Briar Rose 19
She is awakened by a band of ruffians, all having a go on her lifeless body, sometimes more than one at a time. At first she believes, she doesn't know why, that they are drunken peasants who have invaded the castle to loot it, but she soon discovers, recovering somewhat her foggy wits, that they are her father's household knights. They seem more dead than alive, ghostly pale, drooling, their eyes rolled up, showing only the whites. They have roped her to the bedposts, there is no escape, so she leaves her struggling there and goes looking for her ancient friend in the servery, if that's what it is, perhaps it is the great hall, or even the chapel. Oh mother, she groans, why am I the one? Because you won't listen! cries the ill-tempered old scold, flinging the carcass of a plucked goose at her. I'm sorry, child, she says then, picking up the featherless bird and sending it flying out the oriel bay window as though to right a wrong, I didn't mean that, I know you can't help it, but, believe me, you should stop complaining, you are one of the lucky ones. And, poking around in her leathery old ear with a blackened claw as though to dig the story out of there (what come out are more of those little blue lights like a swarm of sparkling nits), she tells her about a poor princess married to a wild bear who smelled so bad she had to stuff pebbles up her nose. He pawed her mercilessly and took her violently from behind and bit her when he mated and scratched her with his great horny claws. But the worst thing was his she-bear. He was married--?! Of course, you silly booby, what did you think? The old crone's ferocious tale seems to come alive and she is lying with the stinking bear while his enraged wife snarls and bares her sharp teeth and snaps cruelly at her exposed parts. Why are the crone's stories always about, you know, the natural processes? she asks, though she does not know why she knows this to be so, "always" itself a word whose meaning eludes her. Because, grunts the bear, who seems to be trying to push another painful spindle into her from behind, she's merely an enchantress, my love, it's all the old hag knows.
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