The princess approached it, clasping her shredded rags to herself in a desperate attempt at modesty.
She made it as far as the dwarves’ door before she fainted.
“They gave me room and board in exchange for cleaning their cottage.” Her serene smile turned melancholy when the cottage door opened.
Garnet stood in the doorway, staring at the girl. He looked so different without the tufts of scraggly hair clinging to his chin. Back then, he’d had a bushy ginger beard with whiskers everywhere.
Garnet stroked them, staring at the limp maiden on his doorstep.
Another dwarf pushed him aside to go to the princess’s side.
I didn’t recognize this dwarf. He had to be Quartz, the one I’d never met.
He cradled the girl in his arms as if she were his own child.
“I became a member of their family.”
Her sad smile disappeared as the scenes unfolded of her life with the dwarves. Cleaning the grimy cottage. Opening their shutters to let the sunshine in. Making supper for her fellow lodgers when they stomped home.
Only they hadn’t been sad back when she’d been with them. They’d been grumpy and suspicious, but all of them grew a little more cheerful when greeted with a warm meal and a clean cottage at the end of the day.
The one who provided these things made them a little happier, too. For the princess, all the housework and cooking was a welcome distraction from her broken heart.
Gradually, she began to smile once more.
The scene changed to the princess finding Quartz sitting in the cottage.
He was carving a little wooden plaque, digging in the words “The Fairest of Them All” upon it.
The princess froze when she saw the sign.
“For your room.” Quartz put down his knife and regarded his guest. “The title suits you.”
“It does not,” the princess said, shaking her head.
She’d bound her tresses into a knot so they wouldn’t get in her way while working. The princess was dressed much as I had been when I had lived with the dwarves.
“I’m not the fairest of them all, nor do I desire to be.” She bit her lip to stop it from trembling.
“True fairness has nothing to do with your physical beauty.” Quartz couldn’t hide the kind and fatherly smile tugging at his gruff expression. “It has to do with what’s in your heart and what you have to offer those around you.” He offered her the plaque. “As far as my brothers and I are concerned, you’ve earned this title.”
Tears gathered in the princess’s eyes.
She reached out a trembling hand to the plaque. Once she held it, she hugged it to her chest as if it were a lost fragment of her broken heart.
“They gave me a new life when I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.”
I glanced at the witch princess out of the corner of my eye.
Guilt and sorrow pulled at her face while she gazed at Quartz.
He was still trying to fight the smile threatening to spread across his face and failing.
“I’d been a princess, but there was no place for me in my former castle. It was better if I wasn’t there. Quartz, at least, liked having me around.”
Green clouds swallowed the tender scene with Quartz to spit out an image of the king, the princess’s father.
He sat upon his throne, watching his beautiful golden-haired queen address the court.
His daughter wasn’t there, not that he noticed. The king smiled, seeing no one except his wife.
This made me angry, although my anger was laced with guilt. My father wouldn’t have forgotten me. How could this man show so little interest in his own child, even if he was in love?
He wasn’t the only one unaware of the princess’s absence, though. Most of the court had the same besotted expression as the king’s upon their faces when they looked upon their queen.
Oriana herself smiled sweetly at them all. There was a hardness in her eyes when she gazed at each person, including her husband.
Every once in a while, she would gaze at a small empty silver chair, not far from the king’s throne.
“Was the silver chair yours?” I glanced at the witch princess.
She nodded, staring at the golden thread twisting its way through her fingers. “Almost no one realized it was empty. My father had forgotten me. My former subjects no longer remembered that they had a princess.” She wouldn’t look up at the mirror. “I wondered if anyone might miss me, but no one came after me.”
“Your stepmother did a very good job endearing herself to your people.” I tried to swallow my anger.
The people themselves were as responsible for this as the queen. Oriana might have charmed them, but they’d fallen for her charms.
“She was very good with people.” The witch princess looked up at me from under long eyelashes. “Much as you are.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as my attention dropped from the mirror. Yes, I’d been quite manipulative myself for the last few weeks, trying to win my people over.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You worked hard to win their approval, just as she did. I never bothered,” the princess witch said with a thoughtful tilt of her head.
“You worked hard to win the dwarves over,” I pointed out. “You succeeded with them.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” The princess smiled a little bit at my words. “I received exactly what I gave. As for my father, his lack of interest saddened me, but it was also a relief.” She paused for a moment. “He’d let me go.” Her eyelashes trembled. “Perhaps Oriana would, too. At least, I thought she might.” Hands buried in golden thread trembled as well. “I was wrong.”
Emerald smoke surged around the careless court, enveloping them.
Oriana as she appeared today hobbled out of the smoke.
The dwarves’ cottage was before her.
Fear brought out the wrinkles on the queen’s face when she stared at the open window.
The princess was there, looking out with a smile at the morning sunbeams.
The smile died on her red lips when she saw her former beloved.
“As you can see, she came after me.” The witch gazed at her younger self. “She used her magic to disguise herself as an old woman, much as I am doing now.”
Disguise? I wondered as I looked at the princess in the here and now.
