WEEK 2 Story- Mary and the Basilisk

Mary stood before the basilisk in the garden of roses, both parties eyeing each other in quiet curiosity. The basilisk held a brilliant, gleaming sword between its beak and dropped it at Mary’s feet. She looked down at it, confused. For someone who had just gotten handed over to a treacherous monster, things hadn’t been so bad for her. The palace was beautiful, full of many rooms to explore and sprawling grounds to roam. The basilisk wasn’t so bad himself. He was kind of hard to talk to, which made conversations difficult, but it wasn’t entirely all unpleasant. All new things take getting used to—she figured he would get used to her presence eventually. She was beginning to think this arrangement wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

            “You have to cut off my head.”

            “I’d rather not do that,” Mary whispered back, timidly. “This is really not ideal for either of us.”

            “What do you mean?” The basilisk blinked back at Mary, confused by her words. Mary wasn’t sure what was confusing about what she said, but that was fine. She could be patient.

            “Don’t you, um, need your head to live and do things?”

            “I actually don’t need my head at the moment. So, if you would be so kind,” the basilisk paused briefly and edged the sword closer to Mary with its talons. “You have to cut off my head now,” he said with a growl filled with a deep sense of urgency. It wasn’t explicitly scary, however.

            Mary picked up the sword and turned it around in her hands. She could see a distorted reflection of herself in it. The sword itself felt comfortable in her hands, not too heavy, not too light. She didn’t know much about swords, but it was long and slender. “I’m really not comfortable doing this for you, but I will if I absolutely must.”

            The basilisk nodded his head. “If you don’t do this I will rip you apart.”

            “Okay, yeah, I’ll do it.” Mary stepped forward and swung the sword swiftly, landing a clean cut on the basilisk. His head was no more. Then another less than ideal thing happened. The head of a serpent came forth and it was awfully angry at the current moment.

            “Cut my head off again,” the basilisk demanded once more. Mary was completely fine with it this time. She didn’t like snakes much. She swung again. 

            A pair of golden keys fell from its mouth and landed softly onto the grass. A flash of light enveloped the basilisk and he was transformed into a handsome man, around Mary’s age. “You have lifted the curse! Because you have set me free, everything here now belongs to you!” The man bent down and picked up the keys. He tossed them to Mary. “I’ve never seen someone so agreeable in my whole life,” he laughed.

            “You threatened to kill me so I didn’t have much choice,” Mary said, not sure if she wanted to laugh back or not. None of this had been her choice, but she had to admit it had worked out in her favor. She was lucky.

            “So, about that whole marriage thing…” the man said, trailing off. Right. That. Her mom had promised that she would marry him in exchange for the roses, but he began rambling on about how she didn’t have to stay if she didn’t want to or even marry him. She did want to stay. She liked the roses here. Mary would have to get to know him a little bit better, but it was definitely better than anything she had ever had in her life.

            Mary smiled softly at the man and grasped the keys firmly in her hands. “Give it some time, okay?" She was going to like it here. 

Source: The Three Roses from The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis  

Author’s Note: I didn't want to retell the entire story, so I chose the part that was most interesting to me. I didn't want to include the marketplace or how her mother accidentally gave her to the basilisk for roses. I thought the original was fun, but I wanted to add more dialogue between the basilisk and Mary, so that's the route I went down. I also excluded that part where she nursed the basilisk. I'm not sure if it was important, I just did not understand it in terms of its relevance, so it cut it for mine. I'm not super big on the fairy tale thing where the girl and boy marry immediately, so I didn't do that either. 

Basilisk (Wikipedia)