Philip shrugged.
Fedderlin, though an elf, was in no mood for dallying.
“We need a book,” he said, turning to Adam. Trying to make a joke, to coax one of those smiles that he was so fond of from Edora, he said,
“Well, you certainly came to the right place. A specific book perhaps?”
“Poetry,” Fedderlin said.
“You want a book of poetry?”
“The poems have elf magic woven into them. They will tell me all that I need to know.”
Philip nodded, suddenly wishing that he'd cared about poetry in his lessons a bit more than he had. Okay, a lot more than he had. Luckily, Fedderlin had said that there was elf magic in the poems and so long as Philip did not have to do all of this alone, then all was fine.
He smiled. He'd thought of escaping, wanted to, but had been pulled back by genuine concern for Aurora. That had been alarming enough. But then the elf had jumped out, introduced himself and suddenly things got a lot more complicated. Or did they? Maybe, everything got easier. Philip was no longer alone. Aurora would be helped, but it wasn't all up to him. Not anymore.
“Go on, read it,” Fedderlin prompted, handing Philip the book in front of Aurora, when they'd returned to the tower.
“I just read it and then, she wakes up, right?” Philip said. It seemed too good to be true. If Aurora awoke, then he'd be the hero that Midnight deserved. Having already overcome Aurora's sleeping disaster, he could outwit some old curse that aimed to separate him from Midnight and bind him to Aurora. Fedderlin would help him. He was a useful sidekick to have along. Well, perhaps, sidekick wasn't doing him justice. He was more of a guide. It was precisely at this time that Philip realized that his guide had not yet answered his question. Philip took the book from Fedderlin, but he looked at him, instead of at the page.
“Right?” Philip prompted Fedderlin to agree with him.
“If all goes as we believe, then yes.”
“Why wouldn't it work?”
Fedderlin didn't answer that question. Instead, he said,
“Just read.”
I've a pocketful of promises
That I have from you
Some have been fulfilled
Some are waiting to come true
At night you come to sing to me
In the shadow of the moon
And as I drift in slumber
You whisper, “Soon, my love, soon”
Philip grimaced. Fedderlin nodded, prompting him to go on.
We've yet to dream this dream
Though it resonates within
We've yet to dance this dance
Though you beg, “play it again!”
With the clarity of a brilliant night sky
Dressed in black velvet
I caught your eye
Somehow we knew
That somewhere out there
We would come true
And as I drift in a dream spun by day
You whisper, “soon, my love, soon”
Philip held his breath. He stared at Aurora, waiting for the magic to happen, waiting for the words to do their part. He'd done his. Then she'd wake up and all would be right again. Philip waited. He looked to Fedderlin. Fedderlin stared at Aurora. He looked up at Philip, but said nothing. Nothing. Nothing happened.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Philip
“Father, we need to speak. It didn't work,” Philip said. There was no use prolonging this. If Father had made a mistake and he was not fated to be with Aurora after all, then it was better to know sooner than later, while he still had a chance with Midnight. Even more though, if he wasn't the key to waking Aurora, then it was time to find out what was.
“What exactly didn't work?”
“The poem. Fedderlin said it would wake her.”
“Fedderlin? You've been speaking with Fedderlin? Then did he also tell you of the shoes?”
“The shoes?” Philip said, shaking his head.
“I procured them from Fedderlin. I told him that I needed something so that Princess Asteria would know that you were the key to helping Aurora.”
“You monster! Why would you do such a thing?”
The words ripped from Philip's lips, before he had time to consider what he was saying.
“I'm not a monster, Philip. I'm your father and the king.”
“So that gives you license to throw aside the lives of other princesses?”
“Of course not. I believed that you would save Aurora. I wanted Asteria to know that you were the one to do it. I knew that whatever she asked you to do, you would. You wouldn't kiss Aurora of your own volition, much less marry her. And so yes, I know that you love Asteria and yes, I know that it's hopeless, but not because she's a princess and you're not a prince. Simply because she's the wrong princess.”
Philip's head whirled with too many thoughts.
“You know this. Then, why did you not send me to her months ago? Why make her suffer?”
“I know of no such evidence that she is suffering,” Philip's father said now.
“Just because the doctors say she's fine, it doesn't mean that we know for sure. Besides, what of her sister? What of her family? What of the kingdom?”
“Many people were employed in the creation of the ball. I'm sure they would say that they were helped,” his father said.
“Yes, but – ”
“Would you rather that they were starving?”
“That's not fair. It's too complicated!” Philip said, trying to make sense of it all.
“No, son. That's life. It's full of complexity. You know that. That's not what's bothering you though, is it?”
Philip drew up his whole height.
“No,” he said, looking his father in the eye, “It's not.”
“Then what is?”
“That you would hide this from me, lie to me for all these years, that you wouldn’t tell me sooner.”
“It wouldn't work until you turned eighteen,” Philip's father said.
“That's the rule?”
“That's the rule.”
Philip had only turned eighteen days before.
“Then we couldn't have helped her sooner?”
He shook his head.
