Briar Rose 33
The more the possibility of reaching her bedside recedes, the closer he seems to come to her. He does not know if, consumed by fear and desire, he is generating this illusion himself, or if it is fairy magic. But he is scaling the castle walls before he has escaped the briars, exploring the castle before he has scaled the walls. It feels as if an impossible problem is being solved, all by itself. The castle itself is a strange and haunted place, unlike any he has ever seen before, yet also oddly comforting, more like home than home. Searching for her through its webby mazes, he feels like he is opening doors to his own past, though it is more like a past that might have been than a real one. Before he has found her, he is already at her bedside. He is so stunned by her beauty, he can't move, even though his lips are already approaching hers. He thinks: Won't it all be spoiled if I wake her up? But he has already awakened her: they are in the great hall, or else in front of the oriel window, gazing out on the manicured gardens, bordered by a small trimmed hedge of sweetbriar. She is just as he has imagined her: beautiful, gentle, innocent, devoted, submissive. He is suffused with love and desire, but he also feels like he would like to take a nap. Today, she says, I saw a strange thing. I saw a plucked goose flying. It flopped into my room where I was sleeping or else lying awake and said to me: You will never awaken because the story you were in no longer exists. Oh yes? He is thinking about the quest that brought him here. Has he made his name then? If so, what is it? Or has he perhaps come to the wrong castle? When she says, perhaps not for the first time, that, even when sitting in the same room with him, she feels like she's all alone, his mind has been elsewhere. I'm sorry, my love, he says. What is your heart's desire? To live happily ever after, she replies without emotion. Of course, he replies, it's yours for the asking. And also I wonder if you'd mind watching the babies for a while? Babies-?!