Once Upon a Dream

by Liz Braswell

  It was her thoughts and memory pictures and everything else that were false.

  “As I was escaping, I saw her feet. They were pigs’ feet. She was one of Maleficent’s creatures. She was working for the queen the whole time, telling her everything. Just pretending to be my friend.”

  “Oh, Rose,” the prince said sadly, running a hand through her hair. It got stuck in some pine pitch.

  She began to sob. “I don’t remember much from the real world, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any friends. Except for squirrels and rabbits. No one my own age or human or anything. Lianna betrayed me! I mean, I know it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t do anything else…she’s not even a real person! Not even a real dream person. But…”

  The prince put his arms around her and pulled her in close. She crumpled into his shoulder, feeling so small. Small as a dormouse. She enjoyed the weight of his chest and arms and the darkness when she closed her eyes, and she wept for many things, not just Lianna.

  “THAT WRETCHED PRINCE!”

  Maleficent’s lips stretched taut and thin over her teeth until even her molars were bared in a rictus of frustration. She was not very pretty.

  In the air before her was a scene of almost ridiculous pastoral romance: a shabby but beautiful girl in the arms of a prince on a path in the woods. They were quite obviously—and ominously—headed toward the fairies’ house.

  “That murdering, foul swine,” she hissed.

  Her hand moved unconsciously to her chest, feeling a place over her heart, which, even in the dreamworld, still bore the ugly scar of a sword.

  Her guards, the misshapen horde summoned from the dark places below, remained silent and shuffled uneasily. Even when things went a little bit wrong, the punishments were painful, random, and certainly not evenhanded.

  This was major.

  Alone among them, unmoving, was a single human-seeming girl—though ragged skirts revealed her trotters. Her eyes were large, unblinking, and black, fixed entirely on the vision in the air. A thin film of wet coated them.

  Maleficent held her staff aloft. The blood in the orb glowed bright green. She swirled it, slowly, carefully, like a wine connoisseur examining a particularly tricky vintage. From inside the green, a strange, strung-out drop of red began to pulse, caught within but not part of the rest of the liquid.

  “The battle has just begun,” Maleficent said with a knowing leer. “I still have the dreamer’s blood from the spindle. It may be time to use it….”

  THREE EXTREMELY concerned aunts came upon her lying in a hollow at the bottom of what she called Fern Hill. It was after dusk, growing dark, and she should have left hours ago…but the hollow was so comfy and she didn’t feel like moving.

  “Briar Rose!” Flora said with a spank in her voice. “We were looking all over for you!”

  There was real emotion on her face, the thirteen-year-old Rose had noted. On all of their faces. The usual presence of serenity was gone.

  The girl knew she should feel bad—or at least concerned—but she didn’t really feel much of anything. It was like they were far away.

  “You can’t be in the woods after dark!” Merryweather scolded. “Wolves could get you! Or bears!”

  “They won’t hurt me,” she had said, slowly getting up. The words came with difficulty. Like she was speaking through a mouth full of honey.

  “Bunnies and owls are one thing,” Fauna said with a gentler tone of caution. “They are not the same thing as bears.”

  “Or rapists,” Merryweather added.

  The two other aunts glared at her.

  There was something they weren’t telling her, some great fear adults had for children that they never shared. Rose was only vaguely intrigued. She let them lead her back to the house. She apologized, because she was a good girl, and promised she would try not to let it happen again, because she was a good girl.

  Then she went straight to bed and slept for thirteen hours and still didn’t want to get up.

  She came to on the ground, the sickening smell of bile filling her nose and mouth. Phillip was kneeling next to her, holding her hair and shoulders, looking into her face with concern.

  The memory had hit her like a sudden falling tree: out of nowhere, splitting her head open. It was so real….

  …but, of course, it was real. That really had happened. Her mind was just recovering all of those lost moments.

