by Liz Braswell
She put a hand to her head. The other Phillip looked sick, seeing the logic behind his twin’s words and where it would go. But he didn’t protest.
“For your own safety, for the safety of this quest—for the good of all the people who are depending on you—it would really be best if you went on. Alone.”
Aurora Rose felt a pain as great as the wound of a sword at these words—an invisible sword, in her heart. It was the truth.
And hadn’t she always known that? She was always alone. She would always be alone. She was the only one she could trust. In both her memories. Whether she was hiding in the giant maze of the Thorn Castle or looking for something to do among the wild animals of the forest or lying on her princess bed, hoping Lianna would stay away, everything had always come down to just her.
The other Phillip also looked pained at the words.
“But…I love you…” he said desperately. “I want to be with you and protect you and help you.”
“No, I do,” the first Phillip said bleakly. “All those things. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s what’s best.”
She knew she couldn’t delay. If she did, she would be stuck there forever, trying to decide—another Maleficent trap. She turned to go, hoping she wouldn’t hear the two boys begin their inevitable fighting again, clanging away in the forest of her mind forever.
Or until she woke up.
“I stole my mother’s pearl earring,” a Phillip suddenly called out.
She closed her eyes and kept going.
“I stole it because it was pretty. That’s all. Later when she was dead and they found it everyone asked if I stole it because I wanted a memory of her and I said yes even though I just wanted it because it was pretty and it was when she was still alive. But this way everyone was nice to me and I was forgiven and everyone felt bad for me!”
She couldn’t stop herself from turning around.
What a weird thing for Phillip to say.
The other Phillip thought so, too; he looked at the first one with disgust.
“Why would you tell her that about us?”
But the first Phillip wasn’t done yet.
“When I was ten, when I was waaaaay too old not to know better, I told my sister Marya that she was prettier than Brigitte. In front of Brigitte.”
The Phillip who spoke looked sick and racked with guilt.
The princess gripped her sword tighter but moved closer.
“Once I caught a mouse and put it in a room with my cat and watched the cat play with it until it was dead. It was horrible and I wept for days after and I went to confession about it, but I did it. I did it. Because I wanted to see what would happen.”
“Sure, all right,” the other Phillip said nervously. “Are we saying all this stuff now? Because I can do it, too. I don’t know why you’d want to tell her all this….”
“I wet my bed until I was thirteen!”
Aurora Rose and the other Phillip both looked at him in shock.
“I wet my bed until I was thirteen,” Phillip continued, a little hysterically. “Not all the time. But on many nights. My father was angry and the chambermaid was sworn to secrecy and they whipped me and told me I was terrible, bringing shame to our name and lineage. Royal princes don’t act that way. Royal princes do not wet their beds. But I did.
“Nobody else knows any of this. No one. I’m telling you because I love you and I trust you with all of my secrets—good and bad. I want you to know that you can trust me, too. I know I lied to you but I swear I will tell you everything about me from now on. All the bad stuff and all the good stuff, too.”
He paused, looking bleak and weary. “Leave now, for the good of your kingdom and for your own safety. Just know that—if you succeed, if we ever meet again—I will never, ever lie to you about anything. Ever again. And I will spend the rest of my life doing whatever I can to make you forgive me.”
The other Phillip opened his mouth to say something.
Which was the opportunity she took to drive her sword through his stomach.
The look on his face was human and terrible: surprise, hurt, horror. His hands came around the shaft as blood began to flow down it, as if he could pull it out and make everything better. Strange noises came out of his mouth.
She staggered back, horrified by the mistake she had made.
And then the blood turned black. And the noises turned to hissing. His body shivered and became something dark and not really there, snakelike and transparent. He vibrated and trembled and shivered.
Finally, he fell to the ground like all the others.
The remaining Phillip watched silently, his cheeks white.
It must be a horrible thing to watch yourself die, Aurora Rose thought.
But he recovered himself and strode forward, giving the thing a coup de grace, a quick death the demon certainly didn’t deserve.
Then he dropped his sword, turned to the princess, wrapped her in his arms, and hugged her so tightly it almost hurt.
She didn’t say anything. There were too many things to talk about: how she had figured out it was really him, how she still didn’t forgive him for lying before, how he wasn’t always the perfect prince he seemed to be.
How she would in private, for the rest of their lives, no matter what happened, remind him of the things he had said that day. Just because.
How she somehow just assumed she would know him for the rest of their lives. Forever.
But she had also just killed something that looked a whole lot like a real person when she stabbed him through the innards. That image replayed itself again and again in her mind.
What if she had been wrong?
So she stayed silent and let herself be held.
A PILE OF BODIES was growing next to Maleficent’s throne. It was a little shocking—maybe even distasteful. Never in her life had the fairy been messy or allowed herself to be surrounded by filth.
The horde around her mostly didn’t care, however; they looked at the corpses with hunger. Lianna rolled her eyes.
“You’re going through them too quickly. There’s not going to be anyone left for you to rule.”
