Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8

by Samantha M. Derr

  "Where am I even going to find a spindle? I hardly even know what one looks like. I half expect it will simply appear in front of me at some predetermined hour, with a flash of light and crack of thunder for ominous effect. Or I shall find it on my plate, cleverly disguised as some strange vegetable in my dinner. Perhaps I will be attending my birthday ball only to discover, to my shock and horror, that my dancing partner was secretly a spindle in a suit the entire time.

  "Perhaps I'll go out on my own and find one, somehow, and spare myself the agony of waiting."

  Meg couldn’t help a smile. No one had ever said exactly how the princess had come across the spindle that had doomed her, but she could see Betty doing just that. "Did you prick your pretty little finger on purpose?" she asked, glancing back over the at the figure on the bed. With her words as comfort, it hurt a little less to look at her. "To be honest, my dear, I can't find it in myself to blame you. If I were in your uncomfortable fancy shoes, I'd have gone mad from the anticipation long before then."

  She unfolded the paper further, despite her better senses insisting that she should get back to packing. "I suppose," it read, "that this may very well be the last thing I ever write. How curious, to think that the moment I touch the spindle, however it may find me, I may never wake up again.

  "Will it happen instantly, like blowing out a candle? Or will it creep slowly over me, until I become too exhausted to do anything but sleep? At least, I think—I hope—it will not be more painful than a prick on the finger.

  "Oh, how I've wanted to avoid thinking about this! For twenty-one years, I've preoccupied myself with other worries, and even now I find my mind wandering to more hopeful thoughts. Such as how I believe, how I want to believe, that I will wake up again, even if it takes until the last moment of the entire hundred years.

  "And yet... I find it equally difficult to imagine that if I should wake, it will be to the face of my true love. What an odd condition to put on a curse! I suppose the fairies thought it would be easy. They must have imagined that a princess would have no lack of people to love her, and that I would be up to my eyeballs in potential curse-breakers by now. Maybe love is just more straightforward for fairies. But I..."

  Meg bit her lip. She looked back at Betty, her face still bright and soft from the sun, and tried to ignore the funny little lurch in her chest. She had suspected, of course, that there hadn't been much of anyone in Betty's life. Even the people who were supposed to love her, even her parents, hadn't seemed to want to bother themselves with her. Was it because of the curse? But that should have just made them even more determined to love her, enough that they could break the Spell as soon as it took hold.

  She should have left by now. She should be down the stairs and out the door, getting as far away as she could before Abbie noticed. But… surely a few minutes wouldn't make much of a difference. Not when it was going to be the last time she'd ever get to see Betty. If she was going to read something so personal, even more so than the scribbles in her books, then she should at least have the decency to do so to her face.

  And, well, she really was lovely in the sunlight. Meg was starting to think that maybe she truly was the most beautiful woman in the world.

  She looked back down at the paper. "But I can't even imagine such a thing. The king and queen may not wish to throw me a courting ball, but I have no illusions that I would have many suitors if they did. Curses aren't very attractive, even when they come attached to the princess of a wealthy kingdom, and though a few men have come unsolicited, they are not... friendly. They're polite enough, but there's coldness in their eyes, and I feel that instead of being put off by it they see my curse as a challenge for them to overcome. That I am a challenge for them. I may be selfish for saying so, when they are the only ones who have offered—but if this is how they want to love me, then it's not a love I can return.

  "I don't feel afraid of my curse, as strange as that sounds. But I am afraid, deep in my heart, that there is no one in my life who cares for me enough to be able to break it. As much as I refuse to believe that tomorrow will be my last day on this earth, I cannot help but think... if I couldn't find a true love while awake, how can it be possible while I'm asleep?"

  The letters of the last word had a tremor to them, as if Betty's hand had been shaking. Meg lowered the paper, and after a moment, lifted her eyes from it to look back at Betty.

  She opened her mouth, but for once, couldn't think of a single thing to say. Instead she just stood there, head bowed, eyes fixed on Betty but not really seeing her. Or, maybe, seeing her more clearly than she ever had.