  There was a strangely comforting familiarity in the sadness of the memory. It felt like so many similar days in the castle…sleeping the hours away, staring at nothing. Not wanting to do anything. Hoping to disappear.

  “I’m fine,” she said, before Phillip could ask her. Her head felt like it was sloshing around some but, other than that and a little lingering dizziness, she really was good to go. She put her hand out to the comforting solidity of a tree root to push herself upright. Funny little memories streamed up her arm and into her head. Before she could process them, the prince was helping her. His arm was as sturdy and unrelenting as a rock. She felt no weakness or give when he lifted her.

  The path remained steady for a time before dwindling down to dusty silt. The sky opened above as trees fell away on either side. To their right, the land dipped down into a tiny, almost impossibly beautiful valley. A stream ran through its lowest point, its bank lined in pink lupine. Before that, tall, dark green grass sparkled with white flashes in the sunlight. Late season dandelions and breathy, tiny white flowers on slender stems were avoided by bees, while purple thistles and asters thronged with them.

  “I could do with a little bit of a break,” she said, looking longingly at the soft, moss-covered braes above the tinkling water.

  The prince made a big show of cautiously surveying the scene. Aurora Rose hid a smile. Nothing seemed harmful. “All right,” he finally said. “My face could definitely do with a wash. Feels all dusty.”

  They stepped down into the quiet valley that smelled like all of summer crushed into a single flower. She collapsed with thankfulness on a soft sunlit patch of moss. The prince carefully lay down on his stomach and cupped his hands in the stream.

  “Wait—should we drink this?” he suddenly asked. “I mean, in fairy tales they always get you with the food or drink.”

  “We’re already trapped in a dream. How much more trapped could we get?”

  “Hm. Excellent point,” Phillip said, and lapped up several mouthfuls.

  “So…my parents,” Aurora Rose mused, chewing on the sweet end of a stalk of grass. “Who are, by the way, not evil. They did, however, give me away to a bunch of fairies when I was a baby.”

  That was the part that was currently confusing her the most. Maleficent was obviously terribly clever in the way she had constructed the false world with its false history; it sinuously, evilly mirrored the real one—and in each, her parents had given her to fairies. For different reasons and at different times.

  “Why, exactly, did they do that? And keep it a secret from me?”

  “They thought it was the best way to protect you, I gather,” Phillip said. He picked a clump of moss and soaked it in the water, then handed it to her. “Here, maybe you can use this like a sponge.”

  She smiled and dabbed her face slowly, still thinking. Unconsciously, she began to rub the itchiest bits, where the pine pitch was.

  “But if Maleficent’s curse was that I should die—or fall asleep—or whatever on my sixteenth birthday, then who cares what happened until I turned that age?”

  “I think there was some question of how enraged Maleficent was at the way her curse was mitigated,” Phillip said with a shrug. His word choice cut through her thoughts; there were moments when the silly, handsome boy almost sounded like a future king. “And that she would just come at you some old-fashioned way, with her army or something. Me, that’s not the way I would have handled it. I would have kept my daughter at home where I could keep an eye on her, and surrounded her with armed guards at all times, and had those fairies hang out around the
castle.”

  Those words sounded strangely familiar….

  Suddenly, Maleficent’s speech to her parents made sense.

  Let me tell you something, dearies. 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.

  Or admit the truth to yourselves. It didn’t matter much either way, because in the end, you really would have preferred a son.

  Aurora Rose rolled onto her stomach, spreading out full-length on the moss like a little girl. She stared at the dirt, part of her marveling at how from this close she could see individual grains and the perfect eyes of ants. How everything tiny was magnified like magic by the globe-shaped teardrop that landed on a patch of moss.

  Tiny like a princess. Useless. Unwanted. A girl tossed aside until it was time to marry. A strategic alliance. A useful pawn.

  “Hey,” Phillip said, noticing her sudden change of mood. He put his hand on her back. Despite the warmth of the sun, his fingers were warmer. “Does it matter now? Didn’t you love your aunts—didn’t they really love you? Surely they must have.”

