When he finally, with a last desperate stroke, slashed through and emerged from the dark night of the briars, he found that day had broken and the world had changed. He’d evidently lost his way inside the hedge and got turned around, for there was his horse, still tethered where he’d left him. But the forest he’d tethered him in was gone. Everything was gone. As far as he could see: a vast barren landscape under the noonday sun. A fairy came, the horse explained, and took everything away. What—? The horse could talk—? Of course it could talk, says the old crone irritably, peering up at her from her spinning wheel. What’s wrong with that? I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right. She wonders if her own prince could have a talking horse, and since, in her stuporous condition, thinking and speaking are the same thing, the crone replies: A talking horse? Don’t be ridiculous! Why do you always suppose every story is about you? Now come on in here and stop interrupting. She remains in the drafty doorway, afraid to enter (something bad has happened here) but afraid to back away, uncertain if the spiral staircase she has climbed is still there behind her. She does not like this story, but knows that its teller knows this without her having to say so. Little blue sparks fly as the crone, turning the wheel slowly, lets the flax slide through her old gnarled fingers. The prince, she continues, wanted to know what the fairy looked like, what color was she, how many teats did she have, was she good or bad, did she come from outside or inside? Inside what? asked the horse. The hedge, stupid, said the prince with an impatient gesture. But then he saw that the hedge was gone, too, they were all alone in the blazing emptiness. He thought about this for a moment, and then he said: Maybe everything is really still here. Maybe it only appears to our bewitched senses to be gone. That may seem reasonable to you, snorted his horse, but it doesn’t make my kind of sense. No, really, insisted the prince, it’s one of the fairies’ favorite tricks. So maybe now, knowing this, I can finally get through to the hidden castle and break the spell. Is this possible? Can he do it? Her interest in the story has picked up, and she takes a tentative halfstep into the room, bringing a curling smile to the dry lips of the old crone. So the prince raised his sword and, bracing himself for the worst, went charging about under the hot sun like one possessed, hoping to bump up against something solid, but in the end all he got out of it was sunblindness and a terrible thirst. The horse snickered at all this human folly and said they should move on and try to find something to eat, but the prince, who was on a heroic quest which he felt determined to see through to the end, even if seeing was no longer what he did best, stubbornly refused, so the horse trotted off without him. The prince went on frantically hunting for the invisible castle for the rest of his life, which was not long, there being nothing to eat in that desert but sand. He died—? Oh yes, raisined up like a dogturd out there in the sun, my pet, a worshipful sight. They would have made him a saint, but they didn’t know what to call him since he had failed in his quest and so had never made his— No, she insists from the doorway, backing away. You can’t do that. That’s not how stories are.
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, he realizes 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—?!
She is in the kitchen, or else the nursery, playing with the babies. They seem to have been conjured up by one of the old crone’s tales, but she’s glad they’re there, strange as they are, more like her parents than any children, the boy with his little tuft of beard, the girl gazing upon her in haughty disapproval even as she changes her breechcloth. The crone, stirring a thick steamy brew in a cauldron big as a bathtub, hung over the fire on an iron chain (they are in the kitchen then, or else in the bedchamber and that is a bathtub), is telling her a story about a princess guarded by a fire-breathing dragon known for his ferocity and his insatiable appetite for tender young maidens, breath-roasted while spitted on a claw. The crone provides several of the dragon’s favorite recipes for basting and dipping sauces, which Rose does not find amusing. Usually — if one with a memory such as hers can really have any idea about what might be usual — she is alone in the castle with the old crone, but sometimes it is full of other people, servants, knights, even princes, and the children come and go at random (they are gone now), an arrangement which also somewhat perplexes her, though only when she imagines she is awake, not often. Today she was fooled by a prince who approached her bedside and began probing her as though examining her systematically for the source of her spindled pain. He was tall and handsome, but badly wounded, his clothing shredded and clinging to him by bloody tatters. My prince! You have come at last! Yes, well, it was a matter of honor, he said gravely, disappointing her. I did it for the love of love. But what kind of a thing is that that jumps about so funnily? she added sleepily, although it was not what she had meant to say at all, it just seemed to pop to mind. For providing relief from sorrow and contact with the numinous, he replied tersely, even as his fingers burrowed deeper. Though it is all an illusion of course. Yes, I know, she sighed and opened her eyes. No prince. Of course. Just a family of nesting churchmice, scurrying beneath her gown. She closed her eyes again and, without transition, found herself here in the kitchen, where now the old crone is down on her haunches, adding a few sticks of firewood to the embers and fanning them into flames with her thick layers of smelly black skirts. In her story, the hero has just flown in with the head of a lady with snaky hair that turns everyone into statues. He aims the frightful thing at the dragon, but the dragon ducks and looks away and the head stuns the princess instead. Now she’s useless to everyone. She may have heard this story before, the part about a princess turned to stone is familiar, but she can’t be sure. What was the princess’s name? she asks. Don’t interrupt! snaps the old crone, shaking the slotted spoon at her, sparks flying from her clashing teeth, her wild unkempt hair twisting about her head like a nest of vipers. She ladles something out of the cauldron that looks like another baby. The important question, you little ninny (her own knees and elbows have gone numb, perhaps she has been lying too long in the same position), is whose head was he using?