During one bleak, bitterly cold winter’s night, Black Bear seeks refuge at the hearth in Rose Red’s cottage. Knowing that it is wrong to have feelings for an ursine creature, Rose Red stifles her longing; heartbroken at Black Bear’s departure in the springtime, she wonders if she will ever find a man who possesses the same warmth of spirit and tenderness as her beloved Black Bear. As she seeks love in a string of unsuitable—and ultimately unworthy—suitors, her thoughts keep returning to the rhyme that Black Bear said to her one night when she played a little too roughly with him, “Rose Red, Rose Red, would you have your suitor dead?” How is it possible that she can possess such feelings for Black Bear, a creature of the forest, what can it possibly mean? TO MY READER: It seems just the tiniest bit ironic that something I loved as a child, reading fairy tales, should inform my writing as an adult, and yet there it is. This fairy tale is the first in a twopart series about the sisters Snow White and Rose Red. In this story you will meet Rose Red and Black Bear. I hope that you love reading the story as much as I loved writing it.ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwen Williams grew up loving to read. You can write to Gwen at gwenswilliams@roadrunner.com. Visit her website at www.gwenwilliams.net.EXCERPT:Much later that evening, Rose Red and Black Bear wandered through the marble statuary garden at the back of the villa. “A question, my love,” Rose Red said.“Yes, my darling,” Black Bear purred.She stopped short, gazing up into his deep brown eyes. Everything about him, so changed, yet this one thing, his brown eyes, remained the same. That alone comforted her, when she grew frightened at the tremendous change in him; above all else, the fact that his eyes were still the same eyes gazing down at her from years before. “I don’t know if I can call you by your real name.”He chuckled deep in his throat. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m your Black Bear.”“I know, but it would be unseemly for me to call you Black Bear during court.”“Indeed.” He took her into his arms and kissed her tenderly. “My formal name is Prince Edgar of Caspian, or Prince Caspian, in its shortened form.”“In public, then, I shall call you Prince Caspian.”“And in our private moments,” he said, his eyes brimming with love, “you alone, of all people in the world, shall call me Black Bear.”“Then that shall be your name.”“After all these years, of hearing you calling out my name, calling me Black Bear, I could not withstand losing that name. It is too tender to me to lose it, not after all this time.”She smiled through her tears. “Then that is my will as well.”