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"Oh, no," said Ironheart, standing up just as Oswald slid into place beside me. "I may not be sensible like Valiant, but I know when three is one too many. Besides, I promised the royal fireworks-maker I'd help him get ready for tomorrow."

With that, he hurried off.

"1 hope he doesn't blow us all sky high," Oswald said after a moment.

"It would make for a memorable occasion," I replied.

He chuckled, shifting to put one arm around me and ease my head down upon his shoulder.

"I'd say the occasion is quite memorable enough."

We sat for a moment, his fingers toying with the ends of my hair.

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"Oswald," I finally said. "Will you tell me something?"

"All your life," he said.

At which I sat up straight. "What?"

"All your life," he repeated. "Isn't that what you wanted to know? How long I've loved you?"

"Well, yes, I suppose I did," I said. "But that wasn't what I was going to ask just now."

He gave a bark of laughter. "I tell you I've loved you since the day you were born, and you tell me you want to know something else. There's no one quite like you, is there, Aurore?"

"Well, if you don't want to tell me," I said. "If you want to have secrets ..."

He laughed again. "No secrets. Not anymore. Tell me what it is you wish to know."

"Whom did you marry, since you promised it wouldn't be Marguerite de Renard? Did I know her?"

"Actually, you did," answered Oswald. "Her name was Jessica."

"Jessica," I repeated, while my mind frantically flipped through the faces of the courtiers' daughters I had known. Nothing. "Do you mean Jessica the gardener's daughter?"

"The same," said Oswald. "Our wedding day was the first time your father told me I had made him proud."

"But not the last?"

"No, not the last," answered my cousin. "On the day he rode away, he called me son. Aurore—about your parents."

"It's all right," I said, laying one of my hands on top of his to silence him. "I think I know. They followed me, didn't they?"

Oswald nodded. "I don't think there's anything I could have done. They waited ten years. Long enough for your father to make certain the kingdom would be at peace—that the changes we both wished to make were going well. Actually, now that I think about it, it was surprisingly easy. The only one who really made trouble was le Renard."

"What happened?" I asked.

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"He raised an army and attacked the castle, after your father had saved him the trouble of knocking down the walls. It didn't do a bit of good. He still lost."

"And after that?"

"There were no more problems after that. His family left the country. No one was sorry to see them go."

"And Papa and Maman?"

"It was the strangest thing," said Oswald. "One day, I looked at your father and I knew he had made up his mind. The next, he and your mother were gone. He built them a cottage just inside the borders of la Foret. Sometimes you could see it from the outside, sometimes not. I used to ride by as often as I could, but the trees had a funny habit of moving around."

"I saw the cottage," I said. "I took shelter in it my very first night. That's where I found Ironheart. There was one of my rugs by the hearth. That really awful green one with the bumps as big as snakes."

“I remember it," said Oswald.

“It was a good place," I said. "It felt—happy—inside. Whatever the Forest holds for them, I think they are—or were—content. I will miss them, but I won't grieve for them. I don't think we were supposed to meet again. Not like you and I."

He reached to tuck a stray piece of hair back behind my ear.

"Thank you for that," he said. “I love you, Aurore."

"Will you give me a gift, if I ask for it?" I said, and had the pleasure of watching his smile flash out.

"What a shameful brat you are," he said. "Very well. What?"

"I have given you my true love's kiss," I answered. "Don't you think it's time you gave me yours?"

"Past time," said my cousin.

And so he kissed me as I had him. Opening every single door inside his heart. And the kiss was like nothing I can describe. For in that moment, I both lost and gained myself.

I ceased to be Aurore and yet became her, too. For, with my heart joined with Oswald's, I became more of what I was. All the empty spaces within me filled to the brim, yet never overflowing.

For true love always knows its own measure. And it is the measure of two hearts, combined.

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Two hearts who need no other magic than what they hold inside them, for they have learned to beat as one.

