Dreams Woven In Briar

Once, long ago, Caz the artist had big, huge, GINORMOUS dreams.

I dreamt of making an animation for Sesame Street, writing a heap of illustrated kids books, and my creative dream at the top of the list….

Writing all the fairy tales for the next series of “Jim Hensons The Storyteller”, as they stopped making them after only 13 episodes and it was one thing that inspired me to no end. I would watch them with my kids, sobbing in most of them, not surprisingly for my children or anyone that knows me…because it would draw you completely in to the old world of fantasy and faeries, of the amazing realm of the light held within the darkness.

I wrote a few pieces of the stories, dark fairy tales, half scrawled on pieces of paper, on an old Mac now gone, floating in the dream that hope lived even in the seemingly hopeless.

I know that none of these stories were ever brilliantly written, but I had the ideas and the vision that someday they would be surrounded by Jim Hensons Creature Shop creatures and it would blend seemlessly into theirs and my own, inner fantasy world.

So years passed and I never did anything with them, and then the other day I found one of the scrawled, not-brilliantly written, Brothers Grimm inspired, heartbroken fairy tales; and even though the amazing incredible Neil Gaiman was due to bring out the next series of The Storyteller some time ago, leaving mildly less hope for me 🤣🤣 I decided that I would put my little fairy tale out into the world anyway, faults and all; because little-artist-fantasy-world-dreaming Caz that uses-too-many-punctuation-marks needed to know that she is not forgotten, that dreams still can live on and grow, can still be read and (hopefully) inspire imagination even if it’s not in the way that you first hoped.

So with only a teensy bit more waffle, I bring to you an original fantasy story, a folk tale for (definitely) teens to adults, or perhaps a fairy tale with a moral?? Honestly not sure where it fits yet….but I’m doing it anyway!!! ❤️

The Briar and the Clay

A Dark Fairy Tale Inspired by the Brothers Grimm (and Jim Hensons The Storyteller.)

-written for you awesome peeps, by Caz Rose.

Once, far from the here and now, a babe was born onto the grateful earth.
He was brought into the world bearing the mark of the brave and the beautiful.
His young, joyful life was filled with adventure, and a perfect, abundant future seemed completely certain.

But life was not as kind to him, as life had hoped.
His loving mother—whom he loved and adored—fell ill with a terrible infection, and after much suffering, she died.
His young, tender heart was so shattered by grief that it broke clean in two.
One half was seized by a raven as it fell and was carried to the other side of the world, where it was dropped into a briar hedge and lost to the leaves and thorn.
The other half was taken by a swan, where it floated under sun and moonlight upon a gentle river—travelling far across a broken earth until it sank to the very bottom of a lake, lost among the stones and clay.

Over the years, the young babe grew tall and strong, as best as he could without a heart to call upon.
He learned a trade and gained so much popularity that he earned a very fine living, until he became the wealthiest man around.
He acquired a substantial home and much, much land with the money he gained, and proudly kept his gold and jeweled opulence in large brown leather pouches that grew rounder every year.
But although his wealth grew, his kindness did not—turning away any poor stranger or friend that needed help, and refusing the hand of any woman that offered it.
But with everything he acquired, there was always something missing.
Something he could not find.
Something no amount of money could buy.
He carried a heavy emptiness, and no wealth or favor seemed to fill the deep, unceasing hole within.

One fateful day, a kind maiden came to his door.
She was very poor, and her clothes were made of dirty rags that hung from her shoulders and fell about her feet.
Awkward looks glanced between them, the woman nervous to meet his gaze.
She told him that she had nowhere to go, but if he could perhaps give her a meal and somewhere dry to sleep, she promised she would give him much in return—only asking for warmth, for safety.
Then she told him she could give him a great and wondrous life, should he choose to see beneath the jewel.

This confused the man, for she was different from any woman he was used to seeing in his circles—the women with their fineries and laced possessions.
He looked her up and down but could not see the beauty through her skinny, disheveled frame and unkempt hair.
With a shake of his head, he felt there was nothing he needed from this woman.
He told her he had no need of her wants and witchcraft, and bid her good day.

But just as he was about to close the door, he noticed a bright glow underneath her smeared clothing.
From within it, he could clearly see—inside her chest—a ruby-red jewel, held in body, clutched under bone.
He had never seen the likes of it, not at any jewel house or royal event he had ever attended.
How could a woman so poor hold a thing so precious?
He could not let her go without having it as his own, so he deceitfully invited her inside and offered her a meal and a room inside his home, giving her warmth as she had asked.

That night, he asked her about the jewel, but she would not reveal the secrets.
Could not.
Would not.
She would only tell him,
“You need to make a choice.”
He pulled out his brown leather purse, brimming with coin, begging her to take as much gold as she could hold within her hands.
Again, she would not.
Could not.

The woman stayed for a day and a night.
All the while she cleaned and cooked.
All the while he begged for her to know of the treasures within.
All the while she refused him, as he shook the coins about her feet. All she would reply was,
“You need to make a choice.”
This only fuelled his anger further.
“What choice?” shouted the man.
“What choice could I possibly make? It is YOU that needs to make a choice!”
She would not reply.
The man would plead no more.
Furiously, he dragged her by the arm, threw her into her room and locked the door, screaming at her that he would not—nor he could not—release her, and would feed her on little to nothing until she revealed how he could possess the jewel.
He became obsessed with it, day in, day out, pacing the corridor outside her room—the power that pulled from her very chest connected like strings into the depths of his mind.

Fruitless days and sleepless nights passed into weeks, then months, to no reward.
On the third month of being denied, the young man, bitter with greed, unlocked her bedroom door and crept silently into her darkened room, where the sickly woman lay sleeping.
He shook her to waking, demanding the jewel be given to him—that he would give anything she asked.
Weak and exhausted, she again shook her head.
“You need to make a choice.”

The man, obsessed with ownership and drenched in rage, demanded that if she would not give it, then he would take it.
From behind his back, he pulled out a fine-bladed knife, maddeningly raised it above his head, and sliced bitterly at her heart.

But though he frantically searched, he would not find the precious jewel.
His crazed fingers rifled through torn hessian and cotton rags, desperate to find where his glowing prize lay hidden.
It had vanished into nothingness, as had the woman within them, from beneath his blood-drenched hands.

The man grabbed at the rags, screaming violently in angry defeat.
He picked them up, screeching into the empty room, and threw them madly at the wall.
But as the woven scraps fell to the floor, out tumbled—without so much as a quiet ceremony—two small halves of a once broken heart, slowly coming to a stop at his feet.
One half covered in briar thorn, the other half in grit-marked clay.

He picked them up curiously and held them in his trembling, bloodied hands.
It was then that he realised everything he had done, everything he had lost, every choice unmade.
A lifetime of salted tears fell from his eyes, pouring out onto the cold stone floor around him, until he had wept first a running river, then a lake around his once warm and ambitious body.
And from deep inside his lifeless chest grew a vine, entwining the two pieces in briar, to make them one.

And not time, man or woman, machine or spell, can remove the island of briar within the lake to this day—where the swan and the raven stand as guardians, forevermore.