The Thicket - LilyRose (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📗

himself, in the service of righting that wrong. Surely she who had served the Princess so faithfully for so long could understand that?

And then he was off; up the path, thinking now only of the future. It would require concentration and attention to manage this properly; but his trail of golden threads should not have been disturbed since his flight with Meridian back through the thicket. With care, and diligence, he would find his way to the castle once again.

It took him much longer than he had planned to find the entrance into the briars through which Meridian had taken him. Not an auspicious beginning. By the second trip around the hedges, Gyllain was practically making his way on his hands and knees, his arm aching from holding up the lantern close enough to spy the glitter of golden thread. When finally he found it, draped around a long black thorn, he placed the lamp down and rolled onto his back, as exhausted as though he had been on a hunt and pursued a wounded Hart on foot for a full half a day.

Now would come the most dangerous part of his journey; winding his way alone down the labyrinthine path through the briars. Carefully he examined the twisted branches of the hedge, and now he could see it: a space, between the hedges, large enough for a man to pass through. The reason it was normally invisible was because rather than opening a way directly into the bushes, it veered off at such an extreme angle that only very close inspection, by someone who already knew what he was looking for, would reveal it to the eye.

Carefully, he stepped into the space. He probed ahead with his stick, and held the lamp aloft before him; already the moon was on its descent to the west, and the bright moonlight that had lit his way from the Inn was a mere mockery of twilight here in the thicket. Leaning forward, he held out the lantern, moving it slowly back and forth until he saw the next tiny yellow gleam of gold. Then he would place the steel shoe of his walking stick at the spot where the thread was, and carefully make his way toward it, before once again searching for the next golden thread that would mark his way.

It was laborious, painstaking, and yet fraught with great tension, for fear of turning the wrong way and impaling himself upon the black, oily, poisonous thorns. As in the first time he had come through the thicket, he wore his rapier on his belt, but he knew from all the previous failures before him, that trying to hack his way through would be the last desperate flailings of a doomed fool. No: nothing less than total success – making his way completely through to the other side – would suffice in this enterprise. He could not even consider failure.

Slowly, carefully, he tracked the golden threads following the twists and turns of the path. The farther along he went, the more he sensed that something wasn't quite right. It wasn't just that it was taking longer, for he knew he was moving much more slowly than before. It was that the path itself seemed longer, more full of loops and reversals, than his memory of this trip would allow for. Were it not for his certain knowledge that he himself had blazed the golden trail, he would have assumed by now that he had somewhere along the route gone very wrong.

A drifting fog had risen from the ground, and it took what little moonlight was left in this night and thinned it like milk diluted by water. The thicket was a patchwork of faint luminescence fractured by a jackstraw jumble of jagged branches and spiky thorns. Although the path was wide enough for him to move along, the dim light meant he could only see a foot or so in front of him, even with the lantern's glow. He considered turning up the wick to make the way brighter, but hesitated, fearing that he might use up the oil in the lamp before making his way through to the gate in the castle's outer wall.

Slowly, he moved forward to the next gold thread, keeping his eye on it and the stick planted in the ground. When he was even with it, he once again thrust the lamp forward, ready to search for the next one, but this time he gasped and yanked his hand back so fast he nearly lost hold of the lamp itself. Horrified, he stared at the thin red line that had been scratched onto the back of his hand. He quickly brought it to his mouth, sucked on it, spat, and did it again. Then he very carefully held up the lamp, and looked.

Before him was a near-solid wall of branches, leaves and thorns. He looked for a possible turn to the left and the right; but the path he had been walking on had abruptly come to an end. Feeling something like the seed of panic begin to germinate inside of him, he slowly backed up until he could see the last thread he had encountered. It was caught on a leaf, and hung limply in the shadow. He reached out and took it; yes; it was one of the threads of spun gold that he had pulled from the cuff of his coat the day before. He had put this here. Then why could he not find the next marker of the path? Why did there seem to be no path at all?

