by Tia Nevitt
As the end of that year drew near, people began to discuss the curse more and more. Rumors spread throughout the streets. The most prevalent of them was the rumor that the entire kingdom, and not just the princess, would sleep for a hundred years after the fateful pinprick. I thought about what Prince Andrew had told me, and it made sense. I could well imagine the fairies casting such a spell. If everyone slept alongside her, perhaps Aurora’s parents would be able to cheat Aurora’s death, after all.
Harla was prosaic. “If we’re all asleep, what difference will it make?” she said one day to Mother and me. “We’d all go on as before, once we woke up. No one would be able to steal from us, for anyone who enters the country would fall asleep, as well.” She smiled. “Besides, a hundred years could do wonders for my ale.”
“Well, unless the sleep affects moths as well as people, a hundred years will ruin my stock,” Mother said. “Your ale would be safe in its casks. We’d wake up to nothing but dust and moth droppings.”
Most of the city shared Mother’s view.
***
One day, a fine woman entered our shop. She was tall and elegant with sharp features and black hair. “I hear,” the woman said in a cultured accent, “that the thread you…acquire here is uncommonly fine.”
“We only purchase from the best merchants, ma’am,” Mother said.
“I would look at your thread.”
She looked over our stock. We had row upon row of spools of thread, arranged in order of color and shade. We had balls of yarn and sturdy cords, fibers of every kind imaginable.
“This will not do at all,” she said. “I have very particular wool. I want the thread from my own wool.”
“If I could see it, ma’am?” Mother asked.
As she opened a sack, I thought I saw a burst of colors, but once I blinked it was gone. I felt the wool. It was fine and soft, but not exceptional.
“I will have to send it abroad to have it spun,” Mother said, cautious of revealing too much to a stranger.
“You disappoint me. I was told that you could produce it for me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? But, ma’am—”
“I was prepared to pay thirty ducats for it.” The woman reached for the wool. “Half in advance. But if you say it’s impossible…”
Mother backed away, still gripping the sack of wool. “It’s not impossible. I can do what you ask.”
The woman smiled, and I grew uneasy. “I’m delighted to hear that.” She dropped a small bag of coins on the table and swept out of the shop.
Mother turned to me, her cheeks flush with excitement. “Do you think that was her? She’s high and mighty enough to be a princess.”
“She looked too old. Remember, the princess is only sixteen.”
“Yes, you’re right. But the last year of the curse is almost over.”
I looked at the wool. “Why would she pay us so much, Mother?”
“It doesn’t matter. Thirty ducats! We won’t have to take another job for months.”
She practically danced down the cellar stairs. She insisted upon spinning it herself. As she worked, I began to wonder what kind of sheep could produce such wool. It twisted into thread much finer than anything we had made before.
“Look at it! It feels just like silk.” She caressed her cheek with it.
It did feel like silk. What’s more, the spinning wheel now looked different. The polished wood gleamed even more than usual, and the tip of the spindle glinted wickedly. The entire apparatus had an unnatural glow about it. Mother shoved aside the lantern, since she no longer needed its light. Her eyes took on a fevered cast and she spun faster and faster until I feared the spinning wheel would fly apart. The whir of the wheel grew so loud that I hurried up the stairs to close the windows, to shut in the sound that had been outlawed for sixteen years.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped short.
Our shop had a customer. She turned around. Our eyes met.
It was Rose.
***
She looked at me without a trace of recognition. How could she? Ten years had passed since I had seen her last, and I was now skinny and sickly.
But never had I seen a girl so lovely. Her face was still losing the plumpness of childhood, but had already gained the definition of womanhood. Her hair looked like a cloud of unspun cotton, with just a hint of yellow. Her skin was the color of creamy butter, pinked with rose. She looked like a princess, even in the clothing of a peasant. She was tall and slender, and she moved as gracefully as fairies dancing.
My heart began to thud in my chest. Fate, twisted by the curse, was going to spin its thread in our own cellar, just as my mother had surmised. And my own beautiful Rose was going to be the target of it.
Downstairs, as if in response to my thoughts, my mother stopped spinning to laugh in manic glee.
“She is laughing,” the girl said. Her voice was a melody of tones, but the manner of her speech had not changed from her childhood. It was stilted, the rhythm wrong.
“Rose,” I said. She looked back at me. “Do you remember me? Tally?”
She cocked her head and studied me. “Tally?” she asked.
“Yes. I used to watch you for your godmothers.”
She continued to look at me blankly.
Downstairs, my mother started to spin again.
“Oh, there it is, again!” she said, clapping her hands. “I kept hearing that sound. I followed it here. What is it?”
A generation ago, no one would have failed to recognize the sound of a spinning wheel.
“I could almost dance to it,” she said before I could reply. And to my astonishment, Rose did begin to dance, holding her skirt up as she frolicked throughout our shop without a care in the world.
I could only stare at her. Despite her simplemindedness, there was a certain genius in her. She sang a wordless song to the tune of the spinning wheel. It was a melody I had never heard before that day, yet had been there all along. Her voice was the sound of angels and nightingales blended together. I watched her with my mouth agape, rapt.
