Once Upon a Dream (27 page)

For the first time, she wished she was
out
of the dreamworld. Immediately. She wanted to wake up and see the actual world and face people and make them face her. She was exhausted. She wanted to slough off all the layers of falsehoods like the tired gray skin of a snake.

“How close are we?” she mumbled, finally breaking the silence.

“It’s a little confusing around here. There are rocks, large ones, not that far ahead, I believe,” Phillip answered, carefully trying to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to seem overly eager or grateful for the attention she was showing him, not wanting to scare her away. “As soon as we see them, it should be a straight shot to the house, alongside the little stream.”

“I remember those.”

Immediately another flood of memories pummeled her. She gasped but forced herself to keep walking. Now it was like a valve was turned on and couldn’t close all the way. Even when the initial burst was over, the images continued to trickle in, never ending.

She could
feel
the rocks. She had climbed on them. She had rubbed her hands on them. She had found darker rocks in the stream that she could draw on them with. She had balanced on the rocks. She had pretended she was an eagle nesting on them.

“Get down! Ladies don’t act like that!” Flora had yelled, catching her once.

The other aunts had looked at their leader with skeptical faces.

“Well…I mean…they don’t. She won’t be able to when…you know,” she had continued in a way that hadn’t made sense until now.

“Maybe if more princesses climbed rocks, the world wouldn’t be in the state it’s in,” Merryweather remarked with her usual crankiness. At the time Rose thought she meant
princess
in a generally snarky way.

“Well, we
should
try to remain consistent,” Fauna said reasonably. “Are we raising her to be a
lady
or a girl in the woods? We never discussed that, really.”

“Oh, I don’t know, that’s a fair point,” Flora said, putting a hand to her head. “She has so much natural grace and nobility. Let’s discuss it further but let her be for now.”

The young Briar Rose had latched on to the
let her be
part and had forgotten everything else.

The older Aurora Rose grudgingly saw their dilemma: they had been raising a princess who didn’t know she was one. Their little lessons and flights of fancy were starting to make sense. Eating with the right utensil (when they had it), the steps to a few court dances…the few things that the aunts thought made a
princess
—that the fairies thought made a
human
princess. Fairies who really, until they re-remembered their task, let her run around naked and do what she wanted, because that was normal. For fairies.

What if she had been raised in the castle? She wouldn’t, as Phillip said, have had what little freedom she had enjoyed in the woods. She wouldn’t have hunted with foxes.

Of course, she would have had two loving human parents. Maybe.

Who might at least have been
all right
, like Phillip’s—but nothing special. A prim kiss once a day before bed and after studies.

Who might have just been passing time until a son came along.

It was too much—being hit with the memories, suddenly understanding them in a new context, almost sympathizing with those who had lied to her her whole life.

“Do you want me to carry you?” Phillip asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Aurora Rose cursed under her breath.

It was taking all her effort to stay upright, and there was something coming out of her nose that she was pretty sure was blood.

More than anything she wanted to be carried, the way her aunts had carried her when she was tired as a little girl, when she had played too hard or cried too much or just couldn’t make it back to the cottage. She was exhausted and miserable and aching and in pain, and Phillip, good old Phillip, could easily take her the rest of the way and even enjoy it as penance for his previous sins.

“No.” She set her jaw and kept walking.

Phillip didn’t say anything. He just quietly kept pace with her.

The path dipped unsteadily at what was either the site of an ancient creek bed or a spot where rain naturally collected when it ran down the hill. Topsoil gave way to pebbles and rocks and little sharp divots that were deceiving to the eye. She stumbled twice before they had gone more than fifty feet.

With a burst of annoyance she spread her fingers. If it was really her dream, her head, there would be wide, smooth roads, cobbled and drained, to where they needed to go. Or at least well-packed dirt.

The little rocks danced and sand shifted.

Phillip stopped, foot hanging in the air. At first he was unable to see the cause of the movements. His hand went tentatively to his sword.

