As my stallion and I crest Castello Hill, Vitale Manor rises into view, a tombstone marring the vibrant countryside. Even at this distance from it, I can taste the bitter tragedy and the grief of its devastating past on the mournful breeze.
Around the grim manor, the early afternoon is bright, the sky a peaceful blue. The sun beams down, stroking warm hope into my cautious depths.
I will end the Vitale curse at last.
The myth of the hex placed upon the noble Vitale family existed since before my great-parents were born. It has been recounted at bedtime and around dinner tables, a cautionary tale about offending the fairies and spirits that occupied our kingdom before we did, and a dream to those of us who still believe in magic.
After many barren years of marriage, Lord and Lady Vitale finally welcomed a beautiful baby daughter into the world. As befit nobility of their status, they hosted a party to celebrate her birth. At the time, fairies lived among humans, and it was expected that they would invite all those living in their garden. It was the least they could do for the spirits protecting their home and blessing them with prosperity. They invited twelve fairies for the twelve golden plates they had for them to eat off. Only the thirteenth fairy, dark, grim and adorned in thorns, was excluded.
Naturally, she found out about the party she wasn't invited to. Naturally, she joined her sisters in offering gifts to the little girl, but hers was a curse dooming the child to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die at the tender age of fifteen. Off she had flown, her cackles ringing through the night.
The heartbroken parents had cradled their daughter, vowing that they'd protect her from her wretched fate however they could, but they had known that their greatest efforts couldn't match a fairy's magic.
So eager had the dark, prickly fairy been to wreak vengeance on the Vitales that she had pushed ahead of one fairy who still had a gift to present to the baby. That fairy didn't have the power to undo the curse, but she altered it so that upon pricking her finger on the spinning wheel, the child would fall into a deep sleep that could only be broken by true love's kiss.
Years went by. As the girl grew, her beauty and kindness became legendary. Her parents destroyed all their spinning wheels and banned any from being brought into their estate, but a fairy's malicious will is never so easily thwarted.
On her fifteenth birthday, the girl came upon a spinning wheel that had been forgotten in the depths of the cellar. It was an extraordinary item she had never seen before, and the thorn fairy's curse came true. Lord and Lady Vitale waited for years for the one who would break their daughter's curse, until they turned so frail that their old bones could hold them up no longer.
Legend claims that the Vitale Manor has been empty ever since they passed, with the exception of Rosella still sleeping soundly in her tower room. I fancy I can see it now, rising into the air from the heart of her childhood home, its rose-red drapes fluttering in the wind.
I whip the reins to spur my stallion onwards, faster. Carmine's pointed ears flatten as he takes up the challenge. I lean forward so my body is in line with his. The air pushes in around me, trying to grab some part of me to slow me down, but I give it none.
Onward we go to Vitale Manor, a wheat-coloured stallion and a young nobleman clad in deep blue.
The ground becomes uneven as we near the legendary home. Carmine slows to a trot.
Vitale Manor stands alone. Had it always, or had the thorns that engulfed it pushed the other houses away so they could have this home to themselves?
The cobbled road ends in front of the manor gates. Carmine stops, tossing his head in refusal to take another step.
The gate is barricaded by thorns as long as my forearm. I flinch inwardly as my feet touch down on the ground. My thickest soled boots wouldn't be able to protect me from them. One misstep, and I would be skewered, paralysed, awaiting starvation and death.
Carmine neighs, and I imagine he's saying, Narciso, don't be a fool! Look at the size of these thorns. No girl is worth that.
"They say that her hair is like spun gold and her eyes are like midnight." I smile as I stroke Carmine's mane. "She will be worth this and more," I say, even as I gulp at the thorns guarding the gate.
It's not only Lady Rosella Vitale's beauty and goodness I covet but the chance to change a life. It must be awful to be trapped in limbo, neither dead nor alive, for almost a century.
I would be a hero to end her pain. I would embroider myself into the legend that bears her name.
