Rosamonde: The Real Story of Sleeping Beauty (8 page)

“Quick!” I tried to keep my voice to a murmur instead of a panicked scream. “Up the stairs!”

And up we went. I caught a last glimpse of Prince Fenris’s startled face and then we were up and up and up. Up the stairs, gasping and clattering. The door to the bell tower rose before us in iron-banded oak.

“It’s locked!” said one of the footmen.

“The handle, you’re turning it the wrong way,” said Celeste.

Behind and below us, the pounding footsteps of the prince’s men grew louder and louder, echoing up from the stairwell. It sounded like the knell of doom, or however that’s put. I’ve never been sure if that refers to some dreadful girl named Nell or not, but it is an impressive phrase. At least, I’ve always been impressed by it.

“Shut the door!” I said, as we all piled inside the room. “And lock it! Quick!”

“What on earth are you doing here?”

The voice was irritated, aggravated, quarrelsome, and familiar. Henri glared at us—at me—from across the room. Around us, eight windows opened in the stone walls to reveal the approaching twilight and the dizzying sight of the castle and the grounds below fading into gloom. In the center of the room, the immense triple bells hung from their chains. Uncle Milo crouched over a strange contraption.

“How are you, my dear?” he said, glancing up. “Married yet?”

“Not yet,” I said, “Thanks to you and Marcel.”

“Marcel?” he said, looking puzzled.

“He thought you were a big red dragon come to eat everyone.”

“A dragon?” Uncle Milo looked even more confused, but then his face cleared. “Ah, the balloon. So that’s why we crashed. No harm done. Henri and I were having a rather spirited discussion about how best to land when the first bullet hit. I’m glad Marcel decided for us. At any rate, it’s good to see you, Rosamonde. You look splendid for not being married.”

“Thank you. You look very well yourself, though somewhat charred.”

“This is no time for family reunions!” shouted Henri.

Despite my long history of disagreeing with Henri (which began, I think, when I was five years old and he, a very immature six-year-old, refused to introduce a darling little skunk into the drawing room where a bishop and his retinue were waiting to chat with Father), I must confess that he was probably right. As if to underscore his nervous outburst, someone suddenly pounded on the tower door.

“Open up!” yelled a voice that sounded like Prince Fenris.

“Who’s there?” I called, moving closer to the door.

“It’s me, Rosamonde! Prince Fenris. Open the door!”

Uncle Milo and Henri made frantic gestures at me.

“Stall him,” hissed Henri. “We need a few more minutes.”

They renewed their efforts with the strange contraption in the middle of the floor. It looked oddly like a flower. An enormous flower, that is, made of wood and growing up from a large square box of polished wood and metal.

“Who’s Rosamonde?” I called through the door. “She sounds fascinating. Tell me more, but she’s not here.”

“Don’t play the fool with me, Rosamonde! You’re my wife—you must obey me! Open the door now or you shall be in big trouble!”

“He sounds upset, I think, no?” whispered Celeste. “You remember, my lady, the magic of this place. Any sound made in this bell tower, it is heard by the entire country.”

“Hush, Celeste. Of course I remember.” To be honest, I’d forgotten in the flurry of the moment. But, what did it matter? All of Bordavia could now bear witness that Crown Prince Fenris of Delmania was a nitwit and a colossal boor.

I turned back to the door. The old wood planks were cool beneath my hand. “I doubt that you are married. You do not sound the marrying type. I do not think this Rosamonde you speak of, though she sounds wonderful and probably quite beautiful, I do not think she would agree to marry someone like you. You probably snore like a pig.”

“I do not snore like a pig! The only pigs around here are you Bordavians and your balloon-stealing swine! Bah! Your country—it, it—it is a pigsty!”

“What?” I’m afraid I screeched. I’m sure princesses are never supposed to screech, but it is inevitable when dealing with a foul prune such as Fenris. “Bordavia is the loveliest country in all of Europe! Our pigs are the best-looking pigs in the world. This unhappy Rosamonde girl you speak of, whoever she is, she would be crazy to marry such a blockhead as you!”

