Once Upon a Dream (21 page)

Finally, it sang a song so sad that even the windup bird’s unnatural notes brought tears to all of the listeners’ eyes. Aurora Rose gave it an equally sad, shaky rejoinder. The thing paused for a long moment, fluttering its wings nervously.

It had used up its library of music.

Somewhat regretful the show was over, Phillip turned to Ozrey. “Well, seems like—”

And then it began to improvise.

Tentatively, at first. It began to sing a sad little tune—as if it was truly distraught over almost losing the contest. But then little arias built on themselves, climbing higher and higher, in dizzying complexity. The music turned joyful again as the windup toy sang its clockwork heart out.

Without waiting for her turn, the princess joined in, eager to be a part of such a beautiful thing.

Their duet was like nothing she had ever experienced. She thought she was following the bird, but then maybe sometimes the bird was following her. Could a toy do that? Or was she imagining it? She sang notes she had never hit before, higher than she had ever dared. Song
was
her gift. And for the first time ever, she was fully enjoying it.

“Rose…”

Phillip’s voice came from far away, a little worried sounding. She almost laughed, almost missed a note. She would win the contest. The bird would wind down.

But, she hoped, not yet.

Her throat began to hurt a little.

The bird trilled an arpeggio that soared up and up—she sang a descant that climbed beyond.

She closed her eyes and held a single tone for what seemed like forever; she opened them to look up at the night sky. Each of her notes, each of the bird’s notes, rose and became a star. A little bit of her soul, her voice, caught and rose and would now glitter in the heavens forever. Why hadn’t she seen this before? She could sing the sky.

She held one note for so long that little flecks of blood came out of her mouth.

It was perfect, not disturbing. Her blood became tiny red stars, joining the notes and other stars; she was part of it all, her body and spirit and the music and the universe.

Then a single irritatingly off and banal note ruined everything.

The princess came to, forced to refocus her eyes closer to the earth; a tree branch resolved itself in black detail against the sky. Perched on it like a lump was a nightjar, an ugly, large-mouthed brown-and-black bird. It
chucked
and whistled its ugly call out into the void.

Was it looking at her?

Its voice was scratchy but nuanced, unlike the toy bird. It
carried
. Over the fields and even above the blurry din of the village dance and band, instead of disappearing up into the sky or falling tinkling to the ground, the male bird was calling plaintively for a friend, for a mate.

The princess forgot her song.

Ozrey was looking at her intently. Otherwise neither he nor Phillip was moving. But the little mechanical bird kept singing and glittering and jerking back and forth in its cage.

Its notes sounded silly. Toylike.

Aurora Rose suddenly felt sick and pained, her throat burning. She blinked at the little windup bird.

“That’s it, then,” Ozrey said, suddenly unfrozen. He spoke nervously. “You’ve stopped singing. You’ve lost the bet.”

Aurora Rose looked back up at the nightjar. She raised up a graceful hand. There was no reason the carnivorous and mostly shy bird should leave its perch and alight on her finger.

But it did.

How did she know it was carnivorous?

It burbled happily and did everything but rub its strange, whiskered beak on her hand like a cat. She stroked the back of its head.

“I’ll have your sword,” Ozrey continued.

“There
was
no bet,” Aurora croaked, her voice ruined. “Another trap. He…tricking me…singing forever.”

Phillip looked confused at first. His gaze moved from Ozrey to his bird to the princess and her bird, and then back again.

Then his face went white with rage.

“I should kill you where you stand,”
he swore, starting to pull out his sword.

Aurora Rose opened her hand and the little brown-and-black bird flew away. Saved by a creature of the forest. They remembered her and found her, even in her dreams.

Whatever happened, if she wound up alive and back in the real world, she would never,
ever
forget them. No matter what path her life took.

Ozrey wasn’t reacting to either the prince’s threats or the turn the situation had taken. His eyes were now strangely opaque, like Lianna’s.

“How did you get past the protective wards, demon?” Phillip demanded.

“Oh, everyone knows old
Ozrey
,” the thing that obviously wasn’t human said with a leer. “Everyone helps open the gate and lets him get his wagon through. You might say my current…
role
…fits like a second skin. No one sees through it.”

The princess coughed, the wounds in her throat itching and scratching. A small gobbet of blood sprayed out onto the ground.

“You do have a lovely voice,
Princess
,” Ozrey said with a nasty sneer.

Phillip made an inarticulate sound of rage. Before she could stop him, he drew his sword and drove the blade into Ozrey’s heart.

The thing that looked like a person squealed like a pig. He shuddered and vibrated and shook in a way that no normal creature did when it died. Black oily smoke poured out of his eyes and nose and the wound in his chest. But unlike the others, his skin began to collapse. Great swags of it bagged and pooled in dry puddles on the ground.

The smoke dissipated with a hiss and a terrible smell. All that was left was the thin shell of the original Ozrey, the human-shaped husk a demon had hollowed out and moved into like a mummer into a costume.

The princess turned and closed her eyes.
It’s not real,
she mouthed silently to herself. But
was
there a real Ozrey, in the real world? Was he dead now? Was there a real demon in the real world as well? Was
it
dead, too? Where did the dream end and reality begin?

“Well…at least he won’t report this back to her now,” Phillip said shakily, wiping his sword on the grass again.

The princess coughed—a little less blood this time. She really
would
have kept singing forever. Someday, when she was awake, this would be a hard-to-keep-hold-of dream memory. The only thing that would remain would be a
feeling
that she had sung with the angels, that she was one with the universe.

