Once Upon a Dream (33 page)

Aurora Rose could manage that. Her aunts had never seemed to care when she handled the one very sharp little bronze paring knife. They had let her hold it even as a toddler.

She closed her eyes and held out her hands. She remembered the bone handle. She remembered the dull golden gleam. She remembered the sharp, slightly curved tip, perfect for starting to peel the thick rind of a fruit or vegetable.

She felt its weight in her hand even before she opened her eyes.

“Well done!” cheered the green one.

“Good, good,” the red fairy said impatiently. “Now summon two more. Quickly.”

Aurora Rose bit her lip.

The additional daggers appeared in her palm, which was now sweaty.

“Great job!” Phillip said excitedly.

“Now throw them at the throne,” the red one urged.

Aurora Rose blinked, then did what she was told. She was good at that.

She was not so good at throwing three daggers one-handed. They flew not very far and went every which way, clattering on tables and dirt floor.

Everyone stared at her.

The princess reddened.

“With your
mind
, you ninny!” the blue one snapped.

The green one did not hit the blue one, though it looked like she was sorely tempted.

“You won’t win against Maleficent in a fair hand-to-hand combat,” the red one said politely. “In this protected part of your mind, she can’t see in; she won’t know how strong your control over your own demesne has become. So. Um. Try again. With
magic
.”

Aurora Rose chewed her lip, feeling embarrassed and hot. She closed her eyes—

“Not a good idea in a fight,” Phillip said gently. “Keep your peepers open.”

Aurora Rose took a deep breath and forced her eyes to stay open, not blinking. She held out her hand. Three daggers appeared in it.

She looked at the throne.

The three daggers launched themselves through the air and whistled as they flew. Where they hit the back of the giant chair, the tips buried themselves in the wood.

She let out her breath.

Everyone cheered.

That
was a strange thing, she realized as she panted and felt her cheeks cool down. Almost like people believed she could do this. Like she
could
do this.

“Great!” the red one said. “Now grow a hill out of the middle of the floor.”

IT WAS HARD TO TELL
how much time she spent practicing, but it
felt
like an infinite number of afternoons of summoning the rocks from the walls to come to her and rebuild themselves into a barrier. Unending hours of bringing anything weak and breakable down from the ceiling onto the head of her imagined enemy. Days of causing the very earth itself to ripple like the ocean under the feet of her assailant—without a break for snacks.

And yet it still wasn’t as much time as they needed.

“We must go soon,” the blue one told Phillip in a low voice while the princess made chairs fly up and around the room. “Time passes slowest in this, her most buried memory, but it passes nonetheless. Maleficent has abandoned all pretense of being good and may just keep consuming people until every one of them is gone.”

“But once we leave here she’ll know where we are, won’t she?” Phillip asked.

“Unavoidable,” the red one said, polishing the end of her sword. He watched her deft movements with frank admiration. “We must progress back to the outer edge of her dreams, where the queen holds sway. She will not come to meet us.”

“A bird helped trip one of Maleficent’s traps on our way here,” the prince said eagerly. “Maybe along the way we could gather some more? Have them help us?”

“Birds?” The blue one looked at him blankly. “Oh, sure. Yeah. Birds. Why not? Any help, right?”

The green one patted his knee encouragingly.

Phillip twisted his lip in a suspicious pout.

The chairs dipped in the air and almost fell as the princess tried not to laugh.

“All right,” the red one said, giving her sword a final swipe with the leather strop she had been using. “Let’s go.”

The little procession made its way back through the room with the cradle, where the princess said a silent good-bye to her parents and her baby self, who seemed so happy in the moments before she was whisked away to the woods for sixteen years.

They filed through the front door, into the twilight gloom—which seemed utterly appropriate for the beginning of their secret journey.

The three women were suddenly wearing travel robes, though no one had said a thing or lifted a finger. Phillip raised an eyebrow.

“Shouldn’t we magic up some provisions or supplies for the return trip?”

“Don’t be silly, you don’t
really
need to eat,” the blue one said. “You’re not really here.”

“It’s like being dead,” the green one said helpfully. “You realize you only
think
you need the stuff the living do.”

Phillip’s look turned to one of comic dismay as the implications of what she said began to sink in.

Meanwhile, Aurora Rose was thinking furiously in the pause before the storm. She had never done anything violent in her life before these adventures. She wasn’t sure she could
plan
to now.
Kill
someone? Someone she knew? Would any of her remembered affection for Maleficent slow her hand when they faced off?

It certainly wouldn’t cause a moment’s hesitation from Maleficent.

She discreetly juggled two or three rocks at her side with her mind. It helped distract her.