  "You know," she said at last, so quietly that it was almost a whisper. "I'm not sorry I got sent up here. Never thought I'd say that! But coming to know you... even if it doesn't really count, I suppose... I'm glad for it. Even if I spent the rest of my life wishing that you were—"

  Meg shook her head fiercely, ignoring the sudden stinging behind her eyes. "Well! It's probably for the best that Prince Nathaniel didn't turn out to be your true love after all. Imagine waking up to that lunk! If anyone saw you as a challenge to be overcome, I'd say it's him." Her fists clenched in her dress. "They all did, didn't they? Every grand prince and dashing hero who tried to fight their way to you... what they wanted was the glory, or your papa's kingdom, or both. They didn't..."

  They didn't want her. Even if they'd managed to get through, none of them could have woken her any more than Prince Nathaniel had. Not unless they bothered to look at what she'd left behind, and see her as more than a legend for them to rescue.

  "None of them would have had a chance, would they?" she sighed, leaning over Betty. This close, she was blocking the sun from the window, sending Betty's face into soft-edged shadows. "If only they'd been a snoop like I am, and bored enough to actually read all those dreadful books. Not to mention keep reading them, just for you. Ha! Maybe if it'd been me who'd tried to break your curse—"

  Her mouth snapped shut.

  She hadn't meant it! She'd only been talking without thinking, as usual. If she'd been thinking, she never would have allowed the thought in to begin with, never mind said it out loud.

  But she had said it, and now the thought wouldn't go away.

  "If it had been me..." she whispered.

  Betty's face was now close enough that their noses were nearly touching. She could see the curve of Betty's eyelid, half-hidden behind an errant dark curl, long lashes peeking out from underneath to pillow against her cheek. She was so close that all Meg had to do was just lean down, just a little further...

  Betty's lips were soft against hers, and strangely cool, as if the sun hadn't been able to warm them. Perhaps that was another side effect of the Spell, Meg thought, right before her mind caught up to her and oh heavens, what was she doing?!

  She jerked back, nearly falling over. She'd—she'd kissed Betty! She, a maid, had kissed the princess!

  What had she been thinking?! That a silly girl from the kitchens, so hotheaded that she'd been shut up in a tower to get rid of her, could break a legendary fairy curse? That she could do what Prince Nathaniel and his brothers couldn't, just because she—because she—

  Because she'd been stupid enough to fall in love with the girl behind a bunch of marked-up old books—

  Meg covered her face with her hands. At least no one had seen it, she told herself desperately. She couldn't get in trouble if no one knew she'd done it! No one would ever find out, and she could pretend it hadn't happened in the first place, and just... run off and spend the rest of forever trying to ignore that last thought she'd had. It wasn't like it was going to matter.

  It wasn't like she'd actually managed to...

  There was a rustling noise, so soft that Meg would never have heard it if the tower room weren't so still and so silent. Even then she didn't pay it any mind at first. It was such a familiar noise, one that was so ingrained into the background music of her everyday life that she never even noticed it anymore. The tiniest sound of cloth mo
ving against cloth...

  Meg froze. Heart pounding in her ears, she peeked out from behind her fingers.

  Betty lay there on the bed, just as she always had. Meg let out a long sigh of—relief, of course it was relief, and certainly not disappointment. She was relieved that nothing was different. Betty's white dress was arranged around her exactly the same as always, draped over the arms folded over her chest, and her dark hair still poured over her neck and face, nearly obscuring the golden-brown of her eyes—

  Meg did fall over then, and took the chair with her, both of them ended up in an untidy heap on the tower floor. It wasn't—it couldn't be—but Betty was looking back at her, and blinking those long, long lashes, and oh, she must be dreaming. It wasn't possible. It wasn't...

  Slowly, Betty's arms uncrossed. She made a motion, a little jerk with her upper body, and Meg realized (through the cloudy, distant haze that had settled over her mind) that she was trying to sit up. She managed it on her second try, and oh, but if that didn't make a pretty picture! There she was, sitting in her fancy bed and pooled in the graceful frills of her dress, with the sunlight streaming all around her. Tiny dust motes danced around her like stars, although where they could have possibly come from in the impossibly clean room, Meg hadn't a clue.

