrier of the door, she went inside.

There were three biers flanked by several tall, flickering candle branches, solemn as a church. One the first bier was a King snoring peacefully. Could he be asleep as she had been? On the second bier was, indeed, a young Prince so handsome, and so pure in his repose, that the Princess would have kissed him awake at once if her eye had not been caught by the third bier. The figure on it was surely not asleep, for it was enclosed with a casquet of glass. And inside was an old Queen all in white, her skin unlined, smoothed, as it was, over the angular facebones of the dead. A large bouquet of briar roses spilled over her body as if they spouted from her folded hands.

The sight of the dead Queen gave Princess Mirabelle pause, for she looked older than the King by many scores of years.

The Prince was smiling in his sleep. What did he dream of? Princess Mirabelle could not wait to ask. She leaned over him, kissed his mouth, and then drew back to watch. Slowly his eyes fluttered open. The pupils were very dark. He shook his head slightly, yawned and stretched, smiled to himself and suddenly looked up at the Princess.

“Good morning, my Prince!” she cried holding out her arms to embrace him.

But rather than rushing to her in a heat of gratitude and love, the Prince shrank away.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “Witch! Sorceress! What have you done?”
The Princess was stunned. “But I am not the Sorceress. I am Princess Mirabelle.”

“Fie! You are not. You are that same witch that put a curse upon that other Kingdom. You were exiled into the mountains a long time ago. I know your face.”

The Princess’s heart sank, for she realized he was right. The long dark hair, the sinuous, sensuous body sheathed in its blood red gown, the age old  wisdom in her eyes, the magic of her flight… How had she come to be the Sorceress? Inside she was still Princess Mirabelle!

The Prince jostled the King awake.

“Look father. Look! See who has visited us. Wake up will you! Look!”

The King sat up, startled out of his sleep, and glared menacingly, first, at his son, and then at Princess Mirabelle,

“Ahhh!” he cried. “What is she doing here? Don’t look at her eyes Agramant. Avaunt thee Witch!”

The King pointed his fingers at her in the sign of the horns.

This was how poor Princess Mirabelle found herself being led to the stake. The outraged citizens forgot their war with each other and focused all of their rage upon her. Had not the Sorceress caused the friction that raised the fire of war by obstructing the Succession with her curse of sleep?

“But I am not a Sorceress. I am Princess Mirabelle. I was cursed as well.”

Her sincere protestations fell on deaf ears.

Castle ruins image by Andy Duffell

To be continued…

Click here for Part 10: Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 10

Roses, Briars, Blood is in 11 parts:

Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 11: Finis

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 8

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 10-08-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood

My dark version of Briar Rose continues…

To stream audio press the button below:

To Download the MP3. Click the Title BelowIts  9 minutes long

Roses, Briars, Blood : Part Eight

A tall shadow was was standing at the side of the bed. The shadow was always there, watching. It wore a choker of rubies that were cut to look like roses that shone in the hollow of it’s throat. The central pendant drew the eye, for it hung like a wet drop, dangling slightly forward. The Princess did not think that it was possible to cut rubies into the shapes of roses. The stones were set in a circlet of thorns made of blackened silver that pierced the shadow’s throat, opening the soft white skin so that drops of  scarlet blood trickled down, soaking the roses. The eyes of the shadow rolled up in her head so that only the whites showed, and then they glared down at the Princess, wild as a tiger ready to pounce.

The Princess tried to lash out at the apparition, to escape, but her body was locked, rigid as stone. Often when the night mare seized her, the warm presence of Nine Ladies form the Woods wafted around her bed, smiling and consoling her, lulling her with their songs, dissolving her nightmares in a sea of velvet oblivion. She called out to the Nine Ladies now.

Please help me…Make her go away…help me…where are you? Oh please come…help me…

Her cries did not echo back to her, but stayed cushioned in the silence of her mind, like the earth muffled under its coverlet of snow.

A cold blast of air came into the room, empty and bare as the branches of the trees that pierced the sky like spindles. Then the Princess saw the Nine Ladies, ethereal as the petals of faded flowers hanging by their necks from the trees, each one emitting a soft light that glowed from within, like a lamp. Their heads drooped down on the slender stalks of their bodies as they shifted back and forth in the breeze.

The face of a dark lady was staring at her from the inside of  a mirror…

Princess Mirabelle fell through a trapdoor in the floor under her bed. The well was netted with briar roses. And caught among the flowers were young men with staring sightless eyes, and further down, the deeper  below the ground she fell, the young men were naked, and then green, then black until, finally, they were bones.

\

The beautiful Sorceress pondered what to do. On her return to the castle, she had found the bodies of nine more Princes impaled on high hedge of briar roses that grew around the castle like a wall. She laughed at the young men sacrificing themselves for a dream.

She could not erase from her mind the sight of the King and the Prince from the Kingdom Beyond the River sleeping the enchanted sleep of Princess Mirabelle, nor the aging of the Queen in comparison to them. She could not help worrying that, when the one-hundred years had passed, that they would come back to life and, in her frailty, strike her down to take the Princess away.

Pacing the floor in front of her magic mirror, the Sorceress watched for the Nine Ladies from the Woods, for she was sure they came in through the mirror. At the same time, she watched, from the tail of eye, how the sand piled up at the bottom of the Hour Glass of One-Hundred Years. This accumulation of time drove her back to the mirror to look at the map of her loneliness on the moon pale surface of her face, and she saw the shadows of the years stretching over it.

The Sorceress had come to believe that she needed Princess Mirabelle to stay alive. She had gradually  absorbed the girls’ qualities, given, through her, by the magic of the Nine Ladies. She drew the qualities into herself so that all the grace, the lilting voice, wealth, power, beauty,  and true love became part of her. She perceived that the body of the Princess Mirabelle did not grow toward death as all else did, that it was only an empty husk, a shell. If only she could get inside that shell! Then, as Fate decreed by sorcery, the Prince would come and wake her, and she would live the life of a Princess, and at the end of one-hundred years, be young and beautiful for a lifetime more.