The estate towers over me, its white, storm-battered walls bruised and foreboding. I want to run back to my stallion and leap into the saddle, then blaze a tawny line over the hills and back to my lively, safe, warm home.
No.
I straighten my back and square my shoulders. If worthwhile ventures were easy, everyone would undertake them. This is a task for the steel-hearted and iron-boned.
I step around the thorns in a macabre dance until I reach the wall. The shadows emphasise the indentations in the plaster. I slide my hands and feet into one each. They fit perfectly. I can't shake the sense they were carved out not by design but by the desperation of the men who attempted this journey before me.
I touch the grappling hook and rope dangling from my belt and the dagger sheathed at my hip before starting the climb. As I ascend the wall, I leave the world behind and make my way to a place of fantasy and fairytales.
I focus on the goal, on hearing my name forming part of the legend, on Lady Rosella's arms closing around me on a warm night. Even so, when I reach the top of the wall, all I feel is the ache in my muscles and the blistering burn at my fingertips.
As I hoist myself up, a sneaky thorn tears into my shoulder. I cry out where I kneel at the top of the wall, clutching at my injury. The pain is blinding, dizzying. I grip the lip of the wall to keep from tumbling down to where the thorns await me.
Carmine sends a concerned whinny my way, trotting closer. He stops short of the thorns.
"I'm okay, boy." I grit my teeth and stand, wobbly but steady enough to follow the wall to the manor where the girl of legend sleeps.
I keep my arms stretched out and my gaze level, away from the thorns. I have the strange sense that they're watching me, waiting for me to fall so that they can claim me.
Not today, not ever.
I unfasten the grappling hook and rope coiled at my waist and toss it through the air, towards the corner of the roof. The hook slips past the gutter's edge. I try again. This time, it catches. I pull to check that it's solid.
Excitement tingles through me. I'm doing it, the one thing many men before me have tried and failed to do.
I fasten the rope to the lamp fixed to the top of the wall. I study the half-melted candle occupying the glass box held together by ornate metallic swirls. My gaze shifts, and my excitement turns to dread.
There, scattered among the thorns that have claimed the Vitales' garden, are corpses with tattered clothes, open mouths, and rotting flesh.
I swallow my gag. How stupid of these men to cross a garden so overrun by thorns. I try not to think about them falling to their deaths crossing the wall to the roof as I do now. I look back at the length of wall I have traversed.
I have come too far to go back now. Legend shall speak of me as a hero, not a coward.
I fix the rope to the lamp's base and tug. When I'm certain it won't give, I swing from it, clutching at the rope above me with such force that it imprints its grain on my palms. I put one hand in front of the other. I focus on my breaths as I make my way along the rope, not on the briary graveyard beneath me, not on the thorns creeping up the house I head towards.
I let out a breath as I reach the end of the rope. With one hand, I withdraw my dagger and saw at the thorns guarding the roof's edge. They are stained red with the blood they have drawn, but they shall never taste mine.
I swing onto the roof and crawl up the red tiles. I defy the earth's pull, making my way to the roof's peak, where a tower protrudes. Its windows are open, a silent invitation that I accept. I climb over the sill, dodging the thorns, and slide past the red drapes into the bedroom they adorn.
I wipe the sweat from my brow, smooth my hair and dust my doublet. How do the princes in fairytales keep themselves in such impeccable condition? I hope Lady Rosella will see my bravery and endurance, not the sweat soaking my camicia and matting the ends of my curls.
The white organza floating from her bedframe flutters. Behind it, her slight form reclines, her bosom rising and falling, a reminder that she is only asleep even though the rest of her is as still as death.
I cross the room slowly, quietly, eager to know whether my kiss will break the curse, afraid to find out that it won't.
Lady Rosella's hair is like sun rays radiating over her silk pillow, her lips like the pink of dawn. Before I can think too much, I bend and touch my mouth to hers.