  “I guess.”

  “Believe me, I can tell you, as someone who was raised ‘properly,’ a royal prince in a royal castle, you probably had more love and freedom and fun than any prince or princess I know.

  “Before she died, my mother was someone I saw once a day at the end of the day for a very proper kiss on the cheek and recitation of the day’s lessons. And my dad…well, my dad was pretty great. Except when he was punishing me. But all of his lectures, all of his lessons, all of his time with me—it was all only to groom me to take his place. Think about that. My one role in life was to prepare for the day the man I loved most would die. Birthdays were marked by the sigh of accomplishment that I had made it that far and the worry of how many years I had left before I turned eighteen—and could rightly rule if something happened to him.”

  She remained silent, giving him that point.

  But she couldn’t let it go.

  “At least you knew what you were in for. I never knew what was happening to me—or what was going to happen to me.”

  “Yes, that was a tactical error, I think we established that,” Phillip said, a little impatiently. “But the point of it was to keep you safe. You understand that, right? I’m sure in their own weird way your parents cared about you. Maleficent, despite her…act, most assuredly did not.”

  Aurora Rose allowed herself one moment of crazy thought: what if Maleficent had loved her? What if her heart had melted just a little and she had really adopted the princess? And brought her into her evil ways, and taught her the great summoning spells, and made her ruthless and strong and magical? Was that an unhappy ending? The princess would have become a villain but would truly have had a mother. She would’ve been ruthless but independent.

  Those thoughts drained away as she remembered the uneasy look in Maleficent’s eyes whenever the conversation drifted along those lines.

  It was never a possibility. The princess wasn’t the right kind of daughter for her. She was too weak, too kind, too dumb….

  “And bad at math,” she said aloud with a bitter smile.

  “What?” Phillip asked, confused.

  “I was just thinking about my relationship with Maleficent. I just meant…on top of everything else, being this stupid princess, I can’t even do the math they tried to teach me.”

  “The fairies taught you math?” he asked, confused. “I didn’t even know fairies did that kind of thing.”

  “No, Maleficent tried,” she said with a sigh, picking a fresh stalk of grass and starting on it. “She hired a tutor for me, but I was terrible at it.”

  “Where?”

  “In the castle, silly. In my bedroom or the library.”

  “Yes, but that castle over there? In this dream?”

  “YES, Phillip. Maleficent didn’t melt out of the woods to teach me math while I was being raised by the fairies.”

  Phillip had the indecency to laugh at her.

  “Of course you couldn’t do math here, silly! You can’t do math in dreams.”

  She sat up.

  “What?”

  Phillip shrugged, dismissing the whole thing with one boyish expression. “Everyone knows that. For some reason you just can’t. Everyone I know—even Sir Gavin, who’s like a hundred years old—has these nightmares where you’re sitting at the desk with an abacus and the teacher above you, smacking your fingers with a rod for being so stupid. Equations don’t make sense. Even simple ones. I can’t do Latin in dreams, either. I don’t know if that’s true with everyone else, though. I always start out hic haec hoc and then things get weird. In fact, just thinking about it now, none of it makes sense. What is a declension, anyway?”

  Phillip prattled on, but Aurora Rose ignored him.

  Even the most aggravating parts of her life were a lie. Math wasn’t real in this world. About twenty years of false history and they couldn’t even be useful. The time she had spent, the tears of frustration, how stupid she thought she was. Stupid pretty princess.

  She looked up at the heavens. The amazement at there still actually being a natural world and her being in it hadn’t quite worn off yet. The sky was a light blue and large, puffy clouds moved slowly across it. The ground was uncomfortable in a few places under her but not enough to really matter. The breeze was warm when it blew.

  Phillip leaned over her and, for a moment, she caught her reflection in his eyes—but then lost herself in them instead.

  “Can I kiss you? Would that be all right?” he asked softly.

