Once Upon a Dream (31 page)

“What?” Phillip cried. “No, we should all stick together. Father…”

“No, lad,” the old man said with a sad smile. “This is my part of the story. Yours lies ahead.”

“He’s right, Phillip,” Aurora Rose said gently. “It’s the best plan. Maybe he can delay whatever’s out there until we get done whatever we need to.”

“Listen to her, my boy. She’s a smart one.”

Phillip looked back and forth between them desperately for a moment. Then he set his jaw and nodded.

“All right. Thank you, Father. We would never have found it without you,” he said, embracing the old man warmly.

“We will see you on the other side,” the princess said gratefully. “When we all wake up.”

Hubert gave her a funny look.

“The peasant is the princess, eh? I don’t think you’re either, young lady. I don’t know
what
you are. Maybe you don’t, either. But…I don’t think you’ll see me on the other side. Exactly the same way, I mean.”

“What—what do you mean?” Phillip asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

“What I’m trying to say is, well…” The king flustered and fought for words. “Son, I’ve been lost in these woods for years now. I’ve had some absolutely top-notch—
top-notch
—adventures and made quite a few furry friends. Put some dreadful demons out of my misery. But I don’t think all of me has been entirely found. Do you understand?”

“No,” Phillip said with a worried look.

“Ah, well.” Hubert clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it now. You have bigger issues to deal with. Kingdoms to save. Princesses to—well, I don’t know. We’ll talk later. I wish…I wish we could have talked
before
.
Really
talked.”

His remaining eye grew glassy.

Then he raised his branch in a kingly salute.

“I shall DEFEAT anything that would ATTACK YOU AND HINDER YOU IN YOUR GLORIOUS QUEST! And WHEN I HAVE PERSEVERED, I shall make my own way back to that infernal vine-covered castle. You may have further need of my aid later on when dealing with that witch. And honestly, I should like to be there when she gets her what’s what!”

He gave one last smile. Then he turned with great, slow dignity and headed back into the shadows of the forest. He had disappeared, like a wild animal, in thirty paces.

Phillip watched him go. Emotions struggled for dominance on his face.

“What…just happened?” he asked in a strangled voice. “What just…Something just happened. I feel like we just said good-bye somehow.”

Aurora Rose put a hand on his arm—her first urge to touch him since their fight. But she wasn’t thinking of an
us
or a
we
or a
him
; she saw only Phillip, the boy who had been upbeat and brave and inspiring on this journey, brought to the edge of tears.

He looked down at her hand; the movement dislodged a single drop, which flew to the ground, dampening a salty spot on the leaves.

Then he shook himself and patted her hand.

“Let’s go,” he whispered.

She nodded.

She could almost ignore the little pains all over her body, lost in the satisfaction she felt from her surroundings. Familiar oak leaves crunched on the ground, tracing their strange shapes in pale dirt, looking like harmless baby monsters. The smells they made as she crushed them were so heady she wanted to swim in the air. It was fall here, she suddenly realized, while it had been other seasons elsewhere in the dreamworld. Fall was her favorite after spring. Small burnished brown acorns, with their cute tan caps, littered the ground. She used to collect them and…

It was difficult to stay present; her consciousness had to be constantly and reluctantly pulled back to the world around her. Every part of her wanted to sink into the memories, the warm ocean of completeness she knew was there now, easily dipped into.

“Come on,” the prince said, giving her his arm to lean on. This time she took it right away.

She spotted the cottage first.

“It’s…
sort
of like that place I was kidnapped from,” Phillip said.

It was a pleasant little shack, wood and thatched roof, funny little rooms added on higgledy-piggledy, and one tall chimney reaching up, crooked, above it all. Little puffs of smoke came out.

But it wasn’t quite right. She was pretty sure the stones had been normal stone colors, not bright, shiny browns and whites and blacks, like a picture painted by a child.

And there hadn’t been a flower garden on the roof, sweet peas dangling over the sides in front of a window.

But it was close enough, she decided.

There was a woman waiting in front of the door, which somehow neither of them noticed at first. A simple dark green dress and a lighter green apron fell in clean, crisp folds over her body. A pair of thick graying braids hung from the sides of her head, behind her ears. Her face was smooth but for a few deep wrinkles. She seemed inclined toward peace and kindness.

“Come in, come in, children,” she urged them. “Quickly now.”

“It’s another trap,” Phillip said uncertainly, but even he could feel this was different somehow.

“I…know her?” the princess said, confused but intrigued. “No, this is all right, Phillip.”

“This cottage is the safest place in your mind, Aurora Rose.”

The girl jumped at her full name—what she had begun to think of as her
proper
name.

“Please hurry,” the woman urged them.

The princess looked Phillip in the eye, and for once she was reassuring
him
. He accepted her near-motionless nod and the two stepped forward.

AURORA ROSE BLINKED.

Instead of the expected dark-but-homey cottage with the usual paraphernalia—tidy hearth, pots, a broom—the interior was much, much larger than it should have been. And also brilliant, blinding gold.

When Aurora Rose’s eyes finally adjusted, she saw where they really were: in an ornate, almost
over
decorated room in the castle.
Her
castle. A room she had never seen before. The walls were draped in tapestries of golden animals: rabbits, deer, birds, a unicorn. An orange fire blazed merrily within a positively giant fireplace whose mantel was white marble inlaid with gold. Huge windows with leaded glass panes let in shafts of happy white sunlight. Thick rugs of white and gold thread covered the floor. Brightly colored swags and garlands of flowers hung from every exposed surface.

In the middle of the room was a golden cradle. Above it stood two tall, motionless adults.

