Briar Rose 21
Inextricably ensnared in the briars, yet never ceasing to resist (he will remain a hero to the end), he attempts to conjure up an image of the legendary princess who waits inside (but not for him), hoping to assuage his terrible pain and disappointment and stay his rising panic, but it is not her incomparable radiance and beauty that appear to his imagination but more cadaverous traits: her deathly pallor, sunken flesh, crumbling gown, her empty eye sockets. And the ghastly silence that reigns over her. Oh no! Too late! He wets her shrunken bosom with his tears, strokes her cold cheeks, gazes with horror upon her dreadful inertness. He turns her over: her backside is eaten away, crawling with worms and--no, he does not turn her over! He hacks desperately at the brambles and, as the hedge closes round him like the grasping flesh-raking claws of an old crone, imagines instead her dreams, sweet and hopeful and, above all, loving: loving him who is to come, slashing through the briars and scaling the castle walls to reach her bedside with his spellunbinding kiss. She does not yet dream of that dream-dissolving kiss, however, but rather of his excitement when he discovers her there in all her resplendent innocence, her unconscious body at the mercy of his hungry gaze and impassioned explorations before he quickens it with his kiss, his excitement and her own unwilled passivity before it exciting her in turn, making her eager to awaken and not to awaken at the same time, so delightful is this moment, though of course, he may not be there yet, it is no simple matter to scale the sheer walls of the castle, many have fallen, and once inside he might get lost in the maze of halls and stairs and corridors, not knowing for certain where to find her, and there might be other sleepers along the way who attract his kisses, not to mention his excited explorations, delaying him until it is too late, and even before he can get to the walls there is the infamous briar hedge, noisy with the windblown clatter of bones, the bones of those for whom commitment to love, adventure, honor, and duty and a firm sense of vocation were not enough, their names unmade, forever-aftered into the ignominious anonymity of the nameless dead. No! he cries. Don't just lie there! Get up! Come help!