Published in Livina Press, Issue 15 “Fairytales, Myths, and Legends” – (Trigger Warnings include: Implied murder, suicide, religious/demonic imagery, grooming, death of family members, and body horror/graphic imagery)
Author Bio:
Danielle Patino is a poet and writer based on Long Island, New York. She has a BA in Creative Writing and MA in Adolescent English Education. Her work explores nostalgia, body, memory, and the intersections of beauty and violence, with a special interest in fairy tales. Visit her website to read her published works at storybeforeslumber.com.
The Fate Of Briar Rose
In the year of 1666, the child born at six o’clock on the sixth day of June will be bred for civilization and her return to Hell on her 16th birthday. The mother of Briar Rose had not yet washed herself of the blood of the delivery when she hung from a willow tree chanting her daughter’s fate on Flora and Fauna’s lawn. The prophecy had taken hold on the outskirts of the village. Flora and Fauna had prayed against it, as did all the peasant fare, but the girl was still born, a beauty like no other. Under the shadow of the branches, with her mother’s body swaying over her, blood dripping onto her forehead, the baby slept.
Briar Rose runs coarsely through the forest. Panting between the willow trees, she is sundered from her thoughts, unable to think past the sensations of the forest—how it’s dark; how there’s fear. Her skin, pale as sand, turns red by the slapping wind in demand that she go back.
Her hair—part ash, part branches—sways in unison with her burnt white gown. Her neck, lithe and bare, spins to the harrowing sounds of night. Through the hovering darkness is a foreboding sense of shame. Dusk has just come on, it is time for sleep.
Rose’s beauty is from the Devil. It was deceiving, Flora always said; it was not a gift. As Briar Rose blossomed, her hair cast more golden, her eyes a deep bronze, her lips pert and full. Aunt Flora was cruel: Rose must be hidden or He will clutch her sooner. He has given us these years for her beauty to flourish, but he will take her sooner if that is his whim.
Aunt Fauna would wince at the thorny words. Pulling Rose’s hands from where they covered her face, she’d say Rosie, your beauty is so rich that you must stay hidden; we love you too much to let you go. She’d smile kindly; pinch the orphan’s rosy cheeks.
Weaving between the trees, she is formless as wind. In her absent bound, she steps on sticks and thorns. Blood and mud cover her ankles in the mark of three 6’s. In her dissociation, the forest is made abstract, severed from her past. Here, Briar Rose listened to the hum of the lake, the hoot of the owls, the moan of the wolves. She’d dream of her Prince, she’d dream of villages, she’d dream of escape. She is numb to that fondness now. It’s body memory—forest, marsh, lake—made merely a path. At the end is her destination. Through the nebulosity, her body knows this fact. She could close her eyes, she would still be running.
It is dark here in this stairwell made of stone. I lift my gown, is that blood on my ankles? It is the date of my birth, in ringlets, like roses. I am adorned for my coronation. I walk up and up—I am not afraid. That green light floating in front of me, it is guiding me! Tomorrow is my sixteenth birthday, my purified day of consummation. Emaleth told me so.
She had visited me long ago at the marsh. I had wanted to feel the water of the lake. I remember that feeling—how I wanted to feel it bare. I took off my garments and then Emaleth came, right at that moment, right from the water.
Aurora? She called. I’d heard that name before—in my story book, of course. She said that is my true name, given by my Prince.
My Prince? I asked.
Yes, Emaleth said. She had green eyes, like a snake’s. He is very patient.
She pointed to my storybook, open on a rock by the sand. I am Emaleth, she said, write it in your storybook. Her nails were sharp. My name, she repeated, Emaleth.
This is the night my full beauty has come. My Prince is waiting for me, on the top of this spire, nearer to where Heaven is. He will sanctify me, and this light will guide me while I go up this stairwell—this storied pathway—to Him who will heat me with a sultry kiss to my cheek.
Briar Rose runs like one runs away from things which follow, but there is no one behind her; not the Aunts, not even the birds. Her past is ablaze, crackling and traveling forward.
It was only when the Aunts called for supper would she close her storybook and return to the cottage.
Yes, the cottage. She’s running from it.
Her forehead is sliced by a mangled branch, and impulse settles over her; there is no more cottage, not any longer.
It was only this morning. She dipped into the lake. There, in the calm of the water, there was something stirring. It was then, submerged, that she felt her beauty—her mythical reckoning—in all of her parts. She skipped along home, spurred by the start of her journey to kingdom come.
Golden hour beamed in through the stained glass windows over supper. The illumination missed Rose’s skin by only a hair.
“Emaleth has delivered! My maturation has come! Aunt Flora, Aunt Fauna, it is time I meet my Prince!” She’d said.
Her Aunts went slack. Fauna touched where the light hit the table—trying to feel warmth. Flora’s chair flew backward. The sound jarred Briar Rose, who had then been thinking of love.