With a hiss and a movement that was far more redolent of a snaky dragon than a human queen, Maleficent cleared the space between her and the pig-footed handmaiden in the wink of an eye. She loomed over her, all arches and blackness.
Lianna didn’t flinch.
“I have less than an hour. Excuse me, let me rephrase: we have less than an hour. If I don’t get the princess back here by then, I could consume everyone in the castle and it wouldn’t matter.
“And what help have you been, my dear?” she added with a venomous drawl. “I have attacked her through all her weaknesses…and sent my best servants after her. All of which have failed. What aren’t you telling me? What dark secret of Aurora’s heart can lead me to her defeat?”
“I have told you everything about the princess,” Lianna said steadily. “Excuse me, let me rephrase: you already know everything I know.”
The evil fairy and the strange handmaiden stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Neither looked away.
The rest of Maleficent’s creations grew nervous. They shifted from hoof to hoof or claw to claw and made uneasy whistling and whoomphing sounds.
Maleficent pulled her lips back in a sneer and spun around, concentrating on the image of the battered princess and prince. Her cape flew and settled behind her. Still Lianna didn’t move. If anything, she seemed a little bored.
Suddenly Maleficent looked thoughtful.
“But I don’t have to know the darkest secrets of her heart,” she said slowly. “All I have to do is…encourage them….”
She raised her staff and looked into the depths of the orb, her yellow eyes further illuminated by whatever it was she saw there.
And she began to chant.
THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS traveled down the path in silence. Phillip put his arm out for her to hold and Aurora Rose t
ried to ignore it but finally accepted it, giving in to her present state and tendency to stagger.
She kept replaying the last few seconds, in which she had killed the demon.
It was harder to drive the sword into the thing’s body than she had imagined it would be. But was it still, perhaps, easier than it would have been with a real human? Would there have been more resistance? Would she have been more hesitant? Would the fact that it was an actual person have stayed her hand some?
Or had the past few days changed her more than all her years in either reality?
Phillip was complicated now. She didn’t want to think about him. His feelings for her were unbearably strong. His treatment of her in the Forest Cottage had been abominable.
Or had it?
Wasn’t it just the way he would inevitably wind up, considering his life experiences up to that point? Did he have any reason to trust a random girl in the forest with the truth?
But didn’t he love her?
She didn’t want to think about that. It seemed like wherever she was, whoever she was, Aurora/Briar Rose was some sort of maelstrom of deceit, causing all who came near her to lie.
For the first time, she wished she was out of the dreamworld. Immediately. She wanted to wake up and see the actual world and face people and make them face her. She was exhausted. She wanted to slough off all the layers of falsehoods like the tired gray skin of a snake.
“How close are we?” she mumbled, finally breaking the silence.
“It’s a little confusing around here. There are rocks, large ones, not that far ahead, I believe,” Phillip answered, carefully trying to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to seem overly eager or grateful for the attention she was showing him, not wanting to scare her away. “As soon as we see them, it should be a straight shot to the house, alongside the little stream.”
“I remember those.”
Immediately another flood of memories pummeled her. She gasped but forced herself to keep walking. Now it was like a valve was turned on and couldn’t close all the way. Even when the initial burst was over, the images continued to trickle in, never ending.
She could feel the rocks. She had climbed on them. She had rubbed her hands on them. She had found darker rocks in the stream that she could draw on them with. She had balanced on the rocks. She had pretended she was an eagle nesting on them.
“Get down! Ladies don’t act like that!” Flora had yelled, catching her once.
The other aunts had looked at their leader with skeptical faces.
“Well…I mean…they don’t. She won’t be able to when…you know,” she had continued in a way that hadn’t made sense until now.
“Maybe if more princesses climbed rocks, the world wouldn’t be in the state it’s in,” Merryweather remarked with her usual crankiness. At the time Rose thought she meant princess in a generally snarky way.
“Well, we should try to remain consistent,” Fauna said reasonably. “Are we raising her to be a lady or a girl in the woods? We never discussed that, really.”
“Oh, I don’t know, that’s a fair point,” Flora said, putting a hand to her head. “She has so much natural grace and nobility. Let’s discuss it further but let her be for now.”
The young Briar Rose had latched on to the let her be part and had forgotten everything else.
The older Aurora Rose grudgingly saw their dilemma: they had been raising a princess who didn’t know she was one. Their little lessons and flights of fancy were starting to make sense. Eating with the right utensil (when they had it), the steps to a few court dances…the few things that the aunts thought made a princess—that the fairies thought made a human princess. Fairies who really, until they re-remembered their task, let her run around naked and do what she wanted, because that was normal. For fairies.
What if she had been raised in the castle? She wouldn’t, as Phillip said, have had what little freedom she had enjoyed in the woods. She wouldn’t have hunted with foxes.
Of course, she would have had two loving human parents. Maybe.
Who might at least have been all right, like Phillip’s—but nothing special. A prim kiss once a day before bed and after studies.
