Sleeping Beauty's Daughters (10 page)

Her face was open and dreamy, and it was clear that what she really loved in those memories was Leander.

“Now,” Emmeline said as we dried ourselves with towels that floated across the room to us, “what would you like to wear? Luna, do you want leggings and a tunic or a dress?”

“I suppose I could wear a dress,” Luna mused, to my surprise. “Do you have one that’s green? Leaf green?”

“No peacock blue?” I teased, and she made a face at me and then laughed.

“I think we can manage leaf green,” Emmeline assured her. “And for you, Aurora—lilac, I think.” She threw open the doors of a large wardrobe that stood against the wall and pulled out two dresses, flowing gowns with simple lines. There were no tight bodices to pinch us, no ruffles, no heavy embroidery or jewels. They were like wearing air, as unlike the dresses we wore at home as could be, and they fit us perfectly. Emmeline placed a circlet of emeralds around Luna’s curls and one of amethysts on my head, and gave us soft slippers dyed to match.

“Now you look like princesses again!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands with pleasure.

“But there’s no mirror,” I complained.

“No, I do not keep mirrors,” Emmeline said. “A mirror would reflect me as I truly am—wrinkles, warts, and all. I much prefer the image you see.” It was impossible to imagine a version of Emmeline that was old and wrinkled and warty, as beautiful as she seemed.

We went down to dinner, descending the stairs to the admiring gazes of Prince Leander and Symon, who waited for us below. Symon too was clean and well-dressed in clothes that looked elegant but comfortable. He was very handsome with his hair brushed and his face washed; very handsome indeed.

When Prince Leander raised my hand and kissed it, I curtsied, but I had to hold back a smile at Symon’s red-faced stammer and awkward bow as he approached me.

“I’m just your deckhand, the same as ever,” I whispered. Startled, he laughed and looked himself again.

We sat at a long table inlaid with a mosaic of shells. Above us, in the flickering candlelight from a pink coral chandelier, a ceiling fresco showed ancient gods and goddesses feasting. Our dinner came to us as our bathwater had: first the soup tureen appeared, then a platter of meats, and finally a sweet, all moving to the table as if carried by invisible hands. We served ourselves, for as Emmeline explained, “The dishes are only aloft because I concentrate on them. If I took my attention from the bowl for even an instant, the soup would be in your lap!”

The meal was delicious and merry, though waves of drowsiness hit me between each course. The very last of the devil’s shrub had worn off completely. I knew I couldn’t stay awake much longer. I tried to memorize everything: the taste of the food, the feel of the soft fabric of my dress, my sister’s dear face. I didn’t want to lose it all, and I fought as hard as I could. I wet my napkin with water and dabbed my face; I pinched my arms and legs. Luna saw my distress and kicked me gently under the table now and then, rousing me. Her expression was troubled, and I was grateful for her concern.

When the table had cleared itself, Emmeline and Leander left us to walk briefly in the garden. “We shan’t be gone long,” my great-great-great-godmother said. “I want to practice my spells one last time.”
One last time.
The words made me shiver.

Luna noticed and said, “Sister, it’s better that we face Manon than that we keep running from her.”

“Is it?” I asked hopelessly.

“I think so.” She sounded very unhappy, and I reached out and hugged her. She clung to me.

“Yes, you’re right,” I said. “I’m almost as tired of being afraid as I am just plain tired.”

Luna let me go then and staggered upstairs to sleep, her first real chance at rest in days. Symon, however, refused to leave me. “I’ll stay awake with you,” he insisted.

I looked at him and saw the blue shadows under his eyes. “You must rest,” I told him. “You may need your strength later. I’ll be all right. I don’t think lutins and fairies sleep—I’ll go out to the garden with them.”

He hesitated, but then he gave such an enormous yawn that he had to laugh and agree. Lingering for a few minutes, he asked, “Your godmother and your uncle—they’re a strange couple, aren’t they?”

“Actually, I think they’re very well-suited. They are both—well, both a little . . .” I trailed off, not sure what I meant. Odd? Remarkable?

