Happily Ever After

It would be churlish to expect the fairy tale to provide all the
facts, that is what it is, a fairy tale, and in most ways what is told
is accurate and what inaccuracies there are vary from telling to
telling. However what is maybe truthful is not the whole truth and to
me it seems valuable to properly record the subsequent events from when
the tale generally breaks off. An addendum if you like.

What must be understood from the start is that a castle does not
exist on hoards of treasure and great armies and great armies of
servants alone, it survives mainly through taxing the population around
it. In the intervening hundred years this population had entirely
fallen under the jurisdictions of other kingdoms and it was unclear how
the castle could survive. But that is to leap ahead, perhaps I should
take up from just that point where the tale proper ends.

The term sleep is used inaccurately, one certainly could not survive
a hundred years asleep. Indeed even awake there were old men in the
castle who could barely have expected to see through another winter,
let alone a hundred without food or water. Some greater magic was at
work and not one I can explain, I will therefore use the word as it has
been used before but on the understanding that is not remotely an
accurate description.

The story records well that the immediate business of the castle was
breakfast, for we were all painfully hungry. What the fairy tale
neglects to mention is that though the populace were all perfectly
preserved the contents of the larder had long since rotted to nothing
or been eaten away by rats. The thorn forest prevented any access
outside the castle walls and breaking through it would take far too
long. So it was that by common consent a number of horses and dogs were
slaughtered, cooked and eaten. A fact that rather distressed the young
prince, but more of him later.

Whilst young lovers assumed the business of living happily ever
after, the rest of us began to pick up the pieces. The first business
was the removal of the wall of thorns, a dense thicket that circled us
completely, now letting not even the prince pass, and under the kings
instruction a narrow path was forged through to the outside. After the
cutters the royal party were the first to venture outside and it was a
completely alien world into which we stepped. For what we recalled
seemingly a night-time ago was the centre of a thriving kingdom, busy
roads, prosperous villages and fruitful farmland all in the shadow of
the castle. Now we stood in the arse end of some other land, a muddied
track, some wooded heath and a bare glimpse of our highest tower
peeking over the forest.

It was proposed that the young prince took the entire royal party
back to his own castle where they could eat properly and generally
catch up on what they had missed. The king was discreetly advised not
to take the offer up, it was mentioned that whoever now ruled over the
land might see the woken king as something of a threat and whilst his
character remained unknown it would be unwise for the king to place
himself under the others protection. My master reluctantly concurred
and citing the excuse that there was too much work to be organised,
declined. He did however allow his wife and only daughter to go.

Days went by and neither the prince, princess or queen returned, nor
did any word of the departed party. The king hunkered down with the
considerable businesses of clearing the castle grounds and of feeding
its populace, in his way he was already consolidating its position and,
by revealing its towers, imposing the castles authority over the old
kingdom again.

Consider for a moment the position of the present, un-enchanted,
incumbent king. His son returns from a hunting expedition one day,
cheerily bearing the news that a fully populated castle has been
uncovered in a thick forest in the lower reaches of the kingdom. The
king of this curious castle ruled the lands there a century before but
was placed asleep by some magic, he and his entire household is now
awoken. All of a sudden there is a whole new power base, with a stone
fortress and an army to hold it sprung up in the most unlikeliest of
places and nobody has any information of its intentions. Not only this
but the prince has in one kiss become enchanted with the princess of
this castle and has brought her back as a prospective daughter in law.
The threat to a king is palpable and real, the response cannot have
been an easy one to choose.

A week from our awakening a messenger arrived and conveyed the
demand that our king submit and swear fealty and warned that should he
not the castle would be viewed as an invading force and our presence
treated as an act of war. His wife and daughter were viewed as
legitimate prisoners of war and would be held without harm until the
king surrendered. He was told he had a week to respond but his response
was immediate and furious, he dispatched the messenger back with the
demand that all his rightful lands were returned to his rule and that
his wife and daughter be released immediately.

Though the technology of warfare had advanced in the past century it
was to no great extent. Their crossbows were more powerful and faster
to load than ours and their armour was a little stronger and lighter. A
century before however the world had been a less friendly place and the
army housed in the castle was of a significant size and experienced in
battle. Our king too, had commanded several campaigns over his career,
the prince's father, on the other hand, had never once seen the face of
war.

Thus I believe he was taken by surprise by the swift and cynical
brutality our forces employed. A cannier general might have crushed us
then, whilst we were still weak. Instead the enemy all but stood aside
whilst our raiding parties went far and wide from the castle sacking
villages for supplies. Soon the castle larders were groaning again and
its courtyard teeming with livestock and horses, we were put on a siege
footing. A large amount of land around the castle was seized and
fortified in an attempt to re-establish the rightful kingdom. The
demolition of the thorn forest was curtailed, it and its one narrow
path made the castle impossible to storm, instead a firebreak was cut
around the castle and secret routes were cut through to the outside
through which sorties might travel unobserved. All this we achieved
before the impostor king had so much as drawn up a plan.