Who might have just been passing time until a son came along.
It was too much—being hit with the memories, suddenly understanding them in a new context, almost sympathizing with those who had lied to her her whole life.
“Do you want me to carry you?” Phillip asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Aurora Rose cursed under her breath.
It was taking all her effort to stay upright, and there was something coming out of her nose that she was pretty sure was blood.
More than anything she wanted to be carried, the way her aunts had carried her when she was tired as a little girl, when she had played too hard or cried too much or just couldn’t make it back to the cottage. She was exhausted and miserable and aching and in pain, and Phillip, good old Phillip, could easily take her the rest of the way and even enjoy it as penance for his previous sins.
“No.” She set her jaw and kept walking.
Phillip didn’t say anything. He just quietly kept pace with her.
The path dipped unsteadily at what was either the site of an ancient creek bed or a spot where rain naturally collected when it ran down the hill. Topsoil gave way to pebbles and rocks and little sharp divots that were deceiving to the eye. She stumbled twice before they had gone more than fifty feet.
With a burst of annoyance she spread her fingers. If it was really her dream, her head, there would be wide, smooth roads, cobbled and drained, to where they needed to go. Or at least well-packed dirt.
The little rocks danced and sand shifted.
Phillip stopped, foot hanging in the air. At first he was unable to see the cause of the movements. His hand went tentatively to his sword.
Aurora Rose frowned, concentrating. Why couldn’t the ground see where it was supposed to go? Fill itself in?
The rocks and sand and dirt acted like lodestones that didn’t like each other, or raindrops on top of dry dust: they skittered around nervously, not wanting to go where she wanted them. The uneven places and holes remained.
She shrieked with frustration.
Phillip risked putting a hand on her arm.
“We’re entering the deepest part of your mind, remember?” he said gently. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy to get to. It’s a difficult path to who you really are.”
“Spare me more philosophy. I’m angry right now.”
“Well, how about this? You’re not Maleficent—who had hundreds of years to perfect her magic.”
The sound she made in response could have been either animal annoyance at or human acceptance of the logic in what he said.
So they traveled more slowly.
The path eventually opened up to an ancient clearing. The trees thinned out and a stream, which had been hiding shyly deeper in the forest, came close to them, rocky and gurgling. Gray stones emerged from the forest floor with moss and needles and even trees on top of them. They looked like they had just popped up their heads for a few moments to look around and would disappear back down below any moment.
“This is starting to look…to feel familiar,” the princess said cautiously. She shivered—but in a good way. Finally something was starting to make sense, to feel right.
Phillip wasn’t paying attention to her—which was strange, because he was always paying attention to her. Even when she was being mean. Or distant. Or both.
“Do you remember this? This is near where we met, isn’t it?” she pushed.
But he made a motion with his chin in the direction he was looking, which was not at her.
Standing farther up the path, as if she had always been there, was a little girl.
She looked like a waif: maybe six years old, dressed in a grayish-pink shift that didn’t cover her arms and fell thinly to her knees. An ugly, lopsided crown that looked like a child’s drawi
ng sat tilted on her head. Her feet were bare. She was as pale as a wisp of cloud, and dark half-moons rode beneath her startling violet eyes. She stood perfectly still. Not even a stray breeze ruffled her perfect blond hair.
Aurora felt cold horror creep its ugly fingers up her back.
The girl seemed perfectly calm. Complete stillness surrounded her like a heavy cloak. Although there were no clear shadows in the eternal twilight of the ancient forest, everything seemed dimmer and grayer around her, as if bathed in gloom.
She waited patiently for them to speak first.
“Who are—” the princess began.
“Kill it!” Phillip cried out, suddenly finding his voice. “It’s a demon!”
Without a moment’s hesitation he rushed at the girl, sword out.
Aurora Rose grabbed the prince—although she wasn’t sure exactly why. It wasn’t just because it was an unarmed, pretty little girl with long eyelashes that he was about to attack and run through with his blade.
Phillip was probably absolutely right that the girl was another one of Maleficent’s demons. But there was something terribly familiar about her. About the air around her. The lack of color.
The girl smiled faintly, watching them.
“It’s all right. He couldn’t have touched me anyway.”
When she spoke, it was like there was no distance between them at all; her voice sounded close to the princess’s ear. Like the girl knew she would always be heard by the right person.
Phillip clearly did not like her tone. Frankly, neither did Aurora Rose. She didn’t stop the prince when he launched himself at the girl a second time.
He was beautiful to watch, all grace and consummate skill, warmed up by the battle with his twin. The princess flinched, waiting for the thrust to the belly that would take the child down.
But the girl flickered.
Like a candle about to go out.
She was there and not there and there and not there, and when Phillip’s sword would have connected with her flesh, she was suddenly a few feet away, in the same pose, with the same look on her face, as if she hadn’t had to do anything—not even think—to get there.
To his credit, Phillip hesitated only a moment before spinning and lunging again.