“Oh, I must see it!” the girl exclaimed. And then with the swiftness of a rabbit, she moved past me, descending the stairs with light steps. My heart leaped in my chest and I rushed down after her and almost bumped into her when she stopped short. She stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs, her hands up against her cheeks like a little girl.
Mother stopped her spinning and looked at the girl, astonished.
“What is it?” the princess asked.
“Why, child,” Mother said, clearly not recognizing her. “Have you never seen a spinning wheel before?”
“A spinning wheel!” To the girl, it must have been an artifact out of myth. She dashed toward it. I grabbed her arm, stopping her. She turned her head toward me.
“I just want to touch it,” she said.
“Yes!” Mother said. I could tell she now knew that this was the princess. Her eyes glinted with malice, and perhaps with enchantment. “Touch it!”
“Mother!” I yelled. “It’s Rose!”
Mother blinked at me in incomprehension for a moment, and then her hand flew to her chest. “Rose?” she asked, frozen in shock.
The girl moved forward, oblivious, a wondrous smile on her face.
“No!” I lunged past her. I reached out to cover the spindle with my hand, but my hasty movement overset me. My hand slammed onto the spindle before I could right myself. The point stabbed clean through my palm. A horrendous pain flashed through my hand and arm, and then I knew no more.
Chapter Eight
Sleeping Ugly
Several versions of the Sleeping Beauty story sprang from those days. In one, the princess’s name was Aurora. In the other, the princess had my name, Talia. I cannot say I mind being remembered as a beauty, but it does irk me that everyone thinks I was the princess. The lone spinster who made it into the final story was an old crone who must have been based on my mother.
And the prince
? I’m told he kissed me, but it was not his kiss that could break my spell. Mother tried to send for Willard, but the abbot at the monastery would not release him for so ridiculous a proposition as to awaken a comatose woman with a kiss.
Much to everyone’s surprise, I woke up on my own.
***
I stretched and rubbed the grogginess out of my eyes. It took much longer to wake up than usual. I felt stiff, as if I had recovered from a lengthy illness. My lungs ached. I turned over and coughed long and hard, until my entire chest hurt.
When the cough subsided, I caught sight of my arms, and stared at them, confused. They looked much too thin and pale, the arms of a stranger. I studied my hands; they were papery, like an old woman’s. I looked around. I was in a chamber bedecked with damask, satin bedclothes, mahogany furnishings and wealthy things I could not identify.
I sat up, and a bell chimed. I realized I triggered an alarm—a thread of silk had been suspended across my bed, attached to the bell.
A fairy poofed into existence near me. I cringed back as I recognized her as the one who had destroyed our original spinning wheel. She made no move to cast a spell at me, so I dared to speak.
“Where am I?” My voice came as a croak.
“At the royal castle.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A year and a day.”
An entire year! No wonder I felt so terrible. However, the spell had called for a hundred-year sleep…and it was supposed to strike the princess, not me.
“Arise. The king will want to see you,” the fairy said.
“The king?”
“Yes. You delivered his daughter from the curse. He will reward you.”
“Rose! Is she well?”
“She is as well as she ever was.”
With some difficulty, I arose, my muscles as stiff and sore as if I had been threshing in a field. With a flick of her wand, the fairy prepared a bath for me, so I bathed. With another flick, a dress sprang into existence. It was finer than any I had ever owned.
“What was Rose doing in our shop?” I asked as I dressed.
“The workings of the curse led her there…just as it led you and your mother to craft another spinning wheel.” The fairy sighed. “I tried to warn the king that this would happen, but he would not listen.”
“What happened to Rose?” I asked. “Why was I the one who slept? And why only for a year?”
“You sacrificed yourself to break the enchantment, so the spell did not work for the hundred years it otherwise would have. It only lasted for a year. It took another day for you to awaken.”
“Where is…the princess?”
“She’s in her rooms, playing, most likely.”
“So she’s still…” I hated to say it.
“Yes.”
“There is nothing you could do?”
“The spell awaits the seventh part, still. It goes like this:
“Beloved by all, with
Beauty the most perfect,
Elegance the most graceful,
Temperament the most amiable,
Judgment the most sensible,
Music the most lyric,
And wit the most keen.”
The fairy wiped her eyes. I could have sworn I saw a tear. “And only I can cast it.”
“What prevents you from casting it?”
The fairy pursed her lips for a moment. “Because I had to cast a spell to weaken the curse. Since the seventh part of the Sevenfold Spell is missing, it left her diminished in that area. She can never be anyone’s wife or mother. The prince sees her daily, but to her he is nothing more than a playmate. His heart is forever broken.”
I thought of Prince Andrew, waiting for his wife, and trying to prepare himself to take another. It seemed so unfair to me. The princess didn’t ask for any of these blessings, which had done her more harm than good. Why could her parents not have been satisfied with an ordinary daughter? Did they fear to have an ugly one, like me?
