I drew in a sustained breath. The acidic smell was faint no longer. It invaded the room, coupling with the fresh air entering the chamber, but it was no longer so unappealing. My senses must have become inured. The red-spotted butterfly hovered over the sleeping princess, deciding where to land. I raised my arm to shoo her away and noted a thin film of moisture on my skin.
Had I broken out in sweat?
A drop of water landed on the windowsill.
What magic was this?
I ran my index finger through the wetness. Dark, pregnant clouds scudded below a heavy sky laden with clouds only slightly less dark. The mad crone appeared in the once-great garden, no longer moving. She was standing next to a beast; not just a beast, a hyena — a hyena? She was looking up at my window, her unkempt hair sparkling, rumpling in the wind. I wondered if she was looking at me or simply at the chamber. Neither, it seemed. Her eyes were trained on the castle wall below. Mine followed.
From my lips, which had emitted not a sound in days, came a scream. Slithering up the jagged wall, coming right at me, was a long and heavy desert snake. Its eyes bored into mine. In its mouth, the starling struggled still; around its mouth, streaks of live blood. I screamed and screamed and shut the window, trying to hold the snake, the world, at bay. The windows I had kept closed against the scorching wind outside I would now keep closed against more hideous threats.
Water was pelleting the windows. The mother storm had erupted. The crazy crone, arms raised to the sky in joy and in command, glared at me. The hyena at her side moved not. They both cackled, and I heard them through the panes. The snake writhed at the window, its gullet now engorged with bird. It, too, glared at me. Birds began flying into all four windows, all kinds of birds, starlings, finches, and cardinals, ducks, loons, and herons. Two pigeons landed on the ledge of the east window and pecked on the pane. Then they began to copulate before my eyes, in the rain, a slow and languid mating. A stork alit on the north ledge and glared. Snails inched across the pane, their viscous trails polluting the streaks of rain. The stork began feasting on them, cracking their shells with its long beak, which was soon covered with waxy muck. Insects on all the windows, flies, mosquitoes, crickets, ants. The old fairy gestured with her arm toward the tower. The hyena nodded its head. The fairy spoke, and her words echoed in the room as if she stood next to me.
“The time has come, goddaughter.”
Was she a relative?
I panicked. It was so embarrassing when I did not recognize a family member. Yet even from a distance, she did not look like anyone I knew. She looked like a witch. I tried to concentrate on her facial features. Evidently she had not been speaking to me. My godmother was still young.
A plant of some kind sprouted and wound itself around the fairy godmother’s calf. Plants everywhere, on all sides, shoots, roots, trees, grass, hemlock, all entwined with poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac. All over, sprouting, shooting upward. Thistles, so many thistles, brambles, blackberry, and brier, sweetbrier, greenbrier. Within minutes, a tangled messy mass of impenetrable thorns encircled the tower, a deadly poisonous brier patch, a vast thorny wood.
The rain stopped. Rats invaded the brier patch first, then snakes, scorpions, spiders, mosquitoes, flies. What had been a dry, clear desert was now a moist, teaming thicket of menace.
How would I ever leave this castle?
But leave I must.
The air in the chamber had turned oppressive and smothering, unbearably humid, astringent. The princess reeked of sweat, of brine and yeast, of uncovered and uncooked meat, of rank humanity. Smells I most certainly was not used to. The red-spotted butterfly rested on the princess’s groin, its spread wings seeming to have doubled in size.
What strange occurrence was this?
Stranger yet, men began to arrive.
Outside, a hunting party halted at the outskirts of the brier. Their leader, the prince, jumped off his horse and unsheathed his sword, using it to clear a path through the thorns. None could follow him, for the brier closed rank behind him. Another prince arrived by himself, not ten yards away from the first. He too unsheathed his sword and commenced his journey. To the south, more princes, yet more from the east and more from the west, a multitude of princes — desperate princes, all seeking entry.
Where had they all come from? What had called them?
Many were unable to enter the thicket of thorn. Princes struck and slashed and cut but could not come through — weak princes. Exhausted by their ineffective efforts, they laid their bodies on the ground to recuperate, and the brier extended itself and swallowed them dead. Stronger princes, those who entered, met no happier fate. Murderous plants killed some, poisonous snakes killed others. Princes bled to death, wounded by many a thorn. Princes grew tired and could not keep their swords raised. Their death was the most horrific of all. The brier attacked them, lifted their bodies for one last look at the tower, the desideratum, teased them with one last look at the sky, then devoured them whole. A few, too few, still struggled below, but so many died, a massacre, a princely genocide.
I watched in horror, forgetting everything around me. I retreated from the window, nauseated. I clutched my stomach, as if I had been punched, as if its lining were being carved by a knife. I doubled up in pain. I vomited, but nothing came up. I had not eaten, nothing had entered me, in so long.
Then I heard heavy footsteps rushing up the stairs: thump, thump, thump, thump. The thick wooden door swung open, flew off its hinges, and slammed into the wall. It shattered into pieces. The prince bolted into the room, stormed to the bed, and stopped before the sleeping beauty. He had eyes for nothing else, while mine were glued to him.
The hero had come through. He had lost his sword, his shirt, and his shoes to the brier. Streaked in blood, he had deep wounds on his forehead, on his side, on both palms. Blood ran down his virile, hairy, powerful, masculine calves. The front of his pantaloons exhibited no small excitement. Sweaty, perspiring, he too reeked, yet my stomach had no wish to rebel — surrender, yes. I cleared my throat, ahemmed, but he paid me no mind. Nothing but the princess was his world. He ran his hand along the softness of her bare arm. He seemed surprised at the lack of a response. I wanted to tell him that it was not his fault, that she had not wakened, had not moved, in a hundred years. I wanted only to save him time, to protect him from frustration. I wanted to tell him she was not the one for him, not at all. But he bent his golden torso and smelled her, inhaled deeply, and I almost fainted. He extended his tongue and licked the moistness of her cleavage. And then he kissed her.
He kissed her.
And he kissed her.
She remained asleep, her breathing slow and steady as ever. He licked her lips, then her neck. He lifted himself atop the bed and straddled her. The engorged groin within the pantaloons loomed larger. He bent and kissed the princess once more. He tore off her blouse and chemise, squeezed her milk-white breasts, pinched them, bit them with abandon.
I wanted to stop him. I wanted to warn him that she was an archetype. But if I could not keep a butterfly off her, I would never be able to fend off a prince. My knees felt weak, my breathing was shallow, my skin sensitive and sweaty. I had to sit down.
And he tore off her skirt and undergarments. Still she slept.
I opened my mouth to scream, but what left my lips was a deep, sensuous sigh.
Where once all was smooth and barren, now grew a follicle forest, and into that forest the prince’s face disappeared.
I moaned and the princess echoed me. I was stunned.
She did not open her eyes, and I was unsure whether she had wakened, but she moaned once more. He grunted, buried his face deeper, and she moved. She spread her naked legs wider. Her lips parted, taking in a deep breath. She moaned, he moaned, I moaned. A volcano erupted in my stomach, its heat flooding my body.
The princess’s eyelids flew open. The sleeper had awakened. Her lashes fluttered, and I felt as if I were being whipped.
She sat up on her elbows, bent her knees. With one hand, she held the prince’s head and bucked. He grunted, grunted, grunted, like a pig finding truffle.
She screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in ecstasy.
