Once Upon a Dream (8 page)

Aurora felt herself melt. Here
she
was feeling caged and useless, a princess who spent her whole life inside castle walls, and there he was—one of many who had lived most of their lives Outside. Those who
knew
what they were missing, even if they couldn’t precisely remember it. Who had, in some ways, lost far more than she had.

She reached out and clasped his hand.

He looked at her, surprised.

“On my honor, as soon as I work out this little…mystery, I shall let you in on it,” she promised. “As soon as I hear word about…the safety of going Outside, I will let you know. Myself.”

“Th-thank you, Your Highness,” he stammered. He offered her a spontaneous, jerky bow.

“Good day, Cael,” she said with a royal nod of her head.

“Good day to you, Your Highness,” he said solemnly back. “You’re…as wise and kind as you are beautiful.”

The glow that rose up on her cheeks warmed her on the walk back to the castle.

He might not have been her
favorite
boy in the castle—but he was a boy. And it felt nice.

A strange, quick hissing noise caused her to look up.

Lianna was standing, otherwise motionless, near the door of the summer kitchen, a basket over one arm as if she had been intending to do something useful. Two bothersome, gossipy girls stood with her: none other than Mistress Laura herself and her chaperone, the only
slightly
older Lady Malder. Neither had seen the princess yet.

Lianna shook her head very slightly. Aurora could not return to the castle that way.

The princess bit her lip and quickly dashed to the stone wall, pressing herself up against it as closely as she dared without ruining her dress. The next entrance was all the way around the side, where the chambermaids went to empty the pots and the cooks tossed the offal. It stank, but no one would see her there. She hurried as carefully as she could, holding the train of her dress high out of the dust.

As she rounded the corner, she saw one of Maleficent’s servants nosing around the door.

Off duty?

Did they even
go
off duty?

It was on its knees and hands, snuffling in the midden like an animal.

Aurora had to turn her head when it found a length of entrails and worried it out of the pile, stretching it until the tube of flesh snapped.

Holding her nose and gagging, she slipped past it. The last entrance that was unlikely to be guarded was a once-upon-a-time secret passage for quick escape in case of invasion. Almost everyone knew about it now—there were few secrets left in the remaining population. But it was rarely used because the stairs were slick, the tunnels dark and damp…and they led right past the chamber where King Stefan and Queen Leah were imprisoned.

The princess pulled aside what looked like a set of heavy rain barrels and stepped reluctantly into the dripping hole they revealed. She descended slowly, almost slipping twice in the first few feet and jarring her head badly. She cursed, using a word that she had heard Cael use once—and found it
did
make her feel a little better.

The way ahead was pitch-black, but there was no way she could get lost; there was only one way to go.

And she kept telling herself this as she moved slowly along, a hand on each slimy wall to steady herself.

She tried to distract herself with the important thing she had just learned: that the feather was from a bluebird. A bird that only existed on the Outside…

…an Outside that was supposed to be a wasteland, devoid of all but the most noxious and evil life.

An Outside that the minstrel had apparently escaped to and returned from, not entirely worse for wear.

But was there still a possibility that he was just drunk and mad? That he had simply found a feather somewhere and concocted this crazy story?

Well, then life would go on. As it had.

But if he really
had
been Outside…and things
did
live there…

The princess picked up the hem of her skirt as she stepped delicately over a pool of muck. There was a little light now that reached her from the flickering torches in the dungeon proper. She slunk against the far wall to the stairs on the other side, unwilling to see or be seen by the prisoners.

And then…she heard voices. Her
aunt’s
voice. And—her parents?

She slowed down and pressed herself against the cool black wall to listen and watch.

“Oh, enough already,” Maleficent said with a tired—though dramatic—wave of her arms. “There
is
no way out. You will eventually die. And I shall live again.”

“But our daughter…” the old queen said, coming forward and holding the bars. It
almost
sounded like she cared.

“Your
daughter
?” Maleficent asked, her voice rising in dramatic surprise. “
Really?
What kind of loving mother hands her
daughter
off to the fairies for sixteen years?”

Aurora frowned. That was wrong. She was to be given to the fairies on her six
teenth
year, not
for
sixteen years.

“It was to protect her!” King Stefan protested.

“Really?” Maleficent swung around, arching her arms and fingers like an animal, lowering her yellow eyes to their level. “You couldn’t think of
any other way
to ‘protect’ your daughter? Better guards? Higher walls? Runes and spells
inside
the castle? Really? Let me tell
you
something, dearies.”

She lowered her voice and spoke with a hiss through lips that barely moved.

“You may think I’m more evil than any demon who ever walked this earth. And you may be right. But if
I
ever had a daughter, you can be sure I would keep her close, and teach her well, and school her in the arts of magic, and make her strong and powerful enough to protect herself, and I would
never let anything come between us.
”

Aurora felt something strange inside her. Maleficent was never this uncontrolled, this furious. Her words rang somehow truer now than in all of her carefully composed, dramatic speech.

“Or.” Maleficent recovered herself. She straightened back up to her full height and adjusted her cloak. “Or admit the truth to yourselves. It didn’t matter much either way, because in the end, you really would have preferred a
son.
”

And with that, she spun and strode out of the dungeon.

Aurora was so confused she didn’t bother trying to hide herself. Her aunt almost tripped over her.

