Once Upon a Dream (37 page)

Aurora Rose turned to say something to Phillip…

…and a hand shot up out of the pile, stabbing its way to the light.

A big,
clawed
, black hand.

“No…” Phillip whispered.

As if it was gaining strength from the sheer possibility of release from its stony prison, the creature underneath the rocks began to shift and move. Waves and waterfalls of boulders and rubble tumbled heavily to the floor.

Aurora Rose quickly used up what was left of the castle trying to crush the horrific thing that was slowly emerging. Giant beams, bedrock, furniture, statues, the walls and windows and turrets, the very tower she had jumped from. It all converged on the spot, forced itself into impossibly small spaces as she imagined crushing the life out of Maleficent. Stones screamed and exploded. Burning, liquid scree filled in gaps in the stones, sealing it.

There was nothing left.

A hot, dusty breeze scoured the desolate plain that had once been a castle. The only things that remained unbroken and upright were the throne and the strange hovering oval that showed the real, sleeping Aurora. Her face was twisted, contorted, her dreams of battle and violence causing her to react in her sleep. But the dreamer made no noise.

Everything was silent.

And then the dragon burst forth.

It rose from its cracked, stony prison like a lizard from its egg. The thing rose higher and higher into the sky, enormous, nearly as tall as the castle had been, black and purple and yellow. Not like a proper storybook dragon at all: too skinny here, too lumpy there, wings that were little more than useless flaps on ugly, blackened stumps of shoulders. Long, narrow beak-like mouth full of teeth, like those of the demons Maleficent had summoned. It screamed, the terrible noise ripping across the empty land.

Horrific. Like something from the end of the world.

It shrieked and shook rocks off its seemingly endless scaly back and continued to grow into its new skin.

“Get out,” Aurora Rose said to Phillip without moving her eyes from the dragon. “Get everyone out of here.”

“I’m staying with you. Princes kill dragons. That’s what we’re all about.”

“You didn’t kill her
enough
last time. Help me after you get everyone away.”

Phillip opened his mouth to argue but was interrupted by a shout from behind.

“GOOD SUBJECTS OF HOUSE STEFAN!”

King Hubert stood on the path that led to the forest, as tall and unmovable as a mountain despite the ragged clothing flapping around his ankles. On his legs and arms were fresh wounds: deep, ugly gouges still weeping blood.

But his good eye, clouded before, was clear and icy. He clasped his stone as if it were a royal orb, and his stick a mighty staff.

“Father,” Phillip whispered in wonder. “You’re alive….”

“COME TO THE SHELTER OF THE FOREST!” Hubert ordered. “FOLLOW ME, AND AWAIT THIS BATTLE’S END OUT OF HARM’S WAY!
NOW!
”

As if just waiting to be told what to do, the straggling crowd immediately ran to him. He stood aside and gestured them past with his stick like a stern shepherd. And so Aurora Rose’s subjects fled into what must have looked like a different kind of death to the dreamland sleepers: the forest they had been told was dangerous and deadly.

The princess felt a surge of warmth and gratitude, something she had rarely felt for an adult other than her aunts. People could be surprising. Not
everyone
in the world was untrustworthy and disappointing. Not everyone lied to you or failed you.

Quietly pleased, Phillip watched his father with a smile.

As the last little child ran past him, the king turned—and gave a big old-Hubert-style wink. He shook his stone and stick and whispered: “I’ll defend them with my very blood.”

And then he was off behind them, shouting exhortations and marching very precisely.

Aurora Rose put a hand to her head. Maleficent’s transformation had taken an absurd amount of power, and the blood magic resonated soundly in the princess’s body. It was
her
power the evil fairy stole. She was weak and not ready for what would come next.

The dragon reared up. It belched a wide stream of ugly green fire from its beak.

Phillip grabbed Aurora Rose and swung her to the other side of him, then stood in front of her.

Lianna still stood, strangely uncowed by the fire that seemed like it could have just as easily consumed her.

