The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “I have a feeling you’re going to keep me on my toes just as much here as you did there,” I said to him.

  “More,” he replied, with confidence.

  The woods were much wilder in my dream than they were before, although we were always able to find a way forward. I wondered if we could get lost, but Augustus seemed thrilled to be roaming loose in the forest without any guards. Everyone in the Sun Palace now seemed to adjust to the way we wanted to live.

  “It’s a little strange, isn’t it?” I said. “As if they aren’t real people at all.”

  “I’m not sure they are real,” he said. “I think perhaps only Josef, Lord Merdon and Madame Bertin are real to us…”

  “How strange.”

  “Did you ever really pay much attention to anyone else?” he asked.

  “I’ll miss the children…but I’m certainly glad they’re not here. I want them to live long lives. It gives me a strange feeling just to see our friends who have died, like we’re living with ghosts, but they seem happy to be here. There’s so much I don’t understand. I suppose it’s like I always dreamed. Nothing is truly real but you. But…maybe I don’t mind that.”

  “Does this place scare you?”

  “No, it’s not that. I’m very happy, actually. Like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. The Sun Palace used to make me sad, but the sun shines brighter in this version of it.”

  “What’s that building up ahead?” he asked.

  “Oh—it’s the Lady’s Treat!” I said. “It’s surrounded by forest now!”

  The air seemed strange around the little house. When we got close, I dismounted from my horse and ran to the door, rattling the handle. “It’s locked! And—I don’t have my key.”

  “I’m sure we’ll find it back at the palace.”

  “I hope so. This is where I would rather live.”

  “I know, that’s why I told Axel to keep us there while we sleep.”

  “Axel…” I noticed the curtains were open and I looked inside. “Axel!” I screamed.

  Inside the main room of the Lady’s Treat, I saw Axel walking through the room, and our bodies resting on beds like the plinths on ancient tombs, but we were sleeping. Axel curled my hair around his finger and let it go. He put his hand on my belly, protectively. He kissed my forehead, and then Augustus’, and then he picked up a lantern and moved to another room.

  “Axel!” I pounded on the window. “Axel!”

  Augustus stood behind me, his reflection in the panes. “Rose…I don’t think he can hear us.”

  “I can’t stand it…seeing him there alone…” I pressed my face into Augustus’ shirt for a moment, leaving wet blotches of my tears. “We need to go look for the key.”

  “Do you think we could walk in that door and find him?” Augustus held me tight. “Rose, he wanted it this way.”

  In the Sun Palace, I could never truly embrace my emotions. My fear. My anger. Now I felt a lifetime of emotion bubbling up inside me. Thanks to the witch and her schemes, I had always been a pawn.

  “I want to see the Cobblestone Witch,” I growled to the heavens. “When she sleeps, I want her to enter my dream. She has written my destiny for me, doomed us so that our people would never trust us. We’ve spent our lives in her world…”

  “We will draw her into ours now,” Augustus said.

  “But what do we do with her?” I wondered aloud. “Even though she wanted to kill you, I don’t want to kill her. I don’t like to kill anything, that’s the first problem. I don’t even like killing deer, really. The people protected her for all of this time, and so I’m sure there was something in her that wanted to help them… Why did she do all of this to us?”

  “I certainly don’t have the damnedest idea,” Augustus said.

  “Maybe it’s her dream I need to see,” I said. “Show me…” I lifted my hands. “What is the Cobblestone Witch’s dream?”

  When I spoke, the sun seemed to shift in the sky and the entire sunlit world grew darker and colder. I clutched Augustus’ hand as a path opened up into the forest.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Interlude

  The witch sensed danger. She was old and she felt it prickle in the air.

  She wandered the woods a little desperately, still tasting power on her lips like the fading bloom of a good wine. Where did I make a mistake? she thought. I have planned to take down the Sun Palace forever, and I had it all in my grasp…

  Why didn’t Rose prick her finger the first time? It took me too long to fulfill the curse.

  But she seemed like such a strong queen when she stepped out onto the balcony. How could that be? How could she be happy in such a terrible place?

  The witch had always failed to account for the love that grew between Rose and Augustus.

  She tried to ruin them both by manipulating Count Farren, and she had not accounted for that love either.

  The witch finally had to stop her wandering, falling to her knees in a soft patch of moss. Spring was coming, but under the thick cover of shade, the forest was still cool and damp, and she shivered as she slid into sleep.

  The witch dreamed. Memories she had tried to bury deep inside her bubbled to the surface. She saw her own little brother in a crib, his cheeks flushed, and her mother singing to him, her voice quavering with concern.

  “Is Emmon going to be all right?” she asked.

  Her mother tied a cloak around her neck. “I’m going into the forest to find some stronger herbs to treat him. Watch over him and don’t leave his side. When I come back I’ll have some good magic to make him well.”

  “Yes, Mother…”

  The little girl watched her mother leave, and then she kept vigil over her feverish little brother, at least at first. She looked at the picture book of stories, and heated up the vegetables for her supper. Their cottage was isolated. The little girl’s father had been a soldier, and he died before Emmon was born. Her mother was the village witch, and she took care of others when they were sick. The little girl knew in her gut that something was wrong if her mother was going out into the woods late in the afternoon looking for remedies after trying everything else.

