Sleeping Beauty's Daughters (2 page)

We were quiet, trying to imagine this. Then I asked, “How—how long did you sleep?”

Mama drew a deep, shaky breath and whispered, “Oh, my dearest daughters, I slumbered for one hundred years.”

3

Of a Tutor and a Tale’s End

A
t that moment, I heard the crunch of wheels on gravel in the distance. It sounded as if a carriage was coming up the long drive—but we had visitors so seldom. I turned to Papa questioningly, and he blinked, as confused as I.

“Ah, that must be your new tutor, at last!” he said. “I had forgotten completely that he was expected today. Thank goodness—Luna could certainly do with some lessons to keep her out of mischief.”

“But—,” I started. My mind was still in that tower room, where a young version of Mama slept. Asleep for a century! It was incredible. And there was something more to the tale, it seemed to me. Mama’s uneasiness made that clear. I had to hear the rest.

Mama rose from the chaise. “My head is aching,” she said fretfully. “I must lie down for a time. Children, come to my room after you have met the tutor. I will tell you the rest then.” She left the conservatory, moving slowly, just as one of the footmen entered.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “Master Julien is here.”

Luna was on her feet immediately, but I barely heard the footman’s words.

“Aurora!” Luna pulled at my arm. “It’s the tutor—our new tutor. Come on!”

I shook my head hard to clear it of Mama’s strange, terrible story. Yes, our tutor—I remembered now. We had been waiting for him to arrive for days. This would be our fifth—or was it our sixth? We always looked forward to getting to know them, for they were new faces to us, and we rarely met anyone new. But though they came forewarned of our isolated location, each soon decided that teaching rhetoric and Latin to two girls on a remote cliff top far from the nearest town was not to his liking. Our last tutor had left months before. I continued studying on my own, but Luna could not be forced to her books.

We started out of the conservatory. I was slow, still lost in my thoughts, so Luna darted ahead.

“Luna!” Papa called. “Give the tutor a chance to settle in before you begin to torment him!”

She laughed and sped away.

Servants were already unstrapping a great leather trunk from the back of the tutor’s carriage when we entered the courtyard, and as I watched, the carriage door opened and a man stepped out. He was disheveled, his clothing wrinkled from travel. He had reddish curls under his floppy velvet cap and a rather long, hooked nose.

Luna stepped in front of him and waited for him to bow, but he only pulled off his cap and nodded his head, as he would to any ordinary female. She bristled, and I could see that she was offended. For all her talk, she liked to be treated as royalty.

“I am the princess Luna,” she said in her most imperious voice, and held out her hand to be kissed. Appalled at her rudeness, I started to speak, but Papa shook his head to stop me.

The tutor stepped forward, took Luna’s hand in his, and shook it, saying, “And I am Master Julien, your new tutor.”

Luna glowered. “Show me some respect, sir. I am a princess!”

He smiled then, and his face became a little more handsome. “Well, I am your elder, Your Highness, and your superior in learning. If you weigh these advantages against your rank, are we not equals, more or less?”

This was so outrageous that it was intriguing. I had to hide a smile as I watched Luna trying to decide what he meant and whether she should be insulted. Then Papa came forward, and Master Julien did sweep him a low bow—naturally, for Papa was king.

“Welcome to Castle Armelle, Master Julien!” Papa said. “We are very glad to have you here at last. The girls badly need improvement.” This last, with a smile, was directed at Luna. She scowled when Master Julien laughed.

“I will do my very best, Your Majesty,” he replied.

“Princess Luna has introduced herself,” Papa went on, “and this is my elder daughter, Princess Aurora.”

I nodded my head, and the tutor did the same, saying, “Delighted, Your Highness.” Luna snorted. Obviously, this greeting didn’t meet with her approval either.

“The queen is indisposed and will meet you at dinner,” Papa told him. “We have given you a room on the family’s floor, with a view of the sea. Shall I show you there?”

Now I was surprised. Why would a mere tutor be given a room on our floor, and not with the servants?

“Girls,” Papa said, “go up to your mother. I will join you there shortly.”

