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I can still remember the quiet. The way more people than I had ever seen before abruptly fell silent at the sight of me.

Voices beyond my ability to measure suddenly hushing all at once. And twice as many eyes as that, fixed on the place where I sat before my father. I remember gripping the horse's mane so tightly the coarse hairs cut into my hands.

And then Papa said: "My friends, I give to you my daughter and heir, the Princess Aurore."

At that, a great shout went up. The women fluttered their aprons; men tossed their caps into the air; children jumped up and down. And I did a thing that surprised everyone, myself most of all. I tossed my leg over the horse's head, slid to the ground, and dashed straight into the crowd.

Years later, in a particularly cross and cynical moment, Oswald asked me how I had known to do this. For he claimed it was the best, most perfect thing I could have done. To run to them, my people, my subjects. To fly to them with outstretched arms. I want to know you, my action said. There is no difference between us. We are the same, you and I.

My only answer was that I hadn't truly known anything, not in a way that lets you plan things ahead of time. I simply did what my heart demanded. And, in this way, I answered the demands of my people's hearts as well.

The years that followed are one bright blur, in which I spent as little time inside the palace as possible. Instead, I learned to do anything in the world outside I could. No task was too menial, too dirty, too hard.

I learned to plow and plant the fields, not letting the fact that I sunburned my face and blistered my hands stop me. I held on until I developed calluses and my skin settled down to the color of toasted almonds. I learned to cut peat for fires and the proper way to thatch a roof. I fell off. Twice. The second time I broke my arm.

While recuperating, I spent time with the herbalist, learning which plants could bring down a fever, which could purge a stomach, which were best for the dying of cloth. I even learned which plants could be used to bring about a death, though I swore to keep this information to myself.

40

When my arm had mended, I learned to shear a sheep, to card and spin its wool. Lest I become too domestic, I also learned shoot an arrow from my very own bow and to throw a knife.

Accurately in both instances. Though I never revealed these particular talents to Maman. Just as I never revealed the fact that, if I was doing particularly dirty or heavy work, I tied my hair back, stuffed it underneath a cap, and wore a tunic, boots and breeches, just like a boy.

In short, I pretty much stopped behaving like a regular princess altogether and had the time of my life. But there were two things I never forgot: la Foret and Oswald.

My thoughts on my cousin, I kept to myself. For, though not precisely secret, they were certainly confused, a thing which kept me from asking him about la Foret as I might once have done.

After thinking it over for quite some time, I finally decided that the person who could give me the answers I wanted was none other than Papa. For had he not been the one to remind me the Forest was off-limits in the first place?

I waited until he was alone. Maman had still not quite forgiven me for the broken arm, and, if she learned I was interested in la Foret, I half feared shed shut me in my room and bolt the door.

Papa often spent time in his study at the end of the day. It was there I sought him out one night when I was supposed to be in bed, being careful to first knock on the door. No one entered my father's study without his permission, not even Maman. It was his only private place.

"Come," my father's voice called.

I turned the heavy doorknob and pushed open the door. My father was sitting in a far corner of the room in a great chair made of dark brown leather. He had a book in his lap and spectacles perched upon his nose. He pulled these off and tucked them in a pocket as I came in.

"Why, Aurore. I thought that you had gone to bed."

"I can't sleep, Papa," I blurted out."There is something I would like to know and not knowing is keeping me awake."

"This sounds serious," my father said, but I could see the way his eyes smiled. He took his feet from a low footstool covered in the same leather as the chair and gestured for me to sit down.

"Have you come to tell me what it is?"

41

I nodded, and he gestured for me to continue. "Why is it forbidden to enter la Foret, Papa?"

"Oh, Aurore." He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, as if marshalling his strength, then opened them again. "I don't suppose it would do any good to mention how sincerely I have hoped you would never ask that question?"

"But you've made me your heir, Papa. I will be responsible for la Foret myself one day. Don't you think its history is a thing that I should know?"

"You want to watch saying things like that," my father remarked. "It will make people think you're too clever for your own good. Not that you aren't right, of course. Very well. But don't tell your mother. She'll have my head."

"It shall be our secret," I vowed.

"La Foret has been as it is for as long as I can remember," my father said. "Some would say for time out of mind. In my grandfather's time, there was a woman in the village so ancient none could remember her right name and so she was called la Vieille, the Old Woman. It was la Vieille who told my father what I am about to tell you.

"La Foret is cursed, Aurore."

I felt something cold skitter down the back of my legs.

"Cursed?" I said. "By whom?"

"According to la Vieille, by two great sorcerers," said Papa.

"Where they came from originally, I cannot say. But they ended up here, in our land that is steeped in magic, for no other reason than to use it for their own purposes. To try to turn our magic to their will in a great contest."

"But why? What for?"

At this, my father shrugged his shoulders. "To prove who was strongest, perhaps. No one really knows."

"That's an awfully stupid reason," I said. "And if were sorcerers they ought to have known better than to go messing around with magic that way."

My father's lips twitched, but he nodded gravely. "That is surely so. Is it said that the one who triumphed realized his folly in the end and, with the last of his strength, he cast a spell. One that contained the destruction, the unraveling, that had been 42

wrought inside the boundaries of la Foret. He could not heal it, but at least he could stop it from spreading any more."

"But what's wrong with the Forest?" I asked.

