Swan Sister (17 page)

“Look, do you see, Roisa?” asked Carabeau, and she pointed with her long, ringed finger at an open courtyard in one of the cities. There was torchlight there and music and dancing—but all stopped utterly still. Exactly like the scene in the palace they had left behind.

“Do you see the banners?” asked Carabeau. “The lights and the colored windows. Look at the girls’ rich dresses and the fine clothes of the men. Look at that little dog dancing.”

And the little dog
was
dancing, up on its hind legs, cute as anything. Only right now it didn’t
move
.

Roisa sighed.

“What, my dear?” asked the Faery.

“I wish—” said Roisa.

“Yes? You know you can say to me or ask me anything, my love.”

“Yes, I know. I’m only—sorry I can’t ever see—what it’s
really
like—I miss it, Carabeau. Only a little bit. But I do.”

“Your old life, do you mean? Before you fell asleep and then woke up with us.”

“Yes.”

“Before the Spinning Wheel and the Spindle with its pointed tip.”

“Yes. Oh—it’s marvelous to fly about like this, to see everything, and all the foreign lands—the towers and spires so high up, the splendid rooms, the mountains and seas—I remember that forest with tigers, and the procession with colored smokes and elephants—and the great gray whale in the ocean, and the lighthouse that was built before I was even born—”

“And the libraries of books,” said Carabeau softly, “the treasure-houses of diamonds, the cathedrals, and the huts.”

“Yes,” said Roisa.

She hadn’t known before she began that she would say any of this. She hadn’t known she
felt
any of it. (Nor did she think if Carabeau might be testing her in order that she be sure of this very thing.)

“Is it because,” said Carabeau, “when you visit these sights with us, time has always stopped?”

“Yes—no—”

“Because, Roisa, one day that may change. How would that be for you, if the people moved and the clocks ticked?”

“Of course—of
course
I wish everything was like that—so I could see it properly
alive
. But . . . it isn’t only that. I want—to live
inside
it—not outside all the time.”

“Even if you are outside with us, who love you so well? Even with me?”

“Oh,” said Roisa.

Not long after that the horses dipped down. They galloped between scentless streamers of low cloud that
should have carried with them the smells of spices or fog or rain. They brushed the unmoving tops of trees with their glittering hoofs and skimmed over a wild night-valley.

This time they landed in the courtyard of a vast old temple. Though some of the building had come down from enormous age, still lines of carved pillars upheld a roof whose tiles, blue as eyes, remained.

In the past they had often come down into the places of human life and walked the horses, or walked on foot, among markets and along busy highways, mingling with the people and the beasts who, “playing statues” like everyone in the palace and everywhere, stayed motionless as granite.

That very first night—so long ago it seemed now—Carabeau and the other twelve Feys had explained to her how, while Roisa and her palace slept their magical sleep, the rest of the world went on about its usual affairs. And how, when she woke up each night, it was inside a timeless zone the Faery Faer could make and carry with them. And then, though she and they might spend all the hours of darkness traveling to the world’s four corners and back, no time at all would pass in mortal lands.

“It isn’t,” Carabeau had said, “that we stop their time—only that we move aside from the time they keep. For them less than the splinter of a single second goes by—for us it is a night.”

“But the
wind
moves—” Roisa had cried.

“That wind that blows is not a wind of the world, nor subject to the laws of the earth. That wind is magical, and
its own master. But the moon doesn’t move, and the sea doesn’t. The clouds don’t move at all.”

Astonished, Roisa had never really understood, which she saw now. She’d only accepted it all.

Of course she had. Thirteen Faeries had told it to her.

Only one thing. That first night she had asked if the other people in the palace—her parents, the guardsman—if they could wake up too, as she had done. Because, as she knew, now the curse had fallen they, like her, were meant to sleep for a hundred years.

“They won’t wake,” said Carabeau. “Not until the proper hour. Or else there would be no point to any of this.”

Tonight they dismounted from the horses in the ancient temple courtyard. It was full of the (magically raised) perfume of myrtle bushes, which had once grown there. Faery lamps of silvery amber and cat’s-eye green hung from spider silks or floated in the air. An orchestra of toads and night crickets made strange, rhythmic music. Invisible servants came to wait on the Thirteen Feys and Roisa, bringing a delicate feast of beautiful, unguessable foods and drinks.

They picnicked while the temple bats, caught in that second’s splintering, hung above like an ebony garland thrown at the moon.

Roisa once more sighed. She’d tried hard not to.

Carabeau looked into her eyes. But the eyes of a Fey, even if you look directly into them,
can’t
be seen into.

“Do you recall, Roisa, what happened that evening when you were sixteen? Then tell it again.”

So Roisa told Carabeau and the others what they all knew so well. They listened gravely, their chins on their hands or their hands lightly folded on the glimmering goblets. As if they had never heard any of it before.

But this story was famous in many places.

At Roisa’s birth twelve of the Faery kind had come to bless the child with gifts. These gifts were just the sort of thing a princess would be expected to have and to display. So they made her Lovely, Charming, Graceful, Intelligent, Artistic, Well Mannered, Dutiful, Affectionate, Patient, Brave, Calm, and Modest.

But all the while they were giving her these suitable gifts, the Twelve Feys were restless, especially the two that had to give the baby the blessings of good manners and dutifulness, and the other Faery who had to make her modest.