“Aye, I see what you mean,” Symon said, grinning. “They are well-matched. As you and I are, don’t you think?”

I thought he was teasing, but I wasn’t certain. “We’re far too young to think of such things,” I said hesitantly. “Besides, I am a princess, and you are . . .”

“A smelly fisherman?” he finished for me, raising an eyebrow.

“No, no! That wasn’t what I meant at all!” I exclaimed. I thought of all that Symon had done with us and for us over the past days. “You’ve been so brave—so wonderful. We would never have gotten this far without you. I’m so very grateful. . . .”

“It’s been an adventure,” Symon allowed. “And I’m grateful too.”

“For what?” I was baffled. “Your boat is destroyed, and we’re stuck here on an island with no way to return. And even if we do find our way back—”

“I’m grateful you gave me the chance to go,” Symon said seriously. “My whole life was just fishing before—trying to catch enough to get through each winter, so that the next summer I could catch enough again. I love the sea, and now that I’ve seen beyond Vittray and my little strand, I want to see more. Oh, Aurora, I want to see everything!” He grasped my hand in his excitement at the thought.

“I hope you will,” I said softly. “I hope we get back.”

“We will,” he said with great confidence. “And when we do, I plan to visit you sometimes, though you are a princess, and I just a fisherman.”

My face grew warm. “If Papa allows it,” I said.

“Well,” Symon said, “you could tell him to allow it. You will be queen someday, after all.”

I was starting to feel quite flustered. “What I meant was, Papa probably has some prince or other in mind to court me.”

“I don’t recall mentioning courting you,” Symon said with a wicked smile. “And I may never be a prince, but I don’t think I will always be a fisherman.”

By now I was completely confounded. Before I could stop myself, I spoke, so rudely that I was shocked at my own words. “No? Have you plans to go into business and raise a great fortune and acquire a title and come calling on me when we are both grown?”

He was not the least bit insulted, but only laughed. “That’s a very interesting idea,” he remarked, moving closer to me. He bent his head, and without thinking I raised my face, and he kissed me. His lips were soft and sweet. Their touch made me dizzy with happiness.

He went off to bed then with many backward glances, and I watched him go, feeling the heat in my cheeks and the pounding of my heart. The memory of that kiss would help keep me awake for hours, I was sure.

As the moon rose I wandered through the grounds, looking for Emmeline and Prince Leander. Strange and exotic plants surrounded a pool at the very center of the garden, and I drew closer to splash some water on my face and rouse myself. I sat on the edge and looked in. My own reflection looked back, a pale girl with a dreamy smile and tired, dark-circled eyes.

Then, oddly, as I stared into the pool, I began to see other places in the water. I could make out the beach where we had met Emmeline, and the hallway of her house. I saw Emmeline herself walking in the meadow under the moonlight, hand in hand with Prince Leander as they talked intently. So this was how she had watched us, as we sailed over the seas in search of her!

The visions faded, and I saw my reflection again. But as I looked, my face in the water seemed to change. My mirrored eyes closed, though my real eyes were still open. And then I saw Luna in the reflection and spun around to see if she was behind me. She was not. I turned back. In the pool’s image she stood in a room I didn’t recognize. Her face appeared older and sadder, and I saw that she held a babe in her arms. As I watched, the babe lengthened and grew, and then it stood by her side and she held a second child.

I saw my parents in another room, the conservatory of our castle. Their forlorn faces changed and aged under my gaze, wrinkles and creases appearing and spreading. At last their own eyes closed, and their cheeks grew as pale as marble. I realized I was looking at their deaths. The reflected Luna aged too as I watched. Her eyes closed and her skin took on the translucence of death. I felt hot tears on my cheeks. It was heartbreaking, and I pulled away, crying, “No!”

“Aurora!” I heard Emmeline call as she ran toward me. “Do not look in the pool!” But it was too late.

I stood, trembling and weeping, and my godmother took me in her arms, stroking my hair. “They are all dead!” I sobbed.

