Briar Rose 34
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?
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