A Thorn to Wake the Dead
“Hello?”
My quivering voice seemed too loud even in that grand foyer, echoing around the cascading chandelier and curling between every finely carved detail on the walls and ceilings.
Who speaks?
A shiver pricked at the nape of my neck. Had I imagined that voice, or had someone spoken?
“I am looking for my father.”
He is not here.
The spidery voice beckoned me as though it had entrapped me in gossamer threads, reeling me towards the marble staircase.
“Where is my father?” I demanded, mustering any courage that hadn’t fled upon first heaving open the doors to the mansion.
Not here.
I climbed the dark stairs, brushing away shadows that tried to ensnare me with long, cold fingers. With every step, a rhythmic ticking sound grew louder and louder: it was a grandfather clock, looming over the hallway, glowering and urging me to go faster with every tick – go, go, go, go…
I fled up the second flight of stairs and burst into a conservatory, where the scent of roses engulfed me in its sickening embrace. In the center of the roses was a mirror.
“I have seen this mirror before,” I muttered wonderingly, touching the glass. “Mirror, mirror among roses red; Where is the thorn that will wake the dead?”
The mirror swirled with murky waters, then rippled and stilled. I saw my reflection then, and shuddered at the unfamiliar curling lip over yellow fangs, bristling hairs, and bloodshot eyes under a bushy brow.
“Mirror!” I growled, taking its frame in my claws and shaking it. “Where is the thorn?”
I began tearing through the roses, letting their thorny limbs and frost-tipped petals prick me and tear at my flesh – “Kill me for all I care!” I screamed. “He is dead, and I am forever cursed!”
The grandfather clock in the hall below boomed louder, rattling the glass ceiling of the conservatory. I was running out of time.
Dong-dong, dong-dong… came the midnight chime. I was too late. I had not found the thorn.
〜〜〜
The brass knocker was almost too high for me to reach.
Tap-tap-tap, I knocked. The door creaked open, but no one stood within to welcome me. Only a sprawling dark foyer with cobwebs hanging from dusty chandeliers greeted me as my footsteps thudded loudly on the floor.
“Hello?”
Who speaks?
I started, but replied stoically:
“I am looking for my father.”
He is not here.
Surely he must be here – he had passed this way before me. I pushed past the shadowy voices and ran up the staircase, past a grandfather clock who reproved me, clicking “slow, slow, slow, slow”, to the conservatory on the third floor that I somehow knew must be there.
The stench of dying roses punched me as I entered. Their sharp thorns seemed to reach greedily as though they hungered to taste my flesh.
I set my eyes on the centerpiece of the garden, an enchanted mirror. The words to say tumbled into my mind with hazy familiarity.
“Mirror, mirror among roses red; Where is the thorn that will wake the dead?”
“You are the thorn,” replied the mirror, and cleared its murky surface to reveal my features reflected there. I screamed and covered my eyes against the frightening beast that eyed me back.
“No,” I whispered.
The briars that reached for me nicked my face and flogged my body.
“I want my father back,” I wept.
The midnight bell tolled from the grandfather clock downstairs.
〜〜〜
Who speaks?
“It's me, Belle,” I whimpered in reply to the strange voices crawling inside my head. My voice reverberated against the high walls and continued to echo up the stairs.
I knew that was the direction I must go.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop,” warned a severe-looking grandfather clock in the hallway past the first flight.
“I have to find my father,” I explained to the clock.
He is not here, said the voices.
Still I went on, up to where I discovered a conservatory reeking of decaying roses. In the center of the room sat a large mirror whispering songs I could almost hear if I stopped to listen.
“Mirror, mirror among roses red, where is the thorn to wake the dead?”
“You are the thorn. You are the dead.”
I looked at my reflection and saw a familiar specter, my face covered in gashes and dripping with blood from what I assumed were previous battles with the roses as I eternally sought the elusive thorn that would set the dead free.
Each time I remembered more, heard more.
“You always heard, but never listened,” reproached a new voice, warm and steady.
“Father?”
He stood in the mirror, so close I could kiss him through the glass.
“I came after you,” I sobbed. “I came to bring you back.”
Yet even as I spoke the words, I knew there would be no going back. And if midnight tolled one more time, I might not get another chance.
I am the thorn.
“I am sorry,” I choked. The memories swept through me – my selfishness, my anger, my betrayal.
My beastliness.
But another memory shone through from beneath – of a little girl, and my Father taking me upon his lap to enter into another adventure inside the covers of a good storybook.
What had happened between those days as little Belle, a happy child with her father, and the days of the beast?
I looked at my father, to see my tears mirrored in his own eyes.
“I'm sorry, too,” he said. “Forgive me.”
I smiled as a getaway tear shot down my cheek.
The mirror shimmered, and suddenly he was beside me, and my face in the reflection was that of a youthful, beautiful girl.
“Mirror, mirror among roses red,” he chanted, “the thorn has blossomed; let us bury the dead.”
He led me to step through the mirror, past the carnage of the beast’s curse to the new blooms of roses singing on the other side.
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