Sleeping Beauty

In the room sat an old woman with a spindle, spinning flax, which she had done every day of her life and had never been told to stop.

«What's that?» said the girl. «It turns,» said the old woman. «Would you like to try?»

She put her hand out, and the spindle pricked her finger, and she was asleep before she reached the floor.

And the sleep went out from that room through the whole castle. The king and queen, come home, slept in the hall. The cook slept with his hand raised over the kitchen boy. The fire slept in the grate, and the meat stopped roasting, and the flies slept on the wall. Even the wind in the courtyard dropped and did not blow.

Around the castle a hedge of briar grew, a little higher every year, until there was nothing to see from the road but thorns, and the story of what was inside got longer and less true with every telling.

Kings' sons came to cut through it. The briar let them into the first few feet and then closed on them, and after that fewer of them came.

A hundred years is a long time, but it does end. A young man came along the road and heard the story from an old shepherd, and went to look at the hedge — and the hedge was in flower, and it opened in front of him as he walked, and closed again behind.

He came through the courtyard and the hall and up the tower and found the room, and what woke her was not anything he did: it was simply the hundredth year ending. She opened her eyes and looked at him with complete calm. «You've been a long time,» she said. Below them the fire caught, and the meat began to roast, and the flies got up off the wall.