“No, no,” Emmeline murmured. “When the pool shows the future, it only reveals what
might
happen, not what will happen.”

“But . . . what was I seeing? When might that happen?” I managed.

“If you fell asleep,” Emmeline said gently, voicing what I already knew. “If you slept for a hundred years.”

I had seen my parents’ sad lives, Luna’s sorrowful motherhood, all occurring without me. I nodded, wiping my eyes with my hand. “I won’t fall asleep,” I vowed. “It will not happen.”

And then a sound shattered the quiet of the night, a peal of noise that made us both jump in fright. Again it sounded, and yet again. It was the frantic tolling of a bell, the signal that I dreaded: Manon had arrived.

16

Of Sorcery and Sudden Sleep

T
he bell rang and rang, and I stood in shock, unable to move. A wave of airless cold blew across my face as Emmeline led me back through the garden to the house. “It will be all right,” she said to me. But I didn’t believe her, for I felt that she didn’t quite believe herself.

Luna and Symon clattered down the stairs a few moments later, bleary-eyed. Luna was dressed in her tunic and leggings again. “She’s here!” my sister exclaimed, and I nodded. She took my icy hands in hers.

“I can feel her,” I whispered. “I felt her in the forest, and in Vittray, and even on the sea. She pulls at me, she and her servant Sleep.”

“I won’t let you go,” Luna said fiercely. “I’ll pinch you and prod you and yank your hair to keep you awake. She will never have you!” I laughed shakily and squeezed her hand, knowing that she meant every word.

“We will go down to the shore to meet her,” Emmeline instructed, her voice calm. “I cannot face her and keep all this intact as well.” She motioned to the house around us, and I wondered how much of it was really there and how much only imagined. The table and chairs had felt real, and the food had tasted good. It all looked very solid and true.

But there was no time for such thoughts. We walked quickly down the path and through the moonlit meadow. Emmeline led with Prince Leander, then Symon and Luna and I walked together.

As we neared the beach, we could make out the tall mast and limp black sail of Manon’s boat, which rested on the sand. Somehow the vessel had survived the whirlpool intact. There was no crew that I could see. Only one figure stood on the strand, her dark cape billowing in the breeze.

Then we lined up, the five of us facing her. Symon was on one side of me, and Luna was on the other. Manon threw back her hood, and my eyes widened in surprise as I saw her closely. She didn’t look at all like the crone we’d seen on the pier at Vittray. Her face was young and beautiful, her skin white as the whitest sand, her eyes and brows and hair sable black. But in her malicious eyes and the cruel slash of her mouth, I could make out traces of the old woman I’d watched as we sailed away, and I knew it was truly she who stood before us.

“At last we meet again,” Manon said. Her voice was deep and throaty. She was gazing at Emmeline and Prince Leander, not at me.

Leander bowed. “You look very well, Manon,” he said, his tone serene. But his jaunty smile was gone.

Manon scowled. “I would look far better if I had spent the last century as I should have—with you. The two of us, joyful together. Instead, I have been shaped by great sorrow and loss.”

“You are shaped by cruelty and revenge,” Emmeline countered, stepping forward. “You could not have kept him, you know. He loved only me.”

Even in the moonlight, I could see Manon’s eyes flash. “You are wrong. He loved me once. It was your magic that took him from me. He never would have left me otherwise.”

“My magic?” Emmeline repeated. “Am I so very good at magic? Then we have nothing to fear from you.” She laughed, as if to show her unconcern, but she sounded strained. I exchanged an anxious glance with Symon.

“You are less than nothing,” Manon said harshly to Emmeline. “You are as a splinter in my finger. I will pull you out and toss you away.”

“I am not quite as foolish as I was, nor as weak,” Emmeline retorted. “I have had some years to perfect my skills.”

“Perfect them?” Manon mocked her. “Do you mean this—this illusion?” She swept an arm around in a circle. As her arm moved, the parts of the island that she pointed to wavered and then disappeared. With dread I watched as the meadow, the trees behind, and the land beneath vanished. In a moment, there was nothing left but the strand we stood upon, a narrow beach in a great dark sea.

