by Liz Braswell
It was no use.
Lady Astrid screamed and screamed and screamed. She was somehow aware, despite the strange half-life she lived between dream and sleep, that her death was coming, and it was unavoidable. Her cries were of pain and fear and anger and horror and everything terrible the fairies had never felt themselves—in human quantities.
The blood came faster until it was gushing through the cloth like a fountain, heaving with each pump of the heart.
And then the heart stopped.
The silence of the sleeping castle was complete and utter once more.
Merryweather dropped the bloody rags in sadness that disguised itself as disgust.
Silver tears formed in Fauna’s eyes as she stroked the dead woman’s hair back up under her wimple.
Flora clenched her fists in frustration.
“Damn that Maleficent,” she swore, using the worst human phrase she could think of. “She’s worse than we ever could have imagined. She’s a murdering, life-draining soul leech.”
“And why these two?” Merryweather asked philosophically. “This one seems harmless, and really—that peasant was quite literally a nobody. Nice man, but a strange choice.”
“Well,” Fauna said softly. “Both are equally dead now, noble or not. And Maleficent has bought herself another hour.”
“Only two more before her hold over Rose becomes complete,” Merryweather added. “I mean, Aurora.”
“We have to try again,” Flora insisted. “I felt like we actually did something that time. That we reached her, a little.”
“It’s all we can do,” Fauna agreed. “So let’s try it again.”
The three fairies held hands and closed their eyes, preparing to dream a fairy dream.
SHE PUSHED HER WAY through the tunnel of vines with calm deliberateness, beyond the dangers of the castle now. She couldn’t even hear shouts from above or the commotion in the courtyard. There would be no lifting of the portcullis anytime soon, and Maleficent couldn’t aim her spells at the princess if she couldn’t even see her. There might be new dangers ahead, but the old familiar ones were receding like shadows.
The plants around her were twisted and enormous, solid and unmoving. They didn’t seek to bar her way further. She dragged her hands along them, feeling the leaves crumble away under her fingertips like they were ancient, long dry and dead.
She paused, suddenly remembering. She looked around and called out tentatively:
“Minstrel? Master Tommins?
“Exile?
“Hello?”
No response.
She looked at the dusty ground as she walked—if there were any human footprints in the lifeless soil, they were old and long lost among the strange traceries that time and wind had made. There was no sign that anyone had ever been Outside besides her.
She shivered. The drunken, narrow face of the minstrel would have been a comfort. Even some sign of the Exile would have been reassuring. That he had managed to live—to survive—on the Outside for all these years.
The shadowed world of the enormous plants eventually ended at an archway that revealed nothing but the golden inferno of light she had glimpsed before. There was no hint of what lay beyond.
She shielded her eyes and stepped out.
She didn’t breathe for the first moment, afraid of what she would smell. Afraid of what poisons she would suck in. She felt the heat on her skin and admired the redness of the light through the cracks where her fingers met one another.
Slowly she removed her hand.
She thought she was hallucinating again.
The air was mostly still and the light, yes, golden—but soft now that she had grown used to it. The “inferno” was nothing but strong afternoon sunlight. Little motes floated in the air, larger and fluffier than the dust that haunted her bedroom. She held out her finger and one landed on it: a feathery seedpod, its milk-white strands anchored to a beautiful brown teardrop.
She let it go.
The princess stood in what looked like a small grassy meadow…on the outskirts of a forest. A proper one, not a barrier of magicked plants. Trees with light gray trunks and insanely bright green leaves dotted the edges shyly, a mild invitation to the dark woods beyond. Before the trees, dark green and amber grass grew in large clumps. Tiny light-blue flowers with pale eggy centers burst forth with sprightly enthusiasm.
A breeze made whickery noises in the tree leaves and older grasses.
Aurora knelt down and put her hands on the ground.
She closed her eyes again, feeling the sun-warmed dirt. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of grass and brown and mud and…water? It wafted from somewhere, moist and metallic and full. She had no idea you could actually smell water.
She made a silly but heartfelt vow to never, ever live inside again.
She opened her eyes, and it was all still there.
It had been, she realized after a moment, always still there.
While…
The thorns. The eternal dusk of the castle. The always being cooped up with the same people. The eating of pigeons, the hiding of cats and dogs.
None of that was necessary.
Outside was an entire world with trees and flowers and rivers and…other people? And…
What was it all for?!
Why did Maleficent keep them all imprisoned? What had happened, if her parents hadn’t destroyed everything? How did they all live in the strange dreamworld, not realizing the truth?
A strange qwork qwork from above startled her.
Slowly, calmly making its way across the open blue sky was a raven, its large wings pushing aside the air like it was a god. No thought at all to the royal princess below it or the castle of insanity just beyond.
Birds were real. Beyond pigeons and parakeets.
Probably even bluebirds.
She stood up and stumbled toward the trees, overcome with a desire to touch the bark.
But as she stepped over a clump of grass, the meadow began to swim in front of her eyes, and her perspective shifted. As her fingers brushed the wood surface, the inside of her head broke open.
