Was this room for real? What strange decoration. Not just the solid gold floor. But there only was one lonely-looking spinning wheel and stool sitting in the corner, nothing more. Perhaps a room to have a moment of peace and do crafts? Or then this was the place where I was to pay my dues and hold my end of the deal…since we were back in Tairaland.
This room was so stock full of dark magic it had to be the work of that demon’s sickly-skilled hands.
But I saw fractures in it. I was sure that whatever we had managed to do with Elsa, years ago on the day of the christening, still carried all the way here. And whatever the demon was trying to do, just didn’t work all the way. Not entirely. There was hope. There was always hope…I’d just have to find that one corner of the demon’s handiwork, where he’d made the tiniest mistake, and rip the whole thing down.
Could I be right about that?
I so badly wanted it to be true.
I walked to the spinning wheel, aware of all the disturbing thoughts coursing through my mind. This could be my chance to break free of the deal. If I could find one mistake, if I could prove he hadn’t done his part…
I sat down on the stool, looking for any mishaps, discontinuities, anything the demon might have missed.
A soft gasp behind me made me turn.
A young woman was sprawled on the floor in a spring green court style dress, staring at me gray eyes wide. Her disheveled, blonde locks had fallen out of her hairdo, the braided bun hanging to one side, and her face was so off-color pale it had to be with shock.
She sprung to life, bombarding me with shrill words. What is this, are you a witch, why are you here in the attic of our castle, anyway, and what kind of a strange room is this, in the first place, because I for one have sure never seen this room, and I know all the rooms, I know the pigeons’ nests, I know the stables, I know every spot in this castle! Does Mother even know you’re here?
“You needn’t worry.” I tried to give her a calm smile to ease her panic. Of course, she had perfect reason to panic. In a few moments, she’d be either dying or transformed into whatever was in the cards…drawn by the makeshift magic of two fae halfling sisters, who’d learned their magic tinkering away at home, and one darkling demon not to trust.
She was going to go through a painful transition. It mattered little what fancies she wore. “It won’t matter what you wear, I’m sorry…”
“Excuse me? Who are you, again? Are you a seamstress? Do you work for Mother?”
So, this really was Aurora — so I’d feared. We were here to fulfil the curse or bring it to an end.
I wished I could tell her. I wished I could tell her all that had happened, where I’d been, how I wished someone would free me, and most of all, how I’d wanted to take back my words. Not to mention, how bad I’d felt for her mother. Imagine a baby taken by the Word of Death…?
These thoughts were from long ago.
Something sparkled at my foot. A spindle, by the side of spinning wheel. It was practically bursting with magic power. Curious and baffled, I picked it up. The magic felt like the good kind. Soothing, cool, gentle.
Ah, this had to be the part we’d fixed.
“Now, let me show you something,” I said, playing for time. I had to keep her here and not have her flee. I knew the minute she fled out this room, she’d be dead. “Come on,” I said, fighting my nerves, trying for my most patient voice. “Don’t be shy! I’ll show you how this works.”
“No. It’s my birthday, I need to get back to my party.”
“Don’t be silly, this will only take a minute! Just take a look! Try it. It’s the finest, softest rosewood.”
She took a step towards the corridor. I’d seen the border, where the magic ended. I knew our charms only worked on this side. Once she stepped on that side, there was no saving her.
“What is this place? Did you cook this up with your dark magic?”
“Not me,” I said. What could I tell her? I’d only scare her worse.
The spindle glowed faintly, as if a swarm of teeny, tiny fireflies kept circling it. Aurora stared at it, still looking disbelieving, then lifted her worried eyes, and our gazes met. She was coming around. There you go…
I offered the spindle for her to take.
“What are those sparkles? What’s wrong with it…?”
“Nothing, Aurora. Come, try it out, see how light it is.” But she wasn’t taking it, stubborn girl. She looked absent, disoriented. The magic had to be too strong for her to keep her focus. I could sense it too, in fact I could basically taste it in the air, but I was a fae witch; I could swim in this water.
Aurora wasn’t moving.
“Take it, quick, before it’s too late! It’ll save you—” Could she even hear me?
Stiffly, she finally reached out, like a living puppet, almost as if only the air currents in the room made her move, and sought out the spindle with a shivering hand. And latched on.
The whole room rang with her scream, as she lost her footage, slipped, and fell on the gold floor.
Chapter 15
Carefully, I laid my foot down on the sparkling marble, and then the other, gently, ever so gently, so that my shoes didn’t clank against the stone. We’d been transported into the white-and-gold hall again and were back at the demon’s enchanted castle, the castle wrangled out of roses. And Aurora was on the bed, now, sleeping. I’d simply found myself standing in the middle of the hall, a small distance from Aurora’s stone slab bed.
The demon hadn’t given this much thought after his part was done, it seemed; he’d simply flung us here, and that was that. The room was still as empty as ever, save for that bed, and he didn’t bother to show his face or give us a clue as to what now…
But Aurora’s face was peaceful. That was good, at least. She even had a faint smile on her lips. Me, I had a headache and, honestly, would have wanted to kick the demon into outer dimensions—for not staying to explain, for not helping us on, for not giving us anything to work on, here.