He moved closer to where the next thread should have been, where now there was only thicket. He stared into the branches, moving the lamp back and forth to shift the shadows, until he saw something that caused a cold and icy flower to bloom in his breast.

There was the next golden thread marking the way. Only, it was not marking the way. It was tangled among thorns deep in a wall of shrubbery; so deep that he did not think he could reach through now to retrieve it. It was his own golden trail marker, caught in the vines. But it looked as though between the time he had dropped it and now, the thicket had completely overgrown the passageway that he had taken twice before.

No, he said aloud, startling himself at the sound of his own voice. This could not be. Or, rather, this must itself be a part of the enchantment. A terrible thought occurred to him. What if it was not the knowing of the path, but the being taken along it – by the Princess' handmaiden – that allowed one to break the spell? What if Meridian was the key to reaching the Princess after all, and by leaving her behind, he had made a devastating mistake? What was it she had said? I am the way through?

Prince Gyllain turned around, and then he saw that he had, indeed, made such a devastating mistake, for the pathway along which he had come was also sealed up again. He now found himself in a small space, big enough only to stand in and to turn around, with the poisonous thorns bristling at him from all sides.

He tried to remain calm while he considered what options lay before him. After all; it is the wiles of a Hero that allow him to survive those things that lesser men don't. He could cry out for help, though the likelihood of being heard was small, and being heard by someone who could help him was smaller. Would the Princess hear him, perhaps, and be able to come to his aid so that he might rescue her? It was a possibility.

He could take his sword and try to cut his way through. But this he already knew was futile. If he thought that the path opened up again just beyond this barrier, he might be able to make his way that far. There was no way to know for sure, though. Not in this darkness.

It seemed he would be forced to remain here, at least until the morning light allowed him to make a better assessment of the situation. Perhaps Meridian, when she awoke and saw he was gone, would deduce that he had come back this way, and perhaps take pity on him for the sake of his sincerity, and come to help him out again.

Of course, being a woman, she might not, and that was a worry.

He settled back to wait for the morning light, but all the while, his own thoughts harried him like pecking birds. Little pecking birds of despair, singing their songs of hopelessness, and of a certain knowledge that he had doomed himself though qualities he would rather not believe were his own. It was hard work, trying to ignore those twittering, pecking birds. Prince Gyllain could feel himself begin to weary greatly, and then he did despair for himself after all.

And in that despair the Prince cried out, to whom he did not know, or care, as long as aid might result from it. Help me! he cried, and then, Princess, if you can hear me, help me! I have come to break your enchantment, but now I need your aid! Someone help me, please! Princess, I beg you, please come!

He stopped, and closed his eyes. He pulled a water skin from his knapsack, and drank the cool water, trying to sooth his burning throat. When he opened his eyes again, ready to call out some more, he saw it: a faint golden light moving slowly deep in the thicket. His prayers had been answered. Help had come.

He waited, silent now, watching the warm light slowly make its way toward him. He moved closer to the thorny wall so he could peer into the hedge and see who his saviour was. Slowly, the light approached, until he could see the form of a woman behind it, dressed in a gown of long flowing sleeves and skirts. When the light stopped moving a short distance away, he waited.

Princess? Princess Briar Rose, is that you? I have come to be your Champion, Princess, and to break the enchantment that holds you here. Can you come to me, so that together we can find our way to freedom?

You were here before, whispered the Princess.

You saw me then.

Why did you leave?

I was deceived by your servant, said the Prince. She told me you stayed of your own free will. That she was the prisoner here. She convinced me to take her away. But she couldn't lie to me. I returned for you.

She did not lie, whispered the Princess.

The Prince found himself at a total loss for what to say to that.

You told her you would stay with her, said the Princess.

But I didn't tell her I wouldn't come back for you! Come with me now, and we can all live together outside of this place.

You were told you couldn't return.

But I left a... Prince Gyllain stopped and thought about what he'd been about to say. That he was going to show how clever he had been, to leave a trail of golden threads so that he might find his way back to rescue her. But look at how badly that had served him in the end.

Why did you come back?, asked Briar Rose.

I came back for you, said