“There is no Prince! Emaleth is a figment of your mind, you are under His power! She is His witch! She will bring you to the Devil if you let her!” Aunt Flora yelled. What a wicked thing, Briar Rose thought. She had just found her loyalty. It is Aunt Flora who’s a witch.
Flora turned to Fauna in a haste. “We have to hide her one more day. That is the Devil’s gamble! She has to journey to his realm for Him to keep her.”
Flora gripped her hands to Rose’s wrists—tightened them like cuffs. She pulled her fighting, frightened ward down the cellar stairs. Briar Rose screamed to the kinder Aunt for solace: “Aunt Fauna, please!”
Fauna’s chin began to tremble, but she only shook her head. “Only one more day, my Rosie girl, you will understand.” On her lovely face spread the same smile Rose had once found comfort in; but it was written in the storybook all along, the fate of the beautiful peasant girl.
“You are so close to life, my dear,” Fauna told her. “Once you turn sixteen he can no longer take you.” Flora shut the cellar door. “Just dream, Rosie dear,” Fauna yelled through the iron. “When you wake, you’ll be sixteen, you’ll be past the age for fairy tales—this will all go null!” Briar Rose paused. “You will see things clearly,” Fauna promised, “no more reveries.”
In the dark of the basement, Briar Rose was left alone.
She flipped through the pages of her storybook, straining her eyes to see the words. And then right there, she saw it. Call to Emaleth, it told her. Call to Emaleth, it said—in her very own handwriting, from all those years before. Call to Emaleth, and she did.
She waited for Emaleth but no enchantress appeared. Only a light did ignite—green, right from her mouth, laden and dormant inside her all along.
I lift my gown higher. Such a heavy gown! I pull off the stockings that warm me—I don’t want their contrived heat! I throw them to the stones below. Strewn there, they look merely a tissue. How it has all become futile—fabrics; shields; shelter. My Prince is my greatest protector! With thoughts of him, I have never been lonely.
A breeze from above sweeps down to wrap my knees and I know, I know it’s claiming me. I feel around my midriff for the ribbons of my corset. I throw down the bodice—a fancied carcass—and then I throw the skirt—a satin shroud—and I see how it’s all down there, laying on the stones beneath. I want nothing of this earth!
Aurora. I hear a whisper.
Aurora. Yes, yes that is my name.
It is carried by breath that tickles my ear—sensation is deeper here. There lives a hunger in me now—savagely—beneath my belly. I wish to be out of this skin. My Prince, my Prince will free me—I am almost there, almost to the top of the stairwell.
I trip over a dip in the rotted stone—I must be tired. This stone has held for centuries. I lay on it, listening to the footsteps of Princesses before me. I am drifting off, lulled by their legacies.
Aurora.
Aurora.
I rise. He will sing me a lullaby and then I will rest. He will soothe me, touch me—god, I have been so alone. This world is nothing to me, only my Prince. I am almost to Him.
The dusk is heavy. The smoke is a blanket over her, intimately seething through her undergarments. She feels the gray hovering—swats it, like insects, but it does not reason with command. Briar Rose coughs as the atmosphere finds its place in her throat.
She passes the familiar landscape, but tonight it is different. The forest has a different kind of beauty, a barren kind, on the last eve of innocence.
At once she’s reached the marsh, she is sinking into the marsh.
Briar Rose shakes her head, wishes to be back in youth. Out of her stupor, she stops. The wind quiets. It is cold—her feet are cold. Just a little further. Where has her nightgown gone? She smells a burning. Burning rubber, burning skin.
No.
There is only one thing left to do, which is to run. She trips over a cluster of stones and lays in the dirt, falling unconscious—she is tired. Images flash: princesses, many of them, ruling.
In her fogged state, she remembers.
Hours go by, just Rose and the green light that spurned from within her. She is banging her forearms on the iron door, and stops to listen. “Beauty is fostered through love—he needed her here. He needed us to teach her love, loyalty.” There’s a silence and then Flora continues. “She is His, Fauna, she has always been His.”
Briar Rose watches the green light and feels its vitality—trusts it. With intention, it floats over a tub of petroleum, the same Aunt Flora uses to heat the stove for her favorite deerskin supper. Briar Rose grabs hold of the illumined canister. She spills it on the floor.
She bangs her forearms against the basement’s picture window. Banging it. Banging it. She bangs it again and again, her arms cutting against the glass.
Aunt Fauna hears—she runs down the basement steps. “Rosie!” She screams. Aunt Flora follows behind, meaning to stop her. “Leave her, Fauna, you must! He is close! We have failed! I feel Him!” But she can’t reach her sister before Fauna storms through the iron door.
The witch’s magic diminishes at their entrance; the green light hides under the dark. Under the shattered window, behind the lacey curtains, Briar Rose quiets. The Aunts see the glass on the floor.
“No!” They scream. “Briar Rose!” They search the darkness, making their way toward the window, where it seems she has escaped. It is then that Fauna senses her.
