“But how does it know?”
Blissa raised her shoulders in a half shrug. “We are but fairies, dear. We cannot presume to know how it knows. All we know is that from generation to generation, we have told the story of the Sacred Pool and that it always seems to know who is capable of using magic well.”
Rose looked around at the beautiful landscape of her dream. “What about Maurelle? This is not magic used well.”
Blissa shook her head, and eyed her daughter sharply. “It knows who is capable of using magic well. That does not mean the person will use it well. I thought Maurelle wouldn’t do this, but I was wrong. Still, she didn’t abandon you to a permanent sleep. She left an out for you for a reason, I think. At the time she cast her magic curse on you, a part of her regretted it. A part of her wanted it to be alright. A part of her wanted for you what she wanted for herself: an instant solution, something that would make everything bad go away. A kiss from your true love would cure all your ills. Though, I don’t think in her heart of heart of hearts she believes that there are instant solutions. She’s never figured out how to let go of her anger, and she didn’t surmise that you would be able to find such a solution.”
“And now?” Rose asked. “Do you still think that somewhere deep inside she wants me to awaken?”
Blissa looked down at the grass, her fingers gliding over a few springy tendrils. Finally, she looked up at her daughter. “No,” she said. “I believe Maurelle has become consumed with anger and vengeance and is lost to us. She will try to stop your awakening. Which is why I should leave.”
Rose’s eyes widened and she reached out for her mother. “What do you mean? You came here to help me. You can’t leave.”
Blissa took her daughter’s hand and spoke softly. “I need to leave for several reasons, dear. The first is one you’ll like.”
Rose rolled her eyes, unable to imagine her liking her mother leaving for any reason.
“You need to pull James into your dreams again and you need to be intimate.”
Rose’s pulled back, the idea instantly repulsive. She shook her head. “Mother, no. I almost killed him.”
“But I don’t think you did, which makes me believe that your intimacy strengthens him. Even in the dream sleep, it strengthens his physical body. And he will need strength if he is to fight Maurelle.”
Rose still shook her head. “Mother you didn’t see him. You didn’t see how awful he looked.”
“Rose, if you two focus on the single activity and you send him back, he will be fine. You can’t let him get caught in the dream sleep. You can’t let him linger. But if you are with him, and you send him back, know you will send him back stronger. Perhaps strong enough to evade Maurelle and awaken you.”
Rose wasn’t entirely sure she felt convinced by her mother’s words, but she didn’t want to argue the point either. “And the other reasons you need to leave?”
“I want to see if I can find out what is going on. I want to try to contact Hilly. She put me in this dream sleep, so I have a decent chance of speaking with her. But I need to climb higher.”
Rose was confused. “What do you mean, higher?”
Blissa looked around at the landscape. “Everything you see is part of your dream conscious. You are deep, deep inside of sleep. Think of sleep as a big bowl. On the bottom of the bowl is the deepest sleep one can achieve. That is where you are, where we both are. But if we could climb slightly higher, toward the top of the bowl, we’d be in a lighter layer of sleep. From there, it would be easier for me to contact Hilly. I might be able to speak to her the way you and I used to when you were smaller.”
Rose sort of understood. “But why can’t you reach her from here?”
“The sleep is too deep,” her mother said. “You must be extremely powerful to reach so far. That’s why it was surprising to me that you were able to pull James in. Though it’s possible you were still in a higher layer when you pulled him into the dream with you, especially since it happened shortly after you fell into the enchanted sleep. We don’t go immediately into an enchanted sleep. It takes a bit for us to sink through the layers of dream sleep.”
“So how do you climb?”
Blissa pursed her lips and looked around, as if seeking inspiration. Finally, she said, “It’s hard to describe, but you have to think of yourself as getting lighter, as moving up through the layers of dreams. Imagine yourself a bird or a kite, soaring higher and higher. Eventually, it should take you as high as you’re able to go.”
“And how high is that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “For me, I might even awaken. I agreed to this dream sleep so that I could find you. In my regular sleep, you eluded me because you were too deep. But the enchanted sleep sent me deeper. My hope is that I can climb higher, high enough that I can encounter Hilly in her own dream sleep. Though, I could possibly even climb high enough to wake up, since Hilly’s sleep is not a curse. It was a gift she gave me to help me.”
But mine is a curse, Rose thought. “Do you think I can climb higher?”
Blissa thought for a moment. “Your powers are strong, dear,” she said. “I don’t know. Perhaps. You’d definitely not be able to climb high enough to waken. But high enough to reach James. High enough to pull him in with you and send him out safely.”
Rose nodded. They were back to James again. “And you really think he needs the strength he derives from me?”
“Did I ever tell you why Maurelle hates your father? Why she cursed you?”
Rose shook her head. “Not entirely. You said she was angry at you for marrying a human.”
“Not just any human, Rose,” she said. “The son of the man who murdered her mother.”
Rose narrowed her eyes and breathed in, the shock of it settling in. “My grandfather? Father’s father murdered her mother?”