But the Princess was more than an empty shell, and the Sorceress knew this. For she still had the power to draw Princes to the castle, and sometimes the expressions on her face changed so that the Sorceress knew that she dreamed.

*********

And then, one day, Princess Mirabelle dreamed that someone leaned over her and gave her a kiss. Startled she flinched and clutched the stems of the roses lying on her breast with her fingers. The sting of the thorns woke her. Lifting her arms, she reached up to embrace her savior, the Prince, but met nothing but air. Startled again her eyes flew open to a haze of firelight and a  distant window cobwebbed with frost.

I’m dreaming again…How many times have I had this dream? But this time it felt so real…

Suddenly the Princess was lifted into the air, and set upright on her feet. Contact with the floor felt strange, she was dizzy and weak with her head high above her shoulders, and her back exposed to the cold emptiness. A wintry blast shook her. She walked a little way, circling stiffly back toward the bed, wondering where the handsome Prince was, and not seeing one, thought she must be having a dream more vivid than usual. The Princess looked down at the bed and saw that she was still there, sleeping, her lovely, blooming face nestled in a mass of pale hair, and wearing a faded green gown with tarnished sequins spotted with dried blood.

What?…has my spirit fled my body?

Looking around, Princess Mirabelle thought to enjoy her new found freedom from her bodily prison and slowly circled the circumference of the room, examining the various rich objects, warming to the texture of soft fabrics, inhaling the scent of roses mixed with ambergris and a low note of something unknown to her, until, fascinated by their gleaming in the winter light, she was drawn towards the mirrors.

A once beautiful lady, with long white hair like a blast of snow on the wind, looked back.

The Princess stroked the long, plait that hung over her shoulder, and as she stroked the unfamiliar tresses, they turned dark. She gazed at the pale oval of her face, still unlined, but distant and marked with sorrow. As she gazed, she realized she was looking at the lady with the ruby choker, and that there was smear of blood over her lips. And that the longer she looked at her, the younger she grew.

Click here to continue: Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 9

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Roses, Brairs, Blood is in 11 parts:

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 6

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 20-07-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood

My dark version of Briar Rose continues…

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part Six

As the snow fell, the kingdom slept.
The beautiful Sorceress stood at the window. It had once looked out over deep slopes of pine and rock, waterfalls and caves, but now the glass was encrusted with ice that admitted only a dim, cold light that shone along the throat and facebones of the Sorceress so her skin shone like a pearl under water. Bored, listless, she traced the lace-like patterns in the ice with a long, jeweled finger. The heat of her finger melted the frost, uncovering a layer of opalescent glass etched with snowflakes. The beautiful Sorceress sighed.
“They look the webs of spiders. The whole castle is ringed with them. The Princess and I wait in the middle to be devoured by Old Spider Time.”

The wavering flames of candles and torches were the only light the Sorceress ever saw now, for winter days were naught but an endless twilight that bled into darkest night. She wandered the endless corridors, drifted up and down the grand stairways, lighting and re-lighting, by sorcery, her thousands of candles as she passed. By sorcery, she changed her gowns as she walked, and by sorcery, she flew over the gardens to look at  the roses that continuously crept up the sides of the tower, in full bloom, despite the snow.
On this day, she gazed in awe at the roses, for they grew very high about the tower and had begun to entwine around the portals, windows, and gargoyles of the castle. the roses were scarlet red and open like gouts of blood against the soft pallor of the snow, their black thorns curving like hooks. It reminded the Sorceress of the Princess’s white hand dripping with blood from the wounding spindle.  But, since she believed this vision was a mirror of her own magic, the Sorceress did not question the true meaning of roses blooming in winter, nor the death that was buried under them.

But on this day, the Sorceress discovered the body of a Prince hanging in the roses. He was tangled in the branches high above the ground as if he had been climbing up the side of the tower, had missed his footing, and fallen to his death, impaled on the strong, black talons of the thorns. His eyes sought the high window of the tower for eternity now.
Why was he there? She must find out, for she thought the nine ladies form the woods had put them all to sleep for one hundred years. Perhaps the Prince had come from a far kingdom.
“They said she would sleep for one-hundred years unless wakened by a Prince’s kiss. I must find out how fast this news has spread among Princes.”

*********

As Mirabelle slept, she dreamed. Gazing from the top of a high tower, she saw a Prince coming along the road. Over and over again he came, but he never got farther than the outside walls of the castle. Sometimes she flew through the air, over forests and mountain peaks. There was a castle in the mountains covered with snow and roses. She flew into the tower where the roses grew over the windows, and forgot where she was. Then she felt she was lying in a pool beneath a layer of ice.  It was dark under there, and the water was cold. Someone walked over her, their boots squeaking and their voice muffled by the snow. Blood splattered down on the ice, staining it bright red. The blood turned into rose petals. Their stems twined around her, holding her in a cage held together with thorns over which roses bloomed and died and bloomed again.

I shall go mad, she thought, for she could think in her endless sleep, if someone doesn’t wake me up.

*********

Not long after the kingdom fell into its enchanted sleep, a troupe of Traveling Players wandered into it, looking for an inn and audience. They found the inn, but the audience looked like figures of wax posed in the acts of drinking and conversation. The Players, finding the castle gates open, and the Gatekeeper frozen with his keys, went into the castle yard, and through the entrance to the Great Hall.

There was a large audience in the banqueting hall frozen in the midst of a feast – a waxworks feast, the players declared all at once.  Another troupe of Players was already there, fixed in grotesque cartwheels, or frozen in the air in the midst of a somersault! They displayed, what the Traveling Players described later on in their tales, a complete lack of elegance and grace. They obviously failed to entertain the two Kings whose heads were on their hands, and their mouths open and snoring. A handsome Prince sat around the corner of the table near the Kings, slumped in his chair holding a small bright object in his hand in which he seemed enraptured even in sleep. The food on the table was still very good, for the very forces of life and death had been arrested under the sorcerous enchantment.