Aurora Rose felt something in her throat, a sob or a cry of joy, as she realized who they were, and whom they were gazing at.

She crept forward, almost like a forest creature, hands clasping each other.

She peeked in the cradle.

There, kicking and pink-faced, was baby Aurora.

Grown-up Aurora knew herself immediately.

The eyes were the same, the pale wisps of golden hair the same.

But while
most
people would have been endlessly fascinated by the chance to observe themselves at such an early age, grown-up Aurora Rose more wanted to see something—some
one
—else.

She turned to look at the two adults who loomed over the cradle.

Queen Leah.

Almost like an older version of Aurora, but with slightly browner hair. Slightly browner, thicker,
friendlier
eyebrows. The princess saw where her cheeks would eventually wind up, shed of all their remaining baby fat: sailing above the high cheekbones she also inherited.

But her mother’s looks didn’t matter; it was the look she gave her
baby
that mattered. The queen was completely and utterly enraptured by her daughter in the cradle. Her eyes were wide and unblinking; a very slight smile was on her parted lips. Nothing could distract her from her watch.

King Stefan.

Skinny. A little tired-looking. Kind brown eyes above a not particularly royal mustache and beard. His robes gave his body some depth; the fire gave his cheeks a little ruddiness.

“Mother,” Aurora Rose breathed. “Father.”

The parents she had never known. The parents she was supposed to have been reunited with—only to part from—on her sixteenth birthday. On her wedding day. The ones who had given her life and then given her away.

And this was the only way she would ever get to see them again—in her memories. Her mother’s beautiful, loving face. Her father’s, well, kingly one. She couldn’t talk to them, ask them questions, hug them. She would never be able to find out why they had done what they had. She would never be able to curse them or forgive them.

Phillip coughed quietly, clearing his throat. Reluctantly, she looked up.

Standing by the fireplace was the woman who had let them in, along with two other women.

One was in all different slightly faded shades of blue. She wore robes and belts and scarves and scraps of cloth and even had quick blue eyes that matched—although
they
weren’t faded. Her hair was as brown as a polished chestnut and tied up in crazy buns on the back of her head with sticks pointing out all over to hold them in place.

The third woman was huge: tall and muscled, strapping and strong. She wore a red tunic over rust-red leggings and boots. Her dark blond hair hung to her waist and was pushed back from her face with a simple leather headband. Her skin was tan and a little windburned, and her light brown eyes were dancing.

“The fairies!” Aurora Rose cried.

“Sort of,” she added.

Her memories still weren’t perfect, but there was something off about them. Weren’t they a little younger than her aunts? Or maybe they were older. They certainly dressed differently. And their eyes were…different.

“They don’t look exactly like the twinkling ladies who rescued me,” Phillip whispered. “But they
feel
like them?”

“Nothing is exactly the same in the dreamworld,” the one in blue said. “Just as in a dream your own house seems different, with more rooms, or things within it placed strangely. Everything here is a result of your perception and edited by the quality of your memory. Reality is entirely subjective.”

“She means don’t worry,” the one in green said. “Things aren’t what they seem—but that’s not always a bad thing.”

“You tried to rescue me in the castle,” the princess said. “You appeared to me and told me to wake up.”

“Not precisely, not us,” the blue one said. “That was a manifestation of the real, waking-world fairies. As was the one who sent Hubert to guide you.”

“Trust me, if
we
could have come to your rescue,” the one in red said, “I would have come with my sword drawn and a thirst for Maleficent’s blood.”

Phillip looked at her with something like affection.

“Here in this room, you are in the only part of your memory completely free from Maleficent’s reach,” the woman in green said. She spread her hands and smiled. “These are your deepest, oldest, most untouched memories. You guard them very carefully—as do we all.”

“But that horrible girl thing attacked us not too far from here,” Phillip said accusingly. “Just a little ways that way.”

“Ah,” the woman in green said sadly. “The manifestation spoke truly: mostly, she was a piece of Aurora Rose herself. A monster from her own mind. Maleficent may have given her a nudge, or awoken her fully, but she has always been close to the princess’s heart.”

“I don’t get it, myself,” the woman in red said frankly. “If it were up to me, I would have slain that nasty thing years ago. In the real world.”

“Focus, please,” the one in blue said to the red one. “Aurora, this all comes back to the fact that
you are the dreamer
. You, in the end, are responsible for this world. Inadvertently the beginning and deliberately—hopefully—the end. Only you can end the curse and wake everyone.

“What we are experiencing now are the final effects of a magical promise made sixteen years ago, sort of a balancing out of a magical equation. To wit, Maleficent publicly cursed you to die on your sixteenth birthday. Then Merryweather fixed it a bit with the amendment about you falling asleep. But unbeknownst to all of us, Maleficent tied her soul up in the curse. Had you actually died, your life force—and that of everyone else in the kingdom, to a lesser effect—would have been transferred to her. Instead, when Phillip killed her, Maleficent’s soul was still bound to you and followed you into your sleep. And, of course, we can all see what the result of
that
was.”

“Her controlling me and the world of my dreams,” Aurora Rose murmured.

“And, unfortunately, the lives of everyone else asleep with you,” the one in green added sadly. “An unintended consequence of a little bit of good the fairies thought they were doing by tying the fate of the kingdom to yours so that even if it took a hundred or a thousand years for the curse to be broken by true love, you wouldn’t wake up in a world you didn’t know, surrounded by the great-great-grandchildren of people you knew.”

“All of which is neither here nor there,” the blue one continued. “What is important is that a curse of this magnitude and complication can only be broken by spilling royal blood.”