Briar

Prologue

The dashing man in the simple, inconspicuous, but strangely unpatched brown jacket ran faster as he heard the horses’ hooves bearing up to him. Highwaymen. His arms contracted around the little bundle in his arms as he rushed head long through the blooming forest. Suddenly there were two of them ahead of him, a trap. He turned heavily to the left. His expensive leather boots clinging tightly to the well worn dirt. Trees passed left and right, clawing at his face trying to rip about the prescious bundle, even the forest wanted her. Then it was gone, giving way to nice, flat farm land. He was doomed. But there in the distant was a vague outline of a castle. Help. The man who was nothing like what he appeared to be, pushed out his last stores of energy. It was apparent to his military mind that the highwaymen were just taunting him. Good that’ll give me the leverage I need.
The man made it to the edge of the estate before stumbling to a halt. Rose bushes. I can’t take the young mistress there! His astute eyes scanned the horizon again. Nothing. But I can’t let her be captured by men such as these. He looked down at the sleeping face of Princess Amelia. The little princess was so tuckered out from crying all last night that she hadn’t even awoken. She was adorable: spittle running down her snowy skin, tuffs of black hair standing out against her bright swaddling cloth. Although he could not see the highwaymen yet, he knew they would be there in seconds. This was his only chance, her only chance. The man made his decision. He took the bundle in one hand, concealing her inside the rose bush. Their thorns could protect just as well as they could harm. Then the man dashed away, sending a prayer to the Great Mother Goddess to protect the child. He wasn’t a fourth of a mile before they took his feet out from under him. They took the gold from the man’s pockets. It was more than they had expected. But even though, they searched high and low for the man’s bundle it was lost to them. It had looked precious, rapped in gold. It had been their reason for attacking. They didn’t dare to search the wizard, Azzelbreth’s, land. What kind of idiot would impose upon a wizard?
Curiously enough, the baby, Princess Amelia, a name she wouldn’t be called for some twenty years, was never stabbed by a thorn, even when she began to roll and squall. Consequentially, it was her great capacity to vocalize that saved her. There was an elder couple who lived in Numberland who were both fond of taking evening walks. It was on that day that the woman heard a babe’s cry. At first the man did not believe, the mind could play awful tricks and his wife had wanted a child as long as they had been married. But then he heard it to. They searched, bending their already aching backs until they spotted the culprit enclosed inside the rose bush hedge. Long scratches tour through the man’s arm as he reached for the wiggling child. Once again the baby was completely unharmed. The woman grasped the babe like it was her own, staring lovingly into her wide blue eyes.
“I think she was left here for us, Earl.” The man smiled down at his wife. For years they had prayed for a baby. And now one had been provided.
The man did not even bother to agree. This babe was indeed meant for them. “What should we call her?”
The woman looked at the wild roses and then at the unscarred skin of her new babe, “I think Rose would be best.”


So story is done, but I'm revising so I'll do a chapter a week a post it up. Thanks for reading