“What can have happened?” the Players muttered as they explored on room after another.

Finally they gave up trying to figure it out and, used to living in an enchanted world, they each found a sumptuous Royal bed and spent a few days living in high style. But Traveling Players being what they are, they were soon on their way, now armed with the most astonishing story of a lost kingdom populated with life-sized dolls.

While on the road, the Players had also seen, high above the trees, a strange tower covered with roses and snow. What could possible live in such a place but a captive Princess guarded by dragon. And so the tale was spread through villages and towns, earning the Players warm hospitality, and much money. Eventually, they were invited to into the Royal Court of the Kingdom on the Other Side of the River where the Queen and the Court were hungry for news of their vanished King and Prince Agramant.

Candle image by Matt Austin

For Part 7 click here:

Roses, Briars, Blood: part 7

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 5

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 14-07-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood

My dark version of Briar Rose continues…

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part Five

That same day, the King was banqueting with the King from Across the River discussing preparations for the marriage  of Princess Mirabelle and Prince Agramant. The dowry was to be most magnificent. Apart from her jewels, pearls, precious stones and fabrics, the Princess would bring two hundred thousand gold pieces, paid in ten yearly installments of ten thousand each, secured by the rents of the towns and villages of the kingdom.

“And,” the King smiled as if he enjoyed a private joke,”She will also bring with her, a priceless collection of gloves created by the great Milanese artisan, Sebastiano.”

“Oh,” said the King from Across the River. “I would enjoy seeing that!”

Prince Agramant sipped his wine, smiling with his perfect teeth, his dark eyes flashing. “When shall I meet the Princess? I have been told she is very beautiful. Is she more beautiful than the fair Lady I saw looking down from a high balcony as we entered the castle? Surely no one could be more exquisite than that! Could it have been the Princess that I saw?”

The Prince looked abstracted and pushed his glossy hair back form his face, sighing.

The two Kings laughed together, raising their eyebrows at the Prince. They looked, one at the other, about to speak, and then froze when they caught each others’ eyes. Then they burst out laughing once again.

The King wasn’t sure how he felt about the eagerness of the Prince to see his daughter. Mirabelle was his little girl, after all. With that thought in mind, he quaffed his wine and looked daggers at the Prince over his goblet. The Prince continued to smile to himself as if he had no idea of the implications.

“Tomorrow you shall see her for the first time. At the grand ball,” the King finally said to break the silence. “In the meantime, I have a small gift for you. Here.”

The King dangled a silver locket in front of the Prince as if daring him to accept it. The Prince grabbed it playfully and opened it up with a loud laugh. Then he grew quiet and said,

“But it is that same exquisite Lady I saw on the balcony. Her very likeness! And what is this under the cover of the locket, but a skein of her golden hair!”

The Prince looked mesmerized causing the King to laugh nervously, glancing form the tail of his eye at the King from Across the River who looked soberly down at his plate lost in thought.

“Well,” said the King, Princess Mirabelle’s father. “My Miniaturist is a genius. He has captured my daughter’s likeness exactly. I am glad she does not disappoint you, young man.”

The Prince leaned toward the King, barely containing his excitement. “ Such beauty could never disappoint! Did you know that her beauty is sung by the troubadours who have taken their songs from our Kingdom Across the River, all the way to Paris, and now they shall return here to sing of the beauty of the Princess Mirabelle for the wedding. They say her hands shine like silver, her face is as pure as exquisitely carved ivory, and her hair hangs like sheets of iridescent gold. Now I know it is true. How lucky I am!” the Prince cried looking at his father with fire in his eyes. “Let me see her at once!”

“You must wait, Agramant,” said the King from Across the River, watching the King’s reaction from the tail of his eye. “A gentleman must not be too hasty. Perhaps we shall go hawking in the morning while the Princess prepares for the ball tomorrow night. Work off a little steam, as it were.”

“Yes,” said the King. “I would like that, We have a fine forest here full of game. The young Prince may as well get used to hunting in it straight away. You will meet my sons today, if that is any consolation.”

The two Kings and the Prince crashed their goblets together, and drank healths to each other, while the acrobats turned cartwheels, walked on their hands, or sprung circles in the air, and the Court minstrels sang songs about the wonders of true love.


When the Princess arrived at the top of the stairs, she stepped onto a a landing with a long gallery, that looked down over what once must have been a palatial ballroom, now under layers of dust. The sound of the singing, and the bells, drew her to a partly opened door where the glow of firelight shone through.  The Princess passed through the door into a vast bedchamber with high ceilings and tall windows, and standing before the hearth in the light cast by the fire, was a tall, dark lady with a spindle in her hand. From her other hand dangled a bobbin that whirled round and around, faster and faster, as she sang the name of Mirabelle. The sound of silvery bells scintillated in the air, invisible, and the floor slightly trembled with gongs, causing the long shadow of the lady to waver over it like a flame.

“Who are you?” asked Princess Mirabelle, entranced by the mysterious presence of the beautiful woman who vaguely reminded her of a figure in a recurring dream.

“Come closer and I will tell you,” said the lady, spinning the bobbin round and round.

“What is that?” asked Princess Mirabelle, for she had never seen a spindle before.

“Come closer and I will show it you,” the lady said.

The Princess, suspecting no harm, did as she was told.

“Do you like the sheen of the silken thread?” the lady asked, holding the spindle up before the Princess’s eyes. “I have been spinning it for a long, long time. It is the softest and strongest thread in the land. First, I spun the copper thread, then the silver. Now, I spin the gold. Look closer. It is made more beautiful with hair-like strands of red and black mixed in.”

The Princess put her face very close to the spindle. “It is lovely,” she said.

“Here, hold it for yourself. Try pulling the silk and see how fine it is. It is like your hair,” the lady said smiling with admiration. “Perhaps you will enjoy the magic of spinning.”