My father cocked his head. "I'm not sure wrong is quite the way to describe it," he said. "Different might be a better choice.

The magic of la Foret isn't like magic anywhere else. And remember it is contained. Folded in upon itself with nowhere to go. Even time moves differently there. For the magic of la Foret doesn't need human minds to work its will. Instead it has a mind and will of its own.

"I've seen it snow beneath the trees on a warm spring day.

Placed a marker opposite a sapling one week, then returned the next to find nothing but a gnarled and rotting stump. La Foret makes its own rules, Aurore. But what they are, it alone knows."

"Does no one ever go in?" I asked, for it seemed to me that, though he had warned me away from it, Papa himself had come very close.

"From time to time," answered my father. "According to la Vieille, if you enter the Forest with goodness in your heart, it will pretty much leave you alone. If you're lucky, it will even let you come back out again. But those entering it bent on mischief or destruction are never seen again. I hope you can see now why it is forbidden to go there."

"Of course I do," I said."Thank you for telling me, Papa."

"Do you think you can sleep now?" my father asked.

I slid off the footstool. "Yes, Papa. I think so. And don't worry.

I'll remember my promise." With that, I gave him a kiss good night.

"See that you do, Aurore."

And so my curiosity about la Foret was satisfied, for the time being. And the tale my father had told me was enough to make even me leave the Forest alone. But I would be lying if I said that I forgot about it. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to me that the more I tried not to think about la Foret, the more it took shape within my mind. It called to me, just as the world outside the palace had. Someday, it whispered, when the time was right, my moment to enter it would come.

And that is the way that matters stood when my childhood ended on the day that my sixteenth birthday arrived.

43

Naturally, my parents insisted on throwing me a party. Equally naturally, I wished that they would not. The fact that I was turning sixteen might not be much cause for celebration, particularly when one considered what was supposed to be the year's inevitable outcome. But my parents were adamant, even Papa. It was important to honor this birthday, he said. Not only for itself, but to show that we were not afraid of whatever was to come.

Finally we compromised. They threw me two parties. One in the village, one in the palace. The first I enjoyed. The second, I did not. For it was at that party that it finally came home to me how completely unlike anyone else at court I truly was.

Not surprisingly, this revelation had to do with Oswald.

He was twenty-four now, well past time to be married. For obvious reasons, his choice of wife was considered of some importance and now, perhaps, time was running out. It was probably Maman who decided that, as long as we were throwing a party anyway, it might as well be used to parade as many eligible young ladies in front of Oswald as possible. But this decision produced an outcome Maman did not expect. Actually, two outcomes.

It showed Oswald to advantage, making clear how at ease he was among the nobles. What a catch he would be for any of their daughters. And it showed me to be his opposite. Out of place and frankly miserable. An odd duck in a sea of well-dressed swans.

I had attended court functions over the years, of course. I wasn't entirely ignorant of how to behave, though I was better at cutting peat than dancing a pavane. But the banquets or balls I had attended prior to this one hadn't been about me. For me. I'd been able to put in a brief appearance, perform what duty required, then escape to my room to plan my next day's adventure outside the palace walls. But this was an approach I could hardly take tonight, as the whole evening was in my honor.

It wasn't that anyone was rude. They wouldn't have dared, for one thing. If anything, they were incredibly polite. But it was this very politeness that finally first began to grate upon my nerves, and then to cause despair to rise up within my throat and threaten to choke me. For, no matter how smooth and correct the words issuing from the courtiers' mouths were, they couldn't 44

quite hide the scorn or laughter in their eyes. And so, on the night of my sixteenth birthday, I saw myself as they saw me for the very first time.

My fingernails were clean, but my fingertips were stained a faint blue. I had been helping the village weavers dye wool for winter cloaks. There were calluses upon my palms.

My hair didn't gleam like polished wood or stay perfectly in place as the courtiers' daughters' did, though it was true that it was still an almost impossible shade of gold. But all those years of being stuffed inside a cap had given it a horror of being confined and, over time, it had developed a will of its own. No matter how many pins Maman and Nurse jabbed in to hold it in place, my hair insisted on going wherever it wanted. Usually, at unexpected and inopportune times.

On the dance floor, I forgot the steps and trod upon my partners' feet, though, naturally, they were too polite to comment. My new shoes, which Maman had proclaimed were the height of fashion, were just a shade too tight and pinched my toes. The whole evening was like suffering through the clumsiest moments of my childhood all over again—this time with the whole court looking on.

Finally, after a number of dances that seemed interminable, it was deemed time to take a break for refreshments and I sought a respite behind the column in the ballroom's farthest corner.

What I really wanted was to make a mad dash for my room, but I knew there wasn't any point. Even if I would allow myself to give in to such behavior, Nurse never would. She would simply complete the evening's humiliations by sending me right back down.

So I settled for tucking myself away, leaning my hot face against the cool stone of the column and praying for time to speed up so that the party might be done. And that was when I heard a woman's voice I did not recognize say:

"But where is the guest of honor, the princess Aurore?"

I straightened up. It would never do to let anyone catch me moping. But, in spite of the defects the evening was making so clear, it was apparently easier to overlook me than I had thought. For a moment later I heard a voice say: "I do not see her." And this voice I knew, for it belonged to Oswald.

"How odd," the first voice said. "Surely she must wish to be the center of attention. I know I would, if the party were in my 45