The Sleeping Beauty (4 page)

By that time, the stuff she had spread in the garden to dry was ready to take in. She left all the clothing in one pile and the blankets in another; let them fight it out among themselves who belonged to what.

Coward returned with some scrawny hares at that point. He tossed them on the kitchen table and dived for the piles, greedily picking through them before claiming what looked like the best of a bad lot of rubbish for himself, changed with no thought for modesty and demanded food.

She gave him leftover pease porridge. He didn’t complain, gobbled down three enormous bowlfuls and went back out again, leaving her to gut and skin the game herself.

To make it go as far as possible, she made soup, managed unleavened griddle cakes without burning too many and spread the leftover pease porridge, which by now was a paste, onto them. She took her bedding in from the garden, but left it piled in a corner behind the broom and some buckets, because she had a good idea that if they saw it, they’d take it. She also ate first, at least of the griddle cakes, with some of the stewed rabbit meat. Coward turned up again with more game, squirrels this time; he looked with longing at the soup, but this time didn’t demand any, though he did grab greedily for griddle cakes. She didn’t stop him. He was still stuffing himself when the other six came stumping up the stairs. Bully had a very small bag at his belt. He smacked Coward with the back of his hand when he saw the smaller Dwarf was eating.

“Wha?” Coward sniveled. “I din touch yon soup!”

“See ye remember not ta, then,” Bully sneered, and sat down at the table.

She brought bowls of the soup—the squirrel wasn’t completely cooked, but they didn’t seem to care—and the griddle cakes for as long as they lasted. They had no leavening, no milk, no eggs in them, being more like flat unleavened bread than cakes, but again, the Dwarves didn’t seem to care. They ate everything she put in front of them.

Once again, they gobbled everything down and left a mess behind. By the time she was done and had set another kettle of pease porridge up to cook overnight, she was ready to weep with exhaustion. She dragged her bedding out onto the hearth, and made a more comfortable bed there than she had the night before.

And then she did weep. Because how would anyone ever find her out here? Who would come here, even if The Tradition led them? Who would see she was pretty beneath the layers of filth that were going to build up on her? Keeping clean was going to be impossible. And if they did, how would they get her free without cutting off her foot? There was nothing in the Snowskin Tradition about the princess being chained—or having to cut off her foot to get free!

No, this was a new twist, and a horrible one, and right now there seemed to be no Path, Traditional or otherwise, out of it.

“
I’VE GOT HER
!”

Jimson’s shout woke Lily from her fitful doze. She had fallen asleep in the chair while Jimson searched for the missing Princess, combing through every reflective surface in the general vicinity of the buildup of Traditional power that he and she could sense. Now she knuckled the fog out of her eyes and leaned forward. “Where?” she demanded.

“It’s in the forest. I can place it on a map for you later. Not many reflective surfaces there, I’m using a knife and a water bucket.” The image from the bucket wasn’t very useful since it showed mostly ceiling. The one from the knife wasn’t much better; it was fogged and distorted.

“Ah, I have some more options. Cups.”

The glimpses Lily got of the Princess as she filled those cups made her wince. Bruised, hurt, poor child—her hands were a mass of scratches and cuts, the nails broken and torn. She was filthy, too. Her hair was full of twigs and bits of leaf.

Not as filthy as the creatures appropriating the cups, though. The glimpses she got of matted, fouled beards, yellowed teeth, snarled hair and filthy faces made her grimace. The reflection from the
knife gave relative heights, proving that girl’s captors were Dwarves. But…not the sort of Dwarves that Lily was used to dealing with.

Lily frowned. This was unexpected…perhaps. It looked as if more than one Traditional tale was getting tangled up here.

And the tales were warped and twisted. Those foul little creatures were not the kindly helpers of the proper Traditional Path; the Snowskin Path brought creatures that might be ugly but were always nurturing and kind.
Brutish
was the most charitable word to describe the things that were being reflected now. The way they were treating the Princess was entirely terrible. Rosa had spirit, and Lily could not imagine her staying there unless she was being held in some way.

Meanwhile Jimson was searching for every reflective surface he could find near her, trying one after another so they could get a better idea of what was going on there. It was beginning to look as if they were not going to find anything useful, until—

“Ha,” Jimson said quietly, and suddenly a crystal clear—if somewhat warped, as if it was being viewed through a bubble—image of what was the filthiest kitchen Lily had ever seen appeared in the mirror she was holding. “Fly’s eye,” Jimson said. “Best we’re going to get.”

