I love the wild darkness and the magic of fairytales. Some time ago, I embarked on an exercise to put my own spin on some of my favorite classic tales. This one is a different telling of Sleeping Beauty…
***
She woke in cold confusion amid the rumpled hillocks of musty quilts, on a high sleigh bed in a room silvered by evening light, at the top of a narrow house replete with dirty windows. Outside, the luminous depths of the woods spoke with a thousand voices –tree frogs chanting their paean to the drizzle and chill as the light trembled toward gloaming. From her position on the bed, she could see the tops of the trees, their black bones aflame with tender leaves, their verdure magnified and made radiant by the rain. She sat up, her hand to her brow, pale hair hanging over her face, and drew the topmost quilt about her shoulders.
How did I come here? Where have I been?
She stretched one bare foot over the edge of the bed and lowered it to the floor. Her toes touched the soft dusty weave of a silk carpet. Her heel pressed it. Sudden silence expanded in the room and made her ears pop, and then she heard a soft scratching outside the windows. It seemed to come from every side, a sound like claws dragged lightly over the old clapboards. She crept from the island of carpet to the window and peeked out.
Roses girt the house, strong green whips, wickedly barbed. They had clambered up the porch posts far below and surged over the roof. Their skreeks and hisses waxed and waned with the wind in an awful kind of respiration, their thorns skittering over the skin of the house. The crinkled fans of their new leaves flexed in the last light, and the hard knuckles of their buds rapped at the windows. The roses sprawled out into the overgrown garden, an impenetrable wall from which the house loomed like a shabby, besieged tower.
“Oh. Oh, no,” she whispered, her hand to her mouth. Such neglect must have gone unchecked for a very long time.
As the first stars caught fire above the forest, she turned from the window and sank down upon the bare planks of the floor. She might have sat there all night, stricken by the menace of the roses, but the cold knocked on her bones, and she shivered herself into wakefulness. She crawled to the fireplace, dragging the frayed quilt with her, and struck a match from the faded box she found there. The fire burst from the dry wood and old mouse nests collapsed on the hearth and rushed up the chimney.
In its ruddy light, she saw a tall mirror in a shadowed corner, and she climbed to her feet and rushed to find herself in the glass. But the mirror was black, obscured with paint that slopped onto the graceful pear wood frame and showed her only a distorted haze of a reflection in its smeared gloss.
Suddenly angry, she screamed at it. “Show me my face!”
The mirror made no answer, and the shudder that had disturbed the stifled air of the old house at her shout left a deeper silence in its wake. She became aware of the tidal drum of her own heart. Its thudding climbed from her chest to her ears and set the girders of her skeleton ringing until it seemed she heard two hearts instead of one. She closed her eyes to will away the frightful rhythm, and the second heartbeat revealed itself as the heavy tread of boots on the stairs outside her room. She was not alone.
***
The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped. She pressed her ear to the peeling paint of the bedroom door and held her breath to listen. For a long moment there was silence, and then she heard a soft moan. A voice whispered. She pressed her whole body to the door to catch the sound.
“Please,” it said. Something dragged along the hallway carpet, and the voice muttered low and unintelligible before repeating itself. “Please.”
She stepped back from the door and cast an anxious gaze about the room. A tarnished candlestick stood on the mantle, a mouse-eaten nub of taper protruding from it, barely big enough to hold the wick. She crept to it and held it to the fire. It smoked and gasped, but caught the flame, and she went back to the door and turned the knob. She thrust the meager light ahead of her into the black of the hallway. Nothing stirred. She ventured out.
The hall formed a high gallery. The oak banister, gap-toothed and unreliable, wandered beside a ragged length of carpet to the stairway that staggered down the wall. A shape leaned against the rail near the top stair, and at the sight of it, she nearly retreated behind her door. When it did not move or speak, she tiptoed toward it, her candle held high. Finally, the weak nimbus fell full upon it, and she stifled a shriek.
The shape was a man, but not like any she had seen before. He appeared young, and yet his face was lined and grooved with weariness and pain. He was pale as wax, and she thought he might be a macabre waxwork until he drew a shallow, trembling breath. His eyes fluttered open and fixed on her.
“Ah, you heard me,” he said, his voice like the memory of sound. “It is far past time.”
“I don’t understand.” She disliked having to speak to him. A wave of fatigue passed over her, and she glanced back at her door.
His hand rose from the oaken rail, so slowly it was like the dream of motion, and pulled aside the torn fabric of his shirt. She gave a raspy little scream when she saw the clockwork heart set in his chest. The gears turned with the lethargy of nightmare, stuttering in their smooth action with effortful whirrs and clicks. A slot in the middle of the fine gold mechanism pulsed scarlet and dark, as though some furnace within it flared and subsided to the working of a diabolical bellows.