Every so often, one or several of them would steal closer and stare in at the cradle. The court believed they were just admiring the baby. Of course she was exceptional—she was the king’s daughter.

Eventually the Feys left the room, leaving it loud with congratulatory rejoicing. By magical means they’d called to their own queen, the Thirteenth Fey, whose name was Carabeau.

Now this was unusual. And in the town, which then thrived at the palace’s foot, people looked up astounded to see the Queen Fey ride over the sky in her emerald carriage drawn by lynxes.

When she entered the King’s Hall, courtiers and
nobles stood speechless at the honor. But Carabeau looked at them with her serious, wise face, and silence fell. Then she spoke.

“The princess shall be all that’s been promised you. You’ll be proud of her, and she will fulfill all your wishes. But first she shall have time for herself.”

At that a hiss had gone up like steam from a hot stone over which has been flung some cold water.

The king frowned. His royal lips parted.

Carabeau lifted her hand, and the king closed his mouth.

“The Spinning Wheel of Time shall stop,” said Carabeau, “because this child, by then sixteen years old, shall grasp the Spindle that holds the thread time is always weaving. Then she shall gain a hundred years of freedom before she becomes only your daughter, and wife to the prince you approve for her.”

The king shouted. It wasn’t sensible, but he did.

The rest—was history.

When Roisa finished recounting this, which was all she knew, and all the Feys had told her, Carabeau nodded.

“You remember too that night, and how you went to meet the guardsman—you, always so dutiful, but not then—and somehow you missed him, as we intended, and climbed into the attics, and found me there. And when I offered you the chance of a hundred years of journeys, of adventures—of freedom—you gripped time’s Spindle, and the Time Wheel stopped.”

“I don’t remember that—I never have,” said Roisa doubtfully.
“Only—going upstairs, and perhaps finding you. But when I first woke afterward, I was frightened.”

“But now you are not. Understand, my love, for you this wasn’t a curse or doom. It was my gift, the thirteenth blessing. And anyway, at last the hundred years are at an end. This night is your final one among us. Let me tell you what has been arranged for you when you return to the world. Tomorrow a powerful and handsome prince, even more handsome than the guardsman, will hack a way in through the thorns. He’ll climb up through the gardens, the palace, mount the attic stair, wondering at it all. He’ll find you asleep, as always you sleep by day. He’ll wake you up. You’ll fall in love at once, and so will he. Then everyone else will wake. The birds will fly about, the cats will purr, the earth’s own wind will make the leaves rustle, the sun and the moon will cross the sky. You will live happily till the end of your days, you and your prince, admired and loved by all. The life that, perhaps, now you long for.”

The Thirteenth Fey paused. She waited, looking at Roisa.

Roisa realized that something was expected of her. She didn’t know what it was—should she thank the Faeries excessively for all the pleasures and travels, the feasts eaten and sights seen? Or for their care of her, their kindness?

Roisa didn’t know that the Thirteenth Faery was actually waiting to see if Roisa would say to her,
But I don’t really want that!
For Roisa to burst out that No, no, now the choice was truly hers, really she wanted to stay among the Faery kind. Providing only that they would lift the
spell from those left in the palace (as she knew they could), then she would far rather become one of their own—if that were possible (and it was). Even if it lost her a princess’s crown and all the rough romance of the human world.

But Roisa, of course,
didn’t
want that, did she.

She wanted precisely what she had been supposed to have, before the magic of the Spinning Wheel and the hundred years’ waking sleep.

And so, when Carabeau murmured quietly, “Are you glad your century of freedom is over?” Roisa sprang up. She raised her head and her arms to the sky. She crowed, (not modestly or calmly) with delight, imagining the fun, happiness, glory that was coming.

And then, startling herself, she found she was crying. Just like on that first night. Just like then.

And when she looked down again at the Feys, they seemed pale as ghosts, thin as shadows, and pearls spangled their cheeks, for the Faery People can’t cry real tears.

Then they kissed her. The last kisses of magic. The next kiss she would know would be a mortal one.

“Shall I remember—any of
this
? she asked as, under the static moon, they rode the sky to her palace.

“Everything.”

“Won’t anyone . . . be jealous?” asked Roisa.

The Thirteenth Faery said, “You must pretend it was all a dream you had while you slept.” And in a voice Roisa never heard, Carabeau added, “And soon, to you, that is all it will be.”

T
ANITH
L
EE
says, “The story of the Sleeping Beauty, along with many fairy tales, has always haunted me. I’d considered if, sleeping, she ever dreamed. It took my husband and partner, John Kaiine, to suggest to me that, more than dreaming, she might actually, unknown to any, be regularly waking up. The idea that the thirteenth Fairy might not be as bad as she’d been painted followed swiftly. To me the result here is rather sad—for the fairies and Roisa. Then again, of course she wants her own life back! What, I wonder, would you or I have chosen?”

T
ANITH
L
EE
, who lives on the coast of England, has written a number of novels for children and young adults, including
The Dragon Hoard, Princess Hynchatti & Some Other Surprises, Prince on a White Horse, Islands in the Sky, Black Unicorn, Gold Unicorn, Red Unicorn,
and
Law of the Wolf Tower,
first of the Wolf Law trilogy.