I could not stop from crying out fearfully, and Manon turned her attention to me.

“So, my dear,” she remarked. “You have managed to resist Sleep all this time! You are very clever, very clever indeed.” Manon’s gaze felt unbearably heavy, and I wobbled and would have fallen to my knees if Symon’s grip had not kept me upright.

“It is harder when I am near, is it not?” Manon went on. “Imagine what would happen if I were just to reach out and touch you! Could you stay awake then, do you think?”

I moaned as Manon’s hand came closer and closer to me. I felt paralyzed. I tried to make my legs move, but they didn’t obey me. Was it fear or magic that held me in place? I couldn’t tell.

But then Emmeline stepped between us. “I will not let you,” she declared.

“Ah, good,” Manon said, sounding pleased. “I have been waiting—come, let us see your power!”

Emmeline hesitated, then spoke a string of words I didn’t recognize. Not Latin, of that I was certain. The force of the incantation pushed Manon backward a few steps, and seawater splashed the hem of her dress.

“Surely you can do better than that,” Manon taunted. She uttered her own spell in what sounded like the same language. Emmeline was lifted off her feet as if by invisible hands and tossed off the strand, landing ankle-deep in the sea.

It was like watching a horrific game of lawn tennis, as the incantations flew back and forth between the fairies. Always, though, Emmeline was pushed farther and farther off the strand, until she stood up to her waist in the waves. Each of Manon’s chants seemed to weigh on me, as if rocks were being piled atop my shoulders. And with each intonation, the waves rose a little higher on our tiny island.

Finally Luna could bear it no longer. She grabbed Leander’s arm. “Do something!” she commanded him. “This is all your fault, you wretched imp! If you hadn’t started it all by spurning Manon—”

His composure was shaken. “Don’t you think I know that?” he said. “But I cannot cast spells—I am not a fairy. My speed through air and water will not help here. There is nothing I can do.”

“If you love her, do something,” Luna repeated hotly.

“You must!” Symon urged, and I gave him a grateful look. “Aurora is your niece! You can’t just let Manon have her!”

My uncle’s calm, impassive face changed then. For just a moment, his features showed a trace of what the years had cost him—losing his family, losing his human self. There was an almost unbearable sadness in his eyes.

“Yes. You are quite right.” Prince Leander squared his shoulders and stood straighter. For the first time, I could see in him a little of the young prince as Mama had described him, ardent and strong. He stepped between the two fairies.

Manon had just spoken, and the strength of her spell sent him reeling to his knees. He struggled up and moved toward her, bent at the middle as if he were pushing against a great wind. He reached out, the strain of the movement showing in his face. When it seemed that he was about to grab Manon and choke her, she laughed, and his arms dropped lifelessly to his sides.

“Prince Leander to the rescue!” she scoffed. “You silly creature, what do you think to do against me? I can finish you with a flick of my wrist.” And she flicked her hand, sending Leander sprawling on the wet sand.

“No!” cried Emmeline, trying to pull herself out of the water. “This is between us, Manon! It is not about Leander.”

“Of course it is about Leander,” Manon retorted. “It was always about Leander. You took him from me when he was mine—mine!” I could hardly bear to listen and watch. Emmeline had spoken the truth. Manon was mad, utterly mad.

“Please, do not destroy him,” Emmeline pleaded.

Manon smiled at her, most dreadfully. “Yes, Cousin, what a waste that would be! Since you ask so nicely, I will not destroy him. Instead, I believe I will take him back.”

Standing knee-deep in the seawater, Emmeline covered her mouth with her hand in horror.

“Do you release him, Emmeline? Will you give him back to me?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Emmeline said, in a shaking voice, “Yes. I do release him. You are free to go with Manon, Leander.”

Leander got to his feet slowly and methodically began brushing the sand from his clothes. “But I was always free to go,” he said, unflustered. “I am with you because I love you, Emmeline.”