“What do you want of me?” she cried.
“The key.”
She gaped at him, shaking her head in bewilderment. He took a halting step toward her, his brows drawing together like a massing thunderstorm.
“The key,” he croaked. “For pity’s sake, the key!”
He reached out and grasped her by the silken cord that hung about her neck.
“Let go, let go!” She lunged backward, pulling him after her.
The cord snapped. For an instant she saw, held aloft in his gaunt fist, a shining key. He fell to his knees before her. Her candle puffed out. Night rushed in where the light had been. She turned in terror and fled back into the bedroom where the firelight glowed and slammed the door.
***
CRAA-ATCH, snick, CRAA-ATCH, snick.
She leaned against the bedroom door and listened to the maddening sound of the key scraping and turning in the man’s clockwork heart. She put a hand over her own heart, imagining what it must be like to feel the springs tighten, the gears catch and bite at each other with renewed purpose. Could he hear it ticking, the way she sometimes heard hers beating? Did the sound frighten him? Her stomach rolled in a slow knot of nausea.
She floated on the lake of her memory like a woman in a boat, staring down into the murky green at an image too heavy to surface. It hung in the dimness like a body, weighty with its time in the depths but impish enough to rise anyway, just out of reach. There was something familiar about its shape. She leaned toward it, and it rolled its slack, white face up at her. The clockwork man! In a jolting instant, she knew him. Recognition brought a slick of cold sweat to her skin.
A thump from the other side of the door jarred her from her reverie. She gave a shrill cry and hopped away. The doorknob turned, but she had shot the bolt, and he couldn’t get in. She listened to him breathing.
“You can’t hide in there forever,” he said. His voice was soft, his tone reasonable. “I have the key now. I could leave.”
Was that supposed to be a threat? She wished he would leave. Her gaze slid toward the bed, with its cargo of tatty quilts. The promise of sleep that rose from that warm nest was almost overpowering.
“You know what I want,” he said. “Why not just let me have it? After all this time, why not?”
Another thump shook the door, its violence giving the lie to the quiet, cajoling voice. He was furious, and after all that had happened, she could not blame him. She remembered now, had reached down into that cloudy water and fished up the deed that bound him to her.
“Go away,” she hissed. “You have your bloody key. Take it and go. You never should have come here. I never wanted you.”
He was silent so long she thought he had gone. When he spoke again, his voice seemed close to her, right in the room.
“I want what’s mine. I’ll be back for it.”
She heard the tread of his boots on the creaking boards of the hall, on the stairs. A sound rose from below that she had thought never to hear again. The house door opened with a ghastly moan, then slammed shut. A flock of echoes rose like startled doves to the rafters of the cathedral ceiling.
***
She sat at the window through the night, watching the forest under its frost of moonlight, listening to the restless scrabbling of the roses. Gifts, all of them, from the young men who had come and gone from her salon and dining hall. The gardeners, long gone now, had set them in the grounds and nurtured them. How beautiful her gardens had been, and she, their only rival. She smiled as she recalled those days, dreams she inhabited in the depths of sleep.
There had been a husband once, a man of mature years, but he had gone away. And there had been a small boy, always clinging, always underfoot, who had been sent away to school. Then the young men came in their lavish carriages with their gifts of wine, jewels, and roses. She had held court and they had knelt at her feet, vying to carry her away in marriage, offering their enchanted hearts.
Hearts. The word made her think of the man with his infernal clockwork. She couldn’t think where he had gone or why, but she did not doubt his word that he would return. The fire had gone out, and the room was cold enough that her breath hung before her. She ached to lie down, to close her eyes and dream, but she was under siege. He would be back, and she would have to deal with him.
She dozed fitfully in the moonlight, holding tight to the rope of wakefulness. Fragmented dreams flitted past her heavy eyes. There was a ballroom, filled with fashionable people. The women wore magnificent gowns, slowly revolving in the arms of handsome men. She felt herself gliding along, the silken hem of her gown sweeping the gleaming marble of the floor. In the mirrored walls, she saw her beauty that drew every eye, and a warm flush of pleasure suffused her body. There was a banquet; she was the centerpiece. There was a fine carriage; every gentleman’s hand extended toward her. The lure of the dreams was strong. She pinched herself hard enough to bring tears and woke with a shudder.
As dawn melted the last of the dark, she stood and stretched. She was dismayed at the stiffness of her joints, and at the depth of her fatigue. She had woken before, she remembered, to see to the task of winding the young man’s clockwork heart. It felt like a curse to have to leave the comfortable fortress of her sleep, but the winding of the heart was her one imperative responsibility. Always, on these occasions, she had felt strong and rested, more than equal to the task. She could not recall having suffered such confusion of mind nor weariness of body.