“Aurora,” she said in her normal voice, faintly surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“I…was playing a game of hide-and-seek with some of the servant children,” she stammered.

She had
never
lied to Maleficent before. But overhearing that conversation had unnerved her.

“Oh,” her aunt said, accepting her explanation but still confused. “That’s rather…gracious of you, my dear. I wouldn’t encourage them to hide down here, however. Lest they come under the evil spell of your parents.”

“Or the minstrel,” Aurora added quickly, relieved her lie was taken up so quickly.

“The minstrel? He’s not down here.”

“But he’s not in the stockades, so I assumed…”

“Oh,” Maleficent’s face fell into a mask of sadness. “He’s gone, darling. Apparently the poor drunken fool actually did make it Outside somehow. I thought it was just his usual drunken ramblings….”

“What?”
She just barely caught herself from adding,
So it’s true….

Maleficent regarded her with intelligent, unreadable eyes. “Outside and back
in
, over a month ago. I just found out the truth of it myself. I have no idea how he did it. There’s a hole in the security somewhere. I must recast my spells and protections. Who
knows
what he could have brought in with him….”

“Where is he now?” Aurora breathed, thinking about her feather.

“Back Outside. Where he so desperately wanted to be. For
good
, this time. I…didn’t stop him.”

Aurora felt like throwing up. Her head hurt. She had the feather. Should she tell her aunt? Tears sprang to her eyes.

Maleficent misunderstood, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder.

“Darling. Don’t over mourn. His time wasn’t long here anyway, the way he was living. But—and this is important—
you must never
talk about this with
anyone.
People get funny, wrong ideas…there is nothing Outside. Nothing that will keep you alive for long. We don’t want anyone starting rumors.”

She pulled her cloak around her and started to go.

“Aunt…” Aurora began, not sure what she was going to say. An admission of everything. Something about the minstrel. Something about a feather. Questions about the Outside.

But that’s not what came out.

“What if
I
could do it? What if I could learn magic? Would you teach
me
your powers? Would you raise me to be like you? And we could rule the world together, and maybe make it back to like it once was? Before my parents destroyed it? Together?”

Maleficent blinked at her once with her slow yellow eyes. For perhaps the first time ever, an ironic remark, a dramatic observation, a meaningless quip didn’t form on her lips.

She seemed
uncomfortable
thinking about the question, and twitched her shoulders.

“But you can’t,” she finally said. “You’re just not capable, dear.”

And she swept up the stairs, her cape trailing out majestically behind her.

Aurora sank down on the cold stones. She didn’t go down to confront her parents. She didn’t go up. She stayed in the comforting darkness and wept over things she couldn’t even name.

THE MORNING OF THE GOLD BALL,
Aurora was in bed, as usual.

With the minstrel gone, there was no way she could find out the truth of the matter. Either he was dead, or he was free of the castle, living with flocks of mutant bluebirds or whatever—and in neither case would he be coming back.

She flipped wearily through the blank pages of one of her books. The back of her mind was playing with the idea of wishing for images to appear. Of wishing for the darkness from the Outside to come in. Could it be any worse than living in the castle with the same people for the rest of her life? Worse than blank books and hateful parents? Worse than being confronted every day by your own stupidity—so stupid even your own aunt patronizes you?

She imagined the one brief glorious moment of false paradise the Outside would bring: birds and trees and bunnies and other animals everywhere, flooding the castle halls, singing and purring and leaping in people’s laps—and then it all exploding in one final, rapturous apocalypse as the monsters came in and everyone died.

She sighed, turning over in her bed. She knew exactly how ridiculous she was being. As a princess—a
living
princess—at the end of the world, she was far luckier than those who had died, and her life was far better than the lives of most of those who remained.

With great effort, she pushed herself up until she was at least sitting on the edge of the bed. Her head felt weary with all the terrible thoughts weighing it down. She felt sick—and that idea appealed to her very much. Of crawling back into bed and sleeping and having Lianna wait on her, and then go away…

Sparkles appeared at the corners of her vision. She was both relieved and scared; she really
was
sick. About to faint, even…

But the sparkles weren’t golden or silver as they were normally when she felt light-headed. They were red, green, and blue. They coalesced into three distinct balls of color instead of dissipating when she took a few deep breaths.

The little balls danced around the room in a manner that suggested intelligence: as if they were investigating the cracks, the crevices, the nooks, the crannies. Like they were looking for someone or something that might be hiding.

As Aurora crawled back onto her bed away from them, she noticed detachedly that when they came close to a solid object, their pale lights illuminated it and cast its shadow. Like real lights. Not hallucinations.

Finally, the three balls must have decided it was safe and grouped together, hovering right in front of Aurora.

She blinked, her eyes taking a moment to get used to their brightness being so close. As soon as she could see properly again, Aurora realized that there were
things
in the centers of the lights.

Little
living
things.

Things that looked suspiciously like tiny women. One in each light.

“Oh, dear,” Aurora said aloud, trying to steady herself.

The first thing spoke. Its voice was too high-pitched and tiny to hear.

Aurora shook her head and pointed at her ear.

The balls bobbled a bit.

Then they suddenly puffed up in size.

Now Aurora was faced with three—still smallish—flying ladies engulfed in light.

The princess began to panic. These were fairies. That was startling enough. There
were
no fairies left, except for Maleficent. And certainly not any good ones…