Week 2 Story: Beauty and the Basilisk

The Three Roses 

Once there was a mother who lived alone with her three daughters. Her husband having passed away some years ago the mother worked arduously to provide for her family. She mended neighbors’ clothes, grew herbs on their small plot of land, and even worked occasionally at the local tavern, all to help support her daughters.

It was one night working at the tavern that a visitor to the small community left a sizable tip for her. Ecstatic at the gift, she returned home to her girls. When she arrived home, she became determined to use the money to give her daughters gifts, a largely absent commodity. She asked the oldest daughter what she wanted and the girl immediately spouted out a long list of things she had always dreamed of owning. Unabashedly, the second daughter replied with a list very similar to her elder sister’s. 

Beginning to fear that the tip would not be large enough to cover the desires of the girls, the mother turned to the third and youngest daughter. This girl claimed to be content with the provision of her mother and wanted nothing more. Surprised, the mother asked again and was then told that if the mother insisted on a gift, let it be three simple roses.

Her head whirling with the oddity of the night and trying to remember the lengthy lists two of her daughters provided, she went to bed with the intention of going to the market in the nearby city the next morning. The market within held everything on the lists of the two older girls and the money left to the mother by the traveller was barely sufficient to cover the gifts. Heavy laden, the mother began her trek back home as dusk fell.

On the road home the realization that she had forgotten the simplest of gifts for her youngest daughter overtook the mother. In guilty desperation, she cast her gaze to the countryside around her. In unbelievable luck, she had stopped next to a large estate on the roadside with a magnificent garden. Thinking that the master of the house would not miss three simple flowers, the mother snuck into the garden. 

Within she found the most beautiful of rose bushes. Quickly, she cut three of the largest off and turned to leave the garden. However, standing in the gateway was a large basilisk who stared at her with large, yellow eyes. The basilisk spoke and made a demand of the mother to either give her own life or to bring her daughter here as a price for the roses. Trembling with fear, the mother hastily agreed to bring a daughter to the beast the very next day.

At that, the mother fled from the garden as quick as her feet allowed. Once home, she hurriedly explained to her youngest daughter the agreement, while the older two excitedly rifled through the pile of gifts. Quite surprisingly, the young girl agreed to go with her mother the next morning, an air of calm emanating from the child. Flustered by the whole scenario, the mother went to bed with dread in her heart for the fate of her daughter and hate for her own cowardice.

Despite her misgivings, the next morning she gathered her daughter and her things, and they left for the estate. As they walked down the track, the mother determined she would make amends for her cowardice and save her daughter from the beast at the first opportunity. Once at the estate, the basilisk met them at the same gate as the night before and ordered the girl into the house and for the mother to leave. Crestfallen, the mother gave her daughter what she feared may be her final hug and left.

She did not go far, however, she merely walked down the track and then into the woods, and there waited for night to come. Once night had fallen, she crept back to the estate and peered through a large set of windows. Inside, she saw the most bizarre of scenes. Her daughter was very much alive but was holding the head of the beast in her lap as the rest of it lay curled on the floor. And so the two remained all night long. When the sun began to rise the mother fled the estate again, for fear of the beast and for lack of opportunity to rescue her daughter. 

She returned the same evening after having returned home and rested during the day. Much to her surprise, she found the same bizarre scene with her daughter and the beast. Astounded the beast had let the girl live this long, she returned yet again on the third consecutive night but, this time, to a much different scene.

Inside she heard the beast shouting at the girl to cut off his head with the sword the beast had drug into the room. The girl seemed reluctant as first, but the beast threatened her until she did as he bade. Despite the gruesome slaughter, the girl remained in the midst of the mess while a serpent slithered out of the decapitated corpse. As it slithered, it called out in the voice of the beast for the girl to strike his head off yet again. This time the girl did so without hesitation.

Relieved that the threat was gone, the mother prepared to enter the estate and pull her daughter from the ghastly scene as one final surprising thing happened. The bloody body of both the beast and the serpent melted away, as did the sword the girl was holding. In the place of the body stood a princely man.

He told the girl of a curse which had been placed on him many years ago that required a pure heart to break. He then asked the girl if there was any way he could repay her for breaking the curse. She replied with one simple phrase: “All I would like is three simple roses.”

Author’s Note

Reading the original story left me deeply unsatisfied as there was no explanation for many of the events which happened, such as why the mother was going to the town, and the motivations for all of the characters’ actions were never explained. I sought to add a little more detail to the events which surround the mother going to town in the first place and sought to generate a better understanding of one character by focusing on the mother’s perspective throughout the story. All that being said, I understand and appreciate the mysticism of a fantasy tale and tried to keep an air of that in my retelling by leaving the youngest daughter a mysterious enigma to everyone, as she was in the original story. 

(Image Source: Daron Hagen)

Story Source: The Three Roses by Josef Baudis in The Key of Gold