Once Upon a Dream (3 page)

“Thank you, Aunt Maleficent,” Aurora murmured, lowering her head. She felt nothing but gratitude toward the woman who cared for her—but she still couldn’t look her aunt directly in her yellow eyes. They never seemed to focus on anything. It was impossible to tell precisely what the woman felt except when she made an effort, by moving her mouth.

“I like the theme you chose this time,” Maleficent said, a smile twitching at the edge of her lips. “‘Sky and Water Blue.’ Very poetic.”

“I have to use my imagination,” Aurora said. “Since I’ve never seen the sea or a river.”

In her dreams, sometimes tinkling streams flowed past cool and shaded mud banks—but obviously that was a product of her own starved imagination, and often it was all in shades of brown.

“You’ve done quite well.” Maleficent petted Aurora on the head like—well, like a pet. A funny stroking motion that seemed meant for something else. Another curious habit of her aunt’s. “Now listen, you know the ball is going to go very late tonight. Why don’t you run along and take a little nap, so you’ll be refreshed? I know how much you love to dance.”

“But I want to help….”

“Another time, dear,” Maleficent said, touching her gently on the cheek. “There will be plenty more of these in the years to come.”

“Yes, Aunt Maleficent. Thank you, Aunt Maleficent,” Aurora said dutifully, then leaned forward and snuck a quick kiss on her aunt’s hollowed cheek.

Maleficent’s eyes darted nervously.

The powerful fairy had not
asked
to be the savior of the only people left in the world. She had not asked for the world to be destroyed in the first place.

She had not asked to become the parent of a neglected princess.

She probably wanted to just live by herself in her old castle, practicing her spells and communing with powers beyond the ken of mortal men, happily ever after.

So if she wasn’t used to the hugs or kisses or other displays of affection Aurora had not received from her own parents, well, they would just both have to learn. Aurora would wear her down eventually.

The princess walked slowly back to her room.

The hall was wide, empty, and inviting, but she didn’t feel like twirling this time. She felt useless and desultory.

“YOUR HIGHNESS.”

A hand clawed her shoulder from behind.

Aurora spun around—but it was just the old minstrel. His face was pale, and his long, narrow nose was pinched beyond its usual extreme. He seemed more degenerate and wild than ever; his clothes were torn in a dozen different places, and there were scratches near his eyes that made it look like he was crying blood.

“You are unwell, Master Tommins,” Aurora said gently. She couldn’t
smell
anything about him—not even the home-brewed moonshine some of the peasants had begun to amuse themselves by distilling. But he was so far gone that sometimes
not
having a dram drove him to fits.

“It’s out there. It is! There
is
an
Outside
!”

He looked behind himself wildly and then grabbed her hands and pressed his own around them. “Your Highness,
I escaped
!”

“Unhand me, you are sick,” Aurora repeated, only a little alarmed at his behavior. She was more concerned about his health—and what would happen if anyone caught him touching her in such a manner.

Familiar and ominously irregular footsteps came toward them. The sound drove the minstrel to hysteria. Aurora reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Perhaps you should have a little lie-down….”

But it was too late. Shuffling around the corner were two of Maleficent’s private guards: oily black-and-gray monsters who moved ponderously along, barely upright. They looked like they had been put together wrong.

The minstrel’s eyes widened in naked terror when he saw them, but he didn’t take his attention off the princess.

“Your Highness…”

“Come away from her, singing human,”
the more pig-like creature snuffled loudly.
“Maleficent commands you sleep it off and leave her heir alone.”

“You are the key!” the minstrel whispered, throwing himself at the princess so his lips touched her ear. She tried not to pull away. “
You!
It’s all still
out there
!”

“MINSTREL!”
said the other guard, the one with the comb of a cock and the yellow eyes of a demon.

They each put a horrible clawed hand on the poor man’s shoulders. They swung him aloft like he was no more than a speck of dust.

“Your Highness!” the minstrel cried.

The monstrous guards laughed.

“Sing for us, and we might not hurt you too much on the way to the dungeon!”

“Please be easy on him,” Aurora urged. “He is having a fit of some kind. He needs a doctor, not a beating….”

“SING!”
the second one commanded, ignoring her. Neither monster bothered to bow as they walked away.
“SING!”

The minstrel tried his best, tears running down his bloody face, borne aloft on the shoulders of nightmares.

“Douce—douce dame jolie…”

Aurora watched him go with sadness and horror.

And maybe, just maybe, a tiny spark of something too hideous to admit.
Relief
that the afternoon had become more interesting.

After they were out of sight, all that remained was the quickly fading song, streaming through the hall like smoke.

Aurora noticed her hands were still clasped where the minstrel had held them. When she pulled them apart, she found he had pressed something there for her to hold.

She held it up in wonder.

It was a single brilliant blue feather.

WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT,
Aurora used her thumbnail to crease the spine, to see if it felt like a real feather. It did. She twirled it between her fingers thoughtfully.

There were still pigeons, of course—quite a flock of them in the courtyards now (which peasants occasionally trapped for dinner, not always trusting magical food). They didn’t have feathers like this.

There were some chickens and ducks left, but even the prettiest, most iridescent-winged drakes didn’t sport a blue of this purity.

There were a few descendants of foreign birds from the jungles kept safe in golden cages, but the blue ones were very light, like the tiny flowers in ancient tapestries. Not like this.

She held the feather before her as she—much more thoughtfully—made her way to her room.

