The Rose and the Thorn

by Kate Macdonald

I cannot think of something to say in response to this. I am still angry with him. I will never forget the terror of almost losing Thorn, the fear of being split in two. It is a mark, a brand against my heart. My anger at Freedom will fade much quicker.

  “You are strange couple,” he says eventually.

  I knot my brows together. “We're not,” I say resolutely. “We are both very similar. I never knew myself, until I knew him.”

  Now it is Freedom's turn to frown. “You have always been yourself.”

  “Not with other people.”

  “Well, that's embarrassing- my little sister being wiser than me.”

  “It's not the first time, Freed.”

  “No, I guess not. I hope I know what it's like, some day.” He pauses for a moment. “The willowy fairy girl, with the lovely eyes-”

  “Ariel?”

  “Yes. Is she-”

  “Don't.”

  “Right. Well. One more question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you have a wolf for a pet?”

  I frown. “Bramble's not-” I glance back at my large, loyal, yellow-eyed companion. “Oh. OH! He... he didn't look that that when we got him! Oh... this explains a few things...”

  Freedom laughs, already over the bridge. “That'll teach you not to judge by appearances,” he scoffs.

  Back in the castle, I find the whole place lit with a strange, luminous glow, as if someone has washed away a film of dust I never noticed before. Ariel, Ophelia and Margaret are already sweeping up the debris by the time I return.

  “Don't you three ever rest?”

  “No,” they say in synchronise.

  Ophelia drops her broom and literally flies into me. “Look, Rose, hands! I have real hands again, and wings!”

  “They suit you.”

  “I know!”

  Ariel casts a cursory glance over me. “Hmm, not the outfit I would have chosen to meet the mother-in-law in...”

  I look down. My dress is ripped to shreds, covered in mud, spots of blood, and pond weed. My skin is splattered with scratches. I can only imagine what my face looks like.

  Another part of me giggles. She called the queen my mother-in-law.

  “Rose garden,” she suggests. “I'll lay out some clothes for you.”

  “You don't have to-”

  “Rose garden!” the fairies snap.

  I think it is best to listen to them, and slowly make my way upstairs.

  Thorn and his mother are conversing in our parlour. The door is wide open, and their voices far from hushed. I cannot help but overhear them.

  “About Rose, dearheart-”

  “Please mother, don't say anything about her not being royal, because-”

  “I like her.”

  “Oh. Good. Because I was just about to demand you turn me back in a beast. I have no intention of being human without her.”

  “I like her,” said the Queen more fervently. “And I look forward to getting to know her better, although, I think, I should leave the two of you alone for a while.”

  “Alone? Mother, where will you go-”

  “I wish to search for the remainder of our court, the ones I cast out to protect. If any still live, I would have them return, if they wish.”

  “I... I never thanked you,” says Thorn, “I never even wanted to thank you, not till now. For what you did. What you sacrificed to save me.”

  The Queen reaches out a hand to touch his cheek. “A mother will do anything to save her child.”

  It is then she looks up, and notices standing there. “Go and clean yourself up,” she suggests to her son. “I should like to talk with Rose for a moment.”

  His eyes follow hers, and his face breaks into a giddy, awkward smile when he sees me. “Please don't frighten her off.”

  “She is not one to scare easily.”

  Thorn leaves the room, brushing the back of my hand with his as he does so. There is a strange nervousness between us now. Before either of us can utter a word, Ophelia comes flying straight down the corridor, accompanied by the other fairies. They swamp him and immediately drag him off down the corridor.

  The Queen calls to me.

  “Did you hear all that?” she asks.

  I nod. “I should warn you, I'm a terrible eavesdropper.”

  She holds up her hand dismissively. “I counted roughly three times. There's plenty you missed.”

  That is one of my theories confirmed. “You've been here then, the entire time?”

  “More or less.”

  It must have been awful, watching her son in such pain, unable to help him. For a minute, I wonder if she resents me, for not freeing him sooner, but I don't sense anything like that from her. I believed her when she said she liked me.

  “You will never be queen, you know.”

  “Thank heavens for that. I would make a very awkward one. It might even have to turn him down because of it.”

  The queen does not smile. “My son is only half-fey. He has inherited some magic from me, but he has his father's mortality. I will outlive him by centuries.”

  My mind flashes back to a conversation I had with Thorn, ages ago, when I first arrived at the castle. “Being here is not my punishment.” The curse placed on him was Eilinora's punishment, and although her son has survived, she has nevertheless endured the worst of it. She had lost him: lost his childhood, lost his future, and now, lost him to me.

  “He has so many years left, though,” I remind her. “So many still for you to spend with him-”

  “So many for you to spend with him,” she interrupts. “I like you, Rose. I may envy the years you will have with him that I will not, not truly, but I like you nonetheless. I could not have chosen better.”

  “But you did choose me.” I realise. “It was you who conjured the flowers that lured me here in the first place, and the rain that made me go into the castle.”

  The Queen falls silent. It was not Moya's magic that trapped me here. Moya wanted me gone.

  “The castle had maybe a year's worth of magic left,” she admits quietly. “We were running out of time. I knew the gateway was open, I felt the presence of a young girl nearby. I took a risk. Do you blame me?”

