As he drifted into sleep again, Edward thought he heard the sound of an army. A chorus of men, shouting and calling. The whinnying of horses and the thud of their hooves. The thwack of axes against wood and the singing of swords. And beyond that, even fainter, the brewing thunder of a storm.

He woke gradually, like a bulb awaking from winter, slowly sending out its first shoots. His skin damp and chilled, his limbs trembling, pressed down by a dripping mass. The smell of rain and wet leaves. A far-off sound of boots treading through mud.

Edward raised his hand, expecting resistance but finding none. The withered cane bent like limp straw. He pushed himself to his feet, wet thorns grating against him but giving way. The thornbush lay collapsed about him, a mass of broken cane, ripped leaves, and flame red petals, spread out like of pool of fire across the acres. A devastated space before the gray stone of the castle where the Prince's banner flew.

He looked at his arms and legs, dotted by red scabs as if he were stricken with pox. With slow, uneasy steps, he headed toward the spot where he thought Olaus lay. But his search yielded only sodden rose and blighted cane. Still he looked, ignoring the bite of the thorns, stumbling along on his weak legs. No body, no helmet, no sword. Even the bones were gone, consumed by whatever had consumed the thornbush. The wounds on his hands broke open and bled anew. He had ceased to care. He could hear the sounds of revelry within the castle, the cheers offered to the Prince. All Edward wanted was to find Olaus.

He didn't know how much time passed; he ignored the angle of the shadows and the heat on his back. After a while, he noticed a group of men-at-arms approaching from the castle, their shields displaying a familiar crest.

"By God, you're a lucky one," one of them said, his eyes roaming over Edward's ravaged limbs. "The only man to emerge from the thorns since they fell."

Edward stared at their unblemished helms, their perfect spears which sparkled in the sun. "Lucky," Edward nodded, "to travel from one dying garden to another."

The soldier seemed confused. "Come into the castle. A barber will look to your wounds, and we've enough food to feast for a week."

Edward shook his head. "I'm not welcome inside those walls."

"You've nothing to fear. The Prince has declared an amnesty. All debts forgotten, all misdeeds forgiven-a new start for everyone in the kingdom."

"I belong here among the flowers. There's another here I must find." He walked away, wading back into the fallen thorns, eyes seeking out bones. He closed his ears to the sound of drums and trumpets, shut out the smells of roast pig and boar. If he could find Olaus, give him a proper burial, perhaps he could make sense of it. Perhaps Olaus was still alive and trapped like Edward.

With the twilight, another man came out to see him. In the growing darkness, he didn't recognize the face until he was very close.

"I was wrong about you, gardener," the hermit said. "You did know how to survive."

Edward gazed into the hermit's ruined face. "But Olaus did not. The roses have shrouded him."

"These thorns will never yield up their dead," the hermit said. "If they did, the bodies would choke the fields, and the Prince could not celebrate the rescue of Beauty."

"He came because I asked him."

"Finding his corpse won't cleanse you of fault."

The strength emptied from Edward's legs. He stumbled as the hurt and hunger overwhelmed him.

"Come in with me," the hermit said, helping him to his feet. Leaning on the hermit's shoulder, they walked into the castle, where the cries of joy echoed off wet stone. Pale, smiling peasant faces, whirling and dancing as if the maypole stood in their midst. Their feet were clumsy and their movements stiff, but they did not lack for bliss.

"The Prince arrived only three days behind you. With him came woodsmen and sappers and the men-at-arms. As he set camp, the storm broke. While the wind and hail lashed through the cane, the Prince walked to the edge of the flowers. He pricked his thumb on the thorns, and the roses fell down before him like hounds before a master."

"How fitting. The King will be proud."

"He's the most willful of the lot, this one. Acted like he already owned the land, with no ear for word or warning. Didn't give me my square, either. No, he told his soldiers to strip the cape off my back instead."

Rushes and squill crunched beneath his feet as Edward followed the hermit into the feasting hall. At the far end, the Prince sat on the old throne, a goblet in his bandaged hand and the cape draped around his slender frame. On him, the cape seemed regal, brighter and more brilliant, as if all the colors of the world had gathered on his shoulders. The hall filled with the echoes of the laughter and boasts of his men.

