Notes: This is a collection of four stories based on fairy tales, but I promise it's not the usual rewrite. All four stories focus on characters who are "shadows", people not part of the original fairy tale, but possibly existing during the story.

The first tale is based on "The Sleeping Beauty", and the narrator is a boy who grew up with Princess Aurora.

The Shadows In The Castle, Story I – A Wall of Thorns Between Us

My parents always said I’d known Aurora since she was born. I was almost two years old when I attended her birth ceremony, one of many noblemen’s sons who only thought about getting out of those uncomfortable clothes and going to play outside. I neither remembered nor cared about the girl child we were supposed to be celebrating.

So in all honesty, I knew Aurora, for real, from about the age of eight. That was when I began actually spending time with her, when she began to join the other children to play. She’d always been a delicate thing, pale and pretty and slight as an elf-child, and the king and queen refused to let her outside. I did not recall the fairies that were responsible for helping and cursing her, and only knew vague things about the curse. I believe I was outside with a group of other boys when Aurora was enchanted to die by the angry witch.

Thus, I only knew that her parents shut her away because they were afraid of the curse. She had her own royal tutors who taught her all manner of useless things, like needlecraft and dancing. She was good at them, of course. She was good at many things. But she wanted to learn more. She wanted to know why. Why was the sky blue. Why was her father the king. Why couldn’t she go outside with the other children. Why had her mother chosen such an ugly ochre yellow for the chairs in the fifth dining room. Why.

I explained to her the answer to several of her questions years later—but I’m getting ahead of myself. When we were younger, we played in the same group of children occasionally, when it rained and no one could go outside. Then, we sometimes played make-believe, and even though I was at the age when children begin to doubt pretend worlds, I played along. All of us skeptical boys were completely captivated by the stories she could create for us to act out. This was not simple pretend anymore, but long and detailed plot, with characterization and everything. Our battles were no longer the fake-sword and bloody death affairs of the past, but filled with heated exchanges, narrow escapes, ingenious uses of scenery and props, outside interruptions… To be honest, Aurora’s pretend was almost like what the players did when they came to act plays in the castle.

But each time, as soon as the sun came out, we all ran off to play outside (usually ball) without a backward glance, and she was left to watch us silently from some shaded window. One day when I was ten, I paused at the doorway and turned to look back.

And my fate was sealed forever.

Her eyes were filled with something so lonely and wistful that I couldn’t just abandon her that day. Without a word, I sat down beside her on the stairs. She smiled.

I think she told me a story that afternoon. Something about a girl and an enchanted prince. It hardly matters anymore, but after that, I would stay with her every so often when the others were outside. I told the boys I was tired, or my leg hurt, or I had something else to do. But remembering the smile she gave me that first time, I had to experience it again. I had to see her delight again.

The summers passed much too quickly after that. I stayed inside more and more often. Suddenly, I was thirteen, and could no longer recall when I had last chosen to go outside without Aurora. She wasn’t supposed to go out—her family claimed she would be in danger unless within the castle walls—but she begged me, and I was still a boy with curiosity at what might happen if we did it.

So, one not-terribly extraordinary day, we waited until the rest of the castle was at its quietest, when the adults were all busy at court or working, and we walked down to the deserted servants’ quarters and slipped out one of their back doors. And then we were off, running towards the nearby forests and their secluded fields of wildflowers.

We slipped back in before supper, and no one suspected a thing. I personally thought we would be caught immediately, as Aurora looked severely healthier and sported a golden glow over her white skin after our excursion in the sun, but nobody seemed to say anything about it. We could not pass up such a temptation; we repeated our secret adventure many times over. Interestingly enough, we never were caught for it in all the years we had done it, probably due in no small part to Aurora’s clever idea of mixing up the days we chose for outdoor adventuring and the days we simply stayed in the castle to talk.

She asked me all her questions, her whys. I slowly learned how to answer them over time. Her father was king because he was the son of the last king, and if your father is a king, you will be one. Her mother chose an ugly yellow for the chairs because she has an odd sense of colors. Aurora couldn’t go outside because her parents were afraid she’d run into trouble. I’m not sure why the sky is blue. “Maybe it’s sad,” she replied.