And she would never do it again.

She wished she could talk so she could tell Phillip how she felt, how Maleficent ruined everything and hurt her in ways she never expected. But it was too painful—in every sense of the word

“Let’s…get out of here,” Phillip suggested. “Hide until morning, in case there are more of her spies around. We’ll go out to the far fields—keep warm in a haystack maybe.”

She didn’t argue, exhausted and dispirited and unable to speak.

Out in the meadows, the last insects of summer were chirping comfortingly and the ground smelled of dry grass and clean dirt. The princess drew out of herself some, marveling at all the sensations. But she was still caught in her memories of being stuck in the castle, where all was sterile and dead.

Phillip chose a large pile of hay and dug into it, making a little hollow for them. After she clambered in and settled down, he got in next to her…then pulled out his sword and placed it between them.

She gave it, and him, a curious look.

“They do it in fairy tales?” he said. “You know, to keep from…It means that I can’t…It’s sort of symbolic. Oh, never mind. If anyone ever asks you about tonight, you can say there was a double-bladed sword between us and your chastity was safe.”

She raised her eyebrows at him wearily. It was a strange thing to be concerned about right then. Considering none of this was even real.

“Just forget about it. Go to sleep. Rest. Whatever one does in a dream when one is tired,” Phillip said, taking off his cape and laying it over both of them. “I know
I’m
exhausted.”

She curled up, her back to him. It would have been warmer if the sword wasn’t there. She wanted to be held. By Phillip or her fake aunts or a real mother or father—or even Maleficent, the way she imagined her to be.

Tears began to fall silently from her eyes and soaked the hay under her head, faster and faster, until she finally slept.

And that’s when she finally woke up.

SOMEONE WAS SHAKING HER.

Aurora rolled over and saw concerned-looking adults—serious people in somber clothing and gold medallions of office. They crowded over her.

“Wake up, Your Highness. It’s over. You’re queen now. Maleficent has been overthrown. Your parents were, unfortunately, lost. We need you back at the castle. We can get you there. It’s all a terrible mess.”

Aurora blinked and let herself be pulled up. They were very insistent. And a little rough. She turned once to look at the prince, who should still have been sleeping, but it was like she couldn’t see him.

“Phillip,” she croaked, her voice still hoarse from the contest.

“Later,” the apparent leader said. “You’ve a lot to take care of, my lady. Excuse me, I mean Your Majesty. I am the castellan—I worked for your father, the king. And now you.”

She was shuffled to a waiting carriage, golden and royal, pulled by four beautiful chestnut horses. Before she could give them a friendly pet, the door was opened, she was ushered in, and they immediately set off.

She was bounced around and sleepy and sick, and in no time at all, they were out of the forest and pulling up to the castle—which was neither covered in vines nor looked like it ever had been; this was how she knew she was finally awake.

The moat was back and filled with water, and they crossed over the drawbridge and through a bailey uninterrupted by survival gardens or rain catchers. It was crowded with normal life: peasants, tradesmen, merchants, farmers, and animals.

“You must speak to the people,” the castellan was saying. He held her arm as she stumbled out of the carriage, unable to tear her eyes away from the scene. “Your parents would have wanted this.”

“My parents?” She blinked in the bright late-morning light.

“Please, Your Majesty, there is time to explain all that later,” he said. There were lines on the castellan’s face and a single age spot near his serious, straight brows. He wasn’t a pretty person or an ugly person, either. That was another reason she knew she was awake and this wasn’t a dream.

They pushed her into the castle and up a flight of stairs; someone hastily threw a purple velvet cape around her shoulders to cover up her rags; someone else stuck a very golden—and very heavy—diadem on her head. Her neck bent under its weight. A scepter was placed in her right hand.

Then she was shoved in front of a large window—the same window where she had last seen Maleficent, ordering her capture.

Horns sounded. The chaotic crowds below suddenly turned, almost as one, to look up at her.

Aurora stood as tall and erect as she could, trying not to gape like a goldfish. She was still sleepy, and her mind was clouded and the crown was heavy and the cape was hot. There were strands of hair in her face that were very tickly.

What should she say? What
could
she say to all of those expectant faces below?

What had happened, really?

She had fallen asleep…and then…Phillip said the fairies put everyone in the kingdom to sleep…and then they were ruled in the nightmare world by the undead Maleficent…and now they were free by means she didn’t understand. But their king and queen were dead—her mother and father, whom she had never known in either world.

Didn’t she get a moment to mourn that?

“Good people,” she tried to shout. It came out as an ugly, croaking whisper. “You are now free.”

Everyone looked expectant; a few people clapped.

Obviously, those who actually heard what she said knew that already.

“I am now your queen,” she strained to say as loudly as she could. “Your old king and queen, my parents…are…gone. I guess? I am your
new
queen. And I’ll try to do that to the best of my abilities. Being queen, I mean. From now on.”

There was scattered, confused applause.

The castellan pulled a hand over his face. Men around him in important floppy hats looked similarly disappointed.

“Come, there are other things to be done,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. “Much has fallen behind because of recent events.”

She was whisked away from the balcony and pulled back downstairs. No one took the scepter, crown, or cape away. She wished they would.

They spirited her into the private audience chamber, the one she had never entered when she lived with Maleficent. It was where the queen consulted with her closest advisors, where only the most serious claims were brought before her.

Aurora was plopped down in the large throne-like chair at the end of the room. The wood was hard and uncomfortable under her; she wished she could bunch up the cape and use it as a cushion.