It was familiar.
She didn’t know this meadow, exactly. But she was familiar with the concept. The types of plants. The raven, which she knew was too big to be a crow. The trees: the way the trees circled meant there was probably a bog or a stream in the middle, where the land dipped. She knew that. She knew that beyond these leafy trees would be gnarled, thicker trees with dark green leaves. And beyond them, pines. And under their heavy boughs, there lay a friendly darkness so complete it put the vines over the castle bailey to shame.
She fell.
She felt the soft yet hard ground beneath her, comfortingly supporting her as the sky and world whirled. It kept her from flying off.
There was another meadow. Warm and sweet-smelling, like this one. But much larger—or was she just smaller? Tiny legs thumping the ground. Tiny naked legs. She was warmed by the sun tickling her skin and always two steps behind a large, languorous butterfly. It flapped its oversized wings like a joke and the tiny girl giggled, chasing it but not really wanting to catch it, because that would end badly.
The world was safe and wonderful and soft and warm, and at home…
At home there was a cake. A bright pink-and-blue cake, lopsided, covered with mounds of frosting. She clapped fat little hands and laughed, then sank her entire face into it.
Three pleased and happy faces above her, smiling and serene. And relieved.
Wait—
She tried to sit up.
They looked like…
They were the three ball-of-light fairies who had visited her in the bedroom.
But they weren’t fairies. They were her aunts, who had adopted her when her parents died. They raised her in the forest and—
No, her aunt was Maleficent, who had adopted her when she defeated Aurora’s parents, who had destroyed the world.
She doubled over, the conflicting images in
her head flickering too quickly. Her stomach began to roil.
An older girl now, pretending to be a princess.
Pretending? But she was a princess….
Her three aunts had fashioned a costume for her: a gown of found feathers and flower petals and large green leaves. It was cinched at the waist with a girdle of plaited river reeds and decorated with an incongruous sparkly blue stone that the aunts had found somewhere. A matching reed tiara rested on her shaggy, half-braided hair. When she twirled, feathers and leaves spun out, and she was the queen of the forest.
No, the only queen was Maleficent, and she was the real queen. And everyone lived in the castle, in a proper bedroom, with a fancy bed—
“STOP!” she moaned, rocking back and forth.
But the memories kept coming.
Lying on the forest floor. For hours.
Watching the light change as it moved along the mossy ground like the snails she often played with. Its slow, miraculous journey over a sprouted nut, the magic of the sun causing its first leaves to unfurl toward the sky. The light moving on. Sleeping some. Not feeling like picking berries. Wanting something new, something exciting, beyond seeing what was under the heavy rocks by the creek.
Twirling through shadow and light, across grass and carpets of pine needles, happy but feeling like things hadn’t started yet. Wondering when they would.
Her three aunts arguing when they thought she was asleep. Sweet voices, and sometimes sharp. Things she couldn’t understand; sentences that began one way and didn’t make sense by their end no matter how hard she concentrated.
Utter, utter confusion when she got her moon blood.
The memories slowly wound down. The searing pain behind her eyes dimmed. She rubbed her temples and noticed distractedly that she was curled up in a fetal position so tightly that her legs ached. She cautiously stretched them out, the fear of a muscle cramp momentarily overriding the mess in her head.
She eased herself into a sitting position, the movement grinding dirt and twigs and mushrooms into her beautiful ball gown.
Where were you raised, a barn? Lianna had once asked in disgust, having found the princess in one of her moods, curled up on the ground in the corner of her room, among the dust balls and far too close to the chamber pot.
“No, I was raised in the forest,” she now said aloud, giggling a little.
And her aunts were…fairies. Living like feral peasants, dressed in shabby but cheerful shifts and aprons. They had been uncomfortable in human clothes, Aurora could see in hindsight. Presenting her with food and strange habits and love. They tried so hard, and sometimes they failed, but the love was constant and would last well beyond the end of her own short life.
She thought about the funny, badly made costume gown.
Why didn’t they just use their magic? The way her aunt Maleficent did?
Her…not her aunt.
Not a princess. Not a childhood in a castle.
Not Aurora.
Rose. Briar Rose. She was named after a flower that was thorny and green and strong and beautiful, with moments of unbelievable softness in white and pink.
Sixteen years as Briar Rose, living with three crazy aunts in the middle of the forest.
Not a princess. Just a girl.
The girl, grown now—years older now. How had that happened?
The girl at the edge of the meadow sat up.
She couldn’t think here. She had to start moving. She would go mad if she stayed still.
She staggered into the forest—but was careful not to touch any of the trees.
Sixteen years of alternate memories of life in a forest. Sixteen years in the dark corners of a castle, running around like a bedraggled mouse while the world crumbled around her. Several years beyond that with Maleficent—aha, that’s where they came from.
But…was this the forest where she grew up? It didn’t feel exactly right, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
The last thing she had seen in the castle came back to her: the image of her own body in that bright other world beyond the orb on Maleficent’s staff.
What had the queen said?
I give thee blood for one who sleeps.
