The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty

by Lidiya Foxglove

  Merry spun her toward a tiny mirror on the wall. “Now you know an illusion spell. Before you know it, you can do as the witch does and look young for a hundred years.”

  Jeanne paused, considering the unnatural state of her face in the glass. “I don’t think I want that.”

  “Wise,” he said.

  Wise? Well, now it was a day later and she was being dragged out of a carriage by the witch’s guards, wearing Julia’s face. True, she had the golden scarf, and Merry’s confidence, and the latter was surprisingly comforting. But…she still didn’t feel very wise.

  “Well, well,” the witch said. “What have we here? One of the queen’s special friends. A woman who had all the favors and privileges of royalty and, if I’m not mistaken, took a lover who was not her husband?”

  All around the courtyard where Jeanne had been pulled from the carriage, people were shouting and jeering, just as it was every other time.

  At least Jeanne no longer had to pretend she approved. She whipped her head around, frowning at the crowd. “How many people will die before this is all over?” she demanded. “What purpose does it serve to kill me and so many others? You won’t stamp out your suffering this way. It’s just not that simple. This is nothing but a terror!”

  “Terror,” the witch said, “is simply justice delivered swiftly. And so it is a wonderful virtue.”

  “Madame,” the guards said. “Do be careful of her. We caught her here in the city. She came here, probably with some plot to follow her friend the queen.”

  And then a voice came down from the tower, as a young woman stepped out onto the balcony.

  “I, Marie Rose, Queen of the Sun Palace, wish to speak to my people and the Cobblestone Witch.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  I looked at the crowd, and they quieted down when they saw me.

  I felt very far away from them. None of this seemed real. That helped me to feel up to the task.

  “Julia…!” I whispered the name as I realized that my friend was being brought to the executioner.

  Julia shot me a stern look and shook her head a little. I wasn’t sure what she meant by it, but I realized quickly that I had to gather my thoughts while all eyes were on me.

  “Where were you hiding?” someone yelled at me.

  The Queen Who Bowed didn’t give speeches. I had stood at Augustus’ side, in my official role. But now I had this one chance to speak for myself.

  “I am a human,” I said. “I was not born one of you. But when I was just a young woman who knew nothing of men, I was sent here to marry King Augustus. The rules I was given were all strange to me, but I tried my very best to conform to all of them. I was a slave to my husband’s desires, and before long, my role and my self were intertwined. It seemed like I had never known anything else. My freedom was gone. My self was gone. By the time I had to bow to Augustus and become the queen, I am not sure I could ever have gone home. I don’t think I could live without him. And part of the reason I am devoted to Augustus is because he was so devoted to his own role. Both as my master, and as the master of this land.”

  The crowd grumbled and shouted a few curses at me. “Whore!” “You put the kingdom into debt!” I could see that they didn’t believe we had ever tried. Whatever chance we had to earn their trust was long gone.

  “I will accept my curse!” I screamed, loud enough to shut them up. “I accept it as my penance, because I have failed you as a queen! I relished my gowns and my jewels and I thought they were my due, because there is no part of my body, mind or soul that has not been stripped bare and put on display for you! And yet, I don’t know my people, and you don’t know me. I am here to acknowledge what we all know is the truth: this does not work. The faery realm has been forced into something that doesn’t suit it. I have just come from the Wicked Revels, where the faeries are still free to dance the night away, and they are happy. But they have their own realm, where they have removed themselves from living alongside humans and elves…you must have rooted yourself in this realm because there was something in this world that you wanted. Whatever it is, I think you should figure it out for yourselves. I will sleep, if that’s what you want, and spare my child from this strange world. All I ask is that you end this bloodshed. No more deaths.”

  They were listening to me now, but not exactly kind. I retained some shred of respect with the people, but it hung by a thread. I had to choose my next words very carefully.

  “Let King Augustus live. And…and…” I faltered because I knew I should leave it there, but I couldn’t. “Let Count Farren stay at his side, as the Sword of the King.”

  Axel. He was my greatest weakness.

  The crowd seized on my last words.

  “Count Farren!” “Bloody elf!” “Send him home!” “The queen only bows to the king!”

  An oddly serene, if twisted, smile broke out on my face.

  So, that’s it, I thought. If I had just left it at Augustus, perhaps they would have let me have him. But I had to ask for more. And I can’t regret it, even now. If I’m gone, Augustus and Axel will need each other.

  I stood there, calm in my defeat. They would have to come and get me.

  They were shoving their way up the balconies, coming closer and closer, while the Witch shouted, “Seize her!”

  Still, I waited. I just kept looking down at Julia, who seemed afraid for me now.

  The door behind me burst open. The guards cuffed my hands behind my back. Someone tore the pins and ribbons from my hair and an old woman ripped the lacework off my dress. I was very aware that my body was small and vulnerable, especially in my gown. I had done the best I could, I thought. My mother would be proud because I didn’t run away to the Wicked Revels. And if I finally accepted the curse, maybe everything would calm down enough to spare my friends and Augustus and Axel.

  They could live their lives knowing I would have their child someday.