  I should, perhaps, but how can I, when I have Thorn because of it?

  “And... and you opened the way to let me back in, didn't you?”

  She nods. “Most of my magic was always focused on keeping Moya locked away. I had to... I had to vanish completely from Thorn's life when he was still very little, in order to preserve my power. I kept some for emergencies; that was certainly one of them.”

  “Did you... did you send me the dreams? Were you the one who let me know he was in trouble?”

  At this, the Queen startles slightly. “No,” she responds slyly. “That... that I think was all you.”

  “Is that... my power do you think?” I ask finally. “I know I'm supposed to have one. My mother could sense the future, I think, but I-”

  “Have you not worked it out yet?”

  I shake my head.

  “You see the truth of things,” she says. “Or the potential of it. The gardens, the weather, mimic your feelings. It would not have been so strong, in your realm, but I imagine you kept a lovely garden. You imagine a thing as beautiful, and so it becomes so. It was you who brought life back to this place, and your connection alone that brought about any dreams you had.”

  “That's it?”

  “It's no small thing, to see a thing as beautiful.”

  “I just... I thought it would be more important, is all.”

  The Queen smiles, and reaches out to touch my cheek. All the queenly pretence evaporates with that touch. She reminds me of my own mother. “It was very important to me,” she finishes, and sweeps across the threshold, down the long hall, to the gilded chamber where Thorn's ruined cradle lies.

  I cannot tell you precisely what happened during that day; minutes and hours pass in a blur, short on substance but long in length. The castle is
swept and tidied and primped, food is laid out in the old-fashioned way, though I have no appetite for it. Murmurs of preparing it for guests flitter about. I see little of Thorn during this time, and the fairies seemed to have multiplied, appearing everywhere all at once and creating a bustling hive of energy. I grow tired. I long for the solace of our empty castle, and realise, with odd longing, that it will never be empty again.

  I feels like it will be days until Thorn and I are alone again, and eventually, defeatedly, I drift off to my room.

  The candles are all lit, the bathtub filled with hot, soapy water. A basket of roses sits on the table, and Ariel is flitting about the room, making the bed and laying out the clothes. She grins when I come in, flopping down on the bed she's half-made.

  “I'm your lady's maid!” she declares.

  “Says who?” I pretend to be annoyed, even though I am secretly overjoyed. I am going to like getting to know Ariel better.

  “Me,” she declares cheerfully, and then leaps off the bed to help me unlace what remains of my dress. “In unrelated news, does your brother have a-”

  “Please don't finish that sentence.”

  She sighs dramatically. “I haven't had a body for so long, I think I deserve a little-”

  “Stop, please, I beg you.”

  Ariel pushes me into the bath and dumps a jug of water on my head. I make a joke about missing her fairy form and she splashes me before pouring in a heaped measure of something soft and calming into the waters. This is by far the best bath I have ever taken. I soak for hours. Eventually, Ariel helps me out of the bath and finishes scrubbing me dry. I slip into my dressing gown. There's a warm tray of soup on the table. I realise how long it's been since I've eaten.

  “I'll leave you alone now,” she says, and turns to go.

  It is blissful quiet, dark and warm. I finish the soup completely, licking the plate dry. I have never been so famished in my life.

  There is a knock at my door and I smile. I do not need to answer it. A second later I turn around and Thorn is there. I leap into him with such force that it knocks him into the wall. I have forgotten that he is not as strong as he once was.

  “Careful,” he whispers huskily. “I'm struggling with my balance slightly. I have to admit, I'm missing the tail.”

  I grin up at him. “Does it feel right though, this body?” It certainly feels right to me.

  His smile is slight, but erupts out of him when he slides his hand across my bare shoulder, stopping right before my night-dress begins. “Like everything I imagined and more.”

  Our lips are together again, and my skin explodes under the sensation of his. We wheel around, and end up in the chair beside the hearth, barely breaking for air.

  When we do finally pull back, breathless and giddy, I run my fingers over his features, learning every new inch of him. How can he still look so much like his beastly self? I curl my fingers into his hair and kiss him some more, while his fingers explore the inches of my uncovered skin with new skill. The feel of his flesh against mine sends fire down my spine. I place my hands on his neck, brushing against his collar, and desperately wish the rest of his clothes would just melt away. I wonder what he would say if I asked him to remove them.

  For minutes, moments, hours, we sit in perfect silence, breaking only to giggle. There is no need to talk for that time, there is nothing to say.

  Eventually though, Thorn speaks. His soft fingers are wrapped around my hair while I stroke the smoothness of his cheek.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “I almost miss the hair.”

  Thorn laughs. “I suppose I could grow a beard.”

  I tug on the tiny cleft in his chin. “I don't know. I like you this way, too.”

  “You are so difficult to please.”

  I press the tips of my fingers to his lips, and his palm brushes my cheek. Neither one of us dares look away.

  “I like you this way, too,” he says.

  I tilt my head, catching his hand against my shoulder. “What way?”

  “All the ways.” Thorn's mouth twitches crookedly. He leans down and kisses me with it, just briefly, eyes open, as if he doesn't want to stop looking. My hands return to his features.

