The Sleeper and the Spindle

he castle in the Forest of Acaire was a grey, blocky thing, all grown over with climbing roses. They tumbled down into the moat and grew almost as high as the tallest tower. Each year the roses grew out further: close to the stone of the castle there were only dead, brown stems and creepers, with old thorns sharp as knives. Fifteen feet away, the plants were green and the blossoming roses grew thickly. The climbing roses, living and dead, were a brown skeleton, splashed with colour that rendered the grey fastness less precise.

The trees in the Forest of Acaire were pressed thickly together, and the forest floor was dark. A century before, it had been a forest only in name: it had been hunting lands, a royal park, home to deer and wild boar and birds beyond counting. Now, the forest was a dense tangle, and the old paths through it were overgrown and forgotten.