My body dead, but my spirit keeps
Alive in her thoughts and dreams—
Though to her this world seems
As real as the waking one.
So…this was all a dream? Even the forest she was in now?
Unless she was just hallucinating in the last gasps of a fever, and her body was actually somewhere asleep, dying, in the poisoned wastelands of the Outside.
Aurora Rose grabbed the roots of her hair, feeling like she was going mad with indecision and panic.
She spread her hand before her and looked at the tiny freckle on her finger. The one that matched her sleeping form. She felt a breeze on her fingertips.
“This is all I have,” she said aloud. She needed to hear it with her own ears, outside the voices in her head. “What I know by touch and smell and sight—is all I know. Let’s say this is real now. Let’s start with that.”
She put her hand out to tentatively touch a tree as she passed. No painful opposite memories flooded her this time—just the comforting recollection of tree itself. Her skin remembered the pines’ rough bark better than her mind and appreciated the sticky sap even when she first recoiled at its touch.
By reflex, her psyche tried to grab at the snippets of dark memories that were starting to shrink now, like the skins of discarded fruit.
But…Maleficent.
That great woman who had swept in as a savior, who had kept her parents from handing her over to—wait, that wasn’t real, was it? Well, she would work that out in her head in a while. Maleficent had swept in, magnificent and regal and commanding, and put a protective arm around the scared and neglected princess.
And in the years since…how Aurora had waited and prayed for and then treasured the moments when her aunt dropped the drama and graced her with a genuine smile of fondness. How she did everything to impress the beautiful, royal, and commanding lady. How Maleficent filled her waking thoughts with awe and gratitude…when the princess wasn’t mired in restlessness and its twin, languor.
Aurora had loved her. With all of her innocent heart and soul.
She saw, with a ripping in the very essence of her being, Maleficent standing at the balcony and ordering her capture. The words the queen had spoken hadn’t matched her face: she had talked of clemency for a deranged princess, but her lips had been peeled back in a grimace and her eyes had been filled with hate. There had never been any affection there. It had all been a ruse.
Aurora Rose felt the tears spill out soundlessly and endlessly.
The worst part was that she would have forgiven Maleficent everything—even what she had done to Lady Astrid—if only the queen had lied about it. If she had taken Aurora into her arms and said, Shhh, it’s all over, I do love you. Even if Aurora didn’t believe her aunt entirely, she would have forgiven her and forgotten it.
“I…am so…pathetic!” she shrieked, letting the terrible, climbing, hysterical, inhuman cry overwhelm her tears and take over her whole shaking body.
It felt good, but it didn’t get her anywhere.
When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see a little bird before her, sitting on a branch and giving her a skeptical look.
Aurora Rose had the urge to look around to see if anyone else had noticed.
The bird stretched out and gave a single impatient cheep. Puffing its chest in the sunlight, it revealed a coat of feathers that were the purest sky blue imaginable.
The princess gasped. She went to find the feather the minstrel had given her, to see if it would match. But her chatelaine was gone, along with the cards and the feather and everything else. It must have been torn from her in the escape.
Muscle memory prompted her, without thinking, to start patting the rest of her ripped dress. Did she have anything in her pockets for the littl
e bird?
It cheeped at her impatiently.
“Sorry,” she said with a weak smile and a shrug. “Not myself today.”
She knew this bird had a name. It wasn’t bluebird. When as a child she had asked her aunts what kind of bird it was, Fauna had dismissed her question as irrelevant. Aurora Rose couldn’t have pronounced what the birds called themselves to distinguish them from other types of birds, and little blue bird was just as meaningful as anything else. But, of course, birds were individuals, and it was rude to address one by the name of its whole race.
The bird seemed to do the bird equivalent of rolling its eyes and set about preening itself, as if it had never really been interested in a handout, anyway. Aurora Rose smiled. Leave it to a bird to make the situation all about him.
She rubbed her face in exhaustion, smearing it with pine pitch in the process and not caring. Everything was insane.
At the base of the closest tree was a clump of wild mint. She broke off a stalk and chewed it, beginning to walk again. The world was beautiful. There was an ancient oak tree heralding a shift in the forest. At its roots underground would be the mushrooms the wild pigs liked.
Hey, if wild pigs are still around, are unicorns, too?
She closed one eye, trying to remember if she had ever seen one as a child. She had seen a magnificent white stag once, with golden antlers, but nothing with one horn.
The world Outside…outside…was just as amazing as she had always wished in the Thorn Castle. She could live in this forest and meadow happily until the thoughts inside her head sorted themselves out.
OF COURSE, as with everything in her complicated, unreal existence, that was not the way things played out.
She was wandering around the twisty bend of a game trail, humming a little half-remembered song to herself, when she came upon a scene out of a tapestry:
A deer. A doe, she knew, not just from its lack of antlers but also the shape of its face and the size of its flanks. Beautiful and large and slim and as elegant on its tiny toes as any made-up fairy-tale creature.
Standing some distance away from it was the most breathtakingly handsome man Aurora Rose had ever seen.