There had never been such signs of neglect about the house, either. The man had kept it well, had greeted her each time she woke with humble gratitude, and she had been able to return to her slumber satisfied that her fragile spell would not be shattered. What had changed?
Uneasiness bloomed in her mind. She went to the mirror and touched the thick black paint that marred its elegance. Her fingers - oh, they seemed so thin – plucked at the rubbery little tags of paint that stuck up here and there. She pulled a few long ribbons of the stuff from the mirror and stepped close to observe her reflected eye in one of the slivers revealed.
What she saw wrung a shocked gasp from her, and she clawed at the paint, stripping wide flaps from the glass. At last, enough of the mirror had been uncovered to allow her to see her face. Her hands went to her cheeks but did not touch the ravaged beauty. The skin, once so taut and radiant against the fine bones, had softened and sagged. There were trembling jowls, and a terrain of fine lines about the eyes and around the lips that had thinned and lost their saucy ripeness. Her hair, that once glorious fall of pale sunlight, was white. She stared into her own wide eyes, and a keening sound rose around her. She recognized her voice, wailing in horror, as she slumped at the foot of the mirror.
***
She lay a long time on the floor, the chill and damp of the house claiming her from the skin inward, and the frost of despair turning her to ice from the heart outward. Her mind slowed. Her cheek pressed the cold floor. She closed her eyes and waited, but the House of Sleep would not admit her. She remained in the twilight emptiness between it and the waking world, vaguely aware of her cramped, frozen limbs and the sweep of shadows that passed over her locked eyelids as the sun crept by her windows.
As though from a great distance, she heard the biting and gnawing of carpenter’s tools on the barred door. She felt the gust of its opening and heard the clockwork man’s soft approach. Her eyes creaked open just enough to confirm that he stood over her, the scuffed toes of his boots filling her vision.
“You had to look, didn’t you?” he said. “You couldn’t leave that damn mirror alone.”
When she made no reply, he crouched by her and stroked a tendril of hair from her face.
“You’re like ice,” he said, and his tone was accusatory.
He reached under her and lifted her. He was strong again now that he had the key to wind his heart. Warmth radiated from him, and she felt herself begin to thaw. He laid her on the bed and chafed her limbs, and she snuggled into the quilts with a happy murmur. There was still magic in the old sleigh bed. Perhaps now she could enter the House of Sleep.
“No, no, no,” he barked.
He slapped her cheek lightly, and she sat up and opened her eyes in sudden fury.
“How dare you! Get away. There is nothing to keep you here now. Why don’t you go?”
He leaned toward her and spoke through gritted teeth.
“You know what I want. I’m not going without it.” He put a hand over the smartly revolving gears, the delicate tripping hammers, of his heart. “Give it back. It’s no good to you and hasn’t been for a long while if only you could remember.”
He was so changed, and he was wrong. She did remember. She recalled his eager smile each time she woke, the care he took to please her, and the sorrow in his eyes when she returned to her dreams. He spoke so roughly now, as though he believed she had stolen something from him, when the truth was that he had given it freely. She sighed and fell back against her pillows. She was too tired to argue.
“It won’t fit you now, I’m afraid,” she said. “Everything about you is different. We have both grown ugly, each in our own way.”
He had the grace to look ashamed.
“You aren’t ugly. Never that. And I … I only want to feel again. You’ll go away, as you always do, and I have grown weary of waiting for your love.”
It was true, she’d never loved him. Yet, looking at his youthful, weary face, she felt a pang. She opened a drawer of her bedside table and took out a small black box. It was made of pasteboard, much scarred from jostling among the expensive baubles and love tokens left by her admirers. She stared at it as though seeing it for the first time.
“Is that it?” His voice sounded choked.
She nodded and handed him the box. Almost fearfully, he opened it. She watched his face, saw the hope flare and ebb. He turned his gaze to hers, and his eyes were empty. Without a word, he tilted the box so she could see what lay on the yellowed tissue paper within.
“Oh …” Again, that pang. Tears started to her eyes.
A daub of shriveled red lay there. It looked very much like a dried rose that had succumbed to time. It was not a rose. It was his heart. She looked up at him, at the lost expression on his face, and felt her own heart throb for him. She opened her arms to him, and he sank against her, breast to breast, and laid his head on her shoulder. She felt the whir and click of the clockwork, and the magic that still hovered about the sleigh bed, and the bittersweet pang that might have been love, after all.
“I have something I want to give you,” she whispered.
He started back with a cry, his hands flying to his chest. The clockwork fell from him like petals from a rose. The flesh over his heart was smooth and unmarred, and a living organ beat beneath it. She smiled at the sound of it as she slipped across the threshold of the House of Sleep for the last time.
“Thank you, Mother,” he sobbed.
Thank you so much Stephanie!
Gorgeous! The prose and the imaginative, tragic tale itself. Really enjoyed this.