“Then I give you a choice,” Manon snarled, her tone ferocious. “You may come with me and stay a lutin, or become human again, and grow old like a man, and die.”

Emmeline wailed then, a sound of utter despair. I grabbed Symon’s hand hard enough to make him wince. I was sure that Prince Leander would never choose to become old and ugly and to die, when he could be immortal.

Leander bent a little to adjust his tunic. I couldn’t see his face, so I didn’t know what the words he spoke cost him, but his voice was tranquil. “Why, that is no choice at all,” he said. “I choose life and Emmeline, not the living death that eternity with you would force me to endure.”

Perhaps he could have put it more diplomatically. His reply stunned me, and I realized that he was stronger than he seemed. He had courage—and he truly loved Emmeline.

His words enraged Manon. As her anger intensified, the wind that blew across the strand gusted, whipping the waves higher. Now the land that we stood on was just a strip of sand, and the dark water lapped at our feet.

“So be it!” Manon cried, pointing at Prince Leander. I feared he would immediately grow ancient and wizened and wither before our eyes, but he didn’t change visibly. A great shudder shook his body, and then he was still.

Emmeline splashed over to him, and he put his arms around her. I saw Manon flinch. And then she turned once more to me.

“I shall not let you off so easily, my dear,” she said in a voice of deceptive sweetness.

Symon stepped bravely in front of me, but again Manon flicked her wrist, and he sailed through the air, landing with a splash a few yards away. He scrambled to his feet, but before he could get back to my side, Luna leaped forward.

“You must curse me instead,” she said firmly.

Manon paused. It was clear that she had not been expecting this.

“Why would I want to bother with you?” she asked with real curiosity.

“My sister shouldn’t have to sleep for a century,” Luna said. “I’m the one who should be punished. She’s done nothing wrong—never in her entire life! Not like me—I’ve lied, and deceived, and destroyed things, and hurt people. It’s my fault that she pricked her finger at all. I deserve the curse, not Aurora.”

The wind died into a great silence. I put my hand on Luna’s shoulder, sending her all the love and strength I could through my touch. I looked at Manon. Her face was thoughtful.

“Do you truly believe that you deserve it?” she asked Luna.

“Yes, I do,” she replied without hesitation.

Manon shook her head and laughed. “Foolish girl,” she said with contempt. “You are not what you think you are, nor is your sister. And the spell is already cast. It was settled the moment I cursed Aurora as an infant. There is no way to change it from one sister to the other, even if I desired it.”

I gave Luna’s shoulder a loving squeeze, then released her. I pushed her aside and stood alone to face Manon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luna splashing through the rising water to Emmeline, who stood motionless beside Prince Leander, her face grief-stricken.

“You must help Aurora!” Luna begged Emmeline. Her voice sounded faint and faraway to me. “Can’t you amend the curse? You did it once. You must alter it, shorten it—the way you did before. Not death for Mama, but a hundred years of sleep. Not a hundred years of sleep for Aurora, but . . .”

“Alter it?” Emmeline repeated uncertainly. “I’m not sure. . . .” Then her tone changed. “There is something—oh, Luna! Tell me, quickly, when is your sister’s birthday?”

“It’s . . . September twentieth,” Luna answered, bewildered. I heard their words as if from a great distance. They had no meaning to me. I was beginning to fade.

At that moment, Manon spoke. “Come here, Princess,” she said in a strangely tender voice. She reached out her hand and touched me, ever so gently, on the cheek. With her touch, Sleep came out from its hiding place, and the temptation that I had battled for so long grew too strong to resist.

It felt as I had always imagined death would feel—a slow, dizzying fall into a void. It was a little like being back in the whirlpool. I could not scream or even speak. I saw those I loved as I spun—Luna, shocked and horrified; Emmeline, turning to hide her face in Leander’s shoulder. And Symon, his expression one of deepest sorrow.
I will miss you,
I thought as blackness enfolded me.
Do not forget me!