He did plan though, he gathered and prepared his armies and after
the week was over they marched to war. Our spies forewarned us of their
approach and we were all ordered back into the castle grounds where we
awaited the attack. The opposing forces camped that evening outside the
thorn forest, our queen and princess kept prisoner amongst them, that
night we were kept on full alert, spies moved back and forth through
the forest watching the enemy and a full guard was placed on the castle
walls and battlements. Even those of us who were not soldiers got very
little sleep that night.

The following morning there were a few skirmishes all far removed
from the castle, our snipers picked at the opposing forces from the
forests edge and there was intermittent fighting up and down the single
path leading to the castle. All day reports came back to us of activity
in the forest and at its borders with neither side making much headway
against the other, never once did we see an enemy soldier.

At sundown that evening the spies started reappearing one by one,
each with the news that the enemy were burning down the forest. Every
man was evacuated back into the castle, from the highest tower of which
we could already see the smoke rising like a great black pillar far
into the dusk sky. Now we would know if we had cut the fire break wide
enough.

For two nights and a day it burned. Two nights and a day of constant
black smoke and a thick acrid air that scoured our lungs like breathing
sand. Two nights and a day of permanent fire watch, of every man on
call, waiting for the burning ember that would fall from the sky and
ignite some castle building. Two nights and a day of hauling buckets of
water and two nights and a day of watching the flames get ever nearer
to the castle until on the second night the night sky was lit up like
day.

In the early hours of the morning the fire finally reached us. Great
tongues of flame leapt out from the forest edge and reached and
stretched for the castle walls. Such was the heat that a man could be
burnt from simply standing on the battlements. Such was the fierce rain
of burning detritus that fires leapt up about the castle grounds like
devils leaping from the doorways of hell, and though every man in the
castle including at one point the king worked hard to beat out the
fires wherever they sprang it was soon clear that we were fighting a
loosing battle and even if its stone walls survived the castle would be
gutted.

Then the rains began. Such sweet relief I cannot describe, we who
had lived that night of the drawing inferno truly believed our end was
upon us and never dared suspect that the smoke wreathed heaven
concealed clouds heavy with our salvation. Thus, by providence or other
powers, we were saved. It rained for two weeks after that morning, both
day and night without relent, a great solid downpour heavy with power
and intention. In those weeks and the many years since I have often
found myself impelled to work in storms and rain, cold and sodden to
the skin, yet not once have I given so much as a whisper of complaint,
not against the rain.

My story must now transfer to the invading army camped as they were
at the edge of the burnt forest, I will tell you of the events as
accurately as I have been able to discover them, but you must
understand I was not present for any of what follows and can offer no
guarantee of its truth.

That morning the opposing king, so it is said, stood looking out
over the great smouldering remains of the forest, imagine if you will a
vast wasteland of ashes, garlanded and hidden by smoke and steam and
the pounding rain. His most pressing concern that day the fate of our
castle, a fate completely concealed by the new Hades he now surveyed,
had the fire reached us or were we still there, waiting, as strong and
dangerous as before. With great haste a scouting party was arranged
under the command of the king's own son, the prince, the first man to
have discovered the castle now tasked with locating it in the gloom and
the smoke. Bravely these men disappeared into the murk to navigate the
thick smog and pick their way through the sodden remains of the great
thorn trees the fairies had conjured all those years ago.

I do not know what the prince found that day, it seems likely to me
he discovered the remains of some long abandoned construction where
perhaps woodland beasts had sought refuge from the flames and perished
in large numbers to be incinerated beyond recognition, others say he
found nothing and fabricated a tale to impress has father, still others
say he must have been deceived by the faeries though their part in the
tale had long since come to an end. What is certain though is that he
returned to the encampment after dark that evening and reported that he
had found the stone ruins of the castle raised to the very ground and
the cremated remains of all it's occupants piled within.

Such was the immense scale of the supposed carnage and the horror of
the macabre scene the prince described that there was no cheer in
victory that night. Indeed the king was greatly distressed that such a
massacre should occur at his order. Together he and his son went to the
Queen and Princess who were held prisoner in their own tent and related
to them the news.

It is said that the princess flew into an almighty rage at her
lover, attacking him violently and accusing him of directly
orchestrating the murder of her beloved father, such was the force of
her fury that not one person there did more than stand by and watch as,
screaming and wild, she ran from the tent and into the dense smoke and
the sodden night.

