Once Upon a Dream (16 page)

She remained silent, giving him that point.

But she couldn’t let it go.

“At least you
knew
what you were in for. I never knew what was happening to me—or what was
going
to happen to me.”

“Yes, that was a tactical error, I think we established that,” Phillip said, a little impatiently. “But the
point
of it was to keep you safe. You understand that, right? I’m sure in their own weird way your parents cared about you. Maleficent, despite her…
act
, most assuredly did not.”

Aurora Rose allowed herself one moment of crazy thought: what if Maleficent
had
loved her? What if her heart had melted just a little and she had really adopted the princess? And brought her into her evil ways, and taught her the great summoning spells, and made her ruthless and strong and magical? Was
that
an unhappy ending? The princess would have become a villain but would truly have had a mother. She would’ve been ruthless but independent.

Those thoughts drained away as she remembered the uneasy look in Maleficent’s eyes whenever the conversation drifted along those lines.

It was never a possibility. The princess wasn’t the right kind of daughter for her. She was too weak, too kind, too dumb….

“And bad at math,” she said aloud with a bitter smile.

“What?” Phillip asked, confused.

“I was just thinking about my relationship with Maleficent. I just meant…on top of everything else, being this stupid princess, I can’t even do the math they tried to teach me.”

“The fairies taught you math?” he asked, confused. “I didn’t even know fairies did that kind of thing.”

“No, Maleficent tried,” she said with a sigh, picking a fresh stalk of grass and starting on it. “She hired a tutor for me, but I was terrible at it.”

“Where?”

“In the castle, silly. In my bedroom or the library.”

“Yes, but
that
castle over there? In this dream?”

“
YES
, Phillip. Maleficent didn’t melt out of the woods to teach me math while I was being raised by the
fairies
.”

Phillip had the indecency to laugh at her.

“Of course you couldn’t do math here, silly! You can’t do math in dreams.”

She sat up.

“What?”

Phillip shrugged, dismissing the whole thing with one boyish expression. “Everyone knows that. For some reason you just can’t. Everyone I know—even Sir Gavin, who’s like a hundred years old—has these nightmares where you’re sitting at the desk with an abacus and the teacher above you, smacking your fingers with a rod for being so stupid. Equations don’t make sense. Even simple ones.
I
can’t do Latin in dreams, either. I don’t know if that’s true with everyone else, though. I always start out
hic haec hoc
and then things get weird. In fact, just thinking about it
now
, none of it makes sense. What
is
a declension, anyway?”

Phillip prattled on, but Aurora Rose ignored him.

Even the most
aggravating
parts of her life were a lie. Math wasn’t real in this world. About twenty years of false history and they couldn’t even be useful. The time she had spent, the tears of frustration, how
stupid
she thought she was. Stupid pretty princess.

She looked up at the heavens. The amazement at there still actually being a natural world and her being in it hadn’t quite worn off yet. The sky was a light blue and large, puffy clouds moved slowly across it. The ground was uncomfortable in a few places under her but not enough to really matter. The breeze was warm when it blew.

Phillip leaned over her and, for a moment, she caught her reflection in his eyes—but then lost herself in them instead.

“Can I kiss you? Would that be all right?” he asked softly.

She graced him with a smile.

“Is this because I look like I’m sleeping?”

“No!” Phillip said, pulling back. “Deuce it all, you just looked beautiful and I love you.”

“I was kidding, Prince Serious. You may give me one small kiss. On the cheek. For now.”

He leaned over and kissed her, but he lingered a little more than she had imagined he would. She felt his breath, warm and moist but not unpleasant. Their faces stayed close for another moment, sneaking in a second almost-kiss.

He sat up and looked at her face, into her eyes. He pushed a tendril of her hair back over her head.

She was enjoying it immensely.

“I think…” he finally said. “I think we should probably get moving. It’s kind of amazing that Maleficent hasn’t found us yet.”