“Why couldn’t you cast another spell?” I asked.
“Alas. By an ancient treaty woven into the fabric of magic, any one fairy can cast a spell on any one mortal only one time.”
“Only one time?” I echoed. I thought of Harla. Had she known this, surely she would have taken another swat at the fairy.
“There are a few exceptions, of course. Magic is almost like a living thing. Magic cast for good appreciates goodness. That’s why you didn’t sleep for a hundred years.”
I wondered if it worked in the reverse—if magic cast for evil appreciates evil.
I finished dressing and we left the room. I needed my breath to descend the stairs, so we did so in silence. As I rested at the foot of the stairs, the fairy turned to me.
“As I said, the king will reward you. I wish to give you my own reward, as well. You may have anything you wish for. Remember I can cast only one spell.”
I thought for a moment.
“I wish you were able to cast the seventh part of the Sevenfold Spell.”
The fairy’s eyes flew wide, and then they filled with crystal tears. When she smiled, I knew the magic would work.
***
After the fairy blessed Aurora, it was as if the entire kingdom came out from under a spell. As on the night of her christening, people danced in the street. Only this time, I didn’t have Willard to dance with. I was much too weak to dance in any case. The king lavished gold upon me and insisted that I convalesce at the palace. But the lung sickness still consumed me, and of that, there could be no recovery.
Aurora came to see me every day. Already she looked different from the beauteous simple maiden who had visited our shop. The restoration of her intellect—which, after all, was now “wit the most keen”—put a certain look in her eye that both detracted from and enhanced her former beauty.
“Of course I remember you,” she said on her first visit. “You were Aunt Tally, my friend.”
I smiled. “You called everyone Aunt Something.”
“No. Only those I was close to.”
“Do you remember when those boys wanted you to go in the drain?”
She nodded. “I blamed you for that.” She looked ashamed.
“You were only five years old. And besides—” I cut myself off, unwilling to say the rest.
She finished it for me. “I was simple.”
“What was it like for you, before?”
She paused a moment, with a slight frown. “Like I lived in a fog. I wanted to understand, sometimes I could almost grasp it, but then, it…eluded me. I felt like I only understood the world when I was singing. And when I was dreaming.”
“Do you remember coming to the shop last year?”
“Very clearly.”
“Did you know me then?”
“Not at first. Not until I had run into the cellar. And then, not until you had taken the curse upon yourself.”
I bit my lip, not wanting to say too much.
“I thank you,” she said. “I can never thank you enough. You lost a year of your life out of love for me.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she forestalled me with an upraised hand. “And I suspect you lost much more.”
“It wasn’t loss. It was gain.”
“Gain? I’ve been asking about you. I’ve been speaking to your mother. I know how much you lost. Your livelihood, your betrothed, your very reputation.”
“But most of those were out of my own choice. I gained, as well. My life would have been one way had there never been a curse. But instead, it was the way I lived it. I cannot regret it.”
“Even though you are dying?”
“Of course I wish I were well, but there’s no sense in regretting.”
“But you didn’t wish yourself well. You used your wish on me.”
I was silent.
“My father wishes to reward you.”
“He has already rewarded me.”
“He wants to make you a baroness.”
“I…don�
�t know what to say.”
“Will you be well enough to go down to the great hall for the investiture?”
“Of course.”
***
They carried me down in a reclining chair, and set me before the throne. The court was in full session. I felt eyes looking at me from all around and struggled to arise so I could bow to the king.
“Please,” he said. “Remain in your chair. That’s why I had it brought here.”
Gratefully, I fell back on my cushions.
He looked beyond me. “You all know of the deeds of this lady, Talia Spinster. His voice rang throughout the vast hall. “We can never repay her for her selfless actions. But we can let her know that we are grateful. From this day forward, she will be known as Lady—”
“Sixfold!” a small voice interrupted. I looked up and watched as seven fairies flew in the window and arrayed themselves around me. Among them were Andante and Allegro, now in fairy form. “Let her be known as Lady Sixfold, in remembrance of these gifts that we are about to give her,” Andante finished.
The king nodded. He didn’t look surprised.
Six of the fairies waved their wands. Sparks sprayed from them, and shimmered, and chimes zinged around me like musical fireflies. Panicked, I looked over at Mother, where she stood near the kitchen. Her eyes narrowed, and I knew that she hoped the fairies wouldn’t blunder this spell, as well. She looked around, as if for a weapon.
Once they started, I dared not interrupt. This spell was not poetic; they simply each flitted in front of me, cascaded me in shimmers and pronounced a single word.
“Love.”
“Marriage.”
“Children.”
“Wealth.”
“Health.”
“Years.”
Then, they arrayed in a circle around me, and they each dashed a final burst of magic upon me. “These we grant you in abundance, by the power of our magic.”
As the magic worked upon me, I felt something move deep within, and I knew I was no longer barren. A weight lifted out of my lungs, and I took my first deep breath in months. I felt my face. It was clear of warts for the first time since I was a child.