As the flames neared them, Aurora Rose whipped up a wind that swept the fire aside and into the sky in a vortex of smoke and ash. The dragon shrieked in frustration.

But how could she
defeat
it? What would disable it? What would, at the very least, trip it up?

Gorges.
She remembered them from her time in the woods. Steep and narrow. At the bottom were shallow, pebbly streams….

The world fell out from below the dragon.

The ground caved into itself and tumbled into the bottomless pit that opened up. The giant lizard shrieked and fell backward, clawing desperately to try to stay upright.

Aurora Rose felt a tugging inside her head.

Give up. You cannot defeat me so easily.

The dragon was slithering its way out of the pit, tail and legs moving so quickly and strangely it was like it was climbing the air itself to get out.

Prince Phillip ran toward it, sword out. Just at the edge of the pit, he stopped and sliced at the thing’s neck, which was now level with the ground.

It didn’t even scratch a scale.

Maleficent threw her head back and laughed, yellow eyes narrowing.

That was the only thing, perhaps, that saved Phillip from an eye-level blast of hellfire.

He ran away, past the dragon, zigzagging over the ruined castle floors, through what had once been the kitchens, the chapel, the treasury. He stopped on the other side of the pit and taunted Maleficent—trying to draw her attention away from Aurora Rose. He clanged his sword against his cuirass and hooted.

“Too slow, Maleficent!”

The dragon was now entirely out of the pit. It snaked after him, moving and twitching and shuddering like it hurt to stay still.

Aurora Rose pushed her hands apart. She imagined opening up the earth like a giant book.

The dragon ran headfirst straight into a hill that suddenly rose before it. It staggered, stunned for a moment.

But then it rose, shaking its neck and head—and wobbling a bit—and immediately scrabbled over the ground after Phillip again.

Aurora Rose looked around in desperation. What else could she do?

The trees.

With a sad twinge, Aurora Rose remembered seeing them for the first time when she escaped the Thorn Castle, how amazed she was that they still existed.

Now they pulled themselves out of the ground with creaking, groaning screams. Branches flew off as an invisible hand stripped their trunks to deadly points.

She sent them after Maleficent.

The first one slammed the dragon squarely in the back. It swung its head around in annoyance, brushing it off like a twig and fluttering its useless wings angrily.

Aurora Rose threw a dozen more after that, one after another screaming through the air like large, deadly arrows.

Maleficent roared, then scampered toward her on ugly, flailing legs, doing little to avoid the trees.

The wooden tips blunted, the trunks cracked in half, the missiles bounced off the armor of her skin. When they hit, she merely flinched.

Twigs and leaves cannot hurt me, you silly girl!

Phillip was chasing after the dragon again, slashing at its tail to get its attention.

Maleficent’s head whipped around faster than seemed possible and she belched a river of green fire at him.

Aurora Rose screamed.

Ugly, hissing black smoke rose where Phillip had been.

It drifted, ghostlike, over the piles of rocks and boulders.

The dragon threw back its head and roared out laughter like bile.

Then it turned with a certain regal slowness, as if savoring the next bit.

Aurora Rose swallowed a sob. She had to
not
think about Phillip. She had to think about the hundreds of people who depended on her, everyone who needed her to live, and win, and wake up. So
they
could live.

What kills dragons?

“Think, Aurora,” she said aloud, panicking. “What kills dragons? Phillip—”

Phillip had his magic sword….

Aurora Rose imagined a dozen of them.

They rained on Maleficent from the crazy sky like metal drops, plinking against her skin.

The dragon’s flesh shuddered, crawling and puckering, where each one hit. A few scales, the size of war shields, fell. But no blood was drawn.

No weapons of man can destroy me! I am a mere fairy no more. I am the
greatest
thing in this world!

The dragon’s tongue, forked and giant, came out and raked over its lips in expectation. The beast slithered slowly up on Aurora Rose and raised its deadly claw, each nail twice as long as the swords she had summoned and as black as death.

And then, suddenly, Maleficent’s neck snapped back. She screeched in pain—a horrible sound that carried across the world.