In exchange, she told me all of her stories. She made some of them up herself, though a lot of them were ones she’d found in the library. There were stories of magical jewels and enchanted kings and beautiful princesses. There were stories of peasant children and beggar women and giants. She tended to stay with happy endings, since she preferred it when things turned out well. I can’t say we were constantly together, because we weren’t, but we did spend a lot of time with just the two of us. We did both have other friends and other things to do, such as our studies. She had giggly girl talks with the nobles’ daughters and maids around her own age, and I practiced my swordplay with the rest of the boys in my training group.

More days passed. We were happy, she and I, to do the simple things we did. Study, play, sneak away to our fields, talk to each other…

Came a day when I was sixteen, and it was her fifteenth birthday. Her father said she was old enough to start thinking about her future, about which prince or king she chose to wed, and I was banished from her presence. Boys, her mother said, would ruin her image if she spent too much time with them. After all, we wouldn’t want her future husband to think she was anything but an innocent creature.

Now the roles were reversed. Years ago, I’d been the one who had chosen to sit in the dark castle with her when everyone else went out to play. Now, she perhaps thought of that and returned the favor. Aurora disobeyed her parents and came to see me anyway. It was not every day, nor did it usually last for very long, since she said she constantly had a servant keeping tabs on her, but she came.

I was growing older anyway, and was starting to take on duties for the palace. At first, it was only simple things, organization and paperwork, and acting as an assistant for the older officials. I occasionally accompanied some of the diplomats to their talks in other countries, and, slowly, I rose through the twisted structure of the diplomatic office hierarchy. By the time I was sixteen, I had already been sent on a few solo trips to neighboring states.

Aurora came to me before dawn five days before her sixteenth birthday, as I was about to depart for a diplomatic talk in a tiny state near our kingdom. We had grown up together, and both of us eventually stopped really believing in the curse, assumed it was a superstition, laughed at the adults who warned us against angry fairies. After all, we had made our way out of the palace many times without being caught or punished, so we thought we were free from the binds of our elders. Nonetheless, I felt uncharacteristically worried when I saw Aurora as I was readying to leave.

“Will you be back for my birthday party?” she asked me without lifting her eyes.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “It depends on whether or not the talk ends soon enough.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll bring you back something for a present, though.” She smiled and finally looked up.

“Thank you, I’d like that.” She looked down again. “I’m going to meet my husband at my birthday party, you know.” I was slightly taken aback. I always knew this day would come, but somehow knowing and actually being faced with it were two different things altogether.

“Oh,” I said. We were both silent, awkwardly so, for several long moments. “When will you have the wedding?”

“I don’t know. Father says it will be a good alliance, though, and so we’ll have it sometime in the next month or so.”

“I see.” I almost wished I could stay home for this party now, but I knew my duty. “Happy birthday, Aurora,” I told her, reaching forward and embracing her. “I’ll be back within the week. Make sure you take care of yourself. B-be careful.” I could not explain the sudden worry that was creeping through me. “And if your husband-to-be picks on you, tell me when I get back, and I’ll have words with him.” That made her smile a little, but not for long.

“I can’t help but feel like this is the last time I’ll ever see you,” she whispered. There was very little I could say to that. I wanted dearly to comfort her and tell her I would be back soon, and I would always be there when she needed me. I wanted to tell her that when she got married, if she wanted me to come with her, I would ask to be put into the diplomatic facility in her husband’s kingdom, and failing that, I could quit and work there as a server. I wanted to tell her how happy I was that we had met, and how much I wished we could live forever in the summer days we used to know. I wanted to stand there in the darkened hallway for the rest of my life with my arms around her, protecting her from the shadows and the suffering and the rest of the world.

But I knew, I needed to leave. And I needed to leave her behind, and as much as I cared about her, if her husband threw me out of his kingdom, then I could no longer keep my silent promise. And I knew that she was not the only one who felt the foreboding that told of something monumental and dark in the future.

So I simply held on to her, almost desperately, and said, “You’ll be fine. I’m here for you.” Her arms tightened and tightened around my waist until, suddenly, she let go again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I just…I’m afraid to let you leave all of a sudden.” She stood on her toes and kissed me on the cheek. “Goodbye. If—if for some reason my feeling is right…I just want you to know that I—that you’re the best and greatest friend I’ve ever had. You mean very much to me, and…and I want you to know that.”

“Goodbye, Aurora.” I couldn’t add the “don’t worry” that I wanted to, because even I was worried. Instead, I patted her cheek with my thumb and grinned. “I’ll be back.”