  When I wake up, all I will have left of them is this child. I can take my baby to its father’s grave…and tell it…

  I bit my lip, forcing down my fear, as they urged me down the stairs to where the witch was waiting in the courtyard, next to my oldest friend.

  “Julia…are you…?”

  Julia still held back from me. She had a dangerous look in her eyes. I glanced around, unsure if I had missed something.

  “So, it is time,” the witch said. “I was a little worried that you eluded me once. Love saved you then. Now…” She whispered. “It ruins you. You will sacrifice yourself to save them, because no one can ever truly escape my curse.”

  “Please don’t hurt them. Don’t hurt my dearest ones. Please…I give you myself to save them.”

  “My dear girl, the king must die. He deserves no trial because he has already been judged by the people. A trial suggests there is some chance he may be absolved, and we all know we’re too far gone for that. He is a condemned man. If he could be presumed innocent, then what comes of my revolution? If he could be innocent, then everyone who stood against him, all these fine people, are guilty. I don’t hate your husband, sweet Rose, but I hate his crimes. Augustus must die so that the nation may live.”

  This logic was so twisted that I hardly knew how to argue it.

  I shouldn’t have come, but I had to come, and that was the trap that had ensnared us long ago. We could die as king and queen, or we could hide as exiles.

  “If that is how you feel, then kill me too,” I said.

  “Bring out the spindle,” the witch commanded the guards. “Let the kingdom bear witness. When you wake up, you will be alone in the world, and you will bear your child. But don’t you want that child to live?”

  I swallowed. “They will live, then, and I will make sure you never lay a finger on them. This quest for revenge you’re on will turn you to dust long before the hundred years is over, and magic won’t save you.”

  Maybe it was just bravado, but that was still better than fear. If Augustus had taught me one
thing, it was to control myself at all times.

  Julia was still looking agitated and not acting like herself. “Can I say one thing to my dear friend?” she asked.

  Some of the crowd jeered.

  “Once you fall asleep, I’ll save Augustus,” she whispered to me hastily.

  “How?”

  But this wasn’t really the time for answers.

  The guards brought out the spinning wheel and set it down in front of the executioner’s stone. By now, the crowd had grown very somber, to the point where I’m not sure they were enjoying themselves much. When I touched the sharp point, there was no going back. Not a single person here would live to see the birth of the prince or princess.

  This had always been my fate, and I would see Augustus in my dreams.

  Drums began to play all around me, and the witch couldn’t hide her anticipation.

  “I have given you everything of myself,” I said. “But this moment is the last of me you will live to see. None of you will ever forget me, and I hope you will be happier with the world you create over the next hundred years.”

  There was a bite in my words, it’s true. I would embrace my fate. I saw no other choice that befit a queen.

  But I didn’t have to like it.

  “Rose,” the witch whispered. “The world will be different, it’s true. But it will be better. Your child will grow up to be wild.”

  “If this is what you call better, then I want no part of it.”

  When I saw the spindle gleaming, I lifted my hand and I couldn’t help that it trembled a little, but I wondered if I could stop myself, even if I tried.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Interlude

  Jeanne held her breath. She watched as the queen touched the spindle, and the whole crowd seemed to wince. A few people cried out for her to stop, as her finger brushed the tip.

  The spindle pricked her, and she immediately collapsed.

  Once the queen fell, something seemed to pass over the entire crowd, as if they had woken from a dream. Rose’s curse had stood for so long that everyone could feel the relief of it finally being over.

  Part of it was seeing the woman who had reigned over them in gold and jewels and magnificent splendor, at her king’s side, in her opera box or peering out of her carriage, reduced back down to just being a girl. She looked scared before she fell, but no one could deny that she was brave to come here, just as she was brave to stand on the balcony of the palace and let everyone see her under the king’s mastery.

  Crowds can easily become mobs, but it only takes one moment to turn them the other way. Some of the people who saw the queen fall asleep realized that they had always secretly sympathized with her, and now the ones who jeered her a moment ago skulked off, grumbling.

  It was all happening just the way Merry hoped it would.

  The Cobblestone Witch threw out her hands. “The queen sleeps for a hundred years!” she cried in triumph. “And if the king dares to show his face, he deserves nothing less than death, because he stole your bread and murdered your children.”

  “And who created the spell that caused the long winter?” Jeanne asked.

  The witch shot her a look. “The long winter was part of the natural cycle.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Her hands were bound, but she shimmied her shoulders and shook off the cloth that cloaked her. It fell to the ground and revealed her own face. “I am Jeanne du Bariel, and I have worked alongside the Cobblestone Witch. She taught me many things; how to make herbal concoctions to give to children with fevers and workmen with burns… I was, in many ways, a wicked woman, so I thought I was well suited to work for a witch. I was born to nothing and crawled my own way up the chain, offering my body and my beauty to men until I was the lover of King Emriel himself. But as I worked for the Cobblestone Witch, something strange happened to me. I started to care for something more than my own self. In helping so many of you, what was once mere self-preservation led to me being a part of these streets. And that was when the Cobblestone Witch asked me to help her cast a spell to make this winter particularly long and cold.”

