16

 

 

AFTER SHE’D BRUSHED her teeth and donned her pajamas, Gwynn returned to the sitting room for her great-aunt’s book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. True to form, Mary had tidied it away, back to its erstwhile home on the bookshelf. Gwynn knew she should be searching for something lightweight, something she didn’t have to think about, something that might give her pleasant dreams. Fairy tales in the original didn’t always do that—but she knew she was looking at that book for another reason.

She hadn’t forgotten just how grisly the stories could be. Her great-aunt’s book was well-worn, the green binding faded to a soft spring pastel. The title was stamped in gold: Fairy Tales Old and New. Not too new, obviously; and as she thumbed through the yellowed pages, she remembered just how little these had to do with their Disney counterparts. The line-drawn illustrations, which she studied curiously, were not comfort-inducing. She paused at one page, where a burly hunter in a feathered cap was busily carving up a wolf with an axe, blood spurting. How could parents read these to children? Unless it was to steel them for the hard cold cruelties of life ahead.

She snorted at her fancy and flipped through another couple of pages, to Mary’s bookmark.

Another illustration, this of a crumbling tower, surrounded by and perhaps choked by a thicket of wild, thorny brambles.

Just like mine, she thought wryly.

Gwynn shifted the page back and began to read. Sleeping Beauty, the cursed princess who pricked her finger on a spindle and fell into a hundred-years’ sleep. Over time the thicket of brambles grew up and hid her castle from view, and no one could penetrate the thorny overgrowth.

Just like mine.

There was a happy ending to this fairy tale, of course. After the hundred years, a prince came to fight his way through the thorns and awaken Sleeping Beauty.

This was the point where Gwynn thrust the book aside and turned off the light. That part wasn’t like hers, that was for sure. Her former prince was dead, by his own hand. As attractive as Colin the wood man was, she didn’t need another prince—and Colin couldn’t fight his way through the brambles anyway. He had even admitted it.

With her hand to her scratched cheek, Gwynn fell asleep.