Briar Rose 22
Her charge has just emerged from a nightmarish awakening in which she was kissed by a toad and turned into one herself and as usual has come running, so to speak, to the fairy, who is calming her with a tale about a beautiful young princess who got pricked one day by a spindle and fell asleep for a hundred years. Have I heard this story befor? Hush, child. When she woke up, she found two little babies suckling at her breasts, and one of them--Babies--?! Yes, it seems that her prince, or some prince anyway, had been visiting her person regularly over the years, and these--But didn't the prince kiss her? Didn't he break the spell and wake her up? Well, he may have, I don't know, that's not part of this--But that's terrible! Already she had these babies and she didn't even know if she'd been kissed or not-?! I hate this story! All right, wait a minute, let's say he did. He came into the room, greeted the fairies, played with little Dawn and Day, and kissed the princess. That's it? Now what's wrong? It doesn't sound right. It's not like a real story. What do you know about it, you little ninny? snaps the fairy, picking up one of the children and smacking its bottom to, making her point, make it cry: Whose story is this anyway? Rose takes the baby away from her and cuddles it. You really are very wicked, she says, rocking the baby gently in her arms to stop its screaming, and the fairy cackles at that. You're right, she says, when she woke up there weren't any children, that's a different story. Rose stares confusedly into her arms, now cradling empty air. I don't mind, she says timorously, you can leave the babies in if you want. No, no, there were no babies, forget that. Beauty woke up and found not one prince beside her bed, but three: a wizened old graybeard, a leprous hunchback with a beatific smile, and the handsome young hero of her dreams. Which one of you kissed me awake? Beauty asked, looking hopefully at the pretty one. We all did, replied the oldtimer in his creaky voice, and now you must choose between us. Take the holy one, he said, pointing to the scurvy hunchback in his haircloth, and your life will be lost to the selfdeceiving confusions of human compassion; take the other and you must live all your life with lies, deceit, and unrestrained wickedness. That may be true, old man, said the beautiful one with a snarling curl of his lip, but at least I'm not so hard of heart as you. And I live in the real world of the senses, not some chilly remote tower of the mind. Look at this! He stripped off his princely finery and, with a flourish, watching himself in a round gilt-framed mirror on the wall, struck a pose worthy of the great classic sculptors, with that funny thing between his legs hopping like a frog. Ah, but remember, said the leper, opening his robes and, as though in parody, peeling off a wafer of flesh from his diseased chest, physical beauty is only this deep and lasts but a brief season, while spiritual beauty lasts forever. So tell me, my love, says the fairy, scratching her cavernous armpits, which did Sleeping Beauty choose? Oh, I don't know, whines Rose, and I don't care. You're just making my head ache. Tell me about the babies again.
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