Once Upon a Dream (34 page)

“No, but I shall grant you a dignified and quick death.”

She felt rather than saw the change in stance of those around her; she would bet that the prince was smiling grimly.

Maleficent cocked her head and gave a knowing look. She stroked the raven for effect.

“Well, my, my, a few short days in the world outside the castle and suddenly you’ve become a cold-blooded killer.”

“I haven’t become anything of the sort. In my authority as queen of the realm, I am executing a known criminal, assassin, and enemy to the state.”

“Why not throw me in a prison and have me rot there forever?” Maleficent asked philosophically.

The younger woman raised an eyebrow at the fairy.

“Apparently, killing you
once
isn’t enough to get rid of you,” she said dryly. “I hardly think prison bars—
dream
prison bars—would hold you.”

“Oh, you flatter me,” Maleficent said, looking down and touching her chest coyly. But her grin was all evil and hellfire. She hissed: “Of course, you also flatter
yourself
if you think you can get within a foot of this throne without my obliterating you on the spot.”

She ducked her head like the dragon she had briefly been—prepared to strike. Prince Phillip flinched.

When the evil fairy hunched over, Lianna was revealed standing behind the throne, her black eyes unreadable, her face impassive.

“Greetings, Lady Lianna,” Aurora Rose said coldly, nodding toward the girl. “I’m delighted to see things worked out so well for you.”

“Oh,” Maleficent said, putting on a moue of surprise and concern. “Did you—did you think she was
replacing
you? As my ‘ward’?” Her face twisted into a sneer. “She’s nothing, don’t you know that? Just a little bit of my essence and a lot of clever magic. With some help from the powers below.”

At this, Lianna’s eyes hardened. She didn’t move.

Aurora Rose had a comeback ready, but it died on her tongue. All her queenliness shifted for a moment, slipped aside as a twice-orphaned girl broke through.

“But did you feel nothing at all for
me
?” she whispered.

Maleficent looked shocked at the question.

The room was silent. Everyone else also seemed surprised by this turn of the conversation.

“All of those ‘years,’” Aurora Rose said, pressing her, advancing slowly on the throne, “all those talks we had, all those meals we shared, all the things we did together…did you really feel
nothing
for me?”

Maleficent gripped the top of her staff tightly; her fingers over the orb caused the hideous light in the room to dim. Every human shuddered in relief.

“You were my means to an end,” she finally said.

“You’re not answering my question,” Aurora Rose made herself say. It was hard but felt good. Never, in either life, had she ever questioned someone in authority before.

“Whatever
feelings
I may initially have had in the rearing of a human child, in the end, were irrelevant,” Maleficent said. “Through your death I would live again. After being murdered so callously by your
prince
.”

“Murdered?
YOU WERE TRYING TO KILL HIM.
Because he was trying to save
me
. Are you that deluded, Maleficent? All of this—
all of this
—came about because of the curse you put on me as a
baby
!” she yelled. “A
baby
. Because you weren’t invited to a
party
!”

“Your parents had no respect for me and the powers that I wield.”

“You. Cursed. A. Baby. Because. You. Were. Slighted.”

Prince Phillip moved quietly up to be next to her, hand on his sword.

Maleficent shrugged one elegant shoulder.

“And? Do not slight those of great power. I believe that’s the lesson to be learned there.”

Aurora Rose suddenly felt the urge to draw a weary and exasperated hand over her face. She was losing this verbal battle. She was losing her own train of thought. There was nothing to reach in Maleficent. The princess had been raised in a dreamworld by a madwoman. She had been looking for a mother in a monster.

The three fairies and Prince Phillip moved in close around her, sensing a change. They faced Maleficent together.

“What made you so horrible, Maleficent?” the blue one demanded. “What made you into this monster of a fairy?”

“Was it something in your childhood?” the green one asked. “Is that why not being invited to a party irked you so much?”

“Who cares?” the red one said, brandishing her sword. “She’s evil now. Let’s get her.”

“What if I had some little power?” Aurora Rose interrupted. “What if I had some ability in me, like yours? Would you have
kept me close and taught me well, schooled me in the arts of magic
?”