Not to mention, not making his terms clearer in the first place.
He was foul; but demons were.
I didn’t dare take loud steps, but I walked over to Aurora, wondering what on earth I could do anymore to turn things around.
The stone bed was glowing differently than before, as if some spells around it had been switched on. I’d wondered about it several times, and felt foolish, now, because what other reason could there have been but to have it there for Aurora to sleep on? The demon wasn’t going to try to sacrifice me on it, for my fae heart, like some other people had been hoping to do lately…That thought had crossed my mind. But no. And that was, in its ironical way, a relief.
The bed was made of a rare stone that I’d only come across twice before in my life. I’d needed to buy a morsel for a particular spell once, and I’d gone through the whole town, asking people about it. But nobody ever had any, of course. Smokesnite was almost never attainable anywhere, not even as the town was right by the royal castle. The old innkeeper, Martha, had pulled me aside and produced some from her skirt pockets. I was sure she only got me some — heavens knows where she’d found it — because I’d helped her daughter in a difficult childbirth, arriving in the nick of time to save the poor girl.
In any case, I’d gotten that morsel. The only other incident, when I’d seen it, had been at another healer’s shoppe. Again, a tiny piece; but the shopkeeper had been selling it at such an extra-orbitant price I wouldn’t have dreamt of buying it.
And here was this gargantuan slab of it, in the form of a bed, and I had been afraid to take a guess as to why it was here. But it made sense now, as it was designed to be where Aurora would sleep. I assumed it was to be the main guardian of her sleep: to keep her out of reach of the Word of Death and probably out of reach to all of the supernatural world at the same price, invisible to ghouls and reapers.
Since someone had gone through the trouble of making the bed out of smokesnite, it had to be important.
If I wanted to end this madness, what better way to do it than to wake Aurora up? Then the demon would have failed to keep his half of the deal, and the whole thing would expire. But what else had been in the contract? What had been in the fine print that I could not understand? Would Aurora die? Would we both?
Still, I had to wake her up somehow…
But how?
By trying out all my spells, in small portions, like litmus paper, and if they caught on, cast them full force?
There was one idea…
It could be bad. Who could I ask?
The magic hummed back to me, loud, strong, like winds through eternity. There was no way I would hold my own against that. I needed to find a clever way around this. But again, how…?
I poured the pail of rose petals all over poor sleeping Aurora. I’d gathered the roses where the vines pushed through the window and door into the castle, inside the blue guard walls, where I could reach them.
Aurora’s eyelids twitched minutely, then she stilled again. She looked thoroughly peaceful, pulling gentle breaths, and I had no doubt the demon had given her sweet dreams.
But she’d grow old here and die if I didn’t break this curse, and the same fate awaited me…Except, my horns, I suspected, likely grew forever! Or at least, that’s how it sometimes seemed in my bleakest moments. I was sure the demonic magic in me would feast upon me and eat me up before the horns ceased growing. Would anything stop those ghastly things? They were a foot long. Though, I could hardly be expected to go through the trouble of measuring them, as the next day, they would grow again. Gah! How I wished them away.
I spent more time by Aurora’s bedside now than at the cauldron bowl. To me, she seemed like a mirage, half surreal, because a lot of the time, her image flickered and turned momentarily transparent. But I knew it was her, the real her; it had to be. That’s what our deal had stated, that she’d simply sleep, safe and sound. And indeed, that was how she appeared, and it seemed the only thing she was capable of doing, and I couldn’t wake her up.
Elsa and I had worked hard, though. I was positive we had managed a few modifications to the curse. I’d seen them with my own eyes, the magic webs solidifying in the air back then, years ago. But I had my concerns. How much had we managed? And very possibly, something had gone wrong with our spells. The thing was, I had a gut feeling that Aurora should have been more real in this world, more present.
Had one of us recited a wrong verse, mispronounced a word, waved a hand wrong? Matters of magics were delicate, and the scope of what we’d attempted to do was mind-boggling.
Somehow, I’d trusted the demon to fix whatever Elsa and I might have gotten wrong, but he, then, was a darkling creature, a fallible thing…and evil.
I stirred the roses, arranging them better all over Aurora’s bed.
There was no effect to speak of. How disheartening. Perhaps more roses? Perhaps no more roses?
I quickly whispered a spell. It used up a large chunk of my magic reserves, or whatever had accumulated by now, which wasn’t much. It was pathetically sad, in fact; I had hardly any magic left to use. I couldn’t understand that. How wasn’t my heart making more? How was it only making these trickles, sad for a grown fae woman? Though I did remember hearing somewhere, captive hearts went dry.
Little effect.
I reached as far as I could before the blue magic wall would stop me and pull me back, because I wanted to get to the spots where the rose vines pushed inside with the best roses blooming.
I grabbed an armful of branch and petal and turned to quickly cut the stems with a kitchen knife. It required a bit of acrobatics, but I managed to gather roses by the armful.
There were plenty vines pouring in through the walls, but these were the lushest ones. These were bursting with magic power. But I still didn’t know if that was good thing or not, to cover Aurora with all this magic. I picked the lightest pink and darkest crimson roses off the branches, and then I rushed to the large hall again and poured them all over Aurora.