“You and you,” whispered Uncle Milo to the footmen, “and you and you as well. Remove the strikers from inside the bells. Quickly now. We can’t have them clonging and clanging anymore. Not for the next, er. . . not for the next few days.”

“The next few days?” said Henri. “I thought you said twenty-four hours at most. We need to talk about this.”

“Later, my boy,” said Uncle Milo. “Later.”

I would’ve been more intrigued by the peculiar look on Henri’s face, but that instant I just about jumped out of my skin. A tremendous crash shook the door. The whole room boomed with the sound. Something struck the door again. An axe. Splinters flew.

“You think I wanted to marry you just for your beauty, princess?” Fenris’s voice was something different now, sneering and ugly. “Beautiful women are a guilder a dozen. They’re packed into Paris and Berlin like herring flopping about in a fishing boat. Oh, you’re pretty enough, a sweet bloom to dally with, but marrying you was merely a pretext to swallowing up Bordavia. It was time for me to acquire a wife. You would do just as well as any other princess, but with the more important result of bringing Bordavia with you. Do you know why your precious roses grow so well? Do you know why they bloom with such vigor and wondrous color? There’s magic in the dirt of Bordavia. Enchantment in the earth. Did no one ever wonder why the magic in the people of Bordavia is so insignificant, so dull, so commonplace? It’s because it’s all stored in the earth! And what earth it is! Our alchemists have been experimenting with it for the past year, forging new alloys for our armor, sharper and harder blades, quarrels and arrows and bullets that never miss the mark. If it isn’t by marriage, Princess, then Delmania will take Bordavia by war. Now, open this door!”

“Never!” I shouted, shaking with fear and rage. “Never!”

The axe slammed into the door again. I could see the bright edge of its blade.

“Careful now!” said Uncle Milo.

Henri opened a hatbox and gingerly took something out. From what I could see, it looked like a round, flat disc made from a hard, white substance. Wax, I think.

“Put it on the holder. Gently, gently! Right in the middle. Position the arm just so. Another tick lower with the needle. That should do it. Wind the handle. A dozen turns, no more. If we wind it more than that, the spring will break. Lose the spring and we lose the kingdom. For want of a spring, eh? Wouldn’t want that, would we? I don’t fancy speaking Delmanian for the rest of my life.”

Henri wound a spindly metal arm protruding from the mysterious box sitting in the middle of the floor. Something ticked quietly inside the thing. The axe crashed again into the door and everyone jumped. Celeste clutched the arm of the nearest footman. He looked absurdly pleased.

“Earplugs,” said Uncle Milo calmly.

He took a bag out of his pocket and extracted several clumps of wax. He offered two to Henri. They both stuffed them into their ears. The axe crashed into the door one last time with a dreadful splintering of wood. Fenris’s face peered through the opening.

“Aha!” he crowed. “There’s no escape for you now!”

Unfortunately, that was the moment that Uncle Milo chose to toss the bag of earplugs to one of the footmen. No one was looking in his direction due to the abominable sight of Fenris leering through the hole in the door. The bag of earplugs sailed through the air and fell to the ground, scattering earplugs across the floor.

“Oh, well,” said Uncle Milo. He shrugged philosophically. “Henri, turn on the contraption!”

And with that, as Fenris groped through the opening and unlocked the door, as Celeste fainted into a heap on the floor, as the four footmen whimpered and looked as if they were about to jump out the tower windows, and as I turned as white as my silk sheets, Henri turned on the contraption, and a strange but familiar voice suddenly filled the tower.

It was strange in that I hadn’t heard it since I was a little girl. It was familiar because it was one of the most unique voices in the world, wispy, querulous, rapid as a woodpecker, and oddly soothing.

Soothing, because it was the voice of my grandmother.

Her voice twittered forth from the huge wooden flower blooming on top of the contraption. It whispered through the room, mumbling and muttering and echoing from the rafters and from the iron curves of the old bells. And I knew, as I yawned and my eyelids fluttered shut, that every single person in the entire land of Bordavia, from the lonely goatherd on the highest mountain to the infant sleeping in a cradle in one of the tiny forest hamlets, heard her voice.