As soon as Fauna is within arms reach of her beloved Rosie, she lets out a small whimper—that of relief. She could feel her child under the dark; the child she raised and loved, despite her ugly fate. “Oh, Briar Rose,” Fauna said, feeling at last the girl’s arms in the dark.
Briar Rose doesn’t respond, she only lets out a breath—a vindictive one, filled with years of confinement without clarity, of selfhood amalgamated with shame. The light—the witch’s light—relights as it had done before, a bubble from her mouth.
In the moment before flicking the light, with her very own fingers, toward the petroleum permeated ground—in the moment before the basement blows to flames—she sees Aunt Fauna’s smile. “I thank God I found you,” Fauna says. She leans in to give Briar Rose a kiss.
Both Aunt and child close their eyes. Flora screams her sister’s name.
Amidst the blaze, Briar Rose climbs out of the shard-pricked window in a manner which would make one believe glass doesn’t cut and fire doesn’t burn.
The pain comes back to her; it comes back all at once. There is so much blood. She keeps running. She weaves in and out of dissociation, where she is climbing stone by stone.
They sleep, the peasant town. I see from the top of this spire, it’s a Kingdom for only He and I. Could that be Him over there? Behind the Gargoyle? Yes, it must be.
My love. My love, do you see me? I have rid of my before. You can take me now! Bring me to my consummate after! I am soft, I am tender, I am braised with years of missing you. Your promise is all there has ever been. You, Prince, are my once upon a dream.
But He does not respond.
No darling, your Prince is still waiting for your Return.
Oh, it’s only Emaleth—my watcher, my guide. The floating light grows more luminous as it nears her, revealing the beauty of her face, the power of her body, out from behind the Gargoyle. I am stilled—I must be. I can only look at her, what Power she has.
Come here, my darling, come here, she says. All you have to do is touch, and you will be brought to Him. She removes her long cape. She unbuttons her bodice right between her breasts, and her chest opens—a heart, like a beating ruby, on display. Just touch with one finger, my Darling, the heart of the Devil, and you will have your Prince.
Briar Rose is a viewer of the lake, calm in front of her. She looks to the large stones resting at the bottom of the cliffs and recalls her girlish adventures; her pretend play of Princess, climbing to the top of the tower. She’s motionless, reorienting back to consciousness—there is partly this dream, partly this world. I have killed my Aunts.
She screams, a witch’s shrill.
She feels how the earth at her feet has softened to sand, and she perceives the waves—small waves—calling, a beseechment. She inches forward, lets the water soothe her, touch her; it will soon have her. She again desires to feel the water’s chill in all of her parts.
She hears her name—Aurora—in the same sound as mist. She notices Emaleth out in the distance, standing on the serene water, and it is somehow plain that she is who guides the calm. There’s shadows circling the witch, resembling smoke. Pierced in Briar Rose’s mind is the sudden knowledge that Emaleth was made from fire, infernal and grand.
Briar Rose goes in, her blood—all that blood—rushed by the water. Around her is a red sea. A moan slips out of her as her legs fully submerge; she is wet up to her belly. She walks further, Emaleth’s frame coming closer into view, but far off enough to be a delusion still. “Who are you?” Aurora asks, but Emaleth doesn’t respond. Aurora walks deeper.
I walk toward the enchantress with heavy feet, like walking through mud. I can’t deny her a touch to her heart. I am wet, I am submerged. When I reach her, I kneel down at her front, and place my lips to her chest—the heart an apple, both water and blood. The Witch stays quiet—it is I who moans. I am almost finished, I am almost finished.
I have gorged on her. Her breasts are shredded skin and my lips are dripping blood, but I am not worried I have hurt her. This is a woman who can not be hurt.
When I look up, it seems she is no woman at all. She has the face of the Gargoyle—a grotesque thing I’ve seen in nightmares. My Aunts would hold me—they would show me love. It is only now I understand. We have known this all along.
I am still moaning, I am becoming. I am finally becoming. I am merging with my Prince, I feel it, I can feel it.
Emaleth is still off in the distance, but Aurora has the sense she is almost to her.
Before her final breath, she looks at the witch—just to be sure—and she sees that it has horns. It is no woman any longer. Beauty, grown by love, governed by evil, it says. It shakes its head with awe. The last word goes muffled as the water baptizes Aurora’s forehead. She hears a ringing in her ears from the pressure of the current. It sounds like bells.
In Hell, we dance—my Prince and I. I wear no skirt, but he waltzes me through clouds as if my body is a gown. It’s a similar picture to heaven as yours—up in the sky with pillars and lights—but there is no light, only fire, and the clouds are dark from smoke. I don’t hear the harpsichord but I do hear screaming—those of my Aunts—in the flames surrounding us. My Prince smiles. “We thank earth for its belief in goodness—how they nurtured you for the ripening.”
I laugh—how silly they were. How they thought that love could beat beauty, that love could beat delusion, that love could beat loneliness, that love could beat lust.