Perhaps her magic was weakening or my sight was improving. I could see a girl sitting on the bench, a girl no older than I was, holding a sharp stick and some golden thread in her hands.
I wondered if she hadn’t seen through her beloved’s disguise just as clearly.
Within the mirror, Oriana offered the princess an apple.
It wasn’t the small green thing that had been her heart. It was a large luscious piece of fruit, almost as brilliant a red as the princess’s lips.
“Is this the apple?” I studied its shiny sides. Too shiny. It wasn’t a natural luster.
“It looked so different when Oriana offered it to me a second time.” Unshed tears filled her voice. “I hoped that her heart had changed, even as the apple had.”
The princess stared at the fruit and shook her head.
She gestured to Oriana, beckoning her to enter the cottage.
“I didn’t accept it, not at first.” The princess witch gazed at her past self with a weary pity. “I invited Oriana into my new home. Her disguise didn’t fool me. I didn’t pretend to be fooled. I explained that I had a new life that was no threat to my father or her.”
The scene shifted to the two women standing inside the cottage. The queen still held out the apple to the princess.
“Consider this a token of my acceptance of your new life.” Oriana’s voice was very steady, as if she was only barely holding her emotion in check. “Please. You don’t have to take it, just take a bite.”
Blue eyes wet with tears met the princess’s.
I’d seen that look so many times. It had always softened my resolve to confront Oriana on any
thing.
“This way, a little piece of me will stay with you, even as we lead separate lives.”
The yearning that filled the princess’s eyes was so painful, my chest ached in sympathy.
Gently, she took the apple from Oriana’s hands.
Raising it to her lips, she took a bite.
Her eyelids fluttered as if overwhelmed with an irresistible listlessness.
She swooned, trying to catch herself, but she’d lost control of her body.
The queen smiled as her stepdaughter fell to the floor. It was a dreadful, triumphant smile. “As if I’d ever let these dwarves have you. You’re mine, even if you have to sleep for a hundred years to prove it!”
She threw back her head and laughed.
Emerald mist swallowed her as well as the figure lying on the ground.
“The dwarves found me when they came home.” The witch gazed at the thread in her hand. “They placed me in a crystal coffin, my bedchamber for a hundred years. I knew nothing of this. I was sleeping.”
She stared at me. “It’s impossible to describe what I dreamed, even using the magic mirror. You’ve only had a taste of them. They’re nothing compared to what you experience when you’re under the sleeping curse.”
The former princess looked up at me.
I was almost at her side, leaning over her.
She looked so tiny, so fragile. It was amazing that such a little creature could have cursed me.
The darkness lingered within her eyes, threatening to swallow me.
“I dreamed of such wonderful, terrible things. I learned secrets Oriana must have known. Perhaps I caught a glimpse of the very heart of her power.”
She shook her head, a sad smile touching her red lips. “The curse changed me. When I awoke, I looked the same, but I knew magic. I could feel the wind in the trees, the sun in the sky, and the earth surrounding my resting place in a way I’d never known. More than myself had changed during my century of sleep.”
The mirror reflected what she first saw. Dead, withered briars in a clearing in the woods.
Quartz clutched at his chest. He staggered back from her. Horror widened his small eyes, as if what he saw was too terrible to bear.
The perspective of the mirror changed, to show the princess rising from her coffin.
She wore the purple dress with the red trimmings as she had in the painting. Had Oriana dressed her in this gown?
Her eyes were completely dark. An abyss lay within them, a chasm that could swallow me whole.
Quartz collapsed to the ground.
The princess moved from her coffin to his side. One of her pale hands gently touched his chest. It wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. The princess looked up from the dead dwarf to see his six brothers, watching her silently from the trees.
None of them spoke. She gazed at Garnet, Jasper, Agate, Sardonyx, Onyx, and Opal each in turn, half-imploringly, half-defiant.
Garnet started to tear at his beard, yanking out a chunk of ginger hair. Jasper began crying. Agate clenched his thick hands into fists. Sardonyx and Onyx both trembled. Opal turned away from her, refusing to look at her. Quartz’s body rose into the air.
The princess gestured toward her coffin. He floated to where she’d slept and came down to rest in the exact same spot. Red flower petals fell from the trees overhead.
They danced in a circle to land gently upon Quartz so he was lying in a bed of flowers.
The other dwarves stopped watching at this little display of magic. They ran.
The princess stood silent as they ran away from her. Heartbreak filled her expression.
I felt it as if I were the one experiencing it. It gathered in my throat, hot and painful.
“My former companions feared the change in me,” the witch said with a sigh. “It was unbearable to be around them, so I left. I made my way out of the woods. I stretched out with my new senses toward what had once been my home.”
The green of the forest gave way to an image of our castle, sitting upon the hill as I’d seen it.
Only for the former princess, it was no longer home. The banners that flew from its tower were unrecognizable to her.
I felt this, even as I recognized my family’s colors.
