Briar Rose

Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.

Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.

Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.

A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it - the good people and the not so good, the young people and the not-so-young, and even Briar Rose's mother and father fell asleep. Everyone slept: lords and ladies, teacher and tummlers, dogs and doves, rabbits and rabbitzen and all kinds of citizens. So fast asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years.

Happy-ever-after is a fairy-tale notion, not history. I know of no woman who escaped from Chelmno alive.

A mist still lay all about the walls and floors, hovering like a last breath on the lips of all the sleepers. As he walked through the castle, he marveled at how many lay asleep: the good people, the not-so-good, the young people and the not-so-young, and not one of them stirring. Not one.

All around the castle, a briary hedge began to grow, with thorns as sharp as barbs.

Once upon a time," Gemma began, the older two girls whispering the opening with her, "which is all times and no times but not the very best of times,there was a castle. And in it lived a king who wanted nothing more in the world than a child.