The hermit guided Edward to the nearest table. As Edward stared at the worn, gray wood, the hermit looked around, clapping his hands to get a maid's attention. "Bring us ale, here.

"Not everything is lost, Edward. This castle, this Prince, will need a gardener."

"Always the gardener," Edward said, his words grating his throat. He felt hollow, empty of hope, empty of glory, a barren, lifeless seed. "As if there wasn't one here already."

The hermit grinned, his brown lips like worn roots. "There was no gardener here when the Sleep came. He was elsewhere, picking berries, doing his work."

Edward started to ask a question, but a maid interrupted, setting two pewter mugs on the table. She smiled as she poured them drinks from her pitcher, her eyes as blue as the sky above a mountain.

"Do you realize this is a hero you're serving?" the hermit said, lifting his mug as if to toast Edward. "The only commoner to enter the thorns and live."

The woman smiled as she handed Edward his mug. Her hair was as red as the sunset when it touches the horizon.

MIDORI SNYDER.

Midori Snyder is the author of several fantasy novels, including a high-fantasy trilogy (New Moon, Sadar's Keep, and Beldan's Fire), and a western-Irish fantasy, The Flight of Michael McBride, which combines the Celtic stories of the Sidhe with a Texas cattle ride. She has contributed to the punk fantasy series, Bordertown, and written "Barbara Allen"for artist Charles Vess's popular comic-book series, Ballads and Sagas. After living abroad in northern Italy, she has found herself entangled in two forthcoming fantasy novels set in sixteenth-century Italy among the actors of the commedia dell'arte.

According to Midori Snyder, "The Reverend's Wife" was an oral tale collected from the Kordofan people of Sudan and was originally known as "The Muezzin's Wife." In that version it was the men, a muezzin and a caravan trader, who dupe each other's wives into having an affair. Snyder's version, set in rural America, is definitely not for children.

THE REVEREND'S WIFE.

by Midori Snyder.

It was funny the way it turned out. Hard in fact to feel any shame about it at all. No matter the fire and brimstone pouring out of Preacher Thomas's sermons, God-afearing and God-avenging, hitting the Good Book hard enough to make sin jump up into your mouth and begin to testify. Me, I don't need to testify. God knows me. Instead I just stay quiet and get to thinking how God has a mighty good sense of humor and doesn't mind a little sinning now and again. That is, of course, if no one gets hurt and all parties wind up happy. I guess you could say Violet Thomas and I wound up pretty happy women. And our dear husbands, though they learned a thing or two about women, were never the wiser for it.

It started back about the time my husband Caleb and I returned from our honeymoon. The old buggy and mule had barely made it home, what with the mule getting cantankerous and refusing to move and the buggy losing bits and pieces of itself every time we took a bump. Caleb was furious, swearing at the mule and slapping the reins over its stubborn rump. But I was laughing my head off and could of cared less if the old buggy had fallen apart on the ground and left us stranded in the road. I was as happy as a lark. I was young, loose-limbed, and pretty. I'd just gotten married to the man I loved most and spent three days in a fancy hotel room with him, most of it on my back, my heels up in the air. My bones ached everywhere. I was bowlegged, rubbed raw, and my skin carried a strong musky odor. I got dizzy just bringing my fingers to my nose and inhaling.

"Hey now, Mr. Johnson," I said, when the buggy finally groaned to a stop in front of our hitching post. "Are you fixing to carry me over the threshold?"

Caleb looked at me with those sharp blue eyes and grinned, his boyish freckles darkening with a blush. Sore as I was, I got heated up quick just looking at him. He jumped down from the buggy and ran around in front of the mule over to my side. I'd already sprung loose from my seat, panting like a rabbit, and was waiting for him. Neighbors had gathered on the road and were calling out greetings. But we didn't pay them much mind.

Caleb scooped me up off my feet and after wrestling the door open, hoisted me into our little house. He kicked the door shut behind him and our neighbors' voices were suddenly drowned out by the sound of Caleb's heavy breathing. I can remember the smooth feel of the wood floor, and the fury with which we grappled right there in the front hall. My hands were too busy elsewhere, so I had to bite off his shirt buttons. My petticoats were all bunched up about my waist, my bloomers hanging off of one ankle. I yanked at Caleb's trousers and praised God that we'd left the hotel in such a state that my husband hadn't managed to put on his shorts beforehand.