  “That is a lie,” the Cobblestone Witch said. “I would never hurt the people of this town.”

  “You did it because you felt it was necessary,” Jeanne said. “You told me that hundreds will die so that countless more would have a world of equality and freedom. And on that night, I agreed willingly. I liked the taste of power you offered me. I was becoming a witch, instead of a woman who relies on men. I am telling the truth today, knowing that I might be punished alongside you for what we did on that moonlit night.”

  The crowd buzzed with shock. They believed Jeanne, because Jeanne was telling the truth, and truth does have its own sort of magic. Even as Jeanne worried she might die, she felt a weight lifted off her shoulders.

  Merry stood in the crowd, and he finally stepped forward so she could see him. He tipped his hat at her and his expression was proud. She sensed a trust between them, but in this moment, his first duty was to the queen, and to avenge his own family.

  The people hesitated at first, unsure how to react. Words were passed from neighbor to neighbor, revolutionary to revolutionary, all around the courtyard, and soon the guards heard calls to arrest the witch. Jeanne was already tied up, and she was caught up in it as an afterthought, her arm caught by a guard.

  “Wait,” Merry said. He walked up to her. “You can handle one night in prison, I think. It might be safer than the world outside. But I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you, Jeanne. I know my ugly face doesn’t inspire confidence, but you did the right thing.”

  “Merry…you did inspire me, because you trusted me, and I don’t care how ugly you are,” she said. “No handsome man has ever made me feel like I had the power to change anything.”

  “Well, I still wish I could have been a more attractive specimen and a decent person at the same time.”

  She scoffed. “If you think I’m a pretty one, maybe I don’t mind after all.”

  He looked surprised, and if he had any plan to act on it, the guard dragged her away before he could.

  Jeanne didn’t resist, but the witch had been fighting all her life to get to this moment and she had started waving her hands and shouting curses at the crowd. Dark magic seeped from her hands, killing some of the people who rushed at her.

  “Get her! She’s escaping!” A cloud of dark smoke emerged from where the witch stood and the men who rushed into it had to draw back, coughing. When the smoke cleared, the witch was gone.

  Marie Rose slept, fallen on the blood-stained pavement of the courtyard. Fighting broke out around her, but her mind was in another world.

  Merry took her into his arms and protected her against the fighting, standing guard in front of the spinning wheel. “Sleep well,” he said. “When you wake, things will look different.”

  Late that night, the northern guard and their high elf allies rode toward the city. They found the city dark. The guards of Ellurine saluted, seeing the uniforms of the royal guard, but stopped them at the gate.

  “Commander, you should know that the city is in chaos. The queen has fallen to her curse and we heard the Cobblestone Witch might be dead. They turned on her. King Augustus and Count Farren are still in hiding.”

  “Where is the queen’s body?”

  “The fortress. But she isn’t a body. She’s just sleeping.”

  “And the witch?”

  “We’ve sent out a search for her.”

  No one held them up as they rode to the fortress. People watched the northern guard pass, and children pointed at the high elves, even though it was past midnight and it was disconcerting to see children still awake. It seemed that no one in the city could sleep, even as the queen was cursed to sleep for all her life.

  The witch ran into the forest.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I blinked awake. I was in my bed in the Palace of the Sun, and it was the most beautiful day, with the windows open and the cur
tains dancing and sun pouring in with the scent of the garden below carried right to me on the spring breeze.

  “Wha?” I wiped my eyes.

  I looked for the ladies who were always at hand to dress me in the morning, but I was alone. Then I realized I was already wearing a dress, one of the soft linen gowns I liked best, with beautiful lace at the collar and a spring of flowers pinned just beneath the cream mounds of my breasts. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was loose.

  I heard music outside and I went to the window.

  The faeries were dancing in the garden. The ladies had taken their shoes off.

  “It’s like the Wicked Revels,” I breathed.

  I had never seen the people of my court look so happy. There were no steps to the dance, no rigid rules for the musicians to follow. Children danced with the adults and the dogs were frolicking excitedly down the garden paths.

  But where was Augustus and Axel? Where were my friends?

  There was a knock on my door.

  A knock? How strange to hear that. Usually my day was scheduled and I had no privacy, and people walked in and out of my chambers without permission, sometimes even to see Augustus pleasuring me or me sucking his cock.

  For that matter, why was I not tied to my bed?

  I patted my thighs under the thin gown and felt the King’s Vine was still around my legs, and I felt a little quiver of relief, but the vine didn’t move.

  I opened the door.

  Madame Bertin stood there with a basket of flowers and ribbons, but she set the basket down and gave me an elegant curtsey. “You’re here, my queen. So you’ve fallen into your long sleep. What a lovely dream you’ve given us.” She nodded toward the sound of music coming through my windows. “So this must be the Sun Palace as you wished it to be.”

  “A dream!?” The memories rushed into my mind of the witch and the courtyard and the terrible looks on the faces of the crowd and the spindle… “Oh, no…oh, my dear Madame Bertin! None of this is real, then. You aren’t real. I have to get back. I have to wake up!”