Sleeping Roses

Spindle of a Spinning Wheel

"Briar, can I ask you something?"

"You can ask," Briar said, not looking up from the map Kilan had sketched out for her.

"Who's Mother?"

She looked up. "Mother? Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity I suppose."

Briar sat back, thinking how to explain it. "She saved me," she finally said, "I fell into a very bad situation, a long time ago. I was upset and raging and scared."

"Scared?"

"Scared," she repeated without elaborating, looking at her hands. "I suppose I was tired of my life at that moment and my brother wasn't listening to me. Of course, now I can understand his point of view and I've had more than enough time to think about why he acted the way he did, but at the time... well, less so."

"What was happening at the time?" Kilan asked, taking a seat, setting aside the book he was reading.

Briar sighed, looking away. "I was... engaged," she said, "To a man I did not know well enough, by my own choosing. You have to understand, I never left my home, I wasn't allowed to stray far, I wanted to have someone with me. I know it was stupid, even then I think I knew it was stupid. The brother I keep referring to isn't my only sibling. I had two more brothers, the eldest and the youngest. The youngest was long gone, the eldest vanished suddenly and everything fell to my second brother."

She sighed again, standing up to look out of the window.

"He was better suited to lead then our eldest, but it didn't mean he had planned it or expected it."

She turned around and leant back against the windowsill.

"I refer to her as Mother, but she's not really my mother. My mother vanished, as did my father. I call her Mother because she desires it. My engagement fell apart. I should have seen it coming but of course I didn't."

"What happened?" Kilan asked.

Briar smiled slightly, looking down, her expression a silent laugh at her own foolishness.

"One must never forget how deeply someone can fall in love when there is wealth and power to be gained from it," she said.

Kilan's brow creased, then he looked down and nodded. "Oh," he said.

"Oh, indeed. At the time, my mother was gone, my father was gone, two brothers were gone, and me... well I had just discovered that I was being married for power and that - should I have married him - my new husband could have posed a threat to the life of my remaining brother."

Something flashed in her eyes but before Kilan could decipher it, she turned away and folded her arms on the windowsill.

"I can't say I remember what happened to him after that, but I know I was done with life for a while."

"So what happened? How does Mother play into it?"

Briar frowned, thinking about it. "You may find this story strange," she said.

"I'm a Storyteller," he reminded her with a smile, standing up and walking over, leaning his shoulder against the wall. "It won't be that strange, I'm sure."

Briar kept her face turned away from him but nodded slightly.

"I'll spin you a wish, should you spin me gold. Tell me my child what cannot be told."

Kilan looked down at her. "What?" he asked.

"I'll spin you a wish, should you spin me gold.

Tell me my child what cannot be told.