All right. Then onto the next step…
I had brought a bowl of water by the bedside, too. I knew Aurora didn’t need to drink, as the smokesnite bed would take care of her, so she’d never have to eat or drink, but I had soaked some rose petals in the water, with a good splash of magic. I picked up the bowl and sprinkled some of the water on her face. Aurora frowned a little, as if questioning something in her dream, but that was all that happened.
I put the bowl down, at loss for a moment.
Then I turned on my heels and returned to sit at my usual spot on the floor, cross-legged, and to munch on the fruit and savoury pastries that I’d brought with me from the pantry. Food always appeared and never ran out no matter how much I ate.
I wondered if I was feeding insatiably growing demon powers inside of me. Still…
I chomped down on the pastry again. The crispy crust was nice. And all this imaginative fruit.
Chapter 16
I stared at the ring of pebbles around Aurora’s pillow and pouted. No? Still not good enough?
I picked the pebbles up once again and set them down one by one, grumbling theatrically to myself. It took forever, and still I did it, and that was fine, because what else was there to do anyway—
A flash of light connected the pebbles momentarily, a perfect semi-circle. The magic had picked up the top-most pebbles and accepted them into the spell, and…
Where was Aurora?
A gust of wind and the swaying of billowing fabric was all I could make sense of. Then all I saw was the stone slab, empty. But a bird fluttered above me. It was a lovely radiant blue. Quite small. More like a sparrow than a crow.
It had to be Aurora. I’d done it, hadn’t I? I’d transformed her.
She was in bird form, and she was just fine, wasn’t she? Please let it be so!
Because Aurora was nowhere, but this little blue bird had appeared just now, and I couldn’t make sense of it any other way. The bird rose all the way to the ceiling and kept hovering there, swaying awkwardly from side to side, and then dashed forward, back and forth in the hall in a non-sensical manner. I didn’t think it — she — took any notice of me.
I’d done it! I wanted to do some kind of a victory dance, too…Heavens! I’d done it, me! I’d never read about this in the books, never seen it carried out, but I’d done it—I’d cast a transformation spell!
And what exactly was so huge about it? Aurora could now actually wake up and go and move and do things! She wasn’t going to be sleeping forever, if you asked me. Look at this bird…That wasn’t sleeping, that was a good step towards a free life, right there.
I rushed out to run to the kitchen to get some more heated pebbles.
Chapter 17
The blue bird flapped its wings like a hummingbird — Aurora really had to be confused about this part of flying — and made a sharp turn in the air. The swallow beside her followed and almost brushed the heavy, black iron chandelier, which gloomily hung above the kitchen counters and stoves.
Only yesterday — it felt to me — Aurora had turned a bird, and today, she’d brought a friend…
I didn’t know where from, or how. I’d never seen either one of them going out or coming in. I was positive I’d seen Aurora sleeping in her human form again on the stone slab, but after I’d laid down some coals around her again, casting my spells, and left to get more coal, she’d been gone, and there were these birds here.
My troubles keeping track of time were getting bothersome, considering matters such as these. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been gone, fetching the coals, and I had no idea if the bird had been gone a day or a week.
But I did know, the pebbles and coals were working. I kept working on the spells and Aurora kept disappearin
g from the bed only to flutter around as this little blue bird.
I’d tried talking to her a million times — or, many, I was sure — but she kept fleeing away from me as if I were some giant fox or wolf about to devour her for a snack.
One of these days, I’d trap her and talk to her. If she couldn’t understand me, I’d attach a little note on her wing. She would be the perfect carrier pigeon. Unfortunately, it seemed the magic was making her impossible to catch, and none of my spells worked on her now that the transformation had made her doubly intangible — a dream mirage turned into an illusion…
Now Aurora dashed down again.
The swallow friend followed.
And there went the dough bowl onto the kitchen floor, rolling on the stones, and spilling all the dough. Oh, shoot! These birds, they got everywhere! I had been craving for cinnamon rolls, but for all the lovely things in the pantry, there never were any. I needed my cinnamon rolls. I had so little to do here and so little to rejoice over…
Oh, must you, must you birds rob me of my cinnamon rolls?
I picked up the broom.
Though it was nice to have some company, even if they were but birds — and fled from me like from some monster, at that — and couldn’t perhaps understand a thing I said, it was still nice to have them from company. But their dashing emphasised my hopelessness, and they did get on my nerves. I kept up the hope that Aurora might understand me even as a bird, but whenever I tried to talk with her, I was always disappointed.
Shoo, shoo, I whispered, or maybe I said it only in my mind — quite likely — but I made the broom speak for me, so the birds dashed and dove like in some fantastic ballet.
I only wanted them to stay away from the dough, my sweet and lovely cinnamon roll dough, the highlight of my day. My, oh, my, they were swift and daft, these birds, a spark of life here in the darkness, a spark of liveliness…But every time I watched them come and go, dance, I was reminded of the impossibility of the task. Moments like this, I admired the magic on them so much it hurt.
Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance Page 53