  Still, she tried very hard not to be afraid, even as the sun went down and she heard a wolf howl somewhere.

  “Mother…” She went to pick up Emmon and hold him, because even his warm little body would be a comfort.

  But Emmon was cold.

  “Emmon?” The girl started shaking all over. “Emmon, wake up!”

  He didn’t wake up. He had stopped breathing and she hadn’t even noticed. She was shoving potatoes in her mouth while her brother died silently.

  “Emmon!” she screamed, and then she flung open the cottage door. “Mother! Mother!”

  The only answer was the whispers and trills of the forest night, and she hurried back inside, to sit beside her brother’s body as it grew colder and colder, and as hours passed she grew sure that her mother would never return.

  Her mother finally opened the door, exhausted from searching for something that would save the little boy, but then she saw that the baby was pale and still, and she dropped her basket and started wailing, already stripped raw from the loss of her husband. The little girl started crying too.

  Her mother clutched her so tight it hurt her. “You must never leave me, Metaria! You must never ever die! Do you hear me?”

  “Y—yes…”

  Her mother cried for what seemed like far too long, until the little girl begged her to bury Emmon. After that, the cottage no longer seemed like a home, as if all the life had been sucked out of it. Her mother kept making spells and healing other people’s children, but she never sang a song again.

  When Metaria was fourteen, she went to the city to seek her fortune, and as she was walking to Lumine, she heard the pipes and drums of an army coming up behind her. She rushed off the road, unsure what was happening, only to see that it wasn’t an army, exactly.

  It was Queen Marianna, riding her
warhorse, carrying her shield with the swan painted on it, but she was going to the city to meet with King Enri and discuss the terms of peace. She didn’t even notice the girl standing by the side of the road, but she was a magnificent sight, with a fur cloak slung around her shoulders and her hair to her waist and flowing freely.

  It was the first time since Emmon died that the girl felt excitement for what the future might bring.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I watched the witch as she watched Queen Marianna. This truly seemed like a dream. The edges were fuzzy. Marianna’s face was a blur. Only her shield was sharp in my vision. When she passed by, her entire entourage started to fade away, and so did the young woman the witch had once been.

  She stood alone by the side of the road now, and the path was empty, although the dust of the horse’s hooves still floated in the air.

  “Cobblestone Witch…,” I said. “Is that why you were so angry at us? Is this why you wanted to bring back the old days?”

  The witch turned toward us. “You summoned up this dream,” she said. “So that’s it. I wondered how this could be when I haven’t thought of these things in a century, and I have no wish to think of them ever again! How dare you conjure up my memories in your dream.”

  “You’re the one who forced me into a dream. I just wanted to know why.”

  “Why,” the witch repeated. “Why? I suppose…that when I saw Queen Marianna, I felt a sense of hope. I thought she would be our savior, and before long, she had bowed. King Enri made so many more rules than we ever had before, and his successor made more, and people crammed into the cities, and I was there with them. I saw so many children die, then. I could never see that without thinking of Emmon. So I tried to help them.”

  “But you couldn’t save them all, even so,” I said gently.

  “Of course I couldn’t. Despite my best efforts! But I did save a lot of them. More than you royals ever did.”

  “Queen Marianna couldn’t have saved them all either,” I said. “No one could. I’m sure she made mistakes. We all did. We’re all just trying to find our way in this confusing world.” I bit my lip. “And if we’re lucky, we find someone to love along the way.”

  “Well, I didn’t have that,” the witch said, her eyes widening. She looked like she wanted to strike me, like she thought I was just a stupid girl babbling the sort of thing I’d seen in operas.

  Maybe I was, but I forged on anyway.

  “Your mother loved you,” I said. “I am very sure of that. The last thing she told you before she went away was to watch over your little brother. She trusted that you would, and you did. And the first thing she told you when she got back was not to leave her. Not to die. She didn’t want to think of a world without you.”

  “She was never the same again…”

  “Does your mother still live?”

  “No. She died many years ago.”

  I looked into the witch’s wrinkled face and I saw now that her life had been an attempt to fulfill that promise. To watch over her sick brother, and to live for her mother. But no one loved her, and she didn’t dare to love anyone else, and it had all gotten wrong.

  “You have finished your work here,” I said.

  The witch swatted me. “How dare you try to say these words to me! I tried to take away everything you loved.”

  “I know—and you succeeded. You took Axel from me and now—he will live his life without us. But—you were in pain. I will soon have a child of my own, and I’m afraid about giving them a good life. So I—I can forgive you. All I know is that I’d rather forgive you than hurt you.”

  “Beauty…a quick mind…and grace,” the witch said, with a sharp laugh. “Ahh—hmph. True grace isn’t a regal bearing, but the ability to forgive and give love freely. Those damned Three White Sisters who blessed you. Trying to soften me up now! After the sort of life I’ve lived. I don’t know that I want forgiveness. Maybe I don’t deserve it, but—I had a job to do. I couldn’t save Emmon, but I’ve saved other children! I’m no villain!”