Maleficent was speechless for a moment upon the realization that Aurora had overheard that conversation with her parents.

“But you have no powers,” she finally said. “It is irrelevant.”

The two women looked each other in the eye.

Then a dagger flew through the air and buried itself in the throne next to Maleficent’s head.

The evil fairy’s eyes widened in shock.

“But what if I did?” Aurora Rose whispered fiercely.

“Doesn’t count,” Maleficent said slowly. “This world isn’t real.”

The princess almost threw her hands up in frustration.

“What about all of those special tutors you assigned to me? What about all of those things you did that seemed a whole lot like caring?”

“It was just a game,” Maleficent said lightly. “To keep me amused in this dreadfully boring place.”

But she couldn’t look the princess in the eye. She faltered under Aurora Rose’s stare and turned to pet her raven to get away from it.

She would never, ever reveal the truth. Even if there
was
some last, lingering thread of humanity about her.

“You have no idea,” Aurora Rose said with a mix of relief and disappointment, “how close I actually was to being able to forgive you. Killing you is going to be so much easier now.”

Maleficent recovered herself quickly. “
Easier?
Killing
me
? I think you speak too soon, mighty queen.”

“I am
less than a foot from you
,” Aurora Rose whispered into the fairy’s face, “and I’m not obliterated.”

There was utter silence in the castle as all watched the evil fairy with the horns and the princess with the silver helm glare at each other, their noses no more than an inch apart.

Maleficent’s jaw worked twice before fury overcame her. She thrashed her staff arm impatiently.

Vines—thick, rubbery, and strong but sickly-looking—twined up the princess’s legs and torso. Suddenly, she was being pulled backward, sliding across the throne room floor.

“Rose!” Phillip cried, trying to grab her.

When she was about twenty feet away, the vines hardened into woody trunks that glued her to the floor and pinned her arms to her sides.

Maleficent rose, her cape and robes billowing behind her, caught up in the eddies of magic she was beginning to summon.

At once the green fairy was flying between the two of them.

It was a little shocking; the three women hadn’t shown any fairylike abilities up to that point. And seeing a full-grown middle-aged lady go buzzing overhead—albeit one who seemed to get slightly smaller as she went—was slightly unnerving.

“Be reasonable, Maleficent,” the green fairy said, sounding like a disappointed mother making a last effort with an unruly child before punishing her. “This is
Aurora’s world
. You can’t hope to win. You’re in
her mind
.”

“Oh, I have no fear in that,” Maleficent said calmly. Her raven cackled once. “The little girl barely can figure out her own feelings, much less what she wants or how the world works.
Now out of my way, you useless firefly!
”

She pointed her staff and a flash of purple lightning crackled out. The green fairy dipped and just barely avoided it; the bolt hit a stone in the ceiling above her, which exploded, leaving a sooty black mark where it had been. The green fairy gave Maleficent a chastising look.

“People change. People
grow
, Maleficent.
Normal
people.”

The queen ignored her and kept letting the lightning bolts fly.

Despite the green fairy’s size and billowing dress, she managed to deftly avoid most of them. The throne room lit up with purple flashes, and she buzzed around them as they illuminated her features—in fact, very
much
like a firefly.

One bolt veered off and shot over one of the prisoners; he ducked, but it still managed to set his hat on ugly purple fire. The poor man threw it to the ground and stomped on it despite the warning growls from the guards.

“Can we do this someplace else?” the green fairy demanded worriedly. “There are a lot of innocent bystanders who will die in the real world if they’re hit in this one.”

Aurora Rose wondered if the green fairy knew how incredibly stupid she was being.

Maleficent did what anyone who knew Maleficent at all would expect: she grinned a toothy, lips-pulled-back, skull-like grin and pointed with her staff.

A purple crack of lighting exploded from it and roared its way across the room, then ended its path in the heart of a man. Aurora’s old painting tutor.

He groaned once and then crumpled. The smell of burning human flesh filled the air.