“Yes,” Blissa admitted. “My father, King Roldan, had a sister, Radella. Her husband, a kind fairy named Albaforth, died young, and she raised her daughter happily for many years. But one day while in the forest, she met a young human king, Errol. He, too, had lost his wife. She fell in love with him. She laid with him. She thought he loved her back. Only, he didn’t. He was simply using her to gain strength. Radella was responsible for the nymph fairies. He convinced Radella to send her nymph fairies to lie with his men so they could gain strength in battles. She had no idea that his biggest battle would be with my father, for control of the fairy realm.”
“But how?” Rose asked. “Human men have no magic.”
“No, they don’t, but if they have super strength and can defeat the king, they can get access to the Sacred Pool. They can try to draw powers from it.”
Now Rose was utterly confused. “I thought the Sacred Pool only gave power to those it thought worthy of using them.”
“Not worthy, dear. Capable. And what better way to show capability than to overthrow the fairy king?”
Rose shook her head. “But that still makes no sense. Why offer powers to the wicked?”
Blissa gave her daughter an understanding look. “The Sacred Pool tries to even the slate, to make the world equal. It tries to balance the magic in the world, ensuring there are not too many wood fairies when we need more animal fairies. In this way, it understands that there must be balance. It understands that there will be evil as well as good. That is why it would have given Errol the powers if he had killed my father. He would have laid claim to the Kingdom and the ruler of the realm may command the Sacred Pool to offer it additional powers. Most don’t, but if our nation is in peril, the Sacred Pool is a source of additional power. If the Sacred Pool gives out powers that will be used for ill, it also will give powers, strong powers, to someone capable of doing great good. If Errol had succeeded, the Sacred Pool also would have empowered someone able to stop Errol’s evil. The Sacred Pool offers balance that way. It doesn’t meddle directly in the lives of the world, but does offer a counterforce to powers gone bad.”
“So it would have dis
tributed powers to a fairy that could overcome Errol?”
“Presumably,” she said. “Though, since Errol was a human, it is possible it would have given powers to a human to correct the balance of power.”
Rose shivered involuntarily. “Is that possible? For humans to get fairy powers?”
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s rare. I’ve only heard of it happening in old folk tales.”
Rose nodded.
“I’ve gotten off track. I haven’t fully explained what happened with my aunt. When she realized what Errol had planned, she begged him to stop. And when he wouldn’t, she tricked him. She slit her own throat.”
Rose gasped. “What?”
“She killed herself in front of him, and he had heard that drinking fairy blood gave men the same strength they received from intimacy. So he and his men sliced her open and feasted on her blood and then they stormed my father’s castle, with great success, until they reached the throne room. They got in and battled, but their strength faded quickly and my father and his brethren slaughtered them all. While it was true that drinking fairy blood can make mortals strong, what the men didn’t know was that fairy blood taken without the fairy’s consent fades quickly. And when it fades, it leaves the taker weaker than when they started.”
Rose sat in contemplative silence for a while, then looked at her mother, whose face wore a certain melancholy of which she’d never seen before. “So, Maurelle hates Edmund because his father killed her mother?”
Blissa shook her head. “She hates him because she is still angry that her mother is gone. She hates him because he is a man, and she believes all men to be as evil as the one who murdered her mother. And yes, because it was his father who murdered her mother, she holds a great antipathy toward Edmund.”
“But you don’t?” Rose asked her mother.
“Do you believe your father blames me because my father killed his?”
Rose shook her head. Though she’d never really considered it before.
“And I no more blame Edmund for his father’s attack of my father and the kingdom. When we met, we did not know each other’s history, and we fell in love knowing only of each other’s kindness and grace. That is how it should be. When we did learn of it, we chose to leave the past where it was. Maurelle hasn’t been able to do that.”
Rose stared, processing her mother’s words. She supposed that is how it should be, but she understood why Maurelle wouldn’t be happy at the prospect of Blissa marrying Edmund. Still, Maurelle’s actions afterwards were inexcusable.
Rose nodded to her mother. “You are right,” she said. “You should go. Find Hilly. I will try to climb, too, and I will seek out James and offer him the strength he needs.”
Chapter 25
After Blissa had left, Rose had tried to do what her mother asked. She closed her eyes and imagined herself floating. Higher and higher, through the layers of dream, if that’s what you could call them. Her body felt light and her mind lifted. She was indeed rising, higher and higher, as if things were getting clearer, less murky. And then, boom. She stopped. It was as if she’d hit an invisible barrier. And no matter how much she closed her eyes and imagined that light, wafty feeling that had brought her this high, she rose no more. She was stuck, and she felt sure there would be no further ascension.
She scrunched up her face and looked around. It didn’t look any different from her dreamscape before. But it did feel different. The sun seemed dimmer, the air felt lighter. It was as if she were on the precipice. Perhaps she had arrived in the area where she was closest to normal sleep. The curse would prevent her from breaking through, but she had to be less entrenched in her enforced sleep.
