“The Maiden-Tree” by Catherynne M. Valente is a dark look at the classic Sleeping Beauty. What attraction does a spinning wheel have to a sixteen year old girl? What comes from a hundred years kept preserved after the first blood soaked stab of the needle? The prince is not really coming, at least not for what you think he wants. And really, who is to say what happens when the briars take over the castle and are hungry for more? Take care that the roses don’t take you too. CW: this episode contains descriptions of body horror Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of forty works of speculative fiction and poetry, including Space Opera, The Refrigerator Monologues, Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making (and the four books that followed it). She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of whi...