The Sleeping Beauty (33 page)

“Oh, yes!” they both said. “And the Brownies do not wish you to leave like this ever again, Godmother,” added the one in Lily’s mirror.

“Well
I
don’t want to, either,” she replied fervently, and turned to Jimson. “Well, my love, shall we?”

He bowed and gestured to the mirror. “After you, my dearest.”

Swiftly they stepped through, leaving the suite silent and empty, waiting for its new occupants.

Rosa was perfectly happy to put her new crown in the hands of the attendants who were hovering nervously beside her, waiting for her to give it over. She really had no idea how Lily had put up with that much weight on her head. She was already getting the signs of a headache.

Siegfried seemed just as happy about being rid of his. “Are they gone?” he asked, as the attendants took the crowns away to be locked up. Even in a kingdom as wealthy as Eltaria, the two State Crowns were priceless, every gem—and there were exactly one hundred gems, large and small in each crown—matched and flawless, and enough gold in them to stagger the imagination.

“Let me check.” Rosa took out her own little mirror, and the face of Jimson’s third apprentice appeared in it without her prompting.

“Sylvie, are the Godmother and Jimson gone from here?” she asked.

“Not only gone home, but retired to the bedchamber and locked the door!” giggled the Mirror Spirit. “Shameless!”

Rosa slipped the mirror onto the hanger on the wall and laughed.
“Indeed! You would think that after three hundred years they would have some decorum!”

“I don’t know about that,” Siegfried replied, slipping his arms around her from behind and kissing the top of her head. “We don’t have anything pressing, you know. That sounds like a good idea to me—”

“We still have to say goodbye to Leopold, so he has some daylight to travel by,” she reminded him, and he mock pouted.

“All right. Let’s go say our farewells to the rogue so we can get back to more important business.” At her raised eyebrow, he retorted, “What? Making an heir
isn’t
important?”

“Shush, you.” She batted at his hands, and he released her with a laugh that made her shiver a little at the promise in it.

They made their way out to the garden—closed off from the public, and for once, empty of the courtiers. The public were being feted in tents out in that enormous field—after all, it wouldn’t do for them to say they had been cheated of a coronation celebration!—and the Court having a celebration of their own in pavilions in the orchard.

Which left the garden free for someone who needed space to say his farewells. Like Leopold.

And Leopold’s new wife.

Who was currently berating her father and getting the best of the argument.

As Rosa and Siegfried entered the garden they could already hear her. She had a very impressive voice, and the lungs behind it to make sure people got her point. Siegfried held out his hand, and the royal pair stopped just out of the immediate vicinity of the three. The stunning and statuesque blonde woman in the gold armor had her hands on her shapely hips and, from the look of it, had been dressing her father down for some time. “…and did I, or did I
not
do exactly what you
wanted
by helping Sieglinde escape?” she asked the old,
white-bearded man acerbically. “And never mind what you told Mother about her! And never mind what Mother told
you.
Goddess of the hearth and marriage be damned, she has no right to go around trying to murder poor pregnant girls who got
wyrded
into falling in love! That makes no more sense than punishing a fish because it can’t breathe air!”

He rubbed at his eye patch uncomfortably. “Well—yes—but—Brunnhilde—”

“So since I did what you wanted,
why
was I punished for it?” she demanded.

He fidgeted and wouldn’t look at her. “I—promised your mother—”

“Promises you had no intention of keeping! And you
knew
what was going to happen! You knew very well that once Siggy woke me, the whole wretched saga was going to play out. Erda told you. And I know she told you, because she told
me
she told you!” Brunnhilde actually stamped her foot at him. “Half of your problems are because you keep too many secrets, and the other half are because you bring them on yourself. So why punish
me
for them?”

Leopold stood to the side, arms folded, lips compressed as he tried not to smile. And when Brunnhilde’s father turned to him for help, clearly counting on a man to support another man, he shook his head.

“I have no idea what you two are talking about,” he replied. “So don’t ask me to take sides here.”

Brunnhilde had gotten the bit in her teeth and was not going to be stopped now. Clearly she had been saving this up for some time. “So. You lie to Mother, you manipulate me, you manage to lay the blame for everything that happens on
me
and set
me
up to be the instrument for everything that is going to go wrong! You set me up to fall in love with my
nephew
of all the perverted things,
and
put everything in motion to make my life total misery and end in—”

“Dooooooom!”
trilled the firebird from the tree above their heads.

“Exactly.” Brunnhilde glared at her father. “And now
you
actually have the nerve to come here, think you’re going to force me to give up my husband, and take exception to me for wanting to keep doom and destruction and the end of the gods from happening?”

“Your mother—” the old man said feebly.

“My mother is a manipulative idiot,” Brunnhilde said bitterly. “You’re another. And you two deserve each other, and you should just go home and slap each other to sleep.
I
am not going to repeat your mistakes.” Then, out of nowhere, a slow, sly smile crept over her face. “And by the way,
Father,
I made sure you can’t repeat your own.”

Alarm contorted the old man’s face. Leopold snickered.

“Brunnhilde—what did you do—”

She turned her attention to her nails, examining them critically, then buffing them on the leather strap of her breastplate. “Oh, nothing much. I just got that ring and returned it to the River Maidens.”

