by Jessica Grey
Alyssum. Sweet Alyssum. Don’t you know us?
She blinked slowly. She wasn’t entirely sure if she had actually heard the words. They floated up and away, as hard to catch as the breeze they were carried on.
Alex bent down and trailed her fingers over the flowers nearest her and she had the oddest sense of knowing. Alyssum.
She had asked and they had answered. A feeling of power flooded through her. Alex closed her eyes as her face turned up to the warm sun. She curled her fingers into the plants, thinking of the person she most wanted answers from.
She knew he was there even before she opened her eyes. There hadn’t been any sound, no sense of movement from him walking into the clearing, but she somehow felt it through the flowers. The alyssum against her fingers had somehow changed in texture as they whispered to her, alerting her to his presence.
“Luke,” she said as she stood up and turned around. He was standing several yards away from her. With the sun glinting in his tawny curls, he looked much like he had when she had seen him just the day before. But for some reason he looked more solid, even more broad then he had then. Alex wasn’t entirely sure that was possible. Luke normally dwarfed her, but here among the tiny, delicate flowers he was even taller, very solemn, and almost painfully handsome. He wasn’t wearing his usual jeans and t-shirt, but dark, form-fitting pants and a white shirt under a leather vest. There was some sort of emblem on the vest that Alex couldn’t make out. Her mind flashed back to the conversation she had just been having with Becca about playing knights and dragons with Luke. He had never looked to her more capable of slaying a dragon.
“Lex,” he replied.
Alex couldn’t help herself; she ran the few yards that separated them. The alyssum crushed under her feet as she ran, releasing even more perfume into the air. She stopped abruptly about a foot in front of Luke and looked up into his face.
“Are you dreaming too?” she asked breathlessly. “Are you really here? Or just a figment of my imagination?”
Luke smiled. “It’s your dream,” he answered, “but it might be mine too. It feels real to me.”
He held out his hand and Alex slipped hers into his. The warmth from his hand flowed up her arm and expanded in her chest. Her hand was so much smaller than his, and for a moment, standing there surrounded by the sweet smell of the alyssum and the warmth of the sun, it was as if the world had stopped spinning and had narrowed to just the two of them. She didn’t feel awkward, or irritated, or out of place. She was, for the first time in a very long time, on an equal footing with him.
“Do you know that you are asleep?” she asked. “That you’re enchanted?”
“Yes.” He looked grave. “I know.”
“Luke, I need to tell your mom something so she doesn’t worry about you.”
“Baseball,” Luke murmured as he reached out and wrapped a strand of her hair around his finger. “Have you ever noticed your hair is almost the color of honey?”
“Thank you.” Alex felt herself blushing. “But what do you mean baseball?”
“I had an offer to go check out a college with a scout. I am supposed to leave tomorrow—wait, what day is it?”
“It’s Thursday. But I thought…Never mind.”
Luke smiled at her lopsidedly. “I’m supposed to leave today, then. You can tell her I got a ride to the airport. And you can call the scout and tell him I can’t come. His number is in my backpack.”
“Your backpack; I forgot.” She took a deep breath and asked the question she really wanted to know the answer to. “Luke, why did you kiss her?”
A look of confusion crossed his face, followed quickly by a look of regret. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?” Alex asked in disbelief. She lifted her free hand and laid it on his chest. “How can you not be sure?” Her fingers played over the emblem on his vest. The pattern was very familiar. She looked down at it and gasped. It was a crest, twined in vines and bearing the image of a rose. The rose was studded with jewels—deeply dark red stones. It pulsed under her fingertips, the vines trailing around it writhing against the vest. And suddenly it wasn’t just a pattern. They were real vines, snaking out from the emblem and wrapping around Luke’s chest.
The alyssum flowers pressed themselves against her legs, murmuring urgently, but she didn’t know what they were saying. Luke looked at her with sad eyes as the vines tightened around him. He reached up and pushed her arm away from where it rested on his chest before her hand could get caught in the vines. She felt the scratch of thorns as the vines grasped vainly at her. He had moved her hand just in time. The vines twined rapidly around his arms, pinning them at his side.