  The color was returning to Betty's cheeks, and she no longer looked like a corpse, but as vibrant and alive as any girl Meg had known. Her eyes were fuzzy for a moment, blinking rapidly, but as Meg scrambled back to her feet, they suddenly focused—on her. A smile broke out over Betty's lips, a real honest-to-goodness smile, not the little hints that Meg had occasionally imagined.

  She had excellent posture, Meg couldn't help noticing. There had been a long note written in one of the books, complaining of all the hours she'd been made to spend with things balanced on her head, walking and dancing and curtseying while trying not to lose any of them, and oh dear, her mind really was getting away from her. How could she be thinking about posture, when Betty was... she was awake!

  The princess was awake!

  Her eyes flicked to the bellcord on the wall. She hadn't so much as looked at it since that very first day, when the maid before her had pointed it out. She was supposed to pull it if anything happened—and something certainly had happened—but...

  Betty was still looking at her. She didn't look angry, or at least Meg didn't think she did. She couldn't tell much of anything at the moment. Especially not when those lips (lips that she'd kissed!) opened, and Betty started to speak...

  ...only to go right into a coughing fit. Meg leapt up, started to reach out for her, then pulled her arms back at the last moment in a panic. What should she do?! She couldn't touch Betty—the princess—well, it was too late for that, but she was awake, and everything was different now!

  Finally, at a loss for what else to do, Meg fetched the half-full cup left over from her dinner tray, and dashed back to hand it to Betty. Could she just hand things to a princess? She was a maid, not ever supposed to be in the presence of a noble, let alone a royal, she didn't know the rules! But if there was any protocol, Betty didn't seem to care. She accepted the cup and drank gratefully.

  Meg's fingers twisted in her skirt, all thoughts of escaping fallen right out of her head. She wanted to say something, but for the life of her she didn't know what. She'd been so sure of Betty when she'd just been words on a page, but now that she was here, and staring her right in the face...

  Oh, why had she kissed her?!

  Betty's coughing had stopped, and now she sat there calmly, cup folded in her elegant hands. The smile on her face was as bright as the sun that was still shining in through the window.

  "Meg," she said, her voice still raspy from the coughing, and Meg surprised them both by bursting into tears.

  "I—I'm sorry!" she choked out, wiping furiously at her eyes. Damn it all! She hadn't cried since before she'd come to the palace, why did she have to now? "Be—your highness, um, your grace, I don't... I don't know what to..."

  She braced herself for anger, but all she heard was Betty's laughter, sweet and high and full of joy. Then Betty's hands were on hers, and she was drawn down into an embrace that was only slightly dampened by the tears dripping off her chin.

  "Meg," she said again, voice warm. "Meg, you did it! It's me, it's Betty, I'm here!"

  For a moment, Meg couldn't do anything more than just stay there, wrapped in Betty's slightly dusty arms (and here she thought she'd cleaned everything). Her tears were subsiding as quickly as they'd come, thankfully, but now she had other things to worry about.

  "You... you know my name," she started cautiously, drawing back enough that she could look her in the face. "And that I called you—oh, no!" Betty was nodding, looking far too amused, and Meg felt herself turn red. "You could hear me?!"

  Betty just laughed, and Meg couldn't really bring herself to be angry with her for it, because right now that laugh sounded like the sweetest thing she'd ever heard. She settled for being hideously embarrassed instead.

  Finally, Betty said, still giggling, "I heard every word that came out of your mouth, you ridiculous thing. Don't you think you can get away with all those impertinent things you said!" Her hands found Meg's face, and poked her lightly in the nose. Meg turned even redder. "Oh, you have no idea how long I've been wishing that I could talk to you too! That I could see you! All those years..."

  Her smile faded, just the smallest bit, and Meg found herself immediately mourning its loss. "It was like being in a very long dream, I think," she continued, softer now. "Sometimes I would come closer to the—the surface, I suppose—and it would be almost as though I were awake again, but not really... here. As if I knew things were happening, but I couldn't bring myself to care. But you, Meg...!"

