The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “The Cobblestone Witch will come to see you shortly,” he said. “Please know that she wants to put the queen to sleep.”

  “He was warning us,” Augustus said, when the doors shut behind him.

  “Warning us? Why? He hardly said anything!” I said. “He’s our enemy.”

  “I just have a feeling he was trying to tell us we need a plan. The rebellion was cobbled together hastily enough that it would be easy for one of our allies to infiltrate their ranks. The goblin kingdom were always allies of ours.”

  I was unconvinced, but I said, “How can we put her off?”

  Augustus opened the curtains, sending clouds of dust into the room. I was alarmed to see hundreds of faces looking up to the window, as if they had been waiting for us.

  “We’re surrounded on all sides, I think,” Augustus said. “But there is one way we might escape.”

  “How?”

  “To the Wicked Revels,” he said. “The Wicked Revels exists in another plane, and they can open a door for us. If we took that way, we could never return. We would just be subjects of the Wicked Revels…”

  I remembered the dancers from the Wicked Revels at the Ball de Anon telling me I would make a fine handmaiden for Queen Alexandra. She was the other faery queen, but her life was lived the old way, in the other realm. I knew the Revels would be wilder than anything I was used to. The King’s Vine came from those forests; the trees themselves danced with pleasure.

  I wondered if that was the place where I could have the love of both of these men without anyone whispering about me. I thought I might be able to serve Queen Alexandra if she gave me that.

  “Well, that sounds like the perfect solution if you ask me,” Axel said. “How do we get the door to open?”

  Augustus looked out the window, hands clasped behind his back. The sun was rising, casting his face in the morning glow, but most of his body was still in heavy shadow, from his embroidered coat to the riding boots he had thrown on in the night.

  “I think, before I attempt any escape, I want to ask the witch what she actually wants,” he said. “I want to know if there is anything I can do. These are my people. I can’t just run away.”

  “You really are the king, my lord,” I said, and I couldn’t help but admire him even though I was terrified. “You might not always have been the king they wanted, but maybe you’re too good for them.”

  “No, Rose. They don’t even know us. You were right. We’ve drifted too far from our own flock. The people followed the Cobblestone Witch. What can I make of that except that something has gone very wrong? Maybe we can reason with her.”

  Shortly, the Cobblestone Witch rapped on the door and I hardly knew what to do with myself. A guard announced her presence and she walked in, looking like a very old woman, hunched and withered under a shabby cloak and patched dress, with some pouches hanging from a belt around her waist. She smelled like lavender and rosemary, and beyond that, very much like a witch.

  Despite her humble appearance, an air of power clung to her, and I knew what she was capable of.

  Once, she almost had me. She knew that my role to be the Queen Who Bowed daunted me, and she offered to give me an escape. I nearly touched the spindle and sank into a sleep. I think she expected that I would choose the curse someday.

  She’s wrong. I would never leave Augustus. And I have already embraced my role. What more could she say to me?

  “Congratulations on your pregnancy, Your Majesty,” she said.

  Oh…

  Yes.

  There was one thing I still dreaded above everything else. Giving up my child to a nursemaid so he or she could learn to play our roles someday.

  The witch’s eyes, clear despite her aged face, gleamed at me before she turned to Augustus.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, with a hint of insolence. “What a performance, on the balcony. I must admit, you have taken to it all better than anyone hoped. For a moment I almost thought I saw King Enri in you, but—you can’t fool me. The people won’t be fed for long by the mere sight of your virility.”

  “What do you want?” he asked. “You orchestrated all of this. If I’m to believe some of the stories, you cursed Rose just so that someday you could end my rule before I was even next in line. So it isn’t me you want, it’s the throne.”

  “Yes…yes. I want the old ways,” she said. “You don’t even know them anymore. You couldn’t. You are off—there—behind walls, your gardens groomed, your every whim attended to.”

  “What does this have to do with people starving?” he said. “We’ve tried to trim the budget. We’ve taxed the nobility.”