“Luke!” Alex screamed and as she opened herself up to the fear, the sweet, tenuous link her mind had to the alyssum snapped.
The delicate, snowy flowers began to fade as the roses twined their way down Luke and started to move across the ground.
“Wake up, Lex.”
“No!” she shouted in fury. “Don’t tell me to wake up! Tell me how to wake you up!” The vines were reaching for her feet now, overly large roses blooming at a rapid rate, the thick scent beginning to wend its way into the clear air. “How do I wake you up?”
“Alexandra, wake up,” Luke commanded once more before the vines completely covered him.
Alex slid off the couch with a bone-jarring thud and woke up.
~ Chapter Ten ~
ALEX OPENED HER eyes to find both Becca and Lilia hovering over her with concerned expressions.
“Are you okay?” Becca asked.
Alex stared at her for a confused moment before replying, “Yeah, I am okay.” She struggled to sit up and Becca reached out to help steady her. “What happened?”
“You were asleep for awhile and then all of a sudden you just started screaming and you jerked right off the couch. I think you scared a year’s growth out of me.”
“Sorry.” Alex rubbed the back of her head where she had hit it against the foot of the couch. “I was having a really weird dream. Hold on!” She scrambled off the floor and ran down the hall to her bedroom. A minute later she ran back into the living room holding the bag out in front of her like a prize.
“Luke’s backpack! I forgot I had it!” Alex plopped down on the couch and unzipped it.
“That’s great,” Becca said. “Maybe his phone’s in there.”
“That would be brilliant.” Alex started pulling things out the dark blue bag. Of course there was a baseball glove stuffed into the top. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Why Luke needed a baseball glove at the museum she had no idea.
Becca must have had the same thought. “Does he carry it with him everywhere?” she asked. “Oh no, or maybe he was supposed to meet someone last night? Like baseball people? Do they just get together and play? What if someone already has figured out he is missing?”
“I have no idea,” admitted Alex. “I’m not really up on the whole high school athletics scene.” She tossed the glove to the side and pulled out the next few items—a few different sports magazines and a wrapper for a nutrition bar.
“I ate that,” Lilia offered. “It tasted horrible. Like dirt.”
Alex fished out a notebook and opened it. Neatly paper clipped to the inside front was a letter from a college scout in South Carolina, a printed travel itinerary and a business card.
Alex stared at in complete shock. Was it possible that she had actually communicated with Luke in a dream? She tried to read what the letter said, but the words were jumping around on the page. Her hands were shaking. Badly. She concentrated on holding them steady, but she couldn’t manage it.
“Alex?” Becca asked in concern.
Alex held the notebook out to her. “What does this say?”
Becca took the notebook and looked over the papers, unclipping them so she could read to the second page of the letter.
“It looks to me like Luke is supposed to be going to South Carolina to check out a school? They’re off
ering him a scholarship, which is no surprise. I’d be surprised if there are college sports programs that haven’t offered him one.” Becca flipped back to the front page, looking at the date on the letter. “Isn’t it a little late to be still deciding on a school? I’m registered for my classes already.”
“Yeah,” Alex answered numbly. “It does seem late. I heard he was going straight into the minors.”
“Well, that would make sense too, but maybe he changed his mind? The original letter is dated months ago.” Becca flipped back to the travel itinerary. “Meanwhile, this is pure genius for us! He’s supposed to be going away today! And gone through Monday. That gives us five whole days if we can just convince his mom he left early.”
“Yeah,” Alex repeated dully.
“You don’t appear to be all that excited,” Becca observed. “This is beyond perfect. Is his phone in there? That would just be the icing on the cake.”
Alex reached in and fished out Luke’s phone.
“Wow! Great! Now we don’t have to go back to the museum right away.”