Luna began to protest, but I took her arm and pulled her back into the castle. “I want to talk to the tutor!” she cried.

“Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story?” I asked as we mounted the stairs.

“What else is there? Mama slept, Papa woke her, and here we are.”

“I think there is more,” I said.

We knocked gently on Mama’s door, and at her soft “Come in,” entered the darkened room. She lay on her bed atop the covers, a fresh washcloth on her forehead.

“Oh, Mama, is it bad?” Luna ran over to the bed and took Mama’s hand.

“Not so very bad,” Mama murmured. Jacquelle had brought her a tea tray, so I poured tea, and we sat quietly beside her and sipped until Papa came in. He took a seat in an armchair by the window.

“The tutor is settled,” he told Mama. “He seems very suitable, and looks forward to meeting you this evening.”

“His nose is so long a bird could perch on it,” Luna said.

“It is not!” I protested.

“Girls!” Mama reprimanded us. “You know better than to comment on others’ appearances.”

“Aurora says the story isn’t finished. Is she right?” Luna demanded.

“Yes, there is more,” Papa said. “Rosamond?”

“This part is yours,” she said to him. Papa took up the tale, his voice weaving a spell in the dim room.

“While your mother slept, girls, the forest grew up around the castle over the decades until it was entirely hidden. Even the rumors of a castle in the wood faded over time. But then, when I was a young man of twenty, I went riding in the wood alone. I did not often ride by myself, for my friends and I loved to hunt together, but that day something seemed to call out to me. I like to think that it was your mother’s heart, ready to waken at last.” Mama opened her eyes at that, and tears spilled onto her cheeks. Papa smiled at her from across the room.

“The way grew rougher and rougher, and before long I was lost. I was in a part of the forest I had never seen, overgrown and wild. No birds called there, and strange animals rustled in the thick underbrush. I came to a barrier of vines and thorns. I started to hack my way through them and became like a man possessed. I could not tell you what compelled me to go on. My hands were soon torn and bleeding, but I could not stop. At last I uncovered a stone wall, where I found a door. I pulled aside roots and briars and forced my way in. I thought I was entering an ancient stable, or a long-deserted farmhouse.”

Luna and I sat breathless as Papa continued.

“Oh, children, you would not believe what I saw inside! I was in the great hall of a castle, its marble floor so thick with dust that mice and squirrels had left their tracks all about. I walked past guards drooped over their lances, and a cook facedown in her pastry. My boots kicked up clouds of dust as I tried to wake a servant who had sunk to the floor holding a tea tray. Mice had nibbled away the sugar, but the pot still smelled faintly like tea when I sniffed it. Down in the laundry room, maidservants slept atop piles of folded clothes, and in the hallway even the dogs slumbered with their bones in their mouths. I moved through room after room, all draped in cobwebs, all silent but for the sounds sleepers make. And then I mounted the stairs to the top of the tallest tower, and I found—”

“Mama!” Luna cried.

Papa smiled at her. “Yes, your mother, slumped over her spinning wheel. Ah, even in slumber she was the loveliest young woman I had ever seen! Her golden hair was as bright as sunlight in that dim, musty room. I went to her and raised her head, and I kissed her. And suddenly she woke.”

“Why, that means that Mama is a hundred years older than you, Papa!” Luna blurted out. Papa laughed, and even Mama smiled, wiping the tears from her face with a lace-edged handkerchief.

How romantic, and how thrilling it was! I could hardly believe that this incredible tale had been kept from us so long. Why had we never been told?

Of course Luna was first to ask. “Why have you never told us this story? Why is there no talk about it? Surely people must have known.”

Papa shrugged. “The servants who woke with your mother did talk, for a time. But who would think it true? Few believed them, and so they gave up, and moved on. The idea of a princess who slept for a hundred years—why, it’s the stuff of legends. And so it became a kind of legend. It’s a tale told to children in the nursery now, nothing more.”

“Well,” Luna said brightly, “at least it ended happily, Mama. You woke, you married, you had us.”