Then, I walked away.

That night, I arrived in the neighboring kingdom, and the talks began the following morning. In the afternoon, I went out and found Aurora a birthday present—some pretty trinket I thought she might like to have—tied on a tag, and placed it in my luggage to give to her when I returned home.

Four days later, on Aurora’s birthday, we still had not reached an agreement on the trade issue, and I knew I would be late going back. I quickly scrawled down a message before breakfast and sent it by a rider back home. I wrote to Aurora that I was terribly sorry I could not attend her party, and hoped her birthday was very enjoyable, and that I would bring her present with me when I came home in a few days. I had to keep my message as formal as possible, to avoid trouble from her parents and guardians, so I was unable to write like myself, but I hoped she would understand.

Had I known what would happen after, I would have ignored the rules and wrote exactly what I wanted to. I would have told her to take good care of herself in the future, and I would have asked her not to forget me. I would have told her that she was everything to me.

But I still would not have said the one thing I wanted to say most, because I never realized I loved her until I knew it was too late.

The next morning, I received a message from home. Aurora’s curse had come true. She had somehow ended up pricking her finger on a spindle, like the evil fairy had said, and then she and the entire rest of the palace had fallen under the enchanted ever-young sleep mandated by one of the other fairies who had tried to soothe the curse’s effects. And only the man destined as Aurora’s true love could enter the castle one day and kiss her awake. The legends claimed it would take 100 years.

I dropped the diplomatic mission. After all, my kingdom had no king anymore, so there was no point in having good trade relations. As soon as I could, I bought a fast horse and rode back to the castle, which was already covered in briars and thorn-bushes. I took several blades and went to the gates, attempting to cut through the brambles.

I ended up with a pile of broken metal and a body covered in blood. By the end, I was grasping at the vines with my hands. My skin was covered in multiple welts, and even more cuts, and every one of them stung as the sky opened above me and started to rain.

It had been years since I had last cried—I think I stopped at the age of seven—but I did not even want to restrain the tears rolling down my face. The cold rain was numbing, to the point where I could no longer feel the thorns tearing at me and all that remained was the squeezing in my heart.

I sat unmoving among the brambles long past nightfall, not remembering anything, not knowing what to do with myself.

Aurora was gone.

And I was not her destined true love.

I wanted her back. I wanted to go back to that morning before I left and never leave, and I wanted to hold her again. I wanted to open my eyes and discover I was dreaming.

When she woke up, it would be like the day after her sixteenth birthday. But I would live like any other man, grow old, and die. It was likely I would be gone by the time her spell was broken. It wasn’t fair, and it hurt, and…there was nothing I could do about it.

I had wanted to remain by her side forever, but I had not imagined this would happen. I would never see her again. I would not be there to protect her or help her or watch over her.

I prayed her destined true love would be a good man.

Our kingdom was fairly small, and without the castle, some people migrated away to other kingdoms. Others of us, mostly farmers and woodcutters and other peasants, stayed behind, trading our services with one another. I took up hunting and woodcutting to support myself, as I knew very little about farming or artisan work.

I built a home in the forests a day’s walk from the castle, as I could not force myself to live within sight of where I knew she was. I made pilgrimages to the castle every once in a while to visit her and see if someone had by some chance entered the castle. I talked to her from outside the walls, told her what I was doing, chatted with her about old memories. People would have thought I was crazy had anyone dared to get that close to the enchanted sleeping castle.

Slowly, time passed. Alone, I grew older and older. The gates remained overgrown and closed.

I knew, eventually, that I would not live to see her wake from the enchantment.

On the last day of my life, I made my final pilgrimage to the castle gates to talk with her one last time. “When you wake up,” I said to her at the end. “I hope you find your happy ending.” I turned away again and walked home, knowing I was about to leave the world.

Aurora woke to the kiss of her destined true love 100 years later, and the castle came alive again. Before she could ask where her best friend was, she remembered he had not returned on the day the rest of the castle fell under the spell. She walked down to the courtyard, knowing he could not possibly be alive anymore, but when she came out from the gate, there was a small glass figurine sitting on the ground where the magic brambles had melted away.

Still tied on the figure was a faded tag with the words “To Aurora. Happy sixteenth birthday.”

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"Eyes Wild And Green" - The eldest daughter of a local lord is told by a gypsy that she is a "green-eyed monster", and one day, jealousy will consume her.