“Yeah, great,” Alex echoed. She turned to Lilia. “When you were asleep did you dream? I know you said you were somewhat aware of the passage of time, but do you remember dreaming at all?”
Lilia thought for a moment. “There are images I remember, but I do not remember any actual dreams.”
“Nothing where you were talking to people you knew? Like your mom or dad?”
Lilia shook her head.
“What’s going on Alex?” Becca asked.
“I dreamed I was talking with Luke, just now when I was asleep on the couch. He told me about this baseball trip and he told me he had the number for the scout in his backpack. I had completely forgotten I even had the backpack.”
“Maybe he had told you about the trip before, and you just put it together in your sleep? You know how sometimes that happens; your brain tries to solve problems through dreams.” Becca sat down on the floor in front of the couch and folded her legs under her.
“Normally I would agree with you. But I know he never told me about the trip. I’ve only talked to him a few times in the last week, and never about any of his future plans. It wasn’t just my brain putting together past conversations. I asked him if he knew he was asleep, and he said yes, he knew.”
“Alex, are you saying that you were able to communicate with Luke in a dream?” Becca demanded.
“That sounds totally insane doesn’t it?”
“Everything so far today has sounded totally insane. I’m not ruling anything out merely on the grounds that it sounds insane.”
Alex bit her lip. “I had another dream earlier today about Luke, but I couldn’t talk to him in it.”
“What was that one about?”
Alex blushed uncomfortably. “It was about something that happened in high school. Freshman year we kind of had a falling out. But for the first part of the dream it was like I was Luke, then I was me. It was weird. And there were roses in both dreams.”
Lilia frowned, the creases marring her perfect forehead. “I remember roses,” she broke in. “The images I remember from my dreams, a lot of them were of roses, and vines, being trapped in vines. Or sometimes just sitting in a garden of roses and being very sleepy, feeling like I was too tired and weak to get up.”
Alex jumped off the couch, excited. “Really? I had the same experience! I touched the gems that make up the flowers on the bed and all of a sudden it was as if I were sitting in a garden of roses. I could smell them in the air, strong enough to make me gag. I was tired and couldn’t get up. The really strange part is that I could hear someone laughing, but then I heard Luke calling my name telling me to wake up. I took my hand off the bed and it faded. That’s when I started believing you about the magic in the gemstones.”
“You experienced actual magic?” squealed Becca. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“I meant to, but then you came in with Nicholas and there was that whole debacle, and we ended up going to get clothes and food. I thought we’d eventually discuss it.”
“Okay, I can see how the Nicholas situation took precedence.” Becca twisted a strand of her hair as she thought for a moment. “If we are putting all the pieces together here—Lilia was cursed by a fae named Briar Rose, there are roses all over that bed, you’re both dreaming about roses—obviously they all have to be connected.”
Alex nodded. “That’s why I guessed the name,” she said. “I had a distinct feeling there was a presence in the garden. I heard laughter. It was like the roses were sucking me in somehow.”
“It was not like in the movie,” Lilia said as she sat back down in the recliner. “I did not prick my finger on a spindle—what a silly thing to enchant a spindle. I pricked it on a rose thorn. We never had roses in the palace, because of course they are Briar Rose’s emblem. But that morning, the morning of my seventeenth birthday—”
“Oh, are you seventeen?” Becca interrupted. “In the Disney version you’re sixteen, well not you—but Briar Rose. Wait, I’m confusing myself.”
Lilia smiled. “I understand your meaning. Yes, seventeen. It is the age of majority in Arraine, so I am now old enough to inherit without needing to have a regent.”
“Is that why Briar Rose made your seventeenth birthday the day you would fall asleep?” asked Alex.
“I am not sure. I actually did not know when it would happen, if it happened at all. It makes sense to link it to my coming of age. If I had any idea of that, I would have been a lot more careful that day.”
“Finish your story, Lilia; sorry for interrupting. How did you get pricked by a rose thorn?” Becca leaned forward, placing her chin in her hands, an expectant look on her face.