As the Princess grasped the spindle, she put her finger over the very top. It was sharp! It cut her!

“Ah!” the Princess cried out, watching her finger blossom with a stream of sudden blood. She looked at the woman, pleading for help. “The room is spinning! Oh my,” she cried as she fell to the floor and blacked out.

“How dreadful,” said the Sorceress. “How very dreadful.”

A strange, heavy reflecting cloud fell over the Palace so that the day darkened to twilight, and snow began to fall. There were bells ringing, close, yet far away, increasing the silence with their sound as of waves crashing on a distant shore. The servants moved slowly around the table as if they walked in their sleep. The acrobats paused in their contortions, and the minstrels fell down in a picturesque pile of hat feathers, cloaks and mandolins.

The Prince struggled to stay awake, but when he saw the heads of his father and the King nodding, he, too, surrendered to sleep. And as he slipped into darkness, he dreamed he was falling down a deep well into a tangle of blood red roses. As he fell into them, they bore his body up on a nest of thorns, and there he rested, gazing up at a small circle of winter sky. Crows flew over it, black flapping against the white clouds. Snow was falling on the roses that grew up the inside walls of the well, turning them white. The Prince was dimly aware of the face of a dark woman looking down at him from the circle of sky, before he slipped away into oblivion.

*******

If they had been awake, the King’s subjects would have see a heresy: the Sorceress, with the sleeping Princess at her side, flying through the air towards the forest. She landed on the parapet of her Castle, and carried the Princess into a high tower where a luxurious bed, draped in pale satin brocade, awaited its royal occupant.

The Sorceress placed the Princess so that her shimmering hair streamed over the pillows, her shining hands were folded over her breast, and her feet were pointed delicately. Then she wrapped her in gauzy spells, and lucid dreams, spinning a magic cage around her so that no other sorceries could get in.

“One-hundred years is but a day in my world,” said the Sorceress. “The time will soon pass, and then where will you be?”

But the nine ladies of the woods  were listening by means of their long ear horns, and they knew their spell was being undermined by the clever Sorceress.

“All we can do is make the one-hundred years pass as in mortal time, and this we shall do by wrapping the tower around with briar roses. It will take the roses one-hundred years to reach the top of the tower. Thus, the spell shall dissolve when the Sorceress is no more. The roses shall also serve to keep the Princess in the perpetual summer of youth, and prevent the Sorceress’s winter of age touching her.”


To be continued….

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 4

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 09-07-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 4

My dark version of Briar Rose continues…

Kimded

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When the Princess’s wedding day approached, the King grew anxious. He squabbled with the Queen when she interrupted his brooding and pacing the long corridors, with news of another wedding guest needing the Royal Suite, plus extra rooms for his retainers, or threats that the Prince of Bohemia was going to entertain the Court with his devilish collection of automatons, or that the entire west wing was haunted, so who could they expect to stay there?

The King nodded while the Queen worried on, but did not hear a word she said. He continued to ruminate, certain of only one thing: that whatever he did to protect his daughter must be kept absolutely secret.  After many weeks of deep conflict, he simply had her moved, in the dark of the night, into sumptuous, but neglected, chambers in a remote part of the Palace. These rooms were so rarely visited, he had to have a map drawn up just so he could find them again.

Now the Princess was alone. She spent the whole day looking out over the balcony, wondering if she would be able to see the Prince’s entourage approaching along the road for the wedding. But she saw  only the mountains , pines, clouds, and birds flying past on the wind. Her nurse was often asleep beside the fire, for the Princess made few demands. Because she was locked in, she saw no reason to wear the beautiful but uncomfortable  diamond gloves all the time, so they often sat on her dressing table beside her hair brushes and bottles of scent, outshining of all her other unnecessary jewels. Reading by the fire, she occasionally looked up from her book, and sighed with resigned expectation.

One night, the Princess was awakened when a shaft of bright moonlight was caught in the filmy curtains that blew into the room from the open window casement, setting the room alight, and like moonbeams, the nine ladies from the woods floated in, murmuring, and gazing at the Princess with deep eyes like shadows in their luminous faces. The sound of gongs rolling under the shimmer of silvery bells, came drifting down from someplace higher up within the Palace. The music was haunting and seductive. The Princess sat up to listen to it while the nine ladies stood around her bed in a ring of pale shadows.

“What is that music?” asked the Princess, for she thought she heard a voice among the bells, calling her name in  a scale of falling, ghostly notes.

Miiiraaa…Miiiraaa…Miiiraaa…bellellellellellell….

She was answered by a breeze whistling in, that blew the lighted curtains up so that they swirled like white smoke.

The nine ladies stepped forward as of moved by the sound of the bells. They swayed and rippled in the mottled shadows, there, and then not, and there again, like a flash of lightening. A low moaning chant erupted from them like a warning.

“Someone wants me?” the Princess said sitting up.

Miiiraaa…Miiiiraaa….Miiiiraaa….bellellellellellellll….

The Princess got out of bed slowly, and putting a long cloak on over her nightgown, walked toward the door of her chamber. She heard whispering voices, and felt the nine ladies touching her as if to hold her back, but the voice was calling, and calling, just audible under the steady jingling of the bells.

“Someone wants me,” she said. “I must go.”

The Princess was suddenly startled by a sharp whack! She turned to see the diamond gloves had fallen onto the floor. The nine ladies called for a storm. Winds began to buffet the room, and the sound of thunder rolled. The nine ladies stood before the door, blocking the Princess’s way.

Another, louder voice cried out.

“Mirabelle! What is going on in there?”

All of a sudden, the door grew as tall as a tower, and the nurse burst in, dwarfed in the doorway to the size of a terrier. The Princess screamed and ran back into the room. Spinning around, she came face to face with a tapestry of a dying swan edged with shining blue light.

The bells bonged and shimmered and the distant voice called her.

“I must go!” she cried.