Well, the little brutes were definitely Dwarves, probably digging an illegal mine. The Tradition was definitely at work here, however badly twisted, for there were seven of them; seven was the right number for a Snowskin Princess. The fact that Rosa’s looks didn’t match the Snowskin Path didn’t seem to matter this time—a Snowskin had “cheeks white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony,” and Rosa was
much
more in the line of a Princess Dawn with her rosy cheeks and golden hair. Well they would have been rosy if they hadn’t been smudged with dirt and tears, and it was getting hard to tell she had “locks of gold” what with all the bits of forest snarled in them. Lily’s wince turned into a cringe; the poor
child was definitely the worse for wear. A Princess, even one with Rosa’s unorthodox schooling, was ill-suited to being a servant and cook. She was indeed bruised, dirty and looked exhausted. And behind her trailed a long chain, binding her to the hearth.

“Find me where that cottage is,” Lily said grimly. “I want to get to her before the Huntsman tracks her down.”

If this was the Snowskin Path there was a logical approach that would compel The Tradition to throw a lot of power on Lily’s side to make this right again—what was more, when Lily broke her disguise, it could be as herself and not as the evil Queen Sable. That should make it possible for her to get the girl safely away before revealing that she was also the Evil Stepmother. It was pretty obvious now that The Tradition was moving in such force that Lily needed Rosa to understand the deception that she had been perpetrating as Queen Sable. She had only met Rosa a handful of times, all on formal occasions, in order to keep herself as the mysterious Rescuer just in case such a thing would be needed, and to make sure Rosa never felt she could depend on Lily to save her at any point, but a Fairy Godmother was the sort of person who made a lasting impression.

“Have you seen enough for now, Godmother?” Jimson asked.

She stood up. “I have,” she said. The reflection disappeared, and one after another, more glimpses flashed across the mirror’s surface. Jimson was tracing a path back to the Palace, from reflection to reflection. When he finished, he would have a clear way to the Dwarves’ cottage that he would read to her. She in her turn could transfer it to a map.

Meanwhile she had preparations of her own to make. A second transformative spell—probably best to make it part of a cloak—something that might break that chain…and something to use if she couldn’t break it. Whatever path The Tradition was trying to force, it didn’t much matter. Both ended in a spell of sleep. It was a great
pity there weren’t any Princes lying idly about for this moment, but she would manage. Without a Prince and a kiss, the thing was harder to break, much harder, but not impossible.

She stepped through the mirror to her own castle, where she had everything she could possibly need, taking Jimson’s mirror with her.

As soon as she stepped across the frame, the castle resounded with a beautiful bell tone, announcing her arrival. She hadn’t gotten more than both feet on the carpet of the Hall of Mirrors when she was swarmed by her Brownies, all of them in their typical earth colors.

Brownies were, traditionally and Traditionally both, the servants and helpers of the Godmothers. Being half-Fae, Lily got more than her share of would-be aides and companions. This time she was glad of it, for the ingredients she would need for the sleeping potion were best when gathered fresh.

Brownies were smaller than Dwarves, of a similar build, but less muscular. They tended to look quite pleasant, jolly even, with round little faces and cheerful expressions. So when her crowd of helpers swarmed her, Lily was still more than tall enough to see over the heads of all of them, and direct who to fetch which component.

When they were all gone, leaving her alone for the moment, she pressed one hand to her forehead, trying to concentrate. “Plans,” she said, half to Jimson. “We need plans. We can’t just keep solving one crisis after another. We have to anticipate what might happen—”

For once, the Mirror Servant’s voice was not bored, nor heavy with irony. “My dear Godmother,” he said fondly, “you and I have worked together for many years. Centuries, in fact. If you can do without my services while you make your potions, I will try to anticipate all the paths that might be walked, and uncover as many possible solutions for each as I can.”

Lily held up the mirror and gazed with astonishment at Jimson’s
disembodied face. “You would do that for me? After all the abuse I’ve heaped on you lately?”

Jimson laughed. “When one is trapped in mirrors for so many centuries, one learns which reflections are the true ones. You are the kindest Godmother I have ever served, as well as the one with the most difficult and trying Kingdom to keep stable, and I can tell when it is frustration speaking. Just put me down here, where I won’t be distracted, and make your potions and disguises.” The corners of his eyes crinkled a little as he smiled. “If you will trust me with this, it will be a pleasure to act as an advisor instead of a mere—reflection.”

Lily sighed with relief. She had long known that Jimson was far more than an “ordinary” Mirror Servant; for one thing, she had inherited him, rather than creating him, and he was much, much older than she was. But now, it seemed, he was showing yet another side of himself that she had not expected. “I’d kiss you if you weren’t on the other side of the glass,” she declared. “I promise never to threaten to smash you again.”

Jimson chuckled. “Now there is a reward indeed!”

There was another row of mirrors here, each reflecting a different interior. These did not have to be left covered, since no one but herself and her staff would ever see them. It was a pity they were all one-way, but having that many mirror-passages concentrating their magic within the walls of a single building was dangerous enough without making them work in both directions. She stepped through the one that deposited her just outside her workroom and put Jimson’s mirror on a table just outside the door.