  “You are thinking like a politician. No one cares about any of that. All of society has become corrupt. It’s all about taxes and rules and city planners. We are faeries,” she said. “We are warriors. We are dancers and musicians. And we certainly don’t fuck on a schedule. We came from the woods, and back to the woods we should go.”

  “It sounds like you would be just as happy if I was a mage,” he said. “If we rode around on horseback and asked people if I could cast a fertility spell on their crops.”

  “Well…maybe you do understand.” She almost looked pleased. “But…can you cast a spell? No? No. For kings to practice magic was banned long ago. You are useless. You are no warrior.”

  “You’re insane,” Axel said. “The king is trying to reason with you.”

  “There is no reasoning with me!” she cried. At least she was honest. “I have known what I wanted for too long! I have rallied the people in this fight for decades now, and if there is some spark of a true king in you, that is just plain unfortunate, Augustus. You are, nevertheless, steeped in the corruption of the Palace of the Sun, and you will never be the king we need and I have had plans for you for a long time. I am going to raise the blood of Enri and Marianna in my ways, but first—first—I will sacrifice you to extend my own life. Then I will put Rose to sleep.”

  “No!” I had an urge to shove the witch. How could she stand there and tell my beloved husband that she planned to kill him and then raise his child as her own?

  “Sacrifice me…” Augustus seemed strangely calm. “My life for your own…well. In the end you’re just another wicked woman who can’t let her youth go, is that it?”

  “I’m not afraid of death.”

  “You saw King Enri and Marianna when you were young yourself. When all the world was before you. And you clung to that vision forever… Now you want to rewrite the past into the future. But you can’t. We can only move forward, even when it hurts. Even when our destiny isn’t what we thought it would be. I wasn’t meant to be king—not until my father and brother died. My grandfather wanted me to be a king just like him. You want me to be just like Enri. But I am Augustus.”

  “You are weak, is what you are,” she said, seeming angry. “And the people smell your weakness. So I’ll be glad to be rid of you. Rose, come with me.”

  “No,” I said. I linked hands with Augustus and Axel, and they immediately covered my hands with their own so my fingers were hidden in theirs.

  “If you want her to prick her finger, you’ll have to go through us,” Axel said.

  “Fine by me,” she said. “Guards!”

  Axel still had his sword, so he shoved us back and threw himself into a fight against three men. Augustus clutched both my hands.

  “You can cast magic,” I told him. “It’s too late for rules.”

  “In battle?” He looked unsure.

  “Why not? Is it that different from hunting?”

  “Very different,” he said, as Axel drove his sword through a man’s stomach and quickly took the man’s own sword to keep up the fight without missing a beat. “But…to protect you…I’ll try anything.” He gave me a quick kiss. “Let me borrow this.”

  He lifted my skirts and the King’s Vine slithered down my legs and into his hand.

  One of the soldiers slashed Axel’s side and I shrieked. As Axel was thrown off balanc
e, Augustus reached out and snagged the man’s hand inside the coils of the vine. He quickly pulled it downward and lashed his hands together, then took his sword.

  Axel defeated the last man and they both rushed to shut the doors before any more guards could come, but the ugly goblin beat them to it.

  “You want a door to the Wicked Revels, is that it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Augustus said. “Thank you.”

  “Help me shove aside the bed and off you’ll go.”

  “Who are you, sir?” I asked, surprised at his abrupt kindness with no questions asked.

  “Well, I grew up in the Wicked Revels, and I do agree with the Witch on one thing; I think you’d be better off liberated from the rules of the palace, but I don’t agree with how she’s going about it. I don’t know how much I can help, but at least I can show you to safety.”

  “And your name?” I asked.

  “Call me Merry. But I don’t think you’ll see me again.”

  “You’re not coming with us?” Augustus asked.

  “No, no, I’ll see what I can do here,” Merry said.

  “Please…if I could beg one favor of you, could you try to get a message to Julia and Louisa and tell them I’m all right?”