Pushing the tapestry aside, the Princess found a gap in the wall. She hurried through it and entered a passageway with stair leading up into the darkness where the bells came from, and the voice was calling, calling, calling her.

*********

The bobbin of her spindle dangled from her long hand, spinning faster and faster, as the beautiful Sorceress stood before her enchanted mirror and watched the Princess ascend the stairs. She sang the song of her name, Mirabelle, insinuating her thoughts into the Princess’s mind as she had always done, stealing the girls’ many gifts, given by the nine ladies, for herself. Now she would take back the Princess’s whole body, for was she not the true mother of this child? Had she not given of her own essence so that the Queen could carry her to birth? Mirabelle would be hers now, for one-hundred years, long enough for the Sorceress to feed off of, taking in everything, even greater beauty, and adding another century to her life.

To be continued…..

Top Image: Waiting Sorceress by Kimded

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 3

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 05-07-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part Three

My dark version of Briar Rose continues…

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With his daughter safely ensconced in a forest convent where the good sisters were ordered to keep strict watch on her, the King ordered every spinning wheel in the kingdom to be burned in the palace yard, on the same pyre that the Queen’s decapitated body, and her errant soul, had been sent up in smoke a month before. As he watched the fire from a high balcony, the King wondered, all the while, about the fate of the young Princess Mirabelle, tainted with witchcraft. Bowed down with these dark thoughts, he walked away from the spectacle, and sought solace in the shadows.

Of course without the means of spinning thread, the price of clothing increased. Much more time and  labor was involved in pulling the wool into yarn by hand, which was, yet, no where near as fine as wheel spun thread. Thus the serfs were forced to go about wearing the skins of wild beasts. The Court had always traded for silks and satins with the East, and the art of fashion thrived as the royal spinners tried their hands at stitchery, creating more fantastic garments than ever before.

All the while, the King’s army was out searching for the Sorceress, and though they scoured the forest and the mountainside, they could find no trace of her forbidding castle with its rings of high walls. The knights came back to the King’s Palace, fewer in number, and constantly bothering him with tales of an endless twilight atmosphere that clung about the forest. Strange apparitions appeared, floating lights, creatures with the bodies of animals and the heads of men, rows of trees with mirrors hanging among them that were impenetrable as walls, and the disorienting tinkling of thousands of bells over the deep pulsing of gongs. Strong men though they were, they were frightened.

The furious King had them all flogged and sent them out again, shouting “Bring back the Witch, or don’t come back at all!”

********

The beautiful Sorceress laughed. They had underestimated her. She had hidden the castle in a reflecting cloud of moonlight so that it merged with the trees in the forest. Then she ensorcelled herself in the most remote tower in the King’s own palace and bided her time, spinning.

The King married a new Queen who, unlike the first, was fat, rosy, and fertile. She gave him many strong sons who made a tremendous racket of noise in the palace, setting things alight and shooting objects through the air. The King was amused as his ministers dodged about with annoyed frowns on their faces, the favorite targets of the Princes’ high spirits.

Still, concern for his daughter buffeted the back of the King’s mind like a contained storm. In nine years, he had had no ill reports of her from the Good Sisters. In fact, he had had no reports at all. It was getting to be time to seal her betrothal to the Prince on the other side of the river. She must not get too old, or the alliance would be compromised. So the King sent a letter to the Holy Mother to ask about the Princess. Her answer was brief.

Greetings, Your Majesty,

The Princess is especially devoted to Our Lady of the Roses. She wears the emblems of that Saint, and it is our hope that she will take the veil as Sister Marie Rose.

Yours in Christ,
Mother Ignatius Teresa Barbara Josephine d’Annunciate

The King was not pleased about that.

So, on her tenth birthday, the King went to see his first born child.

He found that the nuns had grown anxious and possessive of the Princess, whispering to each other of their worry that the King would take her away from them.  When the King saw his daughter, he understood, for when she gazed at him with her light turquoise eyes, he was entranced. The simple black habit of the Convent was designed to erase vanity, but the Princess’s beauty shone forth more brightly, for it set off her pale skin and flaxen hair like a pearl on black velvet cushion. A single red rose was embroidered on her bodice with long hooked thorns that made the King think of claws. And under her sweet, docile manner, he detected a deep whirlpool of emotion, and sensed that she could see into his most hidden, secret parts. He decided not to pay attention to these thoughts, for he needed the Princess to be as he wanted her to be. He smiled jovially and rubbed his hands together as he approached Her stern Holiness.

“Ah, such a beautiful girl she has grown to be,” the King told Holy Mother. “ It is time for her betrothal, and I am sure the Prince will be well pleased with his bride. You have done an excellent job. I shall grant the convent more lands — perhaps the orchard that we passed along the way — as a reward for your kind nurturance of the Princess.”

“Thank you, I’m sure,” said Holy Mother.

The nuns looked askance as the Princess rode away with the King, worried about the watering down of her vocation as the evil worm of luxury entered her soul.

As he rode back to the Palace with his daughter, the King brooded. He remembered the danger of her fourteenth year — the year she was to marry the Prince — the year the curse was meant to take effect. One hundred years of sleep was like a death, was it not?

So the King sent forth a summons for the best, most talented silversmiths, from everywhere in the world, to make his daughter gloves of silver, hinged and padded inside so that her fingers could move, and so the metal would not pinch her pale, delicate skin. A great artist came from Venice and created a pair of gloves woven of real silver thread with cuffs embroidered with a motif of roses, set with rubies, and with beautiful, tapering fingers jointed in all the right places. When the Princess pulled them over her wrists, she went into ecstasies as her hands shone and sparkled in the sunshine.

“Nothing shall pierce those fingers now, my child!” said the King. “Now you are doubly safe.”