  “If all that it took to break the spell was for me to say I loved you,” I ask, “why would you not say it first?”

  “I didn't know you had to say it,” Thorn tells me. “All the curse said was that I had to find someone to love me. I didn't know if she just had to fall for me, act on those feelings, or announce them. Ariel suspected that the latter was the case, but we couldn't be sure. I convinced myself that whatever you felt for me, it didn't quite match the level of my affections. I mean, I hoped, desperately. You gave me plenty of reason to hope. Your desire to return if you ever left, your insistence that you wouldn't forget me... when you lost your chance to go home to save me. But I thought your feelings might have strayed into the realm of familial. Whenever I questioned you about them, you seemed to suggest that anyone would have done what you did. I thought perhaps that, although you cared for me, your actions were motivated by morals rather than love. Then... the gardens started to die. I knew that somehow they were tied up in your feelings, and I took it as a sign. Either you didn't love me, you had fallen out of love with me, or you didn't love me enough.”

  My heart aches with the pain I must have put him through. I thought my feelings, confused as they were, were plain to see. I was worried my heart was too visible, I should have been afraid it was too hidden.

  “You still should have told me,” I say quietly.

  Thorn groans but does not pull away. “I did, Rose! At least, I tried-”

  “Well, you did an appalling job-”

  “Did you not hear my poem-”

  “Had you actually said it, of course I would have said it back-”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “How could you not know that? It practically sung from my skin.”

  “I hoped, Rose. I really did. I so desperately wanted to tell you, but I was… afraid. Afraid in the way a normal, mortal man would have been.”

  “Well,” I say softly, playing with the folds of his shirt, “I can understand that. I was terrified in normal, mortal way too. It had so little to do with you being a beast,” I explain, desperately hoping he understands this, “And so much to do with me being afraid of the hurt.”

  “I would never hurt you.”

  “You would if you died. Which, by the way, you come close to a lot. No more of that, please.”

  “I will do my very best.”

  I lie down against his chest, and stay there for a while, listening to the beautiful beat of his heart. My heart.

  “When... did you fall in love with me?”

  Thorn smiles, his heart beating a little faster. “I cannot put a time or date to it,” he replies. “But early, very early. I was quite taken when you didn't scream at me.”

  “Be serious!”

  “I am. I may look quite the dashing fellow now-”

  “You have always been a dashing fellow-”

  “And I would hate to be accused of having low standards, but I do prefer it when my prospective companion does not scream in terror at the sight of me.”

  I snicker a bit at his dripping tone, and snuggle back against him.

  “Your laugh,” he says quietly.

  “What?”

  “I loved the first time you laughed at me, when I teased you about your snort. My life has not had much laughter in it, and I saw a different side to you then. But I knew I truly loved you the night after you tried to take down a pack of wolves for me. I dared to dream, then, that you cared for me. I never stopped dreaming, after that night. You were my salvation and my doom, and every day afterwards was an ecstasy of agony, wondering which you would be.”

  “I knew I loved you when I thought that you were going to die,” I whisper, and then clarify. “The first time, when I stayed. I knew then. But I loved you that day before, down by the
lake. I loved you the night on the rooftop, when I almost fell asleep in your arms. I loved you when we made music together, when I fell from the tree, and didn't want to move. I think I even loved you that first day in the roof garden, when you wanted to kiss me, because I wanted to kiss you too.”

  Thorn leans across as kisses me again. His mouth crinkles into a smile. “Say that again.”

  “Um… I wanted to kiss you too.”

  “No,” he whispers, “just the part when...”

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh. I love you.”

  He kisses my neck. “Again.”

  “I love you. I love you, I love you…”

  I want to call out, forever, always, for eternity. I want to tell him until the words lose meaning, but I do not. Those words will never lose their meaning, nor the shape their bear being so long in the making.

  Firelight dances around the chamber and flames give way to ashes. Outside, the wind howls, and the rains come crashing down. The world moves and shifts and changes. I pull Thorn gently towards the bed and sit down, arching backwards. I take his hand, place it on my shoulder, and guide his fingers. Slowly, gently, we peel back the layers of cloth dividing the two of us. The slightest touch of Thorn's flesh on mine makes my insides sing. I am bursting with bubbling, liquid gold.

  We do not discuss it, we are passed words now. We are both breathlessly, wordlessly eager to eclipse the one gap between us. He may, at one point, ask me if I'm sure. I say yes.

  Thorn's lips touch my neck. His warmth spreads through me. The kisses descend. My fingers graze his back, glide down the shape of him, feel him in places I never knew existed. I pull his face back to mine and tug his body so that it covers me completely, and then I kiss him so deeply I could drown.

  I don't want his face anywhere but here. I want his kiss to merge with mine, I want to press our bodies together until not a cell remains of me.

  We do not sleep. Afterwards, we lie in the candlelight, tracing new parts of our bodies. We whisper to each other, holding each other until the candles have worn away to stubs and faint traces of dawn glitter along the horizon. I lie my head on Thorn's chest and count every heartbeat. And then, at the exact same time, our eyes link together, and we ask each other the exact same question.