Behind me, the footmen crumpled to the ground. Celeste was already curled up, her head pillowed on her arm. Prince Fenris, halfway through the hole in the door, subsided into sleep and gave a loud snore. Uncle Milo looked at me and gestured helplessly at his ears.

“Sorry,” he said. At least, I think that’s what he said. I couldn’t tell, because Grandmother’s voice was so loud. As loud as a thick, woolen blanket, and just as cozy. Someone caught me gently in their arms as I yawned my last yawn.

I fell asleep.

And dreamed.

Of roses, of course. What else would I dream of? Roses and thorns, growing up into an endless night sky. Perfumed and trailing blooms, petals drifting and tumbling and blowing in the wind. A sky of stars, spiky with light, each jewel of fire content in its appointed place. The moon, shivering and shuddering as she delicately picked her way through the thorn-torn clouds. And the land asleep, dreaming and turning on its green bed among the valleys and the mountains and between the softly shining moonlit silver of Bordavia’s rivers.

It was a good dream, but it seemed short. It felt short. It felt like a few hours on a comfortable bed, teetering on the verge of wakefulness. And I knew sleep. I knew dreams, let me tell you! Dreaming of roses, while nice, is not the most enthralling thing to dream of when you are the princess of Bordavia.

So I woke.

***

I woke perplexed. Puzzled because I was in my own bed, in my own room, with the morning sun peering through the curtains and a tangle of rose briers.

Rose briers!

I leapt from my bed and ran to the window. My mouth fell open. I stared out at a sight that was familiar and yet exceedingly strange as well. Instead of the Great Lawn spread out below, instead of the lily-padded moat, instead of the forest stretching away in heights of pine and fir, there were only roses. Roses blooming everywhere, in gorgeous profusion and a glorious confusion of color, tumbling down the castle walls, concealing the waters of the moat beneath, rolling across the expanse of what I could only assume was the Great Lawn. And the forest? It was a marvel of roses, the trees draped to their very heights with roses—so thick that I could not see a single branch or leaf. The deep shadows were hidden. There were only roses, and the air was thick with their perfume.

I was staggered by the sight. My mind was blank with shock.

The castle came alive around me with sound. A whisper of noise, at first, voices down nearby corridors, someone called out in a tone wondering and amazed. And then with a sudden gasp, the entire place erupted into a roar. Hundreds of voices shouting and yelling. It was a confusion as clamorous as the jumble of roses outside.

I went to the door. My limbs felt oddly weak, and my head was strangely heavy.

“Princess!” someone said in the corridor, but I pushed past them. I had to find Uncle Milo. What had happened to our plan, our grand scheme, as Henri had loftily referred to it? Had it failed? What had happened?

A stream of people, pages and maids, courtiers trying to catch my eye, Delmanian soldiers, bore me along like an inexorable tide. But it was a confused tide, complete with yawning faces and bleary eyes. And a great deal of beards. Long beards. How peculiar. The beards had me greatly worried.

Someone grabbed my arm when I was halfway down the stairs to the Great Hall.

“My dear! Rosamonde, are you all right?”

It was my mother.

“Me? I should be asking you,” I said in return.

“I think so,” she said hesitantly. “I had the strangest dream. For a moment I thought I heard Grandmother Baden-Lenox’s voice, but that’s absurd. She’s been living in seclusion in that convent on the top of the Matterhorn in Switzerland for the past ten years.”

“Er. . .” I said.

There was a tremendous scrum of men at the front doors of the Great Hall, a very democratic mix of nobles and servants, with a dignified sprinkling of clergy. They were all hollering and struggling to push the doors open. My father was there, directing them. He had an oddly long beard, as did all the other men.

“Push harder!” he hollered. “Put your back into it! Or your stomach, yes, that’ll work as well, Cedric. Push!”

Everyone pushed and strained and shoved, and I’m afraid one unwise fellow even kicked the door while wearing only velvet slippers. Finally, with a creaking groan, the doors swung open. Several inches, that is. There was a moment of shocked silence from those nearest the door. Others in the hall crowded around, craning their necks and trying to see over the crowd.