Mama shook her head in sorrow. “Though your father brought me great joy, it was not entirely a happy wakening,” she told us. “Think of it: A hundred years had passed. Everyone I had known, except for the servants who also slept, was dead. Most of the court was traveling with my parents—your grandparents—when the curse took hold. Manon’s cruel magic kept my mother and father from ever finding their castle again, and they grew old and died searching for it, while I slept. The world had gone on without me. I had been . . . left behind.”

I tried to imagine what that might feel like, but it was too strange. Too terrible.

“And there was something else,” Mama continued, her voice quavering. She gazed at me, and I felt a shiver of dread.

“What?” I asked, clasping my hands together.

“We did not have a christening when you were born, Aurora. I was so happy then, and I did not want to tempt fate. But a fortnight after your birth, I took you for an outing in the gardens of your grandfather’s palace, where we lived at the time. As I walked the autumn paths, holding you close, I met an old woman who sat at the edge of the fountain in the garden’s center. I thought she was a tinker’s wife, come to sell baubles, or a pauper, begging for alms. Then, when she pushed back the hood of her cloak, I knew at once, though I had seen her only as a newborn infant, that Manon had returned.”

My eyes widened, and my breath caught in my throat. “Why . . . why did she come?” I asked, feeling my mother’s fear.

I had to lean in close to hear Mama’s anguished reply. “As she had spoken to me when I was a babe, so she spoke to you, Daughter. She cursed you as you lay dozing in my arms, saying, ‘Aurora, like your mother you shall prick your finger and sleep for a hundred years.’”

“Oh, Mama!” I cried in dismay.

Mama reached for my hand and took it in her own. “Manon was not finished,” she said, gripping my hand so tightly I flinched. “She pointed to me, as I tried to back away from her, and said, ‘But your daughter’s sleep shall be solitary. None but she will slumber. No servants, no courtiers, no family will sleep with her. She will sleep on as you live out your life and die. And she will wake entirely alone.’”

4

Of a Fate Not Foreseen

M
ama could speak no more, so we left her to rest. As we stood outside her door, the hallway swam through my held-back tears. Even Papa’s arm around my shoulders didn’t give me strength. Luna, though, was thrilled by the story.

“Mama didn’t want to make the same mistake her own mother made, did she?” Luna asked. “That’s why we live so far from anywhere, and see so few people. It’s to keep Aurora out of harm’s way.”

“Yes, child,” Papa affirmed. “Manon never said if her evil spell was to take hold when Aurora was sixteen, as it did your mother, or earlier, or later. So we had to be vigilant. We left my father’s castle and spent months trying to find Emmeline to see if she could help, as she’d helped your mother so long before. But she had disappeared completely. We even consulted with other fairies to see what could be done. None had the power to reverse Manon’s curse, for her magic had grown and strengthened over the years. I had Castle Armelle built in this remote place to safeguard you, to try to keep the fairy’s prophecy from coming true. And to keep Manon from finding us, should she decide to make sure the curse comes to pass.”

“And you forbade all things sharp, so Aurora couldn’t prick her finger!” Luna exclaimed, and Papa nodded.

“But why have I been subjected to the same rules?” Luna asked. “I was never in any danger. It isn’t fair.”

“We could not raise you differently,” Papa pointed out mildly. “You are both our daughters.”

Papa suggested that we stroll along the cliff top, where our palace perched, overlooking the sea. “You need some air, Aurora,” he said to me. “You are looking very pale.”

It was a fine afternoon; the warm sun sparkled on the waves, though the wind gusted as it always did. We stopped on a promontory that jutted out over the sea. I breathed in the salty air for courage. Gulls wheeled and called around us, and below us the waves rolled the smooth, round stones on the beach back and forth in a soothing rhythm. Luna picked up shells that the birds had dropped and threw them out over the cliff, laughing as the wind blew them back again.

Still trying to make sense of all that I had heard, I suddenly said, “It was a little foolish to ban sharp objects, wasn’t it, Papa? For how could you avoid a thorn from the forest, or a splinter of wood—or a broken glass jar?”