Chase was given of course, the prince chief among her pursuers still
black skinned and exhausted from his previous foray into the remains of
the forest. But the smoke and rain conspired to conceal the princess
who ran and ran deep into the smouldering wilderness, searching no
doubt for the grave of her father and the remains of her home. So it is
told the princess ran till her legs would run no more and then walked
and walked until morning though not a sliver of dawns light penetrated
the thick smoke and it remained as dark as night until she, now
hopelessly lost and fearing she might never escape the lifeless land
she trod, climbed upward to the rocky the summit of a small hill that
rose forlornly above the great lake of smoke. There she looked out and
through the rain saw nothing, not the castles towers which unbeknownst
to her still stood strong, not any edge to the swirling desert she had
entombed herself in, and not one single sign of life.

She finally stopped walking there and collapsed onto the rock and
began, for the first time, to weep. She wept great tears of heartbreak
that splashed with the rainwater onto the rock. And from those tears
emerged the tiniest of springs, unnoticeable then in the sodden
downpour but from that spring the smallest trickle of salty water crept
down the rock to where it collected in a pool with the rainwater, and
from that pool spilled a tiny stream, brushing gently down the side of
the hill to where it joined other streams, and from those many streams
a river soon formed that swelled rapidly with the torrents of rain and
carved a route boldly through the landscape.

The prince, still desperately searching and calling for his beloved
though he had long since lost her trail soon found his way blocked by
this river and was surprised, for it was well known that no river ran
there. Keen to discover its source and seeking a way to cross it he
followed it upstream.

From the high castle walls we saw what happened next clearer than
any others, the river was doing what the rain had not and was washing
the pall of smoke from the land. From the vantage point of our towers
we saw the smoke begin to move as if with intention. Like treacle
flowing from a tin it was slowly wending its way around the walls of
the castle and was being sucked out to the distinct line that the river
now sliced through it. By noon that day the smoke had cleared enough to
see the river itself, swollen and turbid with the rain water and racing
with youthful ferocity across the land. Amazed at this discovery we
left the castle and walked on mass to its banks to contemplate this new
feature. At the same time so did the opposing army venture into the
disappearing smog and were equally surprised to discover the river.

Thus both armies now stood on opposite sides of the river, each
equally nervous of the other but amassed not for war but by mutual
wonder. For a while it seemed to all there as if hostilities were to
break out again, the order was given, I know for a fact, to bring
machines of war and archers to the waters edge.

At that same moment the princess gazed out with equal wonder at the
river which sprang ultimately from the rock upon which she stood.
Gingerly she tried to descend from her perch but the running water made
every foothold treacherous and she slipped and fell, tumbling through
the water and the mud to where she found herself trapped between two
fast rushing streams. She tried to make her way back upwards but the
sodden ground gave way beneath her feet and progress was impossible.
So, shivering cold, she attempted to ford one of the streams but weak
from her exertions she again lost her foothold and was swept rapidly
away down the hillside and over a small waterfall where the stream
joined the swelling river.

The prince, who was following the river towards its source, heard
her scream but saw nothing through the driving rain. Terrified for her
safety he stood up in his saddle and shouted her name, for answer came
another scream cut short as the princess was rolled under by fierce
currents. The prince looked and saw her thrashing and struggling in the
water and without hesitation dived off his horse and into the
treacherous river.

He reached her easily and held her afloat but try as he would he had
not the strength to tow her to the rivers edge and together they were
swept downstream. The prince grabbing onto the charred remains of one
of the great thorn trees for support, cutting himself badly on the
thorns several times as they rolled over in the tumultuous current.

So it was that as both armies stood facing each other across the
water the prince and princess were carried past, both exhausted and
frozen and close to death, only the prince had the strength to cry out.
They were near our side of the river and immediately a dozen brave men
jumped in to rescue them. The king spurred his horse and raced after
them, followed in haste by every mounted man there. Only the fastest
horses pushed to very limit on the boggy terrain managed to keep up
with the river, but fortunately some did and one rider, whose name is
lost to history now, managed to thrown a rope into the water. One of
the men who had jumped in after the prince and princess caught this
line and holding it they managed to secure it to the tree to which they
all now clung. The man who threw the line was pulled from his horse and
very nearly ended up in the river himself, yet others arrived and held
him and still more leapt in the rushing water and by a great effort the
prince and princess were saved.

It is said by some that the peace treaty was signed that very day,
that one king rowed a boat over to the other, the king who traversed
the river changing from telling to telling. This was not so, there were
long months of negotiations to come, indeed you would be fool to think
that any man could have safely crossed the flood swollen river that
day, but some still believe it just as some believe a mighty river
sprang from a single teardrop and not from massive deforestation
followed by a great rain.

What is undeniably true though, and can be seen to his day, is that
the river, by the mechanics of geography or by other means, had neatly
divided the land into as perfect halves as any cartographer could
measure. Our castle on one side and the new capital on the other.