Just as the workroom of a worker of darkness stank, the workroom of a Fairy Godmother generally was awash with heavenly scents, and Lily’s was no exception. Because each Godmother was a little different, each used a different “signature” base for her potions, and each worked her magic in different ways, you could often
identify one of them merely by the scent of her room. Not necessarily the potions themselves, because by the time you got done concocting, the potion was often odorless and tasteless, but definitely the scent of the room.

In Lily’s case, the main note was the cool sweetness of April Lilies. Beneath that was mint, just enough to keep the lily scent from being cloying; lavender to cut it further; and a hint of Elflock, which only grew in the Fae realms. Most of her potions used that formula for a base. For Lily, the scent was always that of home, her own comfortable and secure castle.

She stepped inside the room, which was actually two rooms divided by a wall, both heavily warded and shielded against interference of any kind, and against what went on within them. Neither room had windows, and both were lit by an enchantment on the ceiling itself. The Potions Room looked like the still-room in any noble house, save only that there was a great deal more of the apparatus than was ever in such a room—glass vessels, small ovens, crucibles, alembics, beakers, glass pipes, funnels, little charcoal braziers over which a single item could be simmered…. Walls and floor were stone, impervious to just about anything that could end up tossed against them. Sometimes there were accidents; a bit of miscalculation, and the next thing you knew, you were looking for a broom. Sometimes…well, sometimes Lily’s temper got the better of her, and when things had gone wrong repeatedly, as they sometimes did…a broom was definitely in order.

The other room, entered through a door in the Potions room, was also stone-walled and stone-floored, and completely bare, except for the three magical circles inlaid in the floor. The outer one was gold, the middle, silver, the innermost one, electrum. They were not complete; there were bridge-pieces that could be placed in the empty groove in the floor to complete and seal them. This was a great deal
more certain than drawing your circles out in chalk and hoping you didn’t scuff them—because there could be something you would contain in there that you really would not want to get out. Or something outside the circles that you really did not want to get in. Lily had not been in either case very often—only a handful of times in three hundred years—but those times had been more than enough to cause her to be happy for such sturdy precautions.

In the right corner was a mannequin, in the left was a cupboard that contained the items Lily needed for spell-casting, and that was all that was in this room.

Now a sleeping potion was one of the easiest to concoct. It was also one of the most common. Virtually any common village witch could make one, and make a good one. There were perfectly good reasons to administer one to someone, if they were unable to sleep.

Of course, that was usually not why someone wanted one. Spouses wanted to be able to sneak out on their mates. Thieves wanted to make their jobs easier. Courtesans wanted to render their customers unconscious to rob them. The list of good reasons was shorter than the list of bad ones, so most of the trade in such things was confined to the…less than scrupulous. Nevertheless, it was something that was in Lily’s arsenal, too.

Be that as it may, it was not a sleeping potion, as such, that was wanted here, not this time. At this point, it looked as if the easiest path to manage was the Snowskin Path, rather than the Beauty Sleeping Path. Therefore, what she needed was a potion to simulate death. And that was a far, far more difficult thing to manage.

In the Snowskin tale, the heroine was rendered insensible by a poison of some sort, and it was only the intervention of The Tradition that kept it from actually being fatal. It took a
lot
of magic to do that, more magic than even Lily had at her disposal. So she was going to have to simulate what was wanted, the hard way.

You had to slow breathing and heartbeat to almost nothing. Which was fine, a perfectly reasonable and not
terribly
difficult thing to do. Except that you had to do it without damaging the person you’d given the potion to. The human body—or most any body for that matter—does not like trying to exist on very little air or without the blood flowing at the right pace in the veins. Terrible things can happen when a magician does that without thinking; the poor victim ends up, once revived, with damage everywhere. Mostly, damage to the mind. You not only had to slow the breathing and heartbeat, you had to slow everything else down, so that the body no longer needed that much to live on.

So, strictly speaking, you weren’t making a sleeping potion, or even a “this looks like death” potion. You were making a slowing potion.

And that was very, very difficult indeed. You would think with so much magic about such things would be easier! But more often than not, magic only complicated an already-knotted situation.

This was why most of the time, when these things were applied as curses, they were done so as spells rather than potions, with a trigger and a possibility of a release. The “Beauty Dreaming” for instance—that was a simple sleeping spell, no need to feign death there. Touch a finger to the object, draw blood—that triggers the spell, instant sleep. There it was, simple. And because, by the way that The Tradition worked, if a release had not been built in, The Tradition would
put
one in there. The Tradition did not like absolute curses with no way out. The more powerful the curse, the more likely it was that The Tradition would arrange the commonest release, that the Prince passes all the trials, and kisses the Beauty, and all is well.