Papa didn’t take offense at being called foolish. “We have done our best to protect you girls,” he said. “That is why all your needlework is done in Vittray, and why we men go there to have our beards trimmed. That is why we hunt with falcons and not arrows. And that is why our meat comes to us already cut or sliced, and even our forks are dull. But whether it is possible to escape one’s fate—that I do not know.”

I shook my head in dismay. “How terrible for you and Mama, to be afraid all the time!”

“It has been terrible indeed,” Papa allowed. “It was worse for your mother, for she feels responsible for handing down this curse. So it is understandable that she should be quite overwhelmed when she saw the blood—”

“But I was the one who was injured, not Aurora,” Luna pointed out.

“It was rather difficult to tell, in all the mess.” Papa’s tone was scolding and fond at the same time. “And after all these years of worry, your mother did not stop to wonder which of you was injured. She simply thought the prophecy had come to pass.”

“But why?” I asked desperately. “Why does Manon hate us so much?”

“She had loved your uncle very deeply, it was clear,” Papa said. “And because she lost him to Emmeline at your mother’s christening, I believe she felt that her thwarted love was your mother’s fault. And then, to see our happiness together . . . In her bitterness, perhaps our joy was too much for her to endure.”

I shuddered. “But Papa, what shall I do? How can I be sure to stay safe?”

He pulled me close in a hug, his strong arms a comfort. “We have kept you from harm thus far, my dear. I hope that is some consolation.”

After our walk, I trudged to my room. Curled up on my high, soft bed, I thought about Mama’s story. Was my curse worse than hers? I thought it was. She, at least, had awakened to a few familiar faces—and to Papa. But I would sleep alone, as my family aged and died without me. When I woke, no one would remember that I’d even existed. It was too dreadful to think about, and I began to cry.

A moment later, Luna pushed my door open and came inside, uninvited. “Whatever is wrong?” she asked me, leaping onto the bed and bouncing energetically.

“Do go away, Luna,” I begged. “I’m not in the mood for your games just now.”

“Games?” she repeated, affronted. “I’m not playing games. I just wanted to talk about our new tutor. He seems rather . . . interesting, don’t you think?”

I turned away.

“What’s
wrong
with you?” she persisted. “Do you have a headache, like Mama?”

“You are such an infant!” I flared, sitting up. “How can you be so selfish? You heard what Mama said! Have you forgotten that I’m cursed? At any moment I could prick my finger. I won’t know when or where it will happen, but it will surely happen. I’m going to fall down and sleep for a century, and when I wake—if I wake—everyone I know will be dead and gone!”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” Luna said. But I knew that she hadn’t really thought about what Mama’s story might mean. I closed my eyes and lay back against the pillows as Luna tried to make things better.

“Mama and Papa won’t let anything happen to you,” she said confidently. “They’ve kept you safe so far, after all.”

I thought about how we were sheltered and watched over every day. We had known we must stay close to home, though we hadn’t known why. I’d always felt that protecting Luna was my job, but I hadn’t realized that my parents did the same for me. They had done so much to safeguard us.

I sat up again, wiping my face with a corner of my satin bedspread.

“You’re right,” I said, though I didn’t truly believe it. “I must rely on Mama and Papa, and you and I can be especially careful as well. We know what to look for now.”

“We do?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, silly. We must watch for a fairy. She’ll probably look like an old woman, as Manon did when she came to Mama. And we must beware of sharp objects. If I don’t prick my finger, all may yet be well.”

“It shouldn’t be so very difficult,” Luna said. “You’ve escaped the curse for all these years already. The fairy has probably forgotten about it.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed, but just as the dread of the curse had weighed on our parents, so it now weighed on me. Restless, I climbed out of bed and went to sit before the looking glass, taking up my brush.

“Aurora,” Luna said.

“Yes?” I replied, trying to focus on my reflection.

“I’ll do my very best to protect you—I promise I will.”

I turned from the mirror and looked hard and long at my sister. Her face was worried; it was not an expression she wore often. My heart went out to her. She was a terrible pest, but I was suddenly glad to have her near. I smiled, trying to hide my own fear.

“I do believe that you will, Luna!” I said warmly. “Now, let’s go downstairs to dinner, and see how short a time it will take you to try the patience of our interesting new tutor.”