( A F A N C Y W A Y O F T Y I N G U P L O O S E E N D S ) The wonder of my reappearance and Oswald's transformation lasted for a year and a day, long enough for our first child to be born. Actually I suppose I should say our first children, for I bore two girls, so alike it would have been impossible to tell one from the other were it not for their eyes. One had eyes of gold flecked with silver; the other of silver flecked with gold. We named them Jane and Chantal.

Over the years, they were followed by many others, both girls and boys. All straight and fine as royal children are supposed to be. And every single one of them got to go outside as often as they desired.

Our youngest daughter is named Sage, just in case you want to know.

Not long after the birth of the twins, Valiant begged leave to depart. There were rumors of monsters ravaging distant lands.

As those able to dispatch them are always in short supply, and high demand, we let him go. Not long after, he wrote from the very end of the world, to say he had dispatched a particularly horrible ogre. The people of that land were so grateful, they gave him the hand of their princess in marriage, and the kingship besides, the ogre's first despicable act having been to devour the old king, the princess's father.

Valiant's sensible, straightforward approach is much valued in the wilds at the edge of the world. He is there still, living happily ever after himself, as far as we know.

And what, you will ask, of Ironheart?

As his nature was not so straightforward as his brother's, so did the finding of his true love take a little more time. For several years, he lived with us in the palace, alternately delighting and terrifying the children with his strange and wonderful experi-ments, all the while filling many a leather-bound book with notes.

Until the day that the king of the country just to the east sent word that he wished to build a new drawbridge and desired Ironheart's help.

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While there, he rescued the king's only daughter, who turned out to be as scientifically minded as Ironheart was himself. A strange and unusual contraption she'd had specially constructed to allow her to hang suspended from trees, the better to pick their fruit, collapsed, causing her to fall and knock herself cold.

As the tree just happened to be an apple tree, and was moreover located in the heart of the maze the king had recently commissioned, and through which Ironheart just happened to be strolling, he decided perhaps he ought to give kissing the princess just one more try.

Though this failed to awaken her entirely, some water to the temples soon completed the job. When the princess's first concern was not herself but her invention, Ironheart ventured to make several suggestions concerning the design. The speed with which the princess grasped all his concepts, to say nothing of the way she elaborated upon them on the spot, soon turned their chance encounter into the world's most unusual case of love at first sight. And so he awakened a princess with true love's kiss after all.

As a wedding gift, we gave them a vast tract of land bordering her father's kingdom, so that they could live surrounded on all sides by those who love them. Her name is Marianna. Their first child was a son, and they named him Oswald.

Once a year, on the anniversary of my christening, my Oswald and I go to la Foret. There we spend the night on which I always had bad dreams, sleeping peacefully in the cottage. To this day, we have never seen its occupants. But we bring with us mementos of our family. A rug that Jane and Chantal braided together rests before the fireplace now. It's a lovely blue, the color of a summer sky. And it lies completely flat. The year after we brought it, we arrived at the cottage to find a bowl upon the table heaped with what can only be described as a fruit still-life.

Oswald and I haven't discussed it much, but what I believe is that my parents are alive inside of la Foret and will be for as long as I live, for they were the others I kept strong and safe inside my heart. Whether they have grown old with the years, as Oswald did, or stayed young within the boundaries of the Forest is a thing that I can never know, though I have my opinions. But I know that they are happy, because I am happy. And so I let that be enough.

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People go into the Forest now, from time to time. But never more than a handful every year, and they never stay for long.

Though it has ceased to be frightening, it is still mysterious, and most people find life mysterious enough without going to seek out more.

As to what happened to me there, is it possible to sleep for a hundred years in the blink of an eye? Perhaps it doesn't matter how long I actually slept, only how long I was gone. Which was certainly a hundred years, if Oswald's condition upon my return is anything to go by.

Let's see . . . what else?

Actually, nothing that I can think of. Which I think means my story has come full circle, curved around to its close. And, for once, the traditional way of ending a story is exactly the way the story of my own life turned out.

You know the words. Of course you do.

And they lived happily ever after

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