Like a pair of cats on the stoop, we howled, rolled, and left stains on the wood floor with our joyous homecoming.

Well I guess that's what a honeymoon is all about. What I didn't figure on was that it could change so fast. A month after my wedding night I didn't see any blood come at the usual time for it. I waited a second month just to be sure before I told Caleb the news. He was out back fiddling with the buggy wheels, grease all over his hands, his face kind of distracted by the falling-down husk of that old conveyance. When he figured out what I was telling him, well, you would have thought I'd hit him with a brick. His eyes opened real big, and he shook his head in disbelief.

"You sure?" he asked.

"'Course I'm sure," I answered, a little testy that he should doubt me. "It's something a woman knows, Caleb."

"Well, that's all right then," he said, smiling, his face finally opening up to the wonder of it all. "I'm going to be a father."

I was ready right then and there to go in and celebrate the moment with a good tumble in bed. But Caleb had other ideas.

"We've got to be more careful now, Rosalie. I don't want to hurt you and the baby none," he said. "Why don't you lie down a while and let me fix you a sandwich? You sure you feel all right?"

Well, I didn't want a sandwich, but I was touched by Caleb's sudden tenderness. So I figured there was no harm in letting him wait on me a bit. Later I'd straighten his thinking out and let him know that even though I was pregnant, I was still capable of doing almost anything.

I lay down on the velvet sofa with a book in my hands while Caleb spent the day waiting on me, asking after my condition every five minutes, his eyes staring at my stomach as though a baby was going to pop out right then and there. I loved it. Yes I did. Until evening that is, when he made me dinner and then disappeared out back again for a long time, leaving me very lonely and bored. I could hear him hammering on the buggy, and every now and again the old mule braying while Caleb cursed at it. It was late in the night when I heard him finally come in the back door. A moment later he joined me in bed, stinking of axle grease, straw, and manure.

It didn't matter though to me. I was waiting for him, feeling frisky and ready to start a night of play. After all I'd spent the day resting up. I had on my honeymoon nightdress, a band of lace just holding up a sheer drape of fabric over my newly developing curves. My breasts were rounder than a pair of peaches begging to be picked. But Caleb wouldn't have any of it. He just held me close and told me that we both needed to get some sleep, what with the baby coming on and both of us having a long road ahead of us. I didn't like the sound of that, but I let him have his way, seeing's how he'd been so nice to me that day. Tomorrow, I figured, I'd get my way again.

Next morning Caleb was up bright and early and woke me. He was shaved, his hair slicked down with a sweet-smelling hair oil. He had on his wedding suit, a tie, and a hat. In one hand he held a cardboard suitcase and in the other, my tattered carpetbag.

"Where are you off to?" I asked, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

"To work, little mother. Got the buggy fixed up and I'm going back to the road. I'm a family man now, and the best damn traveling salesman in this county. I'm going out to earn us a living. Take good care of yourself and the baby, Rosalie, and don't worry none about me. I'll write you every chance I get."

"When are you fixing to come home?"

"Couple of months. Maybe longer if the money is good."

"Couple of months? What am I supposed to do on my own for a couple of months?" I complained.

"Well, don't you need to knit or something?"

"I don't know how to knit," I snapped.

"Well, there's no time like the present to learn."

And there it was. Just that simple. He leaned over and gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead and left, the mule braying, all the pots and pans tied on the side of the buggy clanking loud enough to wake the dead. But he was off to make our fortune. I sat on the bed feeling cheated out of a lover and cried my eyes out. As far as that man was concerned the honeymoon and all that sex was over and done for a while. We were now each in our respective places, him on the road to make money and me, stuck at home to get as big as a barn while I learned to knit booties. I wanted to throw up. In fact I did, though I can't be sure whether it was my anger or my pregnancy that caused it.

In the weeks that followed I did manage to find ways to occupy myself during the day. The church in our town has always been a holding pen for women with a lot on their minds and not too many ways to express it. They go every day, pray loudly, sing feverishly, and make more food for the church socials than a president's banquet. Every now and again I'd get an envelope from Caleb with a little money in it and a set of instructions on how much to save and how much to spend. I'd take my portion, buy a new hat and go to church, just to be surrounded by the company. And of course, to hear the preaching of the Reverend Joseph Thomas.

