Once Upon a Dream (17 page)

“No, it wasn’t.”

Suddenly, she didn’t feel like smiling—didn’t feel the urge to mirror his face. She felt weak and sick. The strength and determination she had felt just a moment before withered under scrutiny.

“It
was
a trap, wasn’t it? She knows where we are. Somehow she knows I’ve figured everything out. She’s trying to stop me. To
hurt
me, if she needs to…”

“Yes, and that’s great!” Phillip said with a blindingly toothy grin.

Aurora Rose blinked at him. She found herself wondering if the two of them were, right at that moment, caught in different realities, like her and her real sleeping body. Because he wasn’t making sense.

“I’m sorry?” she said, manners kicking in before what she really wanted to say managed to make its way to her lips.

“It means we’re on the right path—don’t you see? Every time Maleficent does something like this, every time we narrowly evade a trap or attack or whatever she sends after us, it means we’re getting closer to our goal. The fairies. The way out!”

“Oh.” She turned this over in her head. It made sense. It was also a way of thinking that was so utterly bizarre to her that she had trouble wrapping her head around it. “Bad things can mean good things. That’s…unique.”

“Nah, basic games strategy. Like when Sir Palomer starts sending all his one-point scouts after your first cavalry, you
just know
you’ve almost found where he’s hidden the crown.”

She studied him for a moment and decided to give manners a rest.

“I have
no
idea what you’re talking about.”

“Catch-the-King? Really? You’ve never played? Oh, it’s a
great
game. Even my sisters…”

She just looked at him, raising her eyebrows a little.

“Well, anyway, the point is this.” Phillip kept talking as he balanced on a giant piece of root, digging his nails into the dirt wall to balance. “It’s a good metaphor, if I do say so myself. Imagine you’re playing a very dangerous game with Maleficent. If you win, then you wake up, she dies—I assume—and everyone in the kingdom wakes up, I wake up, we all live happily ever after. If
she
wins, well, I assume she kills you, takes over the kingdom, and rains bloody hell on everyone and everything.”

Now she really
did
feel sick.

Her stomach turned. When was the last time she ate? Was there anything left to throw up? Her legs felt rubbery. The view down to the bottom of the ravine suddenly seemed a lot farther. And the way back up impossibly steep. All she knew was rabbits and birds and banquets and balls. Nothing about life and death and saving kingdoms.

Phillip had stopped when she stopped, turning around to see what was wrong. When he saw her face, he gave her a sad smile. “You said you didn’t know what it means to be a real princess. Well, now you do.

“Being a member of royalty means the lives of those you rule are more important than your own. You lead your armies into battle to protect your country from invasion. You marry people you don’t want to, to keep the peace.” He chuckled at the irony.

“And there is an
entire kingdom
of people asleep, at Maleficent’s mercy, depending on
you
to rescue them. This is your quest. This is
your
adventure.”

He reached out and gave her white-knuckled hand a squeeze, then a comradely pat.

And then he turned around and started making his way down again.

He was right. This was simply what she needed to do. She had never been
more
needed to do anything in her whole life.

Taking a deep breath, she followed.

“I cannot
believe
you’ve never played Catch-the-King!” he went on, even as he nearly tripped over a narrow ledge that shifted under his feet. His hands flew up for balance, out of hers. “It’s, like, the best game
ever
! I’m not great at it—not even as good as Brigitte, between you and me—but my uncle Charles, now
he’s
the expert. What you do is set up all the markers, without your opponent seeing….”

As he prattled on, she found herself
not
listening to the boy she’d thought was the most handsome in the world just a little while ago.

Then, as he continued endlessly about the rules and setup for the game, she wondered if this was another strategic move on the part of the prince: an attempt to distract her from the weight of the burden she now realized she carried.

And after a while, the going became easier. The wide, gently sloping path a gigantic tumbling boulder had made on its descent allowed them to walk side by side for a little.

“Can I hold your hand?” Phillip suddenly asked, a little plaintively.

The princess looked up, surprised. “Sure. Yes. I suppose.”

He grinned like a kid who had just been given a pony, taking her hand and squeezing it once. He swung it as they walked. All trace of near disaster was gone from his world. He was the handsome hero prince, for whom it was all in a day’s work. The latest evil was overcome and now it was time to move on. No dwelling…despite the fact that they were several stories below the surface of the earth and deep in the ground’s shadow. With no real plan of how to cross the water at the bottom.

“Thank you,” she said after a minute or two. “For carrying me back there.”

“Of course,” he said, breaking off a root with his free hand as they walked. He looked at her mischievously. “But if I’m going to have to rescue you any more, you know, pick you up and throw you over my shoulder, it would be better if you wore softer shoes. Next time.”

“There won’t
be
a next time. I won’t be needing that service again, thank you,” she said haughtily. “I was just…caught unprepared.”

“What is it with you girls and pointy shoes, anyway? Get yourself a nice flat-heeled pair of boots, that’s all you need….”

“I didn’t wear shoes at all in the forest. I was barefoot all the time, and my skin was as thick as hides. I had
so many
shoes in the castle…all different colors.”

She stopped, thinking about it.

Then she reached down with her free hand and slipped off her golden shoes.

With a gentle toss, Aurora Rose threw them into the ravine.

“HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN WALKING?”

They were still a little soggy from tramping through the mud and water at the bottom of the ravine. Luckily, the stream wasn’t as deep as it had looked from above, but it had still been cold and generally unpleasant. Phillip’s boots sloshed a little as he stepped. Climbing back out of it took more time than going down, but she couldn’t have said how much.