Aurora lived in a prettily decorated suite on the second floor of the castle. All the surviving royalty and lesser nobles lived in the main keep, as well as those foreign dignitaries trapped in the kingdom when the world outside finally collapsed. The
…lesser
survivors, the peasants and servants, lived in a hastily erected shantytown in one of the larger courtyards of the bailey.

If Aurora didn’t look too hard at the thick vines covering her window and there was a good strong lantern glowing, she could pretend it was a completely normal royal princess’s bedroom. There was a frothy and beribboned pink canopy bed on a raised dais, a wardrobe with gilt moldings in which hung a stunning number of beautiful gowns, a vanity with a pitcher and basin of beaten silver, a tiny couch with silk pillows, and a lovely little table by the fireplace with long, elegant legs.

There was also a bookcase full of books that hadn’t worked properly since the world had ended.

Most were missing great patches of text and illustrations. Many were simply blank. The words that remained were often in languages that weren’t even real. An effect, Maleficent had explained, of the world-destroying evil magics that King Stefan and Queen Leah had unleashed. They had literally broken the land and the minds and inventions of men. The queen’s powers were not great enough to restore everything fully—they were barely enough to keep the remaining population alive.

And so the books remained mostly blank, and cloth had to be woven from thread summoned by magic. Spinning wheels hadn’t functioned the way they were supposed to in half a decade.

Right then, Aurora’s bed looked especially inviting—the servants had made it up all plump and pretty. And she
did
love dancing, and she
was
going to be up late that night.

There was also the little matter that when she wasn’t twirling, her favorite thing was lying down and dreaming the hours away. Her bed was always her favorite place to be; she could spend the entire day in the dark under its covers. Eventually night would come and sometimes things were more interesting at night…as much as anything was ever interesting in the castle at the end of the world.

And when the nights weren’t particularly interesting, well, at least she had passed another of the endless days away.

She gave in, collapsing on her back onto the fat mattress full of feathers. She twirled the blue feather in her fingers. She had never seen the minstrel in any of the outer courtyards or baileys. He tended to stick to shadows, internal rooms, secluded areas—like a burglar or a cat. Bright light hurt his addict’s eyes, and he was more uncomfortable than most looking up at the giant vines that blocked the sky.

Perhaps that’s what he meant by being “outside.” Not…
Outside.

Poor crazy, drunken fool.

She sighed and reached up over her head to grab one of the broken books, one with an easily memorable design on its cover, and started to place the feather between its heavy, insane pages.

At the last moment, she changed her mind and put it in the little silver pouch attached to her girdle by her chatelaine. A once living thing, wherever it was from, didn’t deserve to be pressed like an inanimate object—filed away like an ancient manuscript. The princess would keep it with her until she figured out what to do with it.

She thought of a different feather she owned and let out another sigh.

Instead of going to sleep, she sat down at her pretty little table, took up her white swan quill, and set herself to solving the math problems on the precious scrap of vellum before her.

After fortifying the castle, making living arrangements for all within, and working out whatever magical source of food she managed, Maleficent had turned to Aurora’s education. The king and queen had neglected everything for their unwanted daughter—basic reading and writing skills, needlework, the sort of useful hobbies royal ladies were supposed to know, even etiquette and geography. The new queen immediately set out to rectify this with a half-dozen tutors, adding things to the mix that weren’t necessarily “princessy.”

Like math.

Which Aurora was terrible at.

Some things came to her naturally: singing, playing the recorder, kindness, patience in sewing—even if it would be years before her needle skills were up to that of a twelve-year-old’s. Her fingers were often covered in tiny pinpricks from embroidery, and Maleficent had suggested, with a kind laugh, that she put off carding and spinning until she could be trusted with the sharp point of a drop spindle.

But numbers…and anything having to do with numbers…that was another thing entirely. Aurora privately wondered if there was a reason princesses weren’t taught math or alchemy or the workings of the world; maybe they just couldn’t grasp it.

Still, she forced herself to pay attention when the old castle treasurer patiently demonstrated the magic of adding and subtracting amounts with tally sticks and abaci, and the castle carpenter showed her the measurement of forms with string and weights.

When she tried to do the exact same problems on her own, however, they never made sense. The numbers swam in front of her and the little counting lines seemed to multiply of their own volition. Her ability to draw was negligible, and her squares often looked like mush.

But Maleficent was trying so hard with her adopted niece that Aurora forced herself to keep working in secret, in private. She kept herself going by imagining the look on her aunt’s face when she finally showed how she could divide an ink flock of sheep into five equal smaller herds.

Aurora drew a tiny ugly scribble of a sheep. Then she drew four more. She counted them. There were five. She drew two more, farther away. Now there were six.

Aurora frowned, looking at the paper.

Maybe seven. Eight?

She tried it on her fingers, pretending each one was a warm white ball of wool.

Did you count the beginning one
and
the last one, too? Or was it like pages of a book, where you didn’t count both ends?

She spent ten more minutes trying to make the two groups of sheep add up. She was pretty sure it was around seven, but the lack of precision was giving her a headache.

Finally, she threw herself on her bed in frustration.

She would never be as smart and powerful and elegant as her aunt.

Sometimes she felt that the queen was just humoring her.

Sometimes she felt the slightest stirrings of anger at always being told what to do.
“Go take a nap.”
What was she, a child?
“Oh, you couldn’t possibly help out with these
unimaginably complex
party preparations.”
Aurora was meant to be queen someday! She could handle a party.