The Reverend Thomas was a man born with the fire of God coursing though his veins. He'd a long serious face that would grow pale as ice when the words come on him. Flames of righteousness seem to shoot out from his raven black hair and black eyes. His lips were a livid red and his white hands beat a golden dust from the pages of his Bible during his preaching. We women filled the front three pews, sweating profoundly under our fine hats, eyes half-closed to the driving incantation of his voice. And when it was all too much to bear, we shouted, surrendering our sins to the scalding flames of Reverend Thomas's preaching. The man was like lightning let loose in the church, and we all held up our hands to receive a healing bolt from that electrified touch.

Church was all right for the day. But there was nothing to keep my mind off of myself and my loneliness at night. There I was, a healthy young woman with a growing appetite for life, burning alone in bed. My body was becoming lush, my limbs rounded and soft, my breasts standing up almost by themselves. Beneath the darkened brown nipples milk tingled like champagne bubbles. Even the surface of my skin had grown so sensitive that a breeze from the window might set me to moaning for something more. But there wasn't anything more. Just my left hand tucked up tight between my thighs.

One night I lay in bed and decided something had to be done. I loved Caleb, but I hated being without him. It wasn't enough just to possess his letters lying scattered over the bed beside me. True, he always told me how much he loved me and how much he missed me. But the last letter said he was staying on the road a while, maybe even until after the baby was born because the money was good. It made me miserable to think all I had of my marriage was a few dollars tucked away in an egg jar and a shelf full of pretty hats. I needed him. Wanted him. But if I couldn't have him, then I wanted someone to help me in my need until he returned.

It wasn't long before the image of Reverend Thomas came to my mind. I figured as he was a married man and a pillar of the church, he'd be above reproach and gossip. His wife Violet Thomas was a beautiful woman, with dark auburn hair and deep green eyes. She sang like an angel in the choir, and many women in the church envied her being married to the Reverend Thomas. But I always thought there was a kind of sadness in her eyes. A hurt I couldn't figure. They'd been married five years and still no children. I wondered now if that was the cause of her sadness. I liked the woman and would have been more friendly to her if I hadn't come up with my plan. I didn't want to give her trouble. I was just hoping I could borrow her husband in a quiet sort of a way.

I counted on the Reverend Thomas knowing as little as Caleb about pregnancy when I went to him on that afternoon. He was at the church preparing his sermon in his office. He was looking very handsome to me at that moment, running his pale hand through his black hair, his head bowed to his writing. His stern features were full of intelligence and passion. He looked up at me and the breath quickened in my chest at the keen gaze of those dark eyes.

"Yes, Sister Rosalie? Can I help you?"

"I do hope so, Reverend Thomas," I answered nervously, and lowered my eyes to my trembling hands. "Forgive me for asking this, Reverend Thomas, but do you know much about having babies?"

I heard him shift in his chair. "A man must protect himself from knowing too much of the sin of Eve," he answered in a low voice.

I found his reply encouraging, figuring it to mean he knew little enough about it. I plucked up my courage, but kept my eyes on my folded hands.

"Well, Reverend, I'm newly pregnant. But the trouble is my husband, Caleb Johnson, he left to go traveling before we both knew about my condition. Well, that has left me in a terrible fix."

"And what fix is that?" the Reverend asked.

"Well, a baby gets put together so to speak throughout the nine months he is carried in his mother's womb. The husband does his job every night to see that all parts are well and truly made."

At that, I glanced up to see how the Reverend was digesting this new bit of biology. He didn't seem to find it strange. I went on.

"But my husband left before knowing that he had got me with child. And now I am afraid that without a man to help me every day, I will give birth to a deformed baby, without a body, without arms or toes."

"Sister Rosalie, this is a hard thing for you," he said, and I was delighted by the genuine concern in his face.

"I wonder, as you are a man of God, and the only one I can trust with this unburdening of my soul, if you would help me in my time of need. Help me to finish making my child, Reverend." There was a moment of silence, and I let the words hang between us. "Confidentially, of course," I added.

"You want me to help finish making your baby?" he asked slowly. I knew he understood me finally as a rosy blush started up from his collarbone and stained his pale throat.

