The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (30 page)

The woman wore a tiara made of silver flowers and had long, flowing, golden hair. She wore a thin gown a shade of pale rose with matching gloves. The twins knew without a doubt that it was Sleeping Beauty.

She was speaking with a royal advisor and her husband,
King Chase. She looked troubled and in a state of deep contemplation. She was tired, too, like the twins’ mother looked when there was a lot on her mind.

“Perhaps we should enforce a law: No sleeping permitted during the day,” the advisor said.

“Absolutely not,” Sleeping Beauty said. “I will not force something so oppressive on my people. Let us not forget that this isn’t their fault.”

“The curse is over, Your Highness,” the advisor said. “It’s time for the kingdom to wake up and see that.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the curse is upon us until the day this kingdom is in the exact condition it was before the spell was cast,” Sleeping Beauty said. “I may be awake, but being asleep for one hundred years has taken a toll on them. They shouldn’t be punished or held accountable for any of this.”

“Darling, you may have no choice,” King Chase said, taking her hand in his. “The kingdom is falling apart. There are no crops being grown or business being done.”

“Let me think about this,” she said, and let out a long sigh.

“May I make a suggestion?” Conner said, walking toward the trio. He took them by surprise; they didn’t know anyone else in the room was conscious. Alex was a little scared. She had no idea what her brother was about to say. She hoped his speech in the Fairy Kingdom hadn’t given him a big head.

“Who are you?” the advisor asked.

“I’m Conner, and this is my sister, Alex,” he said.

Alex awkwardly waved from behind him. “You have a lovely castle!” she said.

“How did you get in here?” King Chase asked.

“Seriously?” Conner asked him, gesturing to the sleeping guards behind him. “This isn’t exactly Fort Knox.”

“They don’t know what that is, Conner,”
Alex whispered.

“Young man,” the advisor said. “With all due respect, this is a very important matter we’re discussing, and—”

“And we’ve been trying to find a solution for years and still haven’t come up with anything that doesn’t take away basic human freedoms,” Sleeping Beauty said. “So, if this young man thinks he has an answer, I say we let him speak.”

The men didn’t argue with her. Conner had the floor.

“Have any of you ever heard of coffee before?” Conner asked.

They stared blankly at him.

“Never mind. I’ve been told it stunts your growth, anyway,” he said. “I fall asleep a lot in school. It’s not my fault; my brain just turns off when it gets bored. A trick I discovered, when I remember to use it, is to wear a rubber band around my wrist and snap it right when I feel myself drifting off to sleep. The sting keeps me conscious for a good five minutes guaranteed.”

They were puzzled by his proposal.

“Look, it isn’t a rocket-science solution, but it works,” Conner said. “And your people could do it to themselves, so you wouldn’t be forcing them into anything. And maybe if they did it enough, they eventually wouldn’t need to anymore.”

They still needed convincing. Conner turned to Alex for help.

“Alex, do you have any rubber bands on you?” Conner asked.

“I may have some hair ties in my bag,” Alex said. She put her bag on the floor and searched through it, accidently knocking the glass slipper out onto the floor. The
clank
echoed through the throne room.

The twins panicked. It was as if time had frozen. Sleeping Beauty, her husband, and the advisor grew very tense.

“How did you get that?” Sleeping Beauty asked.

“It’s Queen Cinderella’s glass slipper!” the advisor said.

“No, it’s not what you think!” Alex said, quickly putting it back into her bag.

“We didn’t steal it!” Conner said.

“Guards!”
King Chase shouted.

A few guards from behind the twins suddenly awoke and became alert.

“Seize them!”
the king shouted.

“Here we go again!” Conner said as the guards sprinted toward them. He grabbed Alex’s wrist and pulled her into a run.

“Your Majesty!” Alex pleaded to Sleeping Beauty. “We’ve come to borrow your spindle! We’re collecting objects for the Wishing Spell!”

Sleeping Beauty stood, about to speak, but the twins couldn’t wait around to hear what she had to say. They were running around the throne room in circles, barely
missing the extended hands of guards trying to grab hold of them.

Alex and Conner ran through a set of open doors leading out of the throne room. They had no idea where they were going, but they knew they had to move. They had been through too much to let guards catch them this time.

“I’m so tired of being chased!” Conner yelled.

They ran down hallway after hallway, making sharp turns whenever they could to throw off the guards. They were moving so fast that the beautiful architecture and artwork of the castle was nothing but a blur.

Suddenly, the hallway they were in came to a dead end.

“Now what are we going to do?” Alex asked.

“Quick! In here!” Conner said, and pulled her through the closest set of open doors. They found a stone staircase on the other side and ran up it. It spiraled higher and higher, and the twins wondered if it would ever end. They were climbing to an impossible height; they must have been headed to the tallest tower in the castle.

They reached the very top of the stairs and found a big, black door. They rushed through it and immediately locked it from the other side.

“Now where are we?” Conner asked, and looked around.

The twins were standing in a large, circular room with tall windows. There were violet drapes and a lavender rug. A balcony wrapped around the entire room outside. Only two pieces of furniture were in the room: an enormous bed and a spinning wheel made from dark wood.

“Conner,” Alex said softly. “I think we’re in Sleeping Beauty’s room. The room she slept in for a hundred years.”

Conner walked over to the bed. There was a beautiful engraving on the headboard that said:

FOR ONE HUNDRED YEARS, SHE SLEPT,
THE HEARTS OF HER PEOPLE, SHE KEPT,
SO THEY AWAITED WITH PATIENCE
FOR THE BLISS
OF TRUE LOVE AND TRUE LOVE’S
FIRST KISS.