“None of my family, none of my family’s descendants still lived there.” The witch stared at the castle with a resigned sadness. “There was no sign of my former beloved. A new family was ruling my former land, living in my former castle, ready to celebrate the birth of a new princess.”
The princess witch raised her hand.
The castle banners fluttered in the wind.
The dust rose and swirled around the hem of her gown; only it was green dust.
Green as the gown Oriana had worn when she’d left her for her father. Green as the smoke that had poured from the queen’s chest, where a heart should have been.
“Why did you curse me?” I sat down on the bench beside the princess witch. “Were you that angry with my family for living in the castle you’d left? Or did you have another reason?”
I reached out to take her hand, which still clutched the stick.
When my fingers touched hers, closed over her hand, its sharp end pricked my skin.
“Why should I be angry? Your family had never harmed me,” she said. “The one who had was incapable of doing anything, even loving me. I felt her lack of love in every kiss while I slept.”
Pain shot through my wounded finger, just as pain made her own fingers tremble.
“Everyone I’d ever cared for had died or rejected me. I was completely alone.” The hungry need in her dark eyes was heartbreaking. “In my loneliness, I chose a new companion. One who’d be completely in my power, unable to escape me or reject me.”
A faintness came over me, as her form, the room, and everything around me began to waver.
Part of me wanted to laugh, although I was too drowsy to do so.
I stared at my bloody finger.
The sharp stick had been a spindle. I had thought it would be bigger, more frightening. It was nothing more than a small tool to spin with. A small stick had brought me down, like I was nothing.
The realization stung more than the prick had.
“Sleep.” There was no hatred in the princess witch’s voice; she sounded almost loving.
The spindle dropped and clattered to the floor.
“Sleep, my beauty, for a hundred years. This sleep will give you death, for change is a kind of death.”
The thread gleamed as it slipped through her fingers to join the spindle on the floor.
No, not thread. Hair.
Golden tendrils delicate as thread floated down strand by strand to form a silky pile.
Each tendril was as fine as the hairs upon my head.
My eyelids grew heavy.
The witch caressed my cheek ever so gently. She ran her fingers down my face to trace the shape of my lips.
Her touch made me shiver.
I remembered Oriana’s words, which echoed in my mind.
“Whether it’s taking a bite from an enchanted apple or pricking your finger on a spindle, the nature of the curse is the same. Only one thing can break the spell. A kiss given by one who truly loves you. Although I suppose you could kiss someone you truly love to break the spell, but I don’t know how you’d do that while asleep.”
I had to reach her.
Did I truly love this woman? Was I worthy of her? If I kissed her, I’d find out.
I reached out for her only to slump into her waiting arms.
The last thing I saw in the waking world was her dark eyes, staring at me. Shock, disbelief, and the faintest hope glimmered within them, fighting the sorrow she’d held for so long.
Chapter Eight: Change
MY MIND, MY heart, my entire being tumbled into a dark place filled with wonders.
Spells, secrets, the answers to questions about the wind and sun, the rain and the flowers waited there.
Time had no meaning. There w
as only the darkness, and I absorbed it. The names of so many things, words that were important in the past, present, and future were drawn into me.
How much had been lost in this place because people feared it?
Too many regarded it as evil. Too many feared darkness, like the dwarves had. They thought anyone who entered it would be lost. They tried to escape, just as Opal, Onyx, Sardonyx, Agate, Jasper, and Garnet had.
I didn’t.
My sleep changed me, but change isn’t a bad thing. I lost my innocence, but I gained knowledge. My mind matured, even though my body remained the same.
What a precious gift she’d given me. To grow in knowledge while my body remained young and strong was a wish cherished by many.
In a way, she had fulfilled my fondest hopes before she struck me down. She’d told me her story as I’d wished she would. What’s more, she hadn’t cursed me out of anger or hatred. She’d simply wanted to keep me to herself. The curse had been meant to change me into an ideal companion.
I wondered if I could be such a thing.
She laid me down in a bed of flowers within the tower room, arranging them around my motionless body.
Briars started growing over the bed in which I slept.
It was I who willed the barrier of thorns to surround me. Dreaming, I had the power to do this.
The briars grew, surrounding the entire tower.
No one could enter my room. The door transformed into a living thing, an old woman’s face looking out of its wooden surface. She shrieked curses at anyone who approached, keeping unwanted suitors at a distance.
This was also my doing, as a kind of tribute to the mask both witches wore.
Did they appreciate the irony of my choice of guardian?
I didn’t know if Oriana did, any more than I knew where she was. Within my dreaming state, I could only keep track of people in the castle.
This was how I knew my parents and the entire court had fallen asleep too. Perhaps it was a side effect of my growing magic, or perhaps one of the witches was responsible. No one wanted my parents to suffer or anyone else to grieve over losing me.
Bad things could happen to the realm, though, while we all slept.
Perhaps it would have been better to let my parents mourn me and carry on with their lives. Not that I could have changed the situation. I’d learned many things in my sleep, but I didn’t know how to wake everyone up. I couldn’t even wake myself up.
Once Upon a Rainbow, Volume One Page 14