"Yes, Reverend. There is no other man I could ask who would understand that this is truly a mission of mercy and not an occasion of sin. My husband and I need your help."

I waited quietly while the Reverend struggled with the idea of serving God while making love to me. I must say, I didn't make it easy for him. My blouse was tight, the buttons straining over my full breasts, and my skirt wrapped around the plump length of my thighs. Pregnancy had given my hair a soft gold luster, and my skin was polished fresh as an apple.

"When?" he said so softly I almost didn't hear him.

"I'll say I'm to have Bible lessons, and I'll come to you every day, here in the church office after the dinner hour."

"Here?" he asked, his eyebrows rising. The room was small and cozy. There were only two chairs and the huge old mahogany desk spread over with papers and books. The desk looked a hard enough surface for my backside, but I wasn't too particular at the time. There was more than enough room on it for two willing people.

"Well, I'd like it best here in the church, where I can keep my mind on the healing presence of God," I said, and lowered my eyes again to my folded hands resting in my lap.

"Come tomorrow then," the Reverend said, and I heard him swallow very hard.

"Thank you kindly, Reverend," I whispered, and, without looking up, left his office, my heart charging like a racehorse rounding the homeward stretch.

Well, I won't say too much against the Reverend Thomas. He was after all in his mind a man doing a desperate woman a serious favor. But when I began those Bible lessons I first learned that the Reverend was a man sorely lacking in the knowledge of pleasuring a woman. It made me understand at last the sadness in Violet Thomas's eyes. Caleb was a lusty soul, not afraid to use his body, not afraid to hold and rock me until I just had to howl. That's why I missed him so. Until I'd met the Reverend, though, it never occurred to me that another man might not be so generous of spirit as my Caleb.

But the Reverend Thomas had a fear about him, and a way of touching a woman that made her feel more like a serpent than a bedmate. I decided that as long as I was settled on the idea of getting the Reverend to help me out every afternoon, I might as well give him a few lessons.

Not that he knew they were lessons, mind you. He just thought I was explaining the right way to set about making up a child. "Please, Reverend, if you'd just kiss me here, it will be better for my baby. And here, too. Yes, I know it's my breast, but it will help make the baby's heart strong. And Reverend, move it in slower, that's right, no need to hurry just yet . . . oh yes, that's doing it nicely. Praise God, I think a little faster now if you please, Reverend. No sir, you're not hurting me. I swear it. We're making the legs today, and they've got to be strong. Give it to me strongly, Reverend."

Oh my. Those afternoons on that mahogany desk were some kind of education. The Reverend was a good student, and he got to know by the sounds of my sighs, the heaving of my chest, the curving of my spine that indeed, he was pushing the clay of my unborn baby around just right. The only thing I had to stop him from doing was singing hymns while we were going at it. I was afraid we'd attract too much attention. Most people already knew I was pregnant before I came to the Reverend, so it didn't raise too many eyebrows when I went every day for Bible lessons. They just figured that in my condition, I wasn't thinking too much about sex, but God.

Well, I did think a lot about God. And thanked Him often for the wondrous changes in my body and the strange joy I found in making love while being as big as a prizewinning pumpkin. I'd be up on all fours, my huge belly suspended like the full moon over that mahogany desk. My climaxes were slow and long, a contraction of pleasure that began at the very bottom of my belly and rose in a steady rippling wave of heat. My breath came in hard gasps as the baby, furious at having his small space squeezed even more tightly by my fun, kicked his tiny legs into my lungs. The Reverend, leaning over me and holding on to my heavy breasts, came away with palmfuls of milk.

One day, I got a letter from Caleb. He was finally coming home the following month, just around the baby's due date. I felt a kind of peace settle over me at last. I was so full and sated with my condition. The baby had turned and his head was like an orange wedged between my thighs, while the soles of his feet were tucked up under my heart. I went with heavy swaying steps to the Reverend's office and sat down in the chair. My knees creaked and I crossed my swollen ankles. I looked at that man and realized that over the last months I had grown rather fond of him. He was a good man in his own way. Gentle, and now, loving enough to please any woman.

"Well, Reverend, our work is done," I said with a sigh. "This baby is coming soon and thanks to you, I know my child will be born healthy and strong."