Aurora Rose swore in rage and struggled against the vines. At least they didn’t cut into her skin, protected as she was by her breastplate and gauntlets.

Then she remembered she didn’t need to
be
anywhere to do what she needed to do. She tried not to close her eyes and calmed her inner self.

“Not yet,” the blue fairy whispered to Aurora Rose. “Let us do the initial battle. Wear her down. Keep your attack as a surprise at the end.”

“But more people will die!”

“
Everybody
will die if Maleficent wins!” the blue one shot back. “Try to think
tactically
!”

“MURDERER!”
the green fairy howled, and dove for the queen.

Maleficent aimed around her, picking out another person in the crowd.

The green fairy banked to the side to intercept the bolt. She held out her hand; suddenly, there was a wand in it. A crackle of golden energy flashed out and knocked the purple magic aside. Gold and purple sparks rained on the room as they canceled each other out.

As if she was choosing flowers, Maleficent calmly aimed her staff at different people in the room and then fired.

The green fairy dove and twisted, shot high and rolled, parrying each bolt with a bolt of her own.

Maleficent twirled her staff and bit her lip but didn’t seem that concerned; it was more like she was playing a difficult game than trying to kill people.

Her attacks came faster.

The dream prisoners cowered and ducked. Gold and purple light made terrible shadows behind them, multiplied the prisoners by a thousand shadow prisoners. Maleficent’s evil servants laughed and only occasionally tried to avoid the bolts.

One got hit.

He exploded on the spot, fangs and tusks and yellow eyes and trotters all disintegrating immediately and becoming black soot. There was nothing wet, nothing animal, nothing real or alive about the death.

His compatriots standing on either side hooted and laughed at his fate, at their luck.

And then Maleficent suddenly turned and aimed her staff directly at the green fairy.

With a toothy snarl she sent a giant bolt arcing across the room.

The green fairy dove, but she was too slow, too late, too concerned with saving other people’s lives to worry about her own.

Her legs and arms flailed outward as the energy hit her directly in the heart; purple rays erupted from her eyes.

There was a huge, brilliant explosion.

Aurora Rose turned away, unable to look.

When the light faded, a small, dim green ball hung uselessly in the air where the fairy had been. It dipped and bobbed a little, unintelligent and barely animate.

“Begone, little firefly.” Maleficent laughed.

The red fairy let out a strangled cry of rage.

She ran forward, sword drawn, making straight for Maleficent’s heart.

Maleficent dipped her staff experimentally at the woman.

The red fairy deflected the purple bolt easily, parrying it away as if it were nothing more than a fly.

Maleficent fired again.

The red fairy deflected the lightning again.

Maleficent frowned and sent out a spray of bolts—dozens of them, one after the other.

All that resulted in was the red fairy’s slowing her advance to defend herself from the attacks. She didn’t
stop
.

Her arms moved quickly, her muscles flexed beautifully as she contorted herself into different positions to avoid being hit. Her brow furrowed with the effort, but her eyes remained clear, full of concentration and anger and not a hint of fear.

She managed to inch her way forward a little at a time.

Prince Phillip, still beside the mostly frozen Aurora Rose, tensed his own muscles and reached, unthinking, for his sword.

“Not yet,”
the blue fairy whispered. “Your lives are short and precious. Save the wasting of them to the end, if we have failed.”

Phillip nodded but didn’t take his eyes from the fight.

Lianna also watched the fight unblinkingly. The sparks from the magic and flashes from the red fairy’s enchanted sword glittered in her eyes.

With everyone watching the incredible battle in front of the throne, it was unsurprising that no one noticed two of Maleficent’s servants creeping up on either side of the red fairy until it was almost too late.

“LOOK OUT!”
Aurora Rose shouted.

“ON YOUR LEFT!”
Phillip cried.

The red fairy didn’t turn around but instead thrust her sword
back
, up under her armpit, surprising the creature behind her. Her blade sank deep into its chest. But she didn’t waste a moment watching him gurgle and bubble and sputter and die. She spun and dove, slicing the second creature’s feet out from underneath him.