Fifty Shades of Sleeping Beauty by Lotte Harding

only one who came close to the castle that day who wasn’t affected by the curse was the Queen’s other sister, Serena. Though her visits to the palace were rarer since it had become a somewhat dismal place, nonetheless she had decided in the morning to see how her niece was doing.
    Travelling on an old but faithful ass (which she found much more comfortable than all the fine horses her sister sent) , as soon as she came in sight of the castle Serena knew that something was wrong. Sniffing the air she sensed magic abroad, a suspicion made all the deeper by the fact that no sound came from the palace. Even in these more sober times there had always been the noise of daily business, but as she drew nearer on the road that led to the gates there was no hint of the usual hustle and bustle.
    Pulling a small mirror from a pouch, she brushed off some dust that had collected on its surface and said in a sharp voice: “Peeping Tom!” It wasn’t much of a magic word, but it was one that worked well enough and a few seconds later the mirror changed its reflection. With a gasp, Serena saw dozens - hundreds - of men and women asleep in the castle, while up above them all in a tower lay Princess Talia - naked and violated, and with the sweetest smile on her sleeping face.
    “Oh, my poor, poor dear,” Serena sighed. “It happened at last.” She returned her attention to the silent castle walls and stared up at them. She had no magic that she could use to lift this spell, but she was sure that leaving the palace in this state was not a very sensible idea at all.
    Sliding from the ass, who looked at her with his usual stoic expression, she pulled another pouch from his packs. Striding purposefully towards the castle gates, she looked at them long and hard for a while. “Damn you, Bellatrix!” she said finally.
    After this, she cast her spell. It was long and complex, and when she had finished singing the words beads of sweat covered her brow. With a final flourish, however, she cast the contents of the pouch in front of her and took a step back.
    For several long minutes, nothing appeared to happen, and Serena wondered if she had said the right words. Her ass, however, gave a raucous bray causing her to step back - just as the first of several tendrils and brambles began to shoot from the earth.
    They grew at an incredible speed, twining and snaking up from the ground and seeking the castle walls hungrily, clambering over each other as they thickened and swelled. Each tendril was covered in sharp, dangerous thorns that grew bigger and bigger as the brambles grew, and the undergrowth became first a thicket and then a dense forest of solid trunks and thorny spines through which no man could pass.
    Exhausted and saddened, Serena slowly returned to her mount and, hauling herself onto his back, began her weary return journey.
     
    It didn’t take long for news that something had happened at the palace to spread through the kingdom. Visitors and tradesmen encountered an impassable forest where once there had been fine, fair walls, and panic and dismay filled the subjects of Nysa.
    And they had good cause. Osiman the Mighty had renounced all claims to Nysa, fearing as he did the power of the witches who lived there (and also regretting that they did not come to live with him). Although he had not exactly become a gentle ruler, much of his old fury had passed as he grew older.
    The same could not be said of his son, however, and when Osiman II came to the throne his first act was to march against Nysa. This time there were no witches to oppose him. Serena kept herself to herself, hidden away and protected by her magic in the forest at the heart of the kingdom, and Bellatrix was not to be seen while Queen Isis lay under a spell in the palace. The younger Osiman conquered Nysa easily, although the evil woods that covered the old castle were such that none of his armies were able to penetrate them, and the vast brambles that grew there seemed