“I don’t think she can leave the castle,” Aurora Rose said lazily, stretching. She wasn’t sure how she knew this. “If she could have she would have. In the last few years. Certainly by now.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to get a good head start.
She
might not be able to leave the castle, but she could send someone.”

Someone
else
outside?

The
Exile.
The
minstrel.

She had completely forgotten about them.

“Have you seen anyone else out here? Sort of a…wasted individual? Might have a lute? Or maybe you know him—our court minstrel, Master Tommins.”

Phillip raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t seen a soul or sign of anyone since I got here. It felt like I was alone in the world. Once in a while, I could hear faint sounds from the castle courtyard, mere whispers on the wind. That’s how I knew there were people inside.”

“No one? Not even a…sort of fat little older man, white mustache…thinks he’s a king…?”

Phillip’s face went ashen.

“Who is this you speak of?” he asked, trying to control his emotion.

“The Exile. He was thrown into the Outside years ago for high treason. We all assumed he died—but I guess out here he could have lived, after all.”

“What was his name?”
Phillip demanded, putting his hands on her shoulders. “There is only one other king for leagues in any direction around here.”

“We never spoke of his name—it was forbidden,” she stammered. “Hugh? Hugley? Humboldt?”

“HUBERT,”
the prince said with a cry, falling back.

“Hubert, that’s right,” Aurora said with relief. Then she suddenly got it. “Oh…”

“He’s my
father
, Rose,” Phillip said bleakly. “He’s been out here all this time and I didn’t even know it. Of course, he would have been in the castle, too—I forgot. He and your parents were in the throne room when it all happened, waiting for the wedding ceremony.”

“I’m so sorry….Well, sort of,” she added, thinking. “Perhaps it was better for him to be out here than in there all this time. Maleficent could have killed him for his blood in there.”

“We’ve got to find him,” the prince said, leaping up. “He’s lost out here, somewhere.”

“Phillip,” Aurora Rose said gently, standing up and putting her fingers on his arm. “I think the best thing we can do now is escape this whole place ourselves and wake up—rescuing everybody in the process. His body, his real self, remember, is still in the other world.”

Phillip started to argue, then stopped.

“You’re right,” he said with a deep breath. He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. “That’s the right thing to do. That’s what…
he
would want me to do. That’s what a king would do.”

They made their way stoically—if regretfully—back up the side of the pretty valley, Aurora Rose putting a comforting hand on the prince’s arm. He smiled and patted it—but that couldn’t disguise the worry that floated just below the surface of his eyes.

When they were back on the path, she took a last deep breath of the wildflowers and turned back down the path, toward the woods.

“All right, but both of my, um, potential lives involved being stuck. Stuck in a castle—the real one, I mean, in the real world—until I was sixteen and married off like a real princess,” she chatted, trying to distract him. “Or being stuck in the woods with nothing to do and no one to see. So what do normal people do? Like
not
princesses, or those cursed by wicked fairies? Like, a normal girl?”

“Well, I…” the prince trailed off, staring at the dust on the path.

“You don’t know, do you,” she said, nodding. “Because you’re not normal, either. I mean you’re
normal
, but a prince. Not like a farmer, or—”

“Rose, look,” he interrupted, pointing. “What’s that?”

Aurora Rose couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just a little area where the dust was shifting in the breeze.

And then settling down on itself like an ant lion building its pit trap just below the surface.

And then getting bigger. Spreading out like a sinkhole. Like…

“GET BACK!”
Phillip cried, spinning around and grabbing her to run.

She stumbled, unable to process what he said and what she saw and what her feet should do at the same time.

She landed hard in the dust, on the same bruises she had made falling from the top of the castle. Her left leg was twisted underneath her.

She rolled over onto her belly as quickly as she could, trying to untangle her stiff appendages—and saw the world open up before her.

Like a devouring mouth, like nothing she had ever seen before or could possibly imagine: the ground itself was falling away into a yawning crack that gaped wider and wider, pulling all the surrounding dirt and rocks and grass with it.