“A while…I don’t know. A couple of hours?” Phillip said. “It’s hard to see under the trees—I can’t make a sundial here. It seems a little darker. Maybe the sun has set or is close to setting.”

So this is real twilight,
she thought. Not the graying-of-everything that evening at the Thorn Castle brought. Shadows were blending with solid shapes, and everything seemed to be more blue or dark purple. She held her hand out in front of her; somehow it seemed more real, more detailed than it did in sunlight. But as she looked off to the sides of the path, directly into the heart of the forest, it was already as dark as night. Impenetrably black.

Except…

She blinked her eyes, thinking she was hallucinating.

No, it
wasn’t
her imagination.
There were
tiny blue and orange wisps of light dancing just beyond the edge of where she could make things out clearly.

Fireflies? Will-o’-the-wisps? Sorcery?

And then one of the wisps bounced its way toward her.

She watched with wide eyes as it whisked this way and that and finally wound up bobbling in front of her face. Phillip continued on unheeding, muttering about finding food and whether or not dreamers needed to eat.

Inside the ball of light was, as she expected, a tiny, perfectly formed girl. Not like the previous ones; younger, with an almost childlike body. Her eyes were wide in surprise as she peered at Aurora Rose.

“You’re a fairy,” the princess stated, more for herself than anything else.

“You’re a princess!”
the tiny fairy squealed in amazement. “A beautiful, fairy-tale
princess
! In the flesh!”

The ball shrank down to the size of a pinhead, then suddenly expanded and, with a pop, disappeared. The princess blinked. The fairy was now hovering in front of her, just off her toes, mostly human sized. She had what seemed like endless waves of chestnut brown hair, a rather shockingly short tunic, and a pointy little nose.

“Oh, how
pretty
you are!” the fairy said, dipping around the girl half on her toes, half in the air. The princess spun, trying to follow.

“You—are you from the real world?” Aurora Rose asked desperately. “Did the others send you? Are you from the cottage?”

The fairy didn’t answer, too busy picking at the girl’s clothes and hair and any other bits that stuck out.

“Hey,” Phillip said politely. “Who’s your friend, Rose?”

She shrugged helplessly. But she couldn’t help smiling at the pretty, delightful, gold-sparkle-trailing creature.

“Please,”
she said, trying not to laugh at the thing’s antics. “Were you sent by Flora? Or Fauna? Or Merryweather?”

“Oh, no.” The fairy was now playing with the ends of the princess’s golden hair, touching it with awe. “Those are important, serious godmothers. Tangled up in human importance. We are wood nymphs. Fairies of the forest.
Fialla! Livuua! Malailialaila!
” she called. The nonsense names quickly degenerated into bird trills and frog calls.

More wisps came quickly bobbing through the trees.

The prince and princess watched, astounded, as more and more fairies changed into life-sized forms and landed around them. They were all tiny, skinny, large-eyed, and wore very little. Not that there was much to cover.

“Oh! Look at your
hair
! It’s like spun gold!” one of the fairies said. “But so dirty!”

“Oh, your hands! So delicate!” another said. The fairy’s fingers were delicate, too—but
too
delicate, tapering to pointy nothings at all.

“Your skin is
flawless
,” a third said, hovering in the air and examining her cheeks—a little too closely.

“Are you a prince?” a fourth asked, turning to Phillip and looking up into his face with reverence.

“Why—yes. Yes, I am.”

“How did you know I was a princess?” Aurora Rose asked. So many fairies flew around her that she was practically cocooned in golden trails. The little sparkles were warm when they landed on her, like harmless crackles from a fire. She felt both crowded and swept up by the little army of magical girls around her.

“You
look
like one, silly!” one of the fairies laughed.

“You’re so handsome,” a fairy mooned at Phillip, her hands clasped.

“Well, I…” he said, blushing.

“Look at your gown!” a fairy wailed. “Your beautiful golden gown, tarnished! Those rags are no fitting raiment for a royal princess!”

“And your
shoes
!
Where are your shoes?
”

“Come with us!” the first one said. “We will brush your hair! And magic you new clothes! And fix your nails,” she added, with a distasteful look at the ragged, dirty, torn ones on the princess. Aurora Rose had a sudden urge to hide them behind her back.

“Nope. Not leaving the path. Not again,” the prince said firmly.

“We can do it
here
then.”

“We don’t really have the time.”

“It will stay your travels but a
moment
,” the fairy pleaded. “Then you will be on your way. Refreshed and renewed—and properly dressed for the adventures ahead.”

“You look like you could use your shoulders rubbed,” another fairy said innocently, turning her big eyes to Phillip.

“Well, now that you mention it,” he said.

“A
prince
and a
princess
! Handsome and beautiful!” the first fairy squealed, clapping her hands. “We are so lucky!”

Soon there were dozens of fairies flying around, lighting the area with their golden dust and creating a strangely room-like space under the trees. One made pine needles fly up together and dance into a low couch. Another conjured a mirror out of dewdrops. A third pulled tree branches together and coaxed them into forming a screen.

“No, no, no!” one fairy teasingly chastised Phillip, pulling him away from the princess to the other side of the screen.

Aurora Rose found herself surrounded by hovering, flitting bodies that changed size and dipped and flew up and down so much that she couldn’t watch anymore. Their hands were gentle and carefully tugged at the ratty gown, flying it off over her head without any issue. The princess wasn’t cold, as she had expected to be; the golden sparkles were keeping her warm.

“Here…”

She was led to the pine needle couch, where a fairy with a basket waited.

“Tip your head back,” the fairy ordered.

She did as she was commanded. A warm cascade of water trickled over her head, getting to all the scratchy places. It felt like heaven. Her hands were being lightly scrubbed with what felt like pinecones.