The old man’s eyes bulged. “You—
what?
”

“Well,
I
didn’t renounce love!” she snapped. “And Siggy was smart enough when the bird warned him to leave it alone! No one else knew where Fafnir was. So Siggy told me where he’d left it, and I got it and gave it back to them. No more cheating and lying over it. No more trying to barter away the other goddesses over it.
And no more betraying your own children over it.
It’s back in the river where it belongs and now there’s going to be no downfall of the gods, either. There’s no escape from the consequences of what you do now, Father. You’re just going to have to face Mother and learn to
deal
with each other now.”

“I—she—you—”

“What’s more, my sisters have decided they aren’t going to be so quick to jump to your orders anymore, either. They’re tired of picking up dead men. They’d like some live ones of their own. What
are you going to do, put
them
on rocks with circles of fire around them?” She sniffed. “Siggy and Leo will find
them
Princes if you do. Niffleheim!
I
will find them Princes if I have to! I’m sure there are entire marshes full of frog princes that would like to find a sleeping princess that can’t run away when they try to get a kiss! So there. This whole cycle of family drama is
over
, Father. You just get on that thing you call a horse, and ride back to Mother, and
deal
with it.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, in a pose uncannily like Leopold’s, and glared at the old man. Rosa and Siegfried hung back—in no small part because Siegfried really would rather not have had his grandfather notice him—

Alas, too late. In the vain attempt to look at anything but his daughter, Wotan glanced to the side and spotted both of them.

“You!” he blustered, pointing a finger at Siegfried. “This is all your fault!”

“Because I didn’t want to marry my aunt?” Siegfried must have decided to face the god down, because he waggled his eyebrows at the old man. “You really do need to get your sense of proportion straight.”

Wotan stood there with his mouth hanging open. Clearly he had expected to intimidate Siegfried, at least.

But the last straw was when a raven, one of two that was up in the tree with the firebird, snickered, breaking the stunned silence.

He glanced up sharply. “Which one of you did that? Hunin? Munin?”

They both snickered.

He threw up his hands. “Bah! Ungrateful! All of you! Go ahead, discard your
Wyrd,
see if I care! I’ll be sitting on my throne in Vallahalia, drinking mead, while you are—are—are—”

“Alive?” suggested Brunnhilde. “Enjoying ourselves? Seeing the world? Having adventures? Having families? Ruling a peaceful kingdom? Which none of us
would
be thanks to that
Wyrd?
I’ll be
going into adventuring, and I’ll have you know that Leo thinks I make the perfect fighting wife!”

“Bah!” He turned to his—well, it was hard to call something with that many legs a horse. Mount. He hauled himself up into the saddle, and kicked it in the side, unnecessarily hard. The thing took a few moments to sort its legs out, then it began lumbering clumsily up an invisible slope of air, as if it was lumbering up a steep hill.

“Oh and by the way, old man? Besides my having a job on my own?
Leo makes love like a tiger!”

“I—can’t—hear—you—!”
came the desperate reply on the breeze. Then Wotan, his beast and, finally, his two ravens, vanished into a cloud and were gone.

At last they could all let go of the laughter that they had been holding in.

When they all got control of themselves, Siegfried clapped his friend on the back. “Are you sure we can’t persuade you to stay?” he asked.

Both Leopold and Brunnhilde shook their heads. “Too dull!” Leopold said cheerfully. “Things are going to be far too peaceful around here. Poor Hilde has been sleeping years away, and before that—”

“Before that it was the same damn thing, day after day. Fly to the battlefield. Pick up the dead man. Ferry the dead man to Vallahalia. Play serving wench to the dead man, his dead friends, his new dead friends, and my father and his drinking buddies all night long,” Brunnhilde said with disgust. “Next day, do it all over again. I was nothing more than a transportation service and barmaid. I
know
how to fight, but I never got a chance to! Now I do.”

“Uh—I think I’ve had all the fighting I ever want to see,” said Siegfried.

“Boring! We’re going to get into as much trouble as we can, aren’t we, lover?” Leopold smirked. “First thing we’re going to do is drop
in on my father and brother and scare them into thinking I’ve come to steal the throne. And from there?”

“I know of a really evil dragon that needs killing,” said Brunnhilde. “Whoever kills him and takes a sword and helmet in his hoard is supposed to save a Kingdom for its rightful heir and topple the usurper from the throne. That Dwarven chain mail you gave both of us as a wedding present is going to come in very handy for that.” She beamed at the King and Queen. “I don’t think we can ever thank you enough for sending Leo to wake me up.”

As Rosa recalled…it had been quite an awakening. Leo hadn’t learned his lesson about taking liberties, but Hilde not only hadn’t minded, she’d been pretty enthusiastic about her awakening…ah…kiss. If it hadn’t been for the armor, it might well have turned into a lot more than just a kiss.

“See, now that’s more like it—dragons to kill, heirs to restore!” Leopold nodded. “You just keep track of us in those mirrors of yours and warn us if we’re getting into any doomy situations, all right?”

“We will,” Rosa promised as Brunnhilde put her fingers to her mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Two stunningly beautiful snow-white horses appeared from another part of the garden and waited patiently for them to mount.

“All right, we’re off,” said Leopold, as their mounts curveted restlessly.

“You’re
sure—
” Rosa persisted.

“Of course we’re sure.” Leopold beamed at them, then as his new bride spurred her horse off into the orchard, followed after her, calling back over his shoulder, “You two are going to live happily ever after! Where’s the excitement in that?”

“I don’t know, love,” Siegfried said, shaking his head. “You make happily ever after exciting enough for me.”

And that was exactly what Rosa wanted to hear. “We have some time before we have to show ourselves at the celebration,” she pointed out. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to do?”

He grinned. “I’m so forgetful. Remind me?”

And so she did.