  “I will.”

  I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, having nothing else with which to show my gratitude, but he looked like this was more than he ever expected.

  The men shoved the bed aside and even though I knew they must be moving the bed for a reason I was still surprised to see a stairway leading down into a glowing passageway under the palace.

  “Was that there before…?”

  “Of course it wasn’t,” Merry said. “But that’s the way home. Tell the queen I said hello.”

  “Ah—you left the King’s Vine there,” I said, realizing I felt rather naked as I started to walk.

  “Oh, you won’t need it where you’re going, Your Majesty,” Merry said. “Whatever awaits you, I’m sure even you will be surprised.”

  Chapter Seven

  Down the path we went, to a grove of trees. A faery maiden came out to meet us and she immediately danced around us excitedly.

  “The King and Queen of the Sun Palace, and the Sword of the King! Oh my, oh my, but we shall have fun.”

  “We’re not exactly here for fun,” Augustus said. “We had to save Rose from the curse.”

  “Nevertheless, you will have fun,” she said.

  “Is that a threat?” Axel asked.

  “Perhaps it is. But we aren’t troubled with all those surface worries. The Wicked Revels, like it or not, will draw out all your secret desires. I hope you’re ready for it.”

  “I don’t think we could have any secret desires left,” Axel said.

  She laughed. “Oh, elf! There is always another layer of the onion. Or should I say, another petal of the rose?” Another woman had joined her and they started stripping me of my clothes.

  I can’t say, by now, that I should be surprised or embarrassed when strangers started unlacing my bodice or peeling my stockings off my legs, and yet—everything was so orchestrated and planned in the Sun Palace. They plucked my clothes off with glee, leaving me standing in the grass and the breeze, while Augustus watched me, as was his right.

  “Don’t intervene, Axel,” he said. “This is how things are here. I’ve always wanted to see this place. The air thrums with magic.”

  “You have left us very little to do! What a nice bare sex!” One of the maidens smacked my pussy.

  “What!” I gasped, as a little flash of bright pain shot through me and she giggled. “I don’t know if I like this place after all!” I was reminded very much of my first entrance into the faery kingdom, when I was stripped naked while Augustus watched me, the same way he watched me now.

  “Even here, you are still the Queen Who Bowed,” Augustus said, arching one brow. “Remember that.”

  In the Sun Palace, I could never disobey him. I had let my guard down, because I always heard that the Wicked Revels was a place of freedom, but they were still faeries and word could spread, so I still should defer to my husband unless we found some privacy.

  Yes, I understood, but it seemed to me that everything we had known was crumbling away. I turned away from him, covering my breasts, while the faery maidens ran off to pluck a dress out of the trees, or so it seemed.

  “Well,” he said. “What next?”

  The faeries emerged with a long, slinking length of nearly sheer silk with impossibly delicate vines twisting around the bodice and the skirt like ribbons. The vines were flowering with glorious purple blossoms. They slipped the fabric over my shoulders and the vines wrapped around me to hold the silk closed, just barely. My body was still visible but veiled, my nipples dark marks under the silk, the shadow of my sex between the very slight swell of my belly and my thighs. The skirt fell to my feet but unlike the wide skirts I was used to, it clung to my legs and dipped very low in back.

  I hardly felt like I was wearing anything at all. The vines moved subtly with my every step, and didn’t restrict my waist or anything else. My arms were bare and so were my legs, under the cloth.

  I liked the way it felt, and the flowers blooming all over the dress, but I was extremely exposed. My eyes darted to Augustus. Would he allow everyone to admire me like this? In the Sun Palace, subtlety was the name of the game.

  The faery girls weren’t done. They brought forth jewelry made of gold and precious stones, to adorn the bare skin at my ankles, my arms and wrists, and my neckline. They let my hair flow long and loose. They gave me light slippers to wear—“So you can dance the night away!”

  Axel’s mouth was hanging open slightly.

  “She probably suits elven tastes now, hm?” Augustus said teasingly.