  I looked down the path and Augustus and I both saw the same thing at once. In the distance, a woman and a small boy walked out of the dust. The woman held up her hand and beckoned.

  “I know,” I said. “But the era of the Cobblestone Witch is over.”

  “And so is the era of the Sun Palace,” Augustus said. “You can go on.”

  A few tears sprung into the eyes of the witch, before she turned away from us and walked quietly into the dust.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Interlude

  Count Axel Farren had come to Ellurine seeking help with the trolls. He had accomplished that mission.

  I have always needed a mission, he thought, watching Rose and Augustus sleep. And now I have one for the rest of my life.

  He brought them to the Lady’s Treat and locked the doors. He wouldn’t allow anyone else near them. As the violence in the city died down, he would hardly consent to let anyone else guard his beloveds, but spent much of his time parked outside the locked doors of the house.

  “The things love will do to you,” Merry said, shaking his head.

  “He seems happy,” Jeanne said. “As if this is the purpose he has always wanted.”

  “You almost sound like you envy him,” Merry said. “I’m surprised. I took you for a woman who is more…” But he couldn’t quite think of a good word to characterize Madame du Bariel.

  “Selfish? Vain? Crude? I can supply you with all the words I’ve been described as.”

  “No, no…”

  “I was born into nothing, and from there I climbed my way up from whore to mistress to the assistant of a witch of dubious morality,” Jeanne said. “Where do I go from there? That’s what I don’t know. That’s why I envy Axel. He has a purpose and you can tell he’s happy to fulfill it.”

  “And I have to take this spinning wheel back home for safe-keeping,” Merry said. “But then I can’t say I have much of a purpose either. I imagine a lovely woman like you will be happy not to look at my ugly face every day.”

  “I think I might be able to stand it,” Jeanne said.

  “Are you sure? Sometimes, before you know it, you’ve subjected yourself to a lifetime of it.”

  “Wasn’t your mother a human? How does she stand it?”

  “Sometimes I’m not sure she does, the way she stands up to my father. If he does something she doesn’t like, she locks him out of the house.” Merry raised his eyebrows. “Of course, then he comes in through the window.”

  “I’m not sure if you’re warning me…” Jeanne paused. “Well, if you had a purpose, what do you think it would be? Will you go home to your folks?”

  “No, I’m not really one for such a domestic life. I wouldn’t mind staying right here.”

  “I have to admit…one thing I really liked best…” Jeanne picked at the torn lace at her sleeve, embarrassed to admit that she cared. “I liked helping women who reminded me of myself. I mean, girls, really—many of them. Just girls. Who took to selling themselves—on the street or on the side, as a barmaid or what have you. They pick up illnesses that way without hardly understanding it, and I would make them healing potions while the witch was helping the children. If no one wants to occupy this palace anymore, I wonder if some of them would help me keep it up.” She threw up her hands. “That sounds much too complicated, doesn’t it?”

  “I like to weave complicated magic,” Merry said. “You don’t know until you try.”

  “Well, Merry…I might stay here with you and try, if you’re willing.”

  “My true name is Gabriel,” he said. “My folk aren’t in the habit of giving their names to just anyone, but I’ll give it to you, Jeanne, if you’ll have it.”

  “Gabriel,” she said. “It’s a nice name.”

  “My father wanted Kruzimugeli but my mother won the coin toss,” he said.

  “Lucky you,” she said. “I don’t think I would have that. But Gabriel…I will have.”

>   Months went by. And then, years.

  In the city, the assembly reconvened and attempted to stabilize the city. Leaders rose and fell in attempts to form a new world for the faeries. Some wanted the world of King Enri and Queen Marianna, others wanted to return to the forest and join with the Wicked Revels, while others suggested a more advanced government of councils like some of their neighboring countries. More blood was shed, amidst triumphs of free thought.

  The Sun Palace was forgotten for years, and Jeanne was happy enough to be forgotten.

  Jeanne and Merry offered a home to the lowliest of faery women in the empty halls of the Sun Palace. All the valuables were gone, and the palace was very cold, but the women kept it clean and they tended the gardens and raised chickens and goats.

  Sometimes the girls walked down the path to the Lady’s Treat and brought food to the mysterious soldier who guarded the house. He was friendly; he would talk and joke with them, play with their dogs and goats, and invite them to share a meal with them. But any attempts to flirt were rebuffed immediately.

  “The only people I will ever love are behind that door,” he would say, if pressed.

  When it was safe, Louisa and Julia and Augustus’ living brother Charles and his sisters-in-law returned to the palace to pay their respects to their dear friend. Julia carried an infant, the child of her quiet husband, who was pressed into doing his conjugal duties more often with Lord Merdon gone.

  On that day, Axel unlocked the door.

  “Oh—no—Rose.” Julia ran to her side, grabbing her pale hand with passion. “Rose…that fiend of a witch! I don’t care if they found her dead in the woods! She should have burned at the stake so I could spit on her! The world isn’t the same without you. Can’t someone wake her up?”

  Louisa approached more slowly. “Look at the smile on her face,” she said. “Did you ever see her smile like that in the Sun Palace?”