  "I... I only looked at your books," Meg protested, a little wildly. "I didn't do anything!"

  "You spoke to me," Betty said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You spoke to me, even if you thought it was only to yourself. Your voice was like a... a beacon, or maybe more like a hook that caught me and dragged me out of myself, and the more I heard it the more aware I became. The more I began to feel again, to feel like..."

  She didn't finish the sentence—which, Meg remembered distantly, was enormously bad etiquette—but only looked at Meg, her eyes crinkling and smile gone all soft around the edges. Her hands were still on Meg's face, fingers gently brushing away the wisps of hair that wanted to fall over her eyes.

  "I felt like I knew you as much as you had come to know me," she murmured. "I've just been waiting for you to wake me up, so I could finally tell you how much I love you, my dear, silly Meg."

  Meg's breath hitched. This must be a dream, she must have fallen asleep in the middle of cleaning, and she was going to wake up any minute now on the cold tower floor and realize she'd upended her suds bucket. But even her imagination couldn't have come up with anything as radiant as the look on Betty's face, and the feel of her in her arms was too warm and solid to be anything but real.

  She was awake. They were both awake. Betty really was here, with her, and she really did want...

  "But—you're a princess," Meg whispered, still not able to really believe it, no matter how much she wanted to. "You're the princess! You should be living in a grand palace, with ladies-in-waiting and a prince by your side. You should have so much more than a... a kitchen maid who doesn't know how to keep her mouth shut."

  "I'd rather say toss to the whole thing and run away with the silver stuffed up my dress," Betty said, with fond exasperation, and it took Meg a moment to realize that Betty had just stolen one of her lines, the little brat. "You know me, Meg. You know I'd much rather run off with a maid than be a princess—provided, of course, that the maid is you. I want us to go off and work in a kitchen together, and you can make me a daisy crown to wear instead of one of those awful, heavy tiaras."

  Meg managed a smile, even though her heart was still thudding in her chest like rain drumming on a rooftop. "And we
'll live in a little cottage, with a dog to play in the garden, and I'll do the cooking and you'll do the mending?"

  "Ugh, mending is too much like embroidery," Betty said, wrinkling her nose in exactly the way that Meg had wanted so badly to see. "Well, you can teach me the cooking, and we'll split both."

  This was... this was insane, even more than talking back to Abbie, even more than falling in love with a sleeping princess. But Meg apparently had a history of doing insane things, and all she could think was, I was going to leave anyway, didn't I want to take her with me?

  And there was a spare dress, and if anyone even knew what Betty looked like they certainly wouldn't expect her to be awake, let alone dressed like a maid and running off with the girl who'd been watching her...

  "Are you—are you sure?" she squeaked, hating how pathetic she sounded. Betty just smiled, and leaned in, and this time it was Meg who was being kissed. It was as good an answer as any.

  She felt a pang for Jenny and the other girls, even though they'd been the ones who'd told her to run in the first place. But it wasn't as though she could never see them again, and there was a girl in her arms right now who she'd been waiting to be with for longer than she'd known. She still wasn't convinced that this was real, that Betty really and truly wanted this... thing, this whatever it was they had, but she was discovering that she very much wanted to find out.

  When Betty finally let her come up for air, Meg took a deep breath, mind made up. "There's kitchens everywhere," she said softly, and managed a grin, crooked as it was. "I'm sure we can find one that'll suit us both. Though," she added, as Betty's face lit up like the sun, "you'll have to do your fair share of the mending, you won't get out of that."

  Betty's laughter filled the tower room as she pulled Meg down a second time, and Meg decided that there really was nothing in the world as nice as being properly kissed by an ex-princess.

  *~*~*

  The tower room was discovered empty a month later, when the boy who brought up the food trays finally—in between munching on biscuits—reported that no one was answering the door. The disappearance of the princess caused an immediate alarm. Guards scoured the kingdom for weeks afterwards, led by Prince Nathaniel himself, and the fervor of their searching was second only to the fervor of the gossip.