Alex went to the spinning wheel, but the spindle was gone.

“The spindle isn’t here!” Alex said. “I don’t understand. The man who wrote the journal promised Sleeping Beauty he would return it after he used it!”

“Is it not here, or did he just not return it because the spell didn’t work?” Conner asked.

The lock on the black door began to rattle as someone from the other side unlocked it.

“Hide!” Alex whispered. She and her brother dove underneath the bed.

The black door swung open. The twins expected to see the clunky boots of the guards, but instead they saw a pair of pink heels.

“Is that…?” Alex whispered.

“Is that what—
ouch!
” Conner hit his head hard on the bottom of the bed.

“You can come out from there,” Sleeping Beauty said.

The twins couldn’t tell if it was a trap.

“I’ve called off the guards,” Sleeping Beauty added. “No one is going to hurt you.”

The twins slowly crawled out from under the bed.

“We didn’t steal the slipper,” Alex said. “It’s hard to explain, but I promise we’re not thieves.”

Sleeping Beauty nodded. “I believe you.”

“You do?” Conner asked. He was stunned. “Because if I were you, I’d totally think we were thieves.”

Sleeping Beauty smiled at them and took a seat on the bed. “So, you two are after the Wishing Spell?”

The twins nodded self-consciously.

“It’s a really long story,” Conner said.

“I’m sure,” Sleeping Beauty said. “And you’ve come to ask me permission to borrow the spindle from my spinning wheel, haven’t you?”

The twins guiltily nodded again. Sleeping Beauty laughed to herself.

“You know, not too long ago, a man came to my castle and asked me to borrow it,” she said. “At first I was completely against the idea, but he convinced me.”

“How’d he manage that?” Alex asked.

“He told me all about the Wishing Spell and how he had traveled to another world and fallen in love and was desperate to return. And being somewhat romantic myself,
I let him humor me with the story,” she said, and her smile faded back into the contemplative expression they had first seen. “And then he started describing this world to me: a place of machines and technology, a place of enormous structures and lands and people unlike any I had ever seen… and I believed him.”

“Why?” Alex asked.

“Because I had dreamed about this place,” Sleeping Beauty said. “It’s complicated and even I don’t understand it, but while I was under that horrible spell, I dreamed about the place he was describing. I dreamed about so many things, I had just assumed it had come from my imagination. I never mentioned a word of it to anyone, so I knew he had to be telling the truth.”

“Did he ever return it?” Alex asked, desperate to know. “Did the spell work for him?”

Sleeping Beauty studied the twins’ faces.

“You’re from there, aren’t you?” she asked. “And you’re trying to find a way home.”

Alex and Conner didn’t have to respond; she already knew it was true. She reached under one of the pillows on the bed and withdrew a metal spindle.

The twins felt their spirits soar. There it was! The man had returned it—
the spell must have worked for him!

“All I’m going to ask in return is that you also return it when you’re done,” Sleeping Beauty said, and handed it to Alex. “As I’m sure you can imagine, it has sentimental value for me.”

The twins were beaming. Now they knew getting home
was a possibility, that they weren’t trapped in the Land of Stories forever.

“We’re just a couple of strangers,” Alex said. “Why are you being so kind to us?”

“There are many things that are out of my control,” Sleeping Beauty said, and her smile faded again. “So I like to help as much as I can, when I can.”

She stood and walked outside onto the balcony. The twins followed her.

Although the kingdom wasn’t in the best condition, the view was spectacular; Alex and Conner could see the entire kingdom and parts of others. The ocean sparkled in the distance, and a beautiful waterfall could be seen in the mountains nearby. It was so beautiful, they forgot how high up they were.

“This used to be the most beautiful of all the kingdoms,” Sleeping Beauty said. “The rolling green hills, the wildflowers, the rivers that used to flow… they’re all just memories now. Even the natural beauty of the land was put to rest under that awful curse.”

“Will things ever get better?” Alex asked.

“I certainly hope so,” Sleeping Beauty said. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked the twins, receiving eager nods. “I haven’t slept since Chase awoke me with the kiss.”

The twins were shocked.

“Yikes!” Conner said. “You must be exhausted.”

“After sleeping for a century, I’ll be quite rested for a while,” Sleeping Beauty said. “I promised myself and I
promised this kingdom that I wouldn’t rest until it was restored to its original state. Had my parents just let me die, as the curse originally intended, none of this would have happened. So I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life, the life they ensured, making things right again.”

Alex and Conner felt sorry for the young queen. They’d always been so distracted by the thought of a cursed, sleeping kingdom that they’d never thought about the responsibility a monarch would face putting it back on its feet.

“I suppose that’s why the Wishing Spell has always intrigued me,” Sleeping Beauty said. “It’s proof that if someone wants something enough, and they’re willing to work for it, they can achieve great things. I keep the spindle as a reminder that even the worst curses cast by the most powerful enchantresses can eventually be overcome.”

“The kingdom is very lucky to have a queen like you,” Alex said. “A weaker person would have given up.”

“Try the rubber band trick,” Conner told her. “I promise you won’t regret it.”

“I will.” Sleeping Beauty smiled. “It’s probably time you headed out. I may believe you, but convincing my husband and the royal advisor of your innocence won’t be easy. Follow me; I know a secret way out of the castle.”

The twins left the castle feeling inspired by Sleeping Beauty. The fairy tale had always romanticized the bravery of the young prince and the horror of the curse that had been cast upon the land, but it had failed to mention what a strong and brave woman the sleeping beauty truly was.