Aurora Rose frowned, concentrating. Why couldn’t the ground see where it was
supposed
to go? Fill
itself
in?

The rocks and sand and dirt acted like lodestones that didn’t like each other, or raindrops on top of dry dust: they skittered around nervously, not wanting to go where she wanted them. The uneven places and holes remained.

She shrieked with frustration.

Phillip risked putting a hand on her arm.

“We’re entering the deepest part of your mind, remember?” he said gently. “I don’t think it’s
supposed
to be easy to get to. It’s a difficult path to who you really are.”

“Spare me more philosophy. I’m
angry
right now.”

“Well, how about this? You’re not Maleficent—who had hundreds of years to perfect her magic.”

The sound she made in response could have been either animal annoyance at or human acceptance
of
the logic in what he said.

So they traveled more slowly.

The path eventually opened up to an ancient clearing. The trees thinned out and a stream, which had been hiding shyly deeper in the forest, came close to them, rocky and gurgling. Gray stones emerged from the forest floor with moss and needles and even trees on top of them. They looked like they had just popped up their heads for a few moments to look around and would disappear back down below any moment.

“This is starting to look…to
feel
familiar,” the princess said cautiously. She shivered—but in a good way. Finally something was starting to make sense, to feel right.

Phillip wasn’t paying attention to her—which was strange, because he was
always
paying attention to her. Even when she was being mean. Or distant. Or both.

“Do you remember this? This is near where we met, isn’t it?” she pushed.

But he made a motion with his chin in the direction he was looking, which was not at her.

Standing farther up the path, as if she had always been there, was a little girl.

She looked like a waif: maybe six years old, dressed in a grayish-pink shift that didn’t cover her arms and fell thinly to her knees. An ugly, lopsided crown that looked like a child’s drawing sat tilted on her head. Her feet were bare. She was as pale as a wisp of cloud, and dark half-moons rode beneath her startling violet eyes. She stood perfectly still. Not even a stray breeze ruffled her perfect blond hair.

Aurora felt cold horror creep its ugly fingers up her back.

The girl seemed perfectly calm. Complete stillness surrounded her like a heavy cloak. Although there were no clear shadows in the eternal twilight of the ancient forest, everything seemed dimmer and grayer around her, as if bathed in gloom.

She waited patiently for them to speak first.

“Who are—” the princess began.

“Kill it!”
Phillip cried out, suddenly finding his voice.
“It’s a demon!”

Without a moment’s hesitation he rushed at the girl, sword out.

Aurora Rose grabbed the prince—although she wasn’t sure exactly why. It wasn’t just because it was an unarmed, pretty little girl with long eyelashes that he was about to attack and run through with his blade.

Phillip was probably absolutely right that the girl was another one of Maleficent’s demons. But there was something terribly familiar about her. About the air around her. The lack of color.

The girl smiled faintly, watching them.

“It’s all right. He couldn’t have touched me anyway.”

When she spoke, it was like there was no distance between them at all; her voice sounded close to the princess’s ear. Like the girl knew she would always be heard by the right person.

Phillip clearly did
not
like her tone. Frankly, neither did Aurora Rose. She didn’t stop the prince when he launched himself at the girl a second time.

He was beautiful to watch, all grace and consummate skill, warmed up by the battle with his twin. The princess flinched, waiting for the thrust to the belly that would take the child down.

But the girl
flickered
.

Like a candle about to go out.

She was there and not there and there and not there, and when Phillip’s sword would have connected with her flesh, she was suddenly a few feet away, in the same pose, with the same look on her face, as if she hadn’t had to do anything—not even
think
—to get there.

To his credit, Phillip hesitated only a moment before spinning and lunging again.

The girl flickered, appearing a few feet away.

Phillip spun around and slashed, even faster than he had before.

It didn’t matter.

