Once Upon a Dream (11 page)

And then the heart stopped.

The silence of the sleeping castle was complete and utter once more.

Merryweather dropped the bloody rags in sadness that disguised itself as disgust.

Silver tears formed in Fauna’s eyes as she stroked the dead woman’s hair back up under her wimple.

Flora clenched her fists in frustration.

“Damn that Maleficent,” she swore, using the worst human phrase she could think of. “She’s worse than we ever could have imagined. She’s a murdering, life-draining soul leech.”

“And why these two?” Merryweather asked philosophically. “This one seems harmless, and really—that peasant was quite literally a nobody. Nice man, but a strange choice.”

“Well,” Fauna said softly. “Both are equally dead now, noble or not. And Maleficent has bought herself another hour.”

“Only two more before her hold over Rose becomes complete,” Merryweather added. “I mean,
Aurora
.”

“We have to try again,” Flora insisted. “I felt like we actually
did
something that time. That we reached her, a little.”

“It’s all we can do,” Fauna agreed. “So let’s try it again.”

The three fairies held hands and closed their eyes, preparing to dream a fairy dream.

SHE PUSHED HER WAY
through the tunnel of vines with calm deliberateness, beyond the dangers of the castle now. She couldn’t even hear shouts from above or the commotion in the courtyard. There would be no lifting of the portcullis anytime soon, and Maleficent couldn’t aim her spells at the princess if she couldn’t even see her. There might be
new
dangers ahead, but the old familiar ones were receding like shadows.

The plants around her were twisted and enormous, solid and unmoving. They didn’t seek to bar her way further. She dragged her hands along them, feeling the leaves crumble away under her fingertips like they were ancient, long dry and dead.

She paused, suddenly remembering. She looked around and called out tentatively:

“Minstrel? Master Tommins?

“Exile?

“Hello?”

No response.

She looked at the dusty ground as she walked—if there were any human footprints in the lifeless soil, they were old and long lost among the strange traceries that time and wind had made. There was no sign that anyone had ever been Outside besides her.

She shivered. The drunken, narrow face of the minstrel would have been a comfort. Even some sign of the Exile would have been reassuring. That he had managed to live—to survive—on the Outside for all these years.

The shadowed world of the enormous plants eventually ended at an archway that revealed nothing but the golden inferno of light she had glimpsed before. There was no hint of what lay beyond.

She shielded her eyes and stepped out.

She didn’t breathe for the first moment, afraid of what she would smell. Afraid of what poisons she would suck in. She felt the heat on her skin and admired the redness of the light through the cracks where her fingers met one another.

Slowly she removed her hand.

She thought she was hallucinating again.

The air was mostly still and the light, yes, golden—but soft now that she had grown used to it. The “inferno” was nothing but strong afternoon sunlight. Little motes floated in the air, larger and fluffier than the dust that haunted her bedroom. She held out her finger and one landed on it: a feathery seedpod, its milk-white strands anchored to a beautiful brown teardrop.

She let it go.

The princess stood in what looked like a small grassy meadow…on the outskirts of a
forest.
A proper one, not a barrier of magicked plants. Trees with light gray trunks and insanely bright green leaves dotted the edges shyly, a mild invitation to the dark woods beyond. Before the trees, dark green and amber grass grew in large clumps. Tiny light-blue flowers with pale eggy centers burst forth with sprightly enthusiasm.

A breeze made whickery noises in the tree leaves and older grasses.

Aurora knelt down and put her hands on the ground.

She closed her eyes again, feeling the sun-warmed dirt. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of grass and brown and mud and…
water
? It wafted from somewhere, moist and metallic and
full
. She had no idea you could actually smell water.

She made a silly but heartfelt vow to never, ever live
inside
again.

She opened her eyes, and it was all still there.

It had been, she realized after a moment,
always
still there.

While…

The thorns. The eternal dusk of the castle. The always being cooped up with the same people. The eating of pigeons, the hiding of cats and dogs.

None of that was necessary.

Outside was an
entire world
with trees and flowers and rivers and…other people? And…

What was it all for?!

Why did Maleficent keep them all imprisoned? What had
happened
, if her parents hadn’t destroyed everything? How did they all live in the strange dreamworld, not realizing the truth?

A strange
qwork qwork
from above startled her.

Slowly, calmly making its way across the open blue sky was a raven, its large wings pushing aside the air like it was a god. No thought at all to the royal princess below it or the castle of insanity just beyond.

Birds were real.
Beyond pigeons and parakeets.

Probably even
bluebirds.

She stood up and stumbled toward the trees, overcome with a desire to touch the bark.

But as she stepped over a clump of grass, the meadow began to swim in front of her eyes, and her perspective shifted. As her fingers brushed the wood surface, the inside of her head broke open.

It was familiar.

She didn’t know
this meadow
, exactly. But she was familiar with the concept. The types of plants. The
raven
, which she knew was too big to be a
crow
. The trees: the way the trees circled meant there was probably a bog or a stream in the middle, where the land dipped. She
knew
that. She knew that beyond these leafy trees would be gnarled, thicker trees with dark green leaves. And beyond them, pines. And under their heavy boughs, there lay a friendly darkness so complete it put the vines over the castle bailey to shame.

She fell.

She felt the soft yet hard ground beneath her, comfortingly supporting her as the sky and world whirled. It kept her from flying off.