And each year after that, new gloves were fitted and made more elaborately than the ones before. Her eleventh year saw a pair of hands encrusted with pearls, the next pair were made of ivory and gold, and so on, The Princess could do nothing with such hands except admire them. She was tired most of the time anyway, so it didn’t really matter. She was content to sit beside the moat under a tree and look at the swans, or stroll along the labyrinth in the walled garden, or sit in the rose entwined bower beside the well, affecting a vacant look, for she did not like personal questions.  But deep inside, dark images moved in and out of her inner vision, obsessing her, drawing her away from the world, draining her of all her qualities. She constantly sensed she was being watched, and once she thought she saw a woman spying on her from the trees, and once a face, that was not her own, was looking up at her from under the water of the moat.

********

The Sorceress watched Princess Mirabelle from an enchanted mirror, fascinated by her increasingly eerie, white beauty as she grew from child to young woman. She was amused by the jeweled gloves the King had so painstakingly made for her, as if Fate could be thwarted by such means!  And the nine ladies from the woods were but to be mocked!
They guarded the Princess by standing in a ring around her bed at night, and accompanying her on her walks about the palace grounds. But, though protective, the influence of the nine ladies was isolating. They created an impenetrable night around Princess Mirabelle that kept, not the Sorceress, but all other people, away.

*******

On Princess Mirabelle’s fourteenth birthday, the King held a great celebration, calling to witness every single living thing in the kingdom. A fine artist from Milan presented the Princess with gloves made of nothing but diamonds, proclaiming them hardest substance in the world, impervious to all penetration. Princess Mirabelle was amazed at how her hands caught the light and cast rainbows on the walls and ceiling, turning frosty in the moonlight, or  deep red in the nimbus of the fire.

But her joy was short lived, for Mirabelle’s fourteenth year was one of increasingly dark moods, nights of bewildered tears, and blood. Her hands swelled and hurt inside the stiff gloves so that she often took them off. On the nights of the full moon she lay in bed unsleeping and saw, or thought she saw, tall faeries standing around her bed. They wore filmy gray-green gowns, and on each of their heads was a bi-horned headdress that shone like the moon.

But they were only impressions, really. Like creatures in a strong, vivid dream…

Spiral in Pine Woods image by Stu Jenks

To be continued…..

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Link to next part: Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 4

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 2

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 02-07-2009

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part Two

My dark version of Briar Rose continues…

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****************

*******************

Now the Queen was adored again.

The King sat next to her at the banqueting table, beaming. He was surprisingly glad that the child was a girl, and explained to his skeptical courtiers that he had always wanted to seal an alliance with the powerful kingdom on the other side of the river. This daughter would certainly grow to be beautiful, and worthy, of the hand of the Prince. And the Queen, having proven herself,  could strive to do better next time.

“Because of our daughter, we may look forward to our future with confidence,” the King said to the Queen one night as he removed his nightshirt and got into bed. “Let us make a son now. Come on, my love. Snuggle up!”

The Queen recoiled. The thought of another birth frightened her. She could not tempt Fate again by going to the Sorceress twice. As it was, she didn’t know how to tell the King that the most horrifying woman in the realm was to be invited to the baby’s Christening.

As she lay under the King, dark thoughts began to cloud the Queen’s mind.The image of the beautiful Sorceress entering the hall in a dark slithering gown, sitting down to dine among the nobles of the land, capturing the candlelight just to steal the glamor of the night, smiling her serpent smile at the Holy Father… What if she stood up and raised a glass to the Queen, congratulating her on the birth of a child? Drawing undue attention to herself! The Queen almost gasped as she imagined her guests rising in protest, crying, “Seize the witch!” — Not the Sorceress who, by magic, slides away into the shadows, but the Queen!

She stared up at the Danse Macabre on the wall opposite the bed, and stifled a scream.

When the time came for the baby’s Christening, the King called for a grand celebration. Bells rang throughout the kingdom as the Holy Father and his Cardinals processed through the narrow streets to bless the tiny child whose unexpected survival brought so much happiness to the King, and fulfillment to the Queen. The Princess was to be called Mirabelle because of her beauty, and her miraculous birth.

The Queen’s joy was feigned, for in the midst of the clanging and bonging of the bells of the city, she heard those other bells ringing far off, but distinct — the bells she had heard at the castle of the Sorceress. Her heat sinking into her stomach, the Queen brooded on the sound, trying to tell how close the bells were, and if they were coming any closer. Her face, squeezed into its tight wimple, was a mask of maternal joy over utter terror. She had decided that her commerce with the Sorceress had all been a dream ( how else could the midwife not have seen her and those faeries ringing her bed?). So she did not invite the Sorceress to the Christening.Now she shuddered, for she knew that, invited or not, the Witch was coming.

The Queen looked at her child in the bassinet beside her and smiled her rare smile. The baby daughter was beautiful. Suddenly, just as she began to warm toward the sleeping infant, her nurse came to take the baby behind a rosewood screen so the Queen could be free to entertain  her guests.

The bells rang the hour. They rang another hour. And another…

The celebrations were getting long. The noise and the crowd exhausted the Queen. She was sitting, languid with fatigue, beside the King at the head of the banqueting table when the First Cardinal came forward to call them to the Cathedral for the Christening. Waking from a doze, the Holy Father nodded. He stood up ready and smiling, his eyes twinkling from too much wine.

They all proceeded to the Cathedral and crowded into the alcove where the baptismal font stood on an altar carved with leaves to look like an archaic, sacred well in the center of  a dark forest. The Princess was lying in a gilded ivory bassinet beside the altar, tended by a nun who seemed intent on keeping the Queen at bay.

Just as the Holy Father was about to begin his sermon on the blight of Original Sin, and the necessity of God’s grace, the sounds of  powerful wind, thundered, banged, and echoed through the arches and the columns, rising to the ceilings and whistling down the aisles. And under that roaring were deep gongs, and the faint, silvery scintillation of the bells known only to the Queen…


Alarmed, the Queen stood up and instinctively pushed her way through the crush of guests to rescue her child. When she got to to the altar, she froze dead in her tracks, for standing around the bassinet, in a glowing green haze, were the nine ladies from the woods. They looked at the Queen with eyes like green flames, as out from among them, walking forward like Doom, was the beautiful Sorceress.

