Sleeping Beauty

A fairytale that's told in the Weald:

A young wizard falls in love with a fair maiden. She is a princess of such beauty that even a rose is unlovely by comparison. He tries to woo her; young and boastful, he promises her the world. She declines his advances, and come autumn, she chooses a prince. An ordinary, mundane, human prince. Not a jot of magic about him. They are to be married when the first rose blooms in spring. Oh, how the wizard fumes with hatred. He challenges the prince to a duel.

The prince, quick as a fox and twice as clever, immediately whips out his sword and slashes the wizard's face. Blinded in one eye, perhaps mortally wounded, he runs into the forest, not to be seen again.

Spring arrives, and the rose buds are swelling. The day of the great wedding feast is at hand. In the great hall in her father's castle, a host of guests attend the ceremony. At the moment they are to be joined in matrimony, the door slams open, and a very old man limps inside. The ceremony is halted.

"Who are you?" demands the prince.

"I think you know already!" croaks the old man, and lifts his hood. A hideous scar runs from his chin, across his mouth, over his left eye, and up to his wrinkly forehead.

"What have you done?" screams the princess.

In silent answer he lifts his staff, a thick, twisted, thorny thing, black and charred, and lets it go. The moment it hits the ground, all the roses in the castle turn black, and thorny vines sprout in all directions. The sweet smell of roses permeates the great hall, and the prince, the princess, her father the King, and the whole host fall in a deep slumber.

The vines keep growing, and soon the castle is covered in a thicket, until even the spires on the castle walls are nowhere to be seen.

Some say the prince, the princess, her father the King, and the whole host slumber still, deep under the mountain of thorny vines, where the black roses grow, at the end of the forest road to the east.