Standing under her, looking grim, was Lianna. She had her little bodice knife sunk deep in the flesh of Maleficent’s ankle and was twisting it.

“But weapons from hell can take back what they are owed.”

There was a very faint but definite smile on her lips. She pulled her dagger out and sank it again, this time in the flat of the dragon’s foot.

Maleficent roared with rage and spasmed, shaking her leg to free herself. But the dagger stayed stuck.

She turned to bite Lianna in half.

Suddenly,
Phillip
was there, popping up from behind a boulder. His hair and clothes were singed and there were burns across his face, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

He cleared the distance between him and Lianna in seconds. He grabbed her around the waist like she was no more than a ball in a game, and kept running.

Maleficent whipped her tail like a club. The tip just touched his side, but it was enough to knock him down. He landed with a sickeningly heavy thud and Lianna fell out of his grasp.

As fast as a cat with a mouse desperate to escape, the dragon leapt over Phillip to pounce on the handmaiden.

“No!”
Aurora Rose cried, trying to summon the earth to move, to make a canyon between the two.

It was too late.

With a look of pure hatred, the dragon ripped its front claws over Lianna’s face and body. Their needle-sharp tips shredded her flesh and opened her innards to the light of day.

And then, as if it had merely been an annoying task to be dealt with, the dragon was done. Maleficent spun around and faced Phillip and Aurora Rose, not even bothering to gloat over her kill.

“Lianna!” Aurora Rose cried.

“Sorry…”
her old handmaiden wheezed.

Then her black eyes froze in place.

It was too much. From friend to betrayer to friend and savior. To
gone
. Aurora Rose couldn’t process all of it.

Stop,
she told herself.
Mourn her later. THINK NOW!

From somewhere unseen, a clock began to strike the hour.

Phillip and Aurora Rose and even Maleficent paused in confusion.

There was nothing left to the castle. Except for the forest, the whole world looked destroyed and grim, flat and featureless in all directions. Yet the distinct bong of a clock could be heard, eerily and perfectly, everywhere at once.

Cold dread washed over Aurora Rose.

Maleficent reared up on her hind feet, the left one splayed from the dagger. She laughed.

Midnight on the day after your sixteenth birthday, Aurora! Now you die—and I live again!

Aurora Rose thought desperately. What could she do? All this was because of the curse. All this was because she pricked—

Suddenly, she knew. She
knew
what she had to do.

Although she had only ever seen one once in the real world, she could bring up a perfect image of it in her memory.

The spinning wheel.

Bits and pieces of the ruined castle—chairs and tables and beams and other chunks of broken wood—began to fly through the air. They spun and interconnected and wiggled until each piece fit, sucking together like lodestones. Aurora Rose frowned, concentrating hard to get the trickier bits in place.

They made an ugly, enormous spinning wheel.

Maleficent laughed and belched green fire.

The spinning wheel caught flame immediately and started to burn away—all but the spindle, the bright black nail with the sharp tip.

The dragon looked confused for a moment.

Aurora Rose drove the spindle into its heart.

The dragon screamed.

It spewed fire that changed different, hideous colors: bloody red, sickly black, hellfire yellow.

Purple and scarlet and black ichor throbbed from the wound in a giant-sized echo of what had happened to Lady Astrid. Aurora Rose watched with a grim, horrible satisfaction.

The dragon clawed at its wound, trying to pull the spindle out, perhaps—but all it succeeded in doing was ripping out patches of scales and flesh.

It toppled, falling so hard that the ground shook. The princess was almost thrown off her feet.

The dragon writhed and scrambled on the ground as if trying to claw its way back to life. It shuddered and hissed and convulsed.

Its wings and legs and scales and tail billowed and fluttered and seemed to shrink, to become raggedy flaps of cloth. These finally shredded and collapsed around what would have been its giant body—except that there was no body anymore, either.

Just a black and purple and yellow stain on the ground, with little pieces of silk flapping in it like a dying butterfly.