There was another meadow. Warm and sweet-smelling, like this one. But much larger—or was she just smaller? Tiny legs thumping the ground. Tiny
naked
legs. She was warmed by the sun tickling her skin and always two steps behind a large, languorous butterfly. It flapped its oversized wings like a joke and the tiny girl giggled, chasing it but not really wanting to catch it, because that would end badly.

The world was safe and wonderful and soft and warm, and at home…

At home there was a cake. A bright pink-and-blue cake, lopsided, covered with mounds of frosting. She clapped fat little hands and laughed, then sank her entire face into it.

Three pleased and happy faces above her, smiling and serene. And relieved.

Wait—

She tried to sit up.

They looked like…

They were the three ball-of-light fairies who had visited her in the bedroom.

But they
weren’t
fairies. They were her aunts, who had adopted her when her parents died. They raised her in the forest and—

No, her aunt was
Maleficent
, who had adopted her when she defeated Aurora’s parents, who had destroyed the world.

She doubled over, the conflicting images in her head flickering too quickly. Her stomach began to roil.

An older girl now, pretending to be a princess.

Pretending? But she
was
a princess….

Her three aunts had fashioned a costume for her: a gown of found feathers and flower petals and large green leaves. It was cinched at the waist with a girdle of plaited river reeds and decorated with an incongruous sparkly blue stone that the aunts had found somewhere. A matching reed tiara rested on her shaggy, half-braided hair. When she twirled, feathers and leaves spun out, and she was the queen of the forest.

No, the only queen was Maleficent, and she was the
real
queen. And everyone lived in the
castle
, in a proper bedroom, with a fancy bed—

“STOP!”
she moaned, rocking back and forth.

But the memories kept coming.

Lying on the forest floor. For hours.

Watching the light change as it moved along the mossy ground like the snails she often played with. Its slow, miraculous journey over a sprouted nut, the magic of the sun causing its first leaves to unfurl toward the sky. The light moving on. Sleeping some. Not feeling like picking berries. Wanting something
new
, something exciting, beyond seeing what was under the heavy rocks by the creek.

Twirling through shadow and light, across grass and carpets of pine needles, happy but feeling like things hadn’t started yet. Wondering when they would.

Her three aunts arguing when they thought she was asleep. Sweet voices, and sometimes sharp. Things she couldn’t understand; sentences that began one way and didn’t make sense by their end no matter how hard she concentrated.

Utter, utter confusion when she got her moon blood.

The memories slowly wound down. The searing pain behind her eyes dimmed. She rubbed her temples and noticed distractedly that she was curled up in a fetal position so tightly that her legs ached. She cautiously stretched them out, the fear of a muscle cramp momentarily overriding the mess in her head.

She eased herself into a sitting position, the movement grinding dirt and twigs and mushrooms into her beautiful ball gown.

Where were you raised, a
barn
?
Lianna had once asked in disgust, having found the princess in one of her moods, curled up on the ground in the corner of her room, among the dust balls and far too close to the chamber pot.

“No, I was raised in the
forest
,” she now said aloud, giggling a little.

And her aunts were…
fairies.
Living like feral peasants, dressed in shabby but cheerful shifts and aprons. They had been uncomfortable in human clothes, Aurora could see in hindsight. Presenting her with food and strange habits and love. They tried so hard, and sometimes they failed, but the love was constant and would last well beyond the end of her own short life.

She thought about the funny, badly made costume gown.

Why didn’t they just use their magic? The way her aunt Maleficent did?

Her…
not
her aunt.

Not a princess. Not a childhood in a castle.

Not Aurora.

Rose.
Briar Rose. She was named after a flower that was thorny and green and strong and beautiful, with moments of unbelievable softness in white and pink.

Sixteen years as Briar Rose, living with three crazy aunts in the middle of the forest.

Not a princess. Just a girl.

The girl, grown now—years older now. How had that happened?

The girl at the edge of the meadow sat up.

She couldn’t think here. She had to start moving. She would go mad if she stayed still.

She staggered into the forest—but was careful not to touch any of the trees.

Sixteen years of alternate memories of life in a forest. Sixteen years in the dark corners of a castle, running around like a bedraggled mouse while the world crumbled around her. Several years beyond that with Maleficent—
aha, that’s where they came from.

But…was this the forest where she grew up? It didn’t feel
exactly
right, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

The last thing she had seen in the castle came back to her: the image of her own body in that bright other world beyond the orb on Maleficent’s staff.

What had the queen said?

So…this was all a
dream
? Even the forest she was in now?

Unless she was just hallucinating in the last gasps of a fever, and her body was actually somewhere asleep, dying, in the poisoned wastelands of the Outside.

Aurora Rose grabbed the roots of her hair, feeling like she was going mad with indecision and panic.

She spread her hand before her and looked at the tiny freckle on her finger. The one that matched her sleeping form. She felt a breeze on her fingertips.

“This is all I have,” she said aloud. She needed to hear it with her own ears, outside the voices in her head. “What I know by touch and smell and sight—is
all
I know. Let’s say this is real now. Let’s start with that.”

She put her hand out to tentatively touch a tree as she passed. No painful opposite memories flooded her this time—just the comforting recollection of
tree
itself. Her skin remembered the pines’ rough bark better than her mind and appreciated the sticky sap even when she first recoiled at its touch.