“I had gone riding, and when we got back, there was a rose—a small one, like the kind that grow in kitchen gardens—stuck to my horse’s saddle blanket. I did not even realize what it was; I merely thought Ivory, my horse, had brushed up against a bush or something. I plucked it off the saddle blanket and felt the thorn sink into my thumb—it was a very small flower, but a wicked thorn—and right then I understood what it was, that Briar Rose’s curse was coming true. Then everything went black.”
“The rose is her emblem; does that mean her power is somehow tied in with it?” Becca wanted to know.
“Yes. Many fae have flowers,or some other kind of plant as an emblem. My mother’s was the lily, as is mine.”
“So, the question,” said Becca, “is whether the effects of these roses are just part of the original spell, or if Briar Rose is actually still working through the gems.”
“Holy crap!” Alex felt like she had been kicked, hard, in the stomach. The thought of a real live fae (not counting Lilia of course) working magic in the modern world and invading her dreams had not occurred to her. “I never even stopped to think about what happened to the fae that cast the spell in the first place! Lilia, do the fae die?”
Lilia shook her head. “No. Well, yes. But no.”
“Um, that was clear,” Alex said, frustrated.
“I am not sure; it is not the same as for humans. Can they die? Yes. Do they just die of old age? No. They are timeless, or maybe a better description is that their time is not the same as our time.”
“So, basically, what you are telling us is that there may be a very old, very magical creature out there that still has a vendetta against you?” demanded Alex.
The crease in Lilia’s forehead got deeper and her icy eyes looked troubled. “It is a definite possibility. We can always hope that her wrath is satisfied. My kingdom appears to no longer exist, so maybe she does not care about me anymore?”
Becca nodded toward the window, rain still pounding viciously against the sidewalks outside. “Somehow that doesn’t seem likely.”
Alex stared out the window for a moment, fighting against the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. “Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to put that belief in research to the test. I’ve got a computer in
my room.”
A half ream of printer paper later, Alex wasn’t feeling any more in control of the situation. Becca was cursing quietly under her breath as she surveyed the haphazard stacks of papers on Alex’s bed and desk. “This is frustrating. None of these stories seem to match.”
Alex leaned back and sighed. “Yeah, there are elements that pop up in each one, but nothing that’s really feeling strongly like Lilia’s version of events. They certainly all have the prince she keeps harping on about.”
Lilia looked up from the bean bag chair in the corner, where she was flipping through a version of the story called Little Briar Rose from Grimm’s Fairytales that Alex had already perused, taken notes on, and abandoned.
“See, it is as I said. A prince should have kissed me awake. My true love; not this peasant boy.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t wake up in labor like the princesses in some of these stories,” Alex commented drily. “Being woken up by a peasant might be slightly preferable to being impregnated while unconscious by a prince, true love or not.”
“I don’t get the true love part of the spell,” Becca said. “In most of the versions the true love bit was added later by one of the fairy godmothers, if it’s there at all. That and the sleeping seems to soften the original spell, which was pretty much just death. But according to you, Lilia, Briar Rose put that in originally?”
“As far as I know, my other aunts did not alter her spell,” Lilia confirmed.
“So then the evil Briar Rose is a promoter of true love? What’s the point of the spell then? It doesn’t sound much like a curse, really just kind of stupid if you think about it. Although apparently your true love didn’t ever arrive, so on second thought that is kind of tragic,” Alex said.
“Ouch,” Becca hissed, poking Alex in the ribs, “that’s harsh.”
“Hey!” Alex rubbed her side and glared at Becca. “I wasn’t trying to be harsh, just factual. If that’s really what was supposed to break the spell it obviously hasn’t happened yet.”
“The real question is if the spell was transferred to Luke—we can assume he’s not her true love—but why didn’t it happen earlier? In the last almost nine hundred years no other man has come across the bed, seen a hot princess, and decided to try his luck with a kiss? Doesn’t that seem odd?”