Three birds —
one blue, one green, and one white —
each carried an ember
to Aoife’s garden of thorns.
She warms her hands
over the three smoldering coals
holding on with just a breath.
The thicket has grown thick over the years:
dense, a tangle.
The birds sing of the Outside,
where everyone calls her the Sleeping Beauty.
Except Sleeping Beauty is wide awake.
She sits trapped in this thicket of thorns,
while everyone else is out cold.
They are the sleeping ones,
oblivious to all that goes on around them.
Will they awaken one day,
as if they had only slept the night,
while Aoife kept vigil
over the century, age, era, epoch?
Aoife pulls the gardener’s coat
tight around her orange dress.
She blows on the embers,
keeps them alive,
but knows not how to feed them.
The thicket grows close in around her,
thorns encroaching,
choking out the light, life, and love.
In her loneliness,
Aoife has found many friends.
Sure the other humans sleep,
but the trees are talking,
and so are the embers.
The wind whistles haunting tunes,
and the ground below has a heartbeat.
She cuts her long, maiden hair
and burns it on the coals,
filling the thicket with foul smoke.
She ties feathers in her short locks
to be like her bird friends.
Wandering the forest beyond the castle garden,
Aoife came upon the old woman
with the fluff and the wheel that spun
round and round and round.
‘What are you doing?’ she wondered.
‘They say we’re not to have our spinning wheels,
so I must work out here where they won’t see.
It’s all well for you rich folk
who can buy cloth from far off places,’
the old woman said,
‘but we poor folk have to card and spin and weave
to have the cloth to make our garments.’
The wheel spun like a kaleidoscope in the dappled light,
Mesmerizing.
‘May I try?’ Aoife asked.
‘No, dearie, I must keep spinning
to clothe my grandchildren.’
‘But how does it work?’
Reaching out…
‘Don’t touch — you’ll break a finger.’
The spindle on that great wheel reeled her in
as the yarn wound round it.
Years of spinning had sharpened
the spindle tip to a fine point.
‘What did I say, dearie?’ scolded the old woman.
‘Now you’ve broken your finger for sure.’
‘No, no, just pricked it.’
Fog rolled in off the stream,
filling the forest.
The old woman’s wheel slowed
and she slumped down, with wool in her lap
and her head on the moss.
Aoife ran,
ran from the fog at her heels,
ran to the castle,
but she only reached the garden.
So she locked herself in the tool shed,
and the fog rolled on by
and around and in all the open windows and doors.
Then it went and sat on the rivers and streams that
bordered the kingdom
like a legion of cats,
ready to pounce any who dared enter.
Aoife hid inside that tool shed long
after the fog retreated.
When she opened the door,
tucked into the gardener’s heavy old coat,
the silence persisted.
Soon she heard a shifting, creaking sound
coming from all around.
She found the gardeners asleep by their tools.
She never left the garden
for the thorn bushes that grew
where the fog had been.
All around her, the thorn thicket creaked into life.
At first low to the ground,
but time passed immeasurably
and the thorns grew tall, dense, constricting.
Aoife’s life closed in around her.
At the loneliest moment,
the birds came to the thicket.
She learned to listen.
The squirrels, birds, rocks told her stories
Old tales, fairy stories
about talking horses and foxes and birds
and princes who rescue lost princesses
and sisters who rescue lost brothers — and sisters
and old women who test young girls
and journeys into far away lands
where people face impossible tasks
and only succeed with the help of others,
especially the animals,
and their own wits.
Sleeping Beauty traveled great distances
on the wings of the stories,
without leaving the ever-thickening thicket.
The embers flicker
Aoife blows on them,
wondering who will rescue her?
Will it be a handsome Prince?
Or a long-lost brother?
Or a peasant on a different quest,
who just happens to come her way?
But no, Sleeping Beauty knows
that no one is coming to rescue her.
A heroine must always rely
on her own resourcefulness,
and the love she gives.
Fear traps her
more than thorns.
Her hands are cold and stiff with it.
She rubs them and holds them over the embers.
How ever will she get out of this thicket?
How ever will she build this fire?
A woodpecker with a red patch on his head
and a black shield on his chest
taps on a trunk,
as if to say: ‘the answer is all around you.’
That black patch on his heart
feels like the same shield
she wears over her heart.
Fairy tales always say that
love saves the day:
love of animals and old people,
love of brothers and sisters and lost husbands and wives,
love of truth,
love of yourself.
The woodpecker says, ‘the answer is inside you.’
So Aoife gathers courage
to look under the heavy shield
that hides her heart
that has been overlooked,
judged, discarded, disregarded.
She lifts the shield,
opens the gardener’s heavy coat…
Someone breaks through the thicket
in a pink dress.
‘You’re awake!’
‘Who are you?’
‘Your long-lost sister, come to find you.’
‘Now what do we do?’
‘Let’s build a fire.’
Together the sisters gather fallen twigs
around the embers
and blow life into flame.
Crunching, crackling sticks
and the moss is green underfoot.
They find the sleeping gardeners’ tools.
Together they chop, cut, prune, burn
the choking thorn thicket.
The flames rise high, higher.
Sleeping Beauty discards the gardener’s coat.
The sisters’ dresses,
pink and orange,
gather scorch holes like fireflies.
Cheeks flush, skin scratched,
more alive than ever before.
Like Scheherezade’s 1001 nightly tales, this is my story of 1001 words to break old, life-stealing patterns. As the story emerged from a deep, hidden, frightened place inside me, it wanted to come out as a poem - probably as a song, though I have yet to hear the music.
YAY, thanks for this, Kali!