“My child! Give me my child!” the Queen cried. Her voice rang loud in the heavy silence of the vault.

The Sorceress hissed at the Queen, her eyes like whirlpools filled with strange sparks. She rose up above the the crowd,  revealing herself to the nobles and courtiers, the Cardinals, the Holy Father, the King! Wickedly, she hovered in the air in the House of God!

“NO!” screamed the Queen, dragging her long veils behind her to reach the Princess Mirabelle, yet her eyes fastened on the Sorceress and the long snaky tail uncoiling under her gown.

The Sorceress looked down at all the guests who had, to a man, gone rigid with shock. Even the King and the Holy Father and all of the Cardinals stood petrified in the liquid  violet light shining forth from the Sorceress.

“So Your Majesty, you don’t deem me worthy to attend the Christening of your child — a child who would never have been born without my magic. Therefore, I shall take back what I have given. When Princess Mirabelle reaches the age of fourteen years, she shall prick her finger on a spindle and die!”

“No! No!” cried the Queen. “I beg you. No.”

The Sorceress turned her baleful gaze at the Queen who seemed to have shrunk like a melted candle. “If you had kept your side of the bargain, you would have borne the second child to term as well — a son — and the kingdom would have thrived because of him.”

“What do you mean?” The Queen, in despair, covered her belly with her hands, glanced at the King, and fainted on the spot. His face slowly melted into a mask of rage.

A soft voice lilted over the now frantic babble of the guests, and filtered into the Queen’s ear as she swam just below consciousness.

“The child shall not die, my Queen. Rather, when she pricks her finger, she shall fall asleep for one-hundred years, or until a Prince wakens her with a kiss.”

*********

The next morning, the Queen was escorted to the tower and locked in. Several months later, she gave birth to a healthy boy who howled his way into the world like a wild animal or a madman. After that, she was beheaded in the public square.
Her bewitched, dismembered corpse was then burned in the fire so she would not come back to haunt the King.  He began to  wonder about the soul of his daughter. When, three days later, the baby boy died, what was left of the King’s heart died with him.

The Princess Mirabelle was sent into a convent in the forest, to be cared for by nuns.

To be continued….

Click here: Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 3

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Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 1

Filed Under (Original Gothic Faery Tales) by admin on 28-06-2009

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mp3: Roses, Briars, Blood 6.9mb 15 minutes

********

I decided to take take my own challenge and write a Gothic Faery tale just for this blog. I have always loved the Grimm’s story of Briar Rose for its strange images of light and dark, beauty, sorcery, and the  formidable rose covered tower where the Princess sleeps for one-hundred years. This tale is pouring out, not even finished yet! I shall write it in parts. I despair of ever being to write a truly short story. Maybe someday, with enough practice, I will.

Roses, Briars, Blood

by Arlene deWinter

2009

Part One

The Queen longed for a child.

Though she conceived, she could not carry; the babes simply slipped out of her  in a torrent of blood; her tears did not matter. She could not command them to stay the course. Frightened of the mocking laughter, and sly whispers of the Courtiers, the Queen dressed in widow’s white and retreated into the dim lit Halls of Melancholy where the echoes of disembodied voices, the tap, tap, tapping of distant footsteps, and the soft pattering of snow falling upon snow were the only sounds she heard.

The King looked askance at the frail Queen. She was ever so pale, like that luminous, crown-petaled flower that glows along the dim paths and the banks of the streams that lead into the deeper shadows of the Otherworld. The fine, flax colored hair, and the small, perfect features that had drawn him with their poignant delicacy, were now an arrangement of signs that hinted of thin, fragile bones, and a slipshod womb.

So, disappointed, the King’s sighs filled the halls of the castle, followed, as the time wore on, by great majestic groans. The Queen grew anxious. Would the King seek to put her away ,and find another who give him the heir he craved?

A third child fell from her body, into the net of a lacy shroud, to be buried, without ceremony, at the crossing of the catacombs. In desperation, the Queen sought the help of a Sorceress whose powers were so great and fearsome, that she was forced to live at the nether end of the forest in a chateau on the side of a mountain ringed about with a high stone wall.

The Queen was frightened, for she must go utterly alone and did not know the way. No one must know she was consulting the Sorceress, for it would give the King just the reason he needed to dispose of her. He might even have her burned for witchcraft! So on the night when the moon was dark, she wrapped herself in a long, black cloak and met the groom in the stables. Slipping him a golden sovereign, (for silence is golden is it not?) she climbed upon the back of her blackest horse and set out for the forest. The Queen’s heart shivered at the sight of the tall peaks of the pines that looked, from this distance, like a wall of impenetrable shadows. But there was a narrow road that wound into that wood, worn down by hunters, and the King’s armed men.

Soon, the path vanished, and the Queen had to pick her way through an icy stream bed, led by the sight of a high stone wall edging just above the fringe of trees at the foot of the mountain. By the time she arrived at the gatehouse, it was beginning to snow. Strange peals of thunder, or high winds, rolled in the heavens above the heavy white clouds that seemed to have fallen closer to the earth, forming mists filled with snowflakes that swirled around the Queen and her horse.

Oh, what am doing? I shall surely suffer for this...she moaned.

Ah, the high, dark walls leaned toward her as if they would fall, and the gate was closed and dim.

How shall I get in? Perhaps there is gatekeeper, and a bell.

Indeed, a large bell hung inside a niche on the wall near the gate. Just as the Queen was about to pull the rope, a whole chorus of bells rang inside the castle walls, ethereal as heaven and deep as earth. The gate slowly opened, and the astonished Queen saw, just across the threshold, a tall and beautiful woman standing in a shaft of torchlight that  cast her long, long shadow before her on the ground.

“Who are you? Why do you come here?” the woman asked in an odd, low, lilting voice. “What do you want?”