This would be a good time to try to reach James. She missed him. She wanted to see him, and something told her now was a good time. In her mind, she saw James asleep in the woods, and felt him yearning for her.
She called out to him. James. And within a second, he appeared. It was so quick, it startled her. She took a step back. “James?”
He quirked his lips into a smile, grabbed her and pulled her to him. He wrapped himself around her, and she felt safe nestled in his biceps. “I was hoping,” he whispered, his breath tickling her ear. “Hoping you’d send for me. Dwennon said you might. He said …” he started, but trailed off as he suckled her neck. She felt herself quiver beneath his lips, as the heat from him filled her.
Despite how much she missed him, and despite how real he felt as he slid his fingers down her back and sprinkled kisses along her collarbone, she had to pull away. Her breathing heavy, she looked at him, looked him over from head to toe. His color was right, not too pale. His eyes glistened with his familiar spark. He looked strong, the way she remembered him at their first meeting.
“You seem alright,” she said. “How? You looked so awful when I last saw you.”
He chuckled, taking her hand and pulling her back to him. “I am fine now,” he said, pulling her down to the soft, pillowy grass. She worried that he wanted to sit. Was he still ill? Still fatigued by his enforced slumber? But he felt strong when he wrapped his arms around her. Nestled in his biceps, she felt immune to harm. “Really, love. I am healthy, but if you must know, when I left you, I wasn’t well. I almost died.”
Rose gasped and James pulled her tighter. “Don’t worry, love,” he said. “I was alright. Dwennon and his friend helped me.” James went on to his explain what happened, but Rose was sure he was using terms that put his ordeal in the best light. And when Rose was sufficiently calm, he told her, “Dwennon says I will need strength I can only get from you, to face Maurelle.”
Rose sighed and stroked his cheek. “Must you face her?”
“I must get to you,” he said, “so, yes, I must face her.”
She didn’t like the idea of it. She still held out hope for Maurelle, that she would somehow learn to forgive. It seemed so unlikely. She leaned forward and kissed his lips. “Then I will help make you strong.”
* * *
Eldred slept comfortably for the first time since Maurelle had bound him to her. He had been so addled with his own feelings for her that he hadn’t seen her for what she had become. He still saw her as the girl of two decades ago. Shy, kind, sometimes scared, and often wracked with sorrow. But the sorrow had grown into anger, and he hadn’t realized just how much it had changed her. Perhaps because it hadn’t changed her with him. Because, with him, she was so often the Maurelle of his memories. And it had been too easy to overlook the stories of the Maurelle she had become.
But now he could not overlook it. She had tasked him with murder. Only, he knew he would never commit that murder. And there was a certain peace in that. He also knew what fate held for Maurelle, and even though she’d done this to him, part of him felt sad at that fate.
Eldred found his dream self in Maurelle’s bed chamber again. Today, she lay there dressed in a more revealing outfit now. It was a skimpy thing that was bright red and lacy. It barely covered her, and a few days ago, he might not have been able to hold control over himself. He would have rushed to her, hands flying to her body, removing it, so that he could touch her, suckle her, make love to her. Only now, there was a bitter taste in his mouth as he remembered giving himself wholly to her as she used it against him.
“What do you want, Maurelle?”
She frowned, the hurt washing over her face. Her expression reminded him of her when she was younger, and part of him hated being the one to put that look on her face. “I want you,” she said, slightly recovered. She stood and walked over to him, as he had arrived at the edge of the room and had no desire to get closer to her. When she neared him, he took a step back. She pursed her lips and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. “I don’t want you to hate me.” She took a step toward him, and he didn’t move. She smiled, reached out and stroked his cheek. “I want what we had last night. I want us to be together.”
“Then release me,” he said.
She stared at him, swal
lowed. “I will,” she said.
He felt a surge of hope, and smiled. “You mean it?”
She nodded. “Once the boy is dead, I will release you from your vow.”
The hope coursing through him turned to anger and he could feel a shiver of rage run through him. “No,” he said. “If you don’t release me now, then you will die. The human will kill you. I have seen it.”
Maurelle took a step back, squinting cruelly at him. “What do you mean? How do you know? You cannot see the humans in your visions.”
“I have seen your future, Maurelle, not the humans,” he insisted, though he knew that wasn’t entirely true. He couldn’t see human futures, but James was changing. Eldred swallowed, and then spoke. “Persisting means death for you. Don’t persist. You can let me go, let the princess Briar Rose go, and live your life.”
Maurelle sneered. “A happy life with you?” she whined, mimicking his tone from earlier.
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That path is closed to you as well. I cannot forgive what you have done to me. But you can live. You can, if you let go of your anger, even be happy.”
She pointed a finger at him and leaned in, eyebrows raised. “So, you want me to give up my kingdom, you, and everything else, for what?”
“Your life,” he said.
“What life? Everything important will be gone.”
Dream Trysts: A Sleeping Beauty Story (Passion-Filled FairyTales Book 4) Page 14