  “She is always beautiful, but I must admit… Rose, you are transformed.”

  “Now, you two handsome escorts, go on and meet the King and Queen!” the faery girls said.

  “Did you hear that?” I said. “You’re just my escorts.” I smiled a little, shaking my head just to feel my hair loose, my footsteps almost skipping to feel how very light I was without the heavy silk of Ellurine.

  Augustus caught me around the waist with one hand and yanked me back against him, giving me a brief but very deep kiss. “Just because,” he said.

  We came to a river, where a small, elegant boat with a lantern at the prow awaited our arrival. A tall faery man with long fair hair steered us across, where we could hear the beat of drums and the music of a fiddle.

  The Wicked Revels awaited us. Lights glowed in the forest ahead. The boat sailed along placid, moonlit waters. Our oarsman gave us a mysterious smile as he brought us to the opposing shore. Axel sprung onto the dock ahead of us and Augustus lifted me into Axel’s arms.

  The beat of drums was louder now, and I heard whoops of joy and stomping feet. The sky was full of stars. Dancers moved through a clearing ahead, while the forest around us seemed to draw its own breath. The vines of my dress curled at the ends, brushing the ferns as I walked by, like they were saying hello. Frogs and insects trilled in the night air. Winter seemed far away.

  “What a strange place,” I murmured. “It really isn’t of our world at all, is it?”

  “Faeries have always been able to slip in and out of this realm,” Augustus said. “A long time ago, some of us chose to take up permanent residence in the human world, while others remained here. By now, we’re almost two different races. In the human world, things are much more fixed. Where we’re from, you can’t have eternal spring, no matter how hard you will it.” He sounded a little disapproving.

  “Are you competitive with these faeries?” I asked.

  “No. They are still our allies, and their lives are too different for me to compete with.”

  “I think that expression is more judgmental than competitive,” Axel said.

  “I withhold judgment,” Augustus said.

  “Ah. So we’ll hear about it later after he can put i
t into words,” Axel said, winking at me. While Augustus seemed to bristle about escaping into the Revels, Axel was already relaxing, his steps moving with the beat of the music. He had to be so restrained in the Sun Palace because his existence had always been against the rules, but the one thing we knew about the Revels was that the only rule was to follow one’s pleasure, one’s wildest fancies.

  The revelers were certainly doing just that. I heard sighs and moans from the depths of the forest and I knew that wasn’t coming from the trees.

  Now we came into a clearing where small fires burned and strange faeries frolicked and waltzed and cavorted, from the nymphs with hair to their knees, to the water faeries with webbed hands. There were also some goblins in attendance, with their mouths crowded with fangs and leaves in their wild curls, and I thought of my own friends with goblin blood. Julia would love this place. Many of the revelers wore masks, and some wore very little else, so my sheer dress fit right in. I saw one human girl, her skin flushed bright red under her mask, her arms entwined around a faery gentleman’s neck, her breath quick.

  I wondered if she had a vine snaking under her skirts and teasing her at this very moment. My own skin flushed with sympathy.

  Tables of food and wine were set up and well picked over, and it was all presided over by a middle-aged couple wearing simple crowns and robes. The king was as fair a faery as I could imagine; he had blonde hair, alabaster skin, and an untouchable expression. The queen looked—much to my surprise—human, with large, warm eyes, nut-brown curls and deep dimples in her cheeks that made her look younger as soon as she smiled at us.

  “Your Majesties, may I present to you, Queen Alexandra and King Ladinas of the Wicked Revels. And, Your Majesties, may I present King Augustus and Queen Marie-Rose of Ellurine,” the herald said.

  Queen Alexandra immediately stepped down from her raised table, sloughing off her robe and leaving it crumpled on the chair, where her husband picked it up and resettled it more neatly. I liked her already.

  “King Augustus. Oh dear…if you’re here, then…”

  “I can’t say it is good news for the situation back home,” Augustus said. “But I thank you for offering us sanctuary.”