  She graced him with a smile.

  “Is this because I look like I’m sleeping?”

  “No!” Phillip said, pulling back. “Deuce it all, you just looked beautiful and I love you.”

  “I was kidding, Prince Serious. You may give me one small kiss. On the cheek. For now.”

  He leaned over and kissed her, but he lingered a little more than she had imagined he would. She felt his breath, warm and moist but not unpleasant. Their faces stayed close for another moment, sneaking in a second almost-kiss.

  He sat up and looked at her face, into her eyes. He pushed a tendril of her hair back over her head.

  She was enjoying it immensely.

  “I think…” he finally said. “I think we should probably get moving. It’s kind of amazing that Maleficent hasn’t found us yet.”

  “I don’t think she can leave the castle,” Aurora Rose said lazily, stretching. She wasn’t sure how she knew this. “If she could have she would have. In the last few years. Certainly by now.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to get a good head start. She might not be able to leave the castle, but she could send someone.”

  Someone else outside?

  The Exile. The minstrel.

  She had completely forgotten about them.

  “Have you seen anyone else out here? Sort of a…wasted individual? Might have a lute? Or maybe you know him—our court minstrel, Master Tommins.”

  Phillip raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t seen a soul or sign of anyone since I got here. It felt like I was alone in the world. Once in a while, I could hear faint sounds from the castle courtyard, mere whispers on the wind. That’s how I knew there were people inside.”

  “No one? Not even a…sort of fat little older man, white mustache…thinks he’s a king…?”

  Phillip’s face went ashen.

  “Who is this you speak of?” he asked, trying to control his emotion.

  “The Exile. He was thrown into the Outside years ago for high treason. We all assumed he died—but I guess out here he could have lived, after all.”

  “What was his name?” Phillip demanded, putting his hands on her shoulders. “There is only one other king for leagues in any direction around here.”

  “We never spoke of his name—it was forbidden,” she s
tammered. “Hugh? Hugley? Humboldt?”

  “HUBERT,” the prince said with a cry, falling back.

  “Hubert, that’s right,” Aurora said with relief. Then she suddenly got it. “Oh…”

  “He’s my father, Rose,” Phillip said bleakly. “He’s been out here all this time and I didn’t even know it. Of course, he would have been in the castle, too—I forgot. He and your parents were in the throne room when it all happened, waiting for the wedding ceremony.”

  “I’m so sorry….Well, sort of,” she added, thinking. “Perhaps it was better for him to be out here than in there all this time. Maleficent could have killed him for his blood in there.”

  “We’ve got to find him,” the prince said, leaping up. “He’s lost out here, somewhere.”

  “Phillip,” Aurora Rose said gently, standing up and putting her fingers on his arm. “I think the best thing we can do now is escape this whole place ourselves and wake up—rescuing everybody in the process. His body, his real self, remember, is still in the other world.”

  Phillip started to argue, then stopped.

  “You’re right,” he said with a deep breath. He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. “That’s the right thing to do. That’s what…he would want me to do. That’s what a king would do.”

  They made their way stoically—if regretfully—back up the side of the pretty valley, Aurora Rose putting a comforting hand on the prince’s arm. He smiled and patted it—but that couldn’t disguise the worry that floated just below the surface of his eyes.

  When they were back on the path, she took a last deep breath of the wildflowers and turned back down the path, toward the woods.

  “All right, but both of my, um, potential lives involved being stuck. Stuck in a castle—the real one, I mean, in the real world—until I was sixteen and married off like a real princess,” she chatted, trying to distract him. “Or being stuck in the woods with nothing to do and no one to see. So what do normal people do? Like not princesses, or those cursed by wicked fairies? Like, a normal girl?”

  “Well, I…” the prince trailed off, staring at the dust on the path.

  “You don’t know, do you,” she said, nodding. “Because you’re not normal, either. I mean you’re normal, but a prince. Not like a farmer, or—”