Philip's shoulders slumped. He breathed easier, even as his stomach tangled. Regret eased away from him, with the burden of responsibility as well. But now the bonds of his fate felt pulled all the more tightly.
“Why did the poem not work?” Philip said now.
“I do not know what Fedderlin told you about a poem. I know of only one way to wake a princess: with a fated kiss.”
“But you said he's somehow connected to the slippers.”
“I went to him for them.”
“But how did he get them?”
“They were forged in his father's workshop. When I thanked him, he said that I should thank his brother Tobby. He didn't tell me more than that, but I got the impression that he was trying to cover up for him, get rid of them quick.”
“And you gave them to Midnight – to Princess Asteria?” He quickly corrected himself.
His father smiled slightly, as though illustrating that he knew Philip's love could be played upon.
“I did.”
“She said they were from her mother.”
“A reasonable assumption,” he said, shrugging.
Philip picked up a piece of straw, twirling it absentmindedly.
“You look like Rumpelstiltskin,” his father said.
“You know him?” Philip said, his twirling stopping abruptly.
“He is a fine fellow, braver than many give him credit for. His father visited our kingdom long ago. It was in a time when we still ruled.”
“How did we lose our power?”
“Greed.”
“Ours?”
“The elves.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Edora
“How could she fall in love with him, with him! Did she not know that he was mine? He wa
s in the library yesterday and she was there with him! It was enough to make my blood boil, to undo me. She's ruined everything! Destroyed the entire castle!” Edora heard the words and her heart sank.
Edora felt herself pale. She clutched the balcony's rail. Slowly, she backed away. When she was certain that her scrambling feet would no longer be able to be heard, she turned and ran. The colors blurred past her, as though she were in a dream. Maybe, she was. Maybe Edora never had any business in being human and someone had simply dreamed her into being. She'd never tried to run on two legs, but it came easily to her. Matter could not be created or destroyed. It was only transformed. Hadn't she read that in a book in the library? It was thick, dark, black, with something on the spine that said – Physics. Yes, that was it. The energy of the deer running was thus not absent but only transformed into the frantic running of feet. Had anyone stopped her, to ask where she was going, she wouldn't have been able to answer. She'd not considered anything nor made a plan. But then that was Edora's way, the way of the deer.
She knocked hard on Fedderlin's door, needing his comfort, his wisdom, anything.
“You tried to warn me. It's all my fault,” Edora said. Her words, though intelligible to the elf, were slipping away from human comprehension. No longer human, but not quite yet fully deer again, Edora hung there in this semblance of reality. If only she were dreaming, like Aurora! She could awaken and all would be fine. She'd have the lovely memory of the dream world to hold her over, the knowledge of the books remembered – at least for a time – for dreams could be fleeting. She'd known the truth of a friend, in Adam, in Midnight. But Edora was not dreaming. She was intensely real and all alone, hanging between two worlds.
“It's not your fault. You're not alone,” the elf said, wrapping a woolen blanket over Edora.
“I should have been more careful,” the elf said now, “I didn't tell you enough. It's the way of the elves not to interfere, to be guardians but not to coerce other creatures. You looked at me with such a trust, such a clarity, that I could not let you think it was impossible. You had to be free to try.”
Edora felt the warmth of the blanket, rested in the softness of the elf and dozed. Weak, but warmed, she awoke after what felt like hours later.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Just a moment,” the elf said. The sun had already risen high in the sky now, though and Edora knew that it was elf time that was being referred to. As though reading her mind, Fedderlin said,
“I suppose you know it's longer than that to you, as a human or as a deer. You see, we elves are somewhat in-between creatures ourselves. We live among the creatures of the forest, but we remember how it was, before,when we lived among the humans.”
Edora's eyes grew.
“You lived among humans?”
“We lived in the castle,” the elf said, “in a secret chamber inside of a room they call the library, where I saw you last.”
Edora nodded.
At the mention of the library, her heart filled. She felt her body strengthen, feeling more human, less deer. The change did not go unnoticed by the elf.
“I see that it indeed did have an impact on you.”
She nodded.
The elf was too polite to ask and Edora was thankful. For how could she explain what the library had meant to her? How could she begin to describe the feeling that rose within her as she approached the books on the first day that Adam had led her there? How could she explain what it was to feel his arms around her, when she'd awoken in the middle of the night, after they'd fallen asleep when reading? Or, how she'd felt no shame as she'd tucked herself in closer beside him, though she knew that the Lady Edora ought to have risen, left, and gone to her bed chamber?
“It was long ago and yet it wasn't,” the elf said returning to the explanation.
Edora nodded, encouraging him to go on.
“That is to say, it was long in human years. It was generations ago, hundreds of years even for flowers, but for us elves, it feels too fresh to let slip from memory. Elves don't trust humans. We remember too painfully what happened.”
He shuddered as he said it, but there was something in the way that it happened that convinced Edora that he did not even realize that he had done so.
“You don't have to – ” Edora began, to let him know that she didn't need to know. If it were too painful, there was no reason for him to go on. She hated the thought of causing him harm. Again, she felt a surge of strength, this time in her heart.