They kept going at it: Phillip attacking and the girl smiling and disappearing and reappearing and nothing else.

Aurora Rose felt sick. None of the magic, nothing they had seen in the dreamworld before, had looked anything like this.

Finally, Phillip fell back, exhausted.

“I told you,” the girl said—not with a mocking tone but with one of infinite patience, which was somehow worse. “You cannot touch me, Prince Phillip.”

“I do
not
intend to ‘touch’ you, demon,” he growled. “I mean to run you through and keep your evil hands away from Rose.”

“Ah. Well. Not everything in here is a
demon
, Prince Phillip. Or rather, not all of the…things…in here are
Maleficent’s
creations,” the girl said, strangely adult sentences coming in her high, young voice.

The prince and princess had matching expressions of confusion, which the girl obviously found amusing.

“Some…
things
…are from Aurora’s own mind.”

The princess sucked in her breath. There was something resonant in that statement. The girl did
not
look exactly like her. But the crown…

“Or wait…is it Rose now? What is it? Rose or Aurora? What are you going by these days?” the girl asked, brow furrowing in put-on seriousness.

“If you’re from my mind, you should know,” Aurora Rose managed to say, trying to channel Phillip’s usual insouciance.

“Ah, but
you
don’t know, do you?” the girl said.

“From your mind? What is she talking about?” Phillip demanded. “Rose, what is she? What is this?”

All of her life had been inaction. All of her life had been waiting for other people to
do
. Ever since she had escaped the Thorn Castle, she had known she wouldn’t last much longer if she continued this way.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she drew her sword and attacked.

She didn’t question whether she could strike what looked very much like a young girl. She just screamed and threw herself into it.

Unblinkingly, the girl watched the princess come at her. At the last moment she put her hand up. A small wooden sword appeared in it, a clunky plaything.

When Aurora Rose brought her own sword down, the girl moved to deflect it.

The princess’s sword bounced off the wooden sword with an unreal booming sound. It echoed sickeningly off the trees.

Her arms and upper body were shaken by the force of the rebound. She had been completely unprepared for how
solid
the girl and her sword were.

But Aurora Rose gritted her teeth and swung again.

The girl spun her sword and did a clumsy, childish parry and riposte. The tip of her toy didn’t reach anywhere near the princess’s body.

Aurora Rose raised her sword above her head, prepared to do the girl in. To cleave her head in half if she had to.

The girl made a concerned,
tch
ing sound.

“Are you
sure
you’re up to this?”

The princess shook with the effort of holding the sword. It wasn’t so big a thing, really, but it was solid metal and above her head. She could feel the blood draining down her arm into her shoulder and it ached terribly.

And what was the point?

They couldn’t kill the thing. Whatever it was.

Her sword fell to her side.

“Rose,
kill
it!” Phillip shouted. “It’s
not
a little girl!”

“I know,” she said dully.

“Don’t feel bad,” the girl said. “You’ve only killed one other person, really. I’m not counting the mist sprite because your boyfriend here helped you finish it off.”

Aurora Rose felt herself wilting.
Person?

“That demon who looked like me was no person,” Phillip said quickly. “It was
another
evil creature, like yourself, whatever you may
think
you are.”

“Honestly, you seem a little tired,” the girl observed, looking at Aurora Rose and ignoring the prince.

The princess collapsed to the ground. It was kind of a relief. She didn’t really want to kill the girl, anyway. And the ground was safe and comfortable.

The girl smiled sadly at her like a mother at an exhausted baby.

Phillip watched in confusion—but only for a moment. He took the opportunity to try a sneak attack, running up behind the girl with the pommel of his sword raised to knock her on the head.

The girl didn’t even bother to look. She was suddenly a mirror image of herself, still turned to observe the princess, but now at the opposite angle.

Phillip fell over, with no plan in his mind for
stopping
once he had engaged the girl.

The girl stood there, looking mildly disappointed, both teenagers on the ground around her.