It devoured the path, coming toward her as fast as a horse at full gallop.

“ROSE!”
Phillip shouted, spinning around when he realized she wasn’t behind him.

Without a second thought, he ran back and grabbed her, reaching around her waist and throwing her over his shoulder.

He staggered under her weight for a moment and then began to run.

“Put me down!” she shrieked. “I can walk!”

She watched, upside down, as the earth continued to be eaten away, the edge of the abyss now almost at his feet.

“Didn’t seem like it,” Phillip huffed.

“PUT ME DOWN!”
she screamed.
“We’ll go faster!”

Swearing, the prince did, pausing only a moment to set her on her feet.

He did not let go of her hand.

The two took off, and he only had to pull her a little.
Grace
—the fairies’ gift, according to his story—seemed to pertain to her running as well as dancing. She might not have been as fast as he, but she was nimble and fleet and didn’t need to look at her feet to avoid stumbling.

But it didn’t help her with stamina.

She pushed hard, almost crying at the effort. There was a tiny part of her that just wanted to give up and admit there was no escape and no sense wasting energy trying. But she was astonished to see that weak impulse completely overcome by the immediate will to survive. She couldn’t have stopped running if she wanted to.

She also chose not to look back; the screams of the ground and the cracking, rocky noises behind them were enough to speed them on.

She suddenly realized they were running back the way they had come, back toward the castle.

But surely, if this was an attack from Maleficent, it wouldn’t destroy the
castle
, would it? With her and her minions and her victims all still in it?

The princess yanked Phillip’s hand and led him, cutting through the clearing where they had met the second time, aiming straight for the silent gray structure looming above the surrounding countryside.

“No!” Phillip cried when he realized where they were going.

But just a few feet from the first outlying thorny vines, the noise behind them stopped.

Phillip and Aurora Rose slowed down clumsily, with heavy thuds of their feet, winded and exhausted.

Slowly, they turned around.

Between them and the forest was now an epic ravine.

The two staggered backward as they tried to see the whole thing from a single viewpoint. It was at least several furlongs across to the other side of the path.

“
I
wouldn’t put this in a dream,” the princess said shakily.

It was like the gorge was too large to be believable—like her mind couldn’t encompass just how large it was. Her eyes kept darting to different points along its cliffs: where the dirt changed color, where there was a particularly large rock jutting out, where what looked very much like giant, ancient bones pressed up against the newly revealed earth. Anything to focus on and distract her from trying to comprehend the whole thing.

All was silent now, except for the occasional distant tumble of rock or
sssht
of a scree avalanche working itself free from somewhere in the depths.

Cautiously, without saying a word, Aurora Rose and Phillip shuffled to the edge and peered over.

The ravine wasn’t
endlessly
deep, as each had probably feared, but it was
fairly
deep. And it was filling with water as rivers and lakes along it were being drained into its bottom.

Phillip and Aurora Rose looked at each other.

“If we go down to cross,” the prince said hesitantly, “she could seal it back up over us immediately. Right?”

The idea of instant black death did not appeal to the princess at all. But neither did the idea of being stuck in the half-state of a dreamworld forever.

“But if she
wanted
to kill us outright, couldn’t she have just opened the earth immediately below us? She’s trying to lead us back—force us back into the castle. She needs us—or me—alive and close by. For now.”

“Hmmm. Good point.”

“Besides…do we have a choice?”

The prince sighed and shook his head.

“No.”

He started his way down, testing the firmness of footholds before holding out his hand to her.

She took it, idly observing how in moments of need, at least, his touch was certainly becoming less strange. Her other hand she trailed along the cool dirt beside her, letting it tangle in roots. How much of this was the real world, and how much was secret layers of her own self?

“Well, it
wasn’t
the stream I drank from,” Phillip said with a lopsided smile. “That was the trap, I mean.”