“Edora, you'd make a fine human,” the elf said. It was impossible to hide the effects from him. He understood what it was, to be half here and half there. He understood what it was to have his heart fill in a way that others find unfathomable and he knew, truly knew, what it was to be hanging in the balance, not quite here and not quite there, torn between two worlds.
“I don't know. I think I was wrong. It doesn't seem like something that I should have wanted. Perhaps, it was a mistake, to dream to be something other than I am.”
“Edora, I want you to listen carefully to me,” the elf said, sounding more serious than she'd heard him before, “No matter if you are human or deer, you have something within you that is special. Never feel that you should hide wanting to be more than you are. This is the mark of the strongest and the best. You must always strive to follow your heart, to do what you know to be right, even if it is not the easiest or quickest route. Live from your heart, no matter what form you are in.”
“I should continue to dream?” she said, trying to make some sense of her thoughts, of all that had happened, of her life.
“Always, child. Always.”
Edora sank into the woolen blanket and dozed. There was more of the elf's story to come, but for now all that mattered was that someone still believed in her and in her dreams, even when she no longer remembered how.
Edora stirred.
“I don't mean to keep falling asleep,” she said.
The elf turned at her words,
“It's all right, child,” he said, “such transformations are demanding. Especially, when your heart is so involved. Yours clearly is.”
She looked down and her eyes blinked rapidly.
“I'm – I'm – glowing!”
“Your heart is trying to keep up with the amount of love that's flooding through it.”
“But, I loved before,” Edora said, “My sisters, my mother, the sunlight and trees.”
“Of course you did, child. All of that was real love. But when you walked among the humans, you developed the ability to love with your mind as well. You could think and reason and determine what choices to make. You could be deliberate. You could love on purpose.”
Fedderlin turned back to the fire and stirred the stew. It bubbled happily, flooding her nose with rosemary, thyme and the deep earthiness of root vegetables.
“What's going to happen?”
“That's up to you.”
Soft candles flickered from the walls, throwing shadows on the wallpaper. Edora's eyes were drawn to it. She blinked.
“It's moving.”
The elf looked from her to the wall and smiled.
“So it is. You are indeed powerful, Edora. I've not seen that move in at least a hundred years. Not since the last time someone underwent this change.”
“It's happened before?” Edora said. She felt the heavy tug of sleep on her and feared that it would pull her under again. Struggling to stay awake, she propped herself up and turned fully toward the elf.
The elf nodded.
“I think it's time to tell you what happened.”
Once, long ago, the elves lived inside of the castle. The library was their lair and the books were their treasure. That, at least, is what the elves believed. But, the people were the true keepers of the kingdom. It was theirs and on this, they were intent. The elves decided to have a bet. If they could read more books than the humans in a set time, then the elves would leave. If they lost, then the humans would hold the castle.
The elves could easily have won the bet. They'd be living in the castle now, but those elves, I am sorry to say, had forgotten the way of the woods, the way of greatness. Their greed drove them to King Midas, to beg him to change their books into bars of gold. When they arrived in his kingdom, they discovered that he was gone, fled out of fear for the uncontrollable touch of his hands. His son, the young Rumpelstiltskin, was missing as well. Some say he'd run into the forest, ashamed that his father had turned the kingdom from a land of prosperity to a land of cold metal. What good was gold when there was no longer food for the people? The kingdom had seeds, larger than any ordinary seed, which gave rise to beautifully large vegetables, able to feed hundreds with a single plant. When the elves found that Rumpelstiltskin was gone and the kingdom abandoned, they gathered the seeds. If they could not have gold, at least they had seeds that could be traded.
But, the elves had been too hasty. They'd not realized that King Midas had an ally in a nearby kingdom. When they approached his lands, offering the seeds in exchange for exorbitant sums, the king recognized these thieves for what they were. He locked them into the dungeon, but the elves were industrious and tunneled out. Being away from the forest, away from the sun and away from goodness and light for so long had depleted their magic. They used the last remaining remnants of their elf magic to plant a seed. Inside of the seed they planted a wish to banish the king and his young son. Even elves have limits in magic, though, and their spell would last as long as the plant continued to grow. All would have been fine there. It would have been the end of it, but a strike of lightning splintered the plant as it grew, knocking down the elves surrounding it.
And then, what happened you ask? Well, that's where it gets interesting. A human approached. He took pity on the badly injured creatures and rather than turn them in to the king, he let them go. It was only then, that they realized the terrible mistake that they had made: the man who confined them was not the king. The spell they had put into the ground for him and his son could not be undone. Worse still, there was now no way to break it because the plant was hindered in its growth and yet the spark of lightning had ignited the magic, so that it was stuck in a precarious state. The man who had condemned the elves was the constable for the king, quick of anger, slow for forgiveness and eager to avenge anyone who dared to cross his friend King Midas. So blinded was the constable by his anger, that he no longer even served the king. He believed that he had not done enough to protect King Midas. While the king was away, the constable usurped his throne and swore an oath to kill the young prince, so that he could not retake his father's kingdom. The king could have rallied to return the throne to its rightful owner, but now the elves had locked him out of his kingdom's castle.
While Aurora Slept- The Complete Trilogy Page 16