“I’m going to miss this,” she said aloud with a sigh. “All this work and when I wake up I won’t even have these powers anymore.”

“You didn’t have them to begin with,” the red fairy said pragmatically.

“But she has experienced it
now
,” the green one said. “It’s hard to go back to not having something so wonderful. Plus now she also knows she was living with fairies the whole time! And
that’s
gone, too. She’s going back to being a regular human girl in a world where princesses are used as pawns and never have any sort of real power of their own.”

“Thanks,” the princess said. “I was trying not to think about that.”

“Hey,” Phillip whispered in her ear as he caught up with her. “I think I’ve figured it out! The blue one is the smart one? And the red one is the brave one? And the green one is…nice? Or compassionate or something?”

He really was just trying to help.

“Oh…
yes
—I’ll bet that’s probably right,” she said slowly, trying to make it sound like she meant it. “I was sort of coming to a similar conclusion myself.”

Phillip smiled, pleased with her praise.

“Wish I had my horse. Samson could take at least two of us. Or maybe three. He’s really strong, you know—just a bit temperamental. Did I ever tell you he was part Nisaean? You wouldn’t guess it from his color. Definitely has war horse tendencies, I can tell you that.”

She understood that he was excited by the return journey to the castle, probably a little nervous about the final showdown, and perhaps showing off a bit to the one in red.

“I
do
wish there was a faster way to the castle,” she said instead of
shut up
. “I’m worried about the time we’re wasting and Maleficent’s being able to see what we’re—”

TIME BECAME DISJOINTED.

Her head grew muddled and thick. For the very first time in the world of the Thorn Castle, she
knew
she was asleep: groggy and aware things weren’t making sense, as if in the middle of a very deep dream.

“BE CAREFUL WHAT
you wish for, my dear.”

Aurora Rose was not altogether surprised to see that they were back in the throne room of the Thorn Castle.

She blinked her eyes muzzily and was transfixed, for just a moment, by how out of place her little party looked. She, in armor and golden rags. The three strange ladies, dressed in red, blue, and green. The prince, who looked somehow more alive and glowing than any of the murky people around the edges of the room.

A blinding green light shone from the orb at the top of Maleficent’s staff; it bathed the room in a sickly cast and confused the shadows. Her visage, never that healthy-looking to begin with, was also a throbbing green. But the queen’s purple-and-black robes lay thickly and luxuriously around her as always, and she sat with less of the tense elegance she always had; now she seemed more relaxed, almost
sated
.

A raven perched next to her wrist on the throne and seemed to smile evilly. The princess was confused; Maleficent had never kept a pet. The shallow, visual similarities between the two were not subtle: both familiar and mistress were black, yellow, angular, and vicious-looking.

The princess turned away from the pulsing green light and blinked again to take a better look at the rest of the room. The people pressed against its walls were those she had spent the last subjective decades with—the people whose real bodies were elsewhere, sleeping. They seemed strangely unfamiliar now, like someone was forcing her to name people in a portrait who were hard to distinguish and resembled others she might have known.

Maleficent’s unnatural servants stood guard in front of them. There were more of the nasty goblin-like creatures with yellow eyes than Aurora Rose remembered. They stood insolently with their spear tips crossed to make an improvised fence to hold their prisoners back. Obviously, the queen had given up all pretense; the poor nobles and servants and peasants now all knew what she was saving them for.

“Sorry, what?” Prince Phillip asked, clearly a little disoriented.

Maleficent looked annoyed.

“
What
what?”

“What did you just say? I missed it.”

“I
said
, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’” the evil fairy hissed through her teeth. “You were just wishing to arrive here faster. I arranged that for you.”

“Yes, yes, we get it. Very clever,” Aurora Rose said, a little impatiently. That was
one
nice thing about all this: she realized that the guilt she felt for her irritation with Maleficent’s more annoying habits was irrelevant now. She could be honestly irked by the woman’s penchant for the dramatic.

She looked deep into the woman’s face, trying to recall everything she had felt for her, and why. How she had wanted nothing more than respect, friendship, and love from her. But there was not a lot that was human in that face, she now realized. Or even “normal” fairy. She saw the queen through two different sets of eyes, and her new vision was rapidly overtaking the old.

This was an unapologetically evil, power-mad, and furious creature in front of her.

What would a real queen do in Aurora’s place?

“Please step down from my throne,” Queen Aurora Rose said coldly. “And release me from this curse.”

Maleficent was genuinely taken aback for a moment, her yellow eyes flaring in surprise.

Then she threw back her head and laughed. The raven cackled in unison with her. Her other evil servants gibbered and hooted as soon as they felt it was all right to do so.

“And
what
, oh beneficent princess Aurora? You’ll deign to spare my life?”