Ah! I cannot say my name…I come because of a child, said the Queen in her silvery, whispery tones.

The Sorceress, for surely it was she, raised one eyebrow and smiled a knowing, red lipped smile. “You desire a child.”

Yes!

“Come inside.”

The Queen, every nerve on edge, slipped quickly through the gate, turning to look back as it shut, creaking, behind her, sealing her in, like a pact. She turned to face the Sorceress whose face, up close, shone with an eerie inner light, pale as the moon in a night of wavy, floating hair that lifted on a wind that blew all around her, and her alone.

The Queen followed the Sorceress across the cobbled courtyard and up a long stair lined with dusty portraits of rather beastly looking ancestors, and into the wide doors of a great hall. There, a table was laid as for a feast. The Sorceress gestured to the Queen to sit down.

It is as if she was expecting me, the Queen thought, suddenly alarmed, and looking for the door.

“You just happened to arrive at my dinner time,” said the Sorceress uncorking the wine. “It is fortunate for you that I had such a sumptuous meal planned for tonight — fit for a Queen. It is, of course Wahlpurgis Night when I must set a feast for the dead.”

Oh dear, thought the Queen crossing herself.

“Please enjoy yourself, Your Majesty!” said the Sorceress pouring the wine into a goblet and setting it before the Queen. “It is pomegranate wine made in my own land. Have some food. You are so thin. No wonder you cannot bear.”

Yes, of course. The Queen sipped her wine. Perhaps she can help me.

The wine was sweet. The food was rich. A peacock lay in a silver charger, but its dark, iridescent feathers were only a decorative cover for some indecipherable meat underneath that tasted like pork.

The Sorceress drank a goblet of wine, and picked at her food silently, gazing at the Queen with her large luminous eyes.  Suddenly the bells began to ring again.

Oh no! The King, my husband has come to get me! He knows where I am!

The Sorceress stood up. She looked very elongated and tall.

“He is not coming.The bells ring the time. Come with me. Be careful, though. The stairs are steep and you are quite drunk, Your Majesty.”

The Sorceress held out a long hand to grasp the arm of the tipsy Queen. Her fingers glittered and flashed with jewels in the firelight; jewels more precious than the Queen’s own.

Certainly not. The Queen shook the outrageous observation away and, at the same time, quickly appraised the rings on the Sorceress’s fingers. I have the finest jewels in the kingdom. Hers are naught but enchanted paste.

Still, rings and a wristlet of rubies, shining like drops of fresh blood, stayed in the Queen’s mind to hypnotic effect, as the Sorceress led her down a long, dark passage, past a series of magnificent bedchambers, to a door at the end under a groined alcove. The door opened into a  small chamber that contained nothing but a gilded cabinet with a crystal door, much like the reliquary of the Holy Sacrament in the Cathedral. The Sorceress opened the crystal door, and took out a vial of deep emerald green glass chased with copper filigree. Whatever was inside glowed so brightly that it created a soft green aura around the vial that lighted the face of the Sorceress so that her skin was tinged like the faint green underskin of a lily.

The Sorceress smiled and took the elegant stopper out of the bottle and poured a portion into a small vessel of violet glass. A wonderful scent filled the air of wet Spring grasses and flowers. The Queen felt as if the very breath of Life Eternal filled the air. When the Sorceress handed her the drink, the Queen quaffed it down without a thought, charmed at the way the elixir, for that is what it must be, warmed her limbs and calmed her nervous heart.

Oh yes!

“Now, this elixir shall help you to bear a child to term, and it shall be a beautiful child, healthy, and worthy of a kingdom. His Highness, the King, shall be so pleased, he will fall in love with you all over again. I only ask for one thing in return,” said the Sorceress, gently passionate, as if she pleaded from her heart.

Oh thank you! Ask anything, anything you want!

“Invite me to your baby’s Christening, Your Majesty. Make me her Godmother! I would so love to be at her wedding, her births, and when the time arrives, I shall attend her funerary rites. I wish to be treated as part of the royal family, so that my exile out here in the wilderness shall not be so bitter any more.”

Is that all? Why of course. For, if all goes well, I shall be the happiest woman in the world!

********

When the Queen lay a-bed in sudden labor, far above the noise of the celebrations that the King had ordained to take place throughout the kingdom, nine ladies from the wood, wearing translucent green gowns, and luminous bi-horned headdresses, crowded around her bed whispering enchantments:

We bestow upon this child exquisite beauty,…charm…wealth…strength… a lovely voice…grace…good fortune…kindness…power….

The chief of these ladies was the graceful Sorceress who stood like a shaft of violet moonlight, at the foot of the bed, watching with an interested smile upon her face.

The Queen’s labor was mercifully fast and, unlike those changelings who had torn away from her in waves of agony and blood, almost painless. The midwife bustled around, singing charms under her breath, leaning over the Queen, as if she did not notice the nine ladies, tall and stately though they were. Rather, she moved through them as if they were nothing more than shadows thrown across the bed from the images of the saints embedded in the stained glass windows.

“Such a clever Queen you are this time, Highness. This one is quick as Mercury! And look out! Here he comes! Push now, just a little harder…Here he comes! It…is …a…girl…”

The Queen sighed over the midwife’s worried disappointment. The Sorceress smiled in the shadows, her eyes glowing in the dark like embers. The new born cried as the nurse wiped the blood away in a basin.

“A beautiful baby,” said the midwife. “Good thing too. It’ll be easier to marry her off to a great house when the time comes. If she stays beautiful, that is.”

The Queen smiled, and held her now rounded arms out to hold the baby. She cuddled the clean, swaddled infant to her hot, damp body, lifting her head weakly, and cooing at her.

The beautiful Sorceress glowed white and green, her secret face flashed, and then she vanished. The nine ladies whirled away in a glimmering, smoky haze, out into the night.

To be continued….

Roses, Briars, Blood: Part 2

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Roses, Briars, Blood is in 11 parts:

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