Sleeping Beauty: The One Who Took the Really Long Nap Read online

  The castle physician kept me in bed for a full week, which I believed to be excessive. He tried to attach a leech to my leg, but it refused to stick. This may have had something to do with the beeswax ointment I rubbed on before each visit.

  Every night I dreamt of horses and how free I had felt. I never dreamt of the fall.

  By the end of the week, being laid up in my bed had begun to feel like a punishment. All my meals had been served to me, and stories had been read well into the night, but I missed my walks in the garden and the busy castle life. When I was finally allowed out of bed, the first thing I did was to go downstairs and visit the horse. I wanted to make sure he was all right. The stable boy jumped when he saw me and said, “I’m sorry, Princess, but the queen has given me strict orders not to let you in here.”

  Why was I not surprised?

  He assured me the horse was fine. I tried to sneak a look, but he stepped to the side and blocked me.

  I considered sulking for a few days, but that got tiring after only a day. Before the fall, I had truly enjoyed living every moment to the fullest, and I intended to keep that up. For the next few months I kept painting. My horses looked like ladybugs and my ladybugs looked like trees, but I was having fun. My plum cakes slowly improved to the point where we could almost fully enjoy them without the help of fairy magic. I read most of the books in the library, even the boring ones.

  For my sixteenth birthday, my parents said I could choose something special to do. I was tempted to ask if I could ride a horse through the countryside but did not want to anger them. It had been years since we had taken a family trip, so I chose that. We decided to go visit the estate of Papa’s second cousins. They had a lake where we could swim, which was something I had not done since I was a child. The only body of water near our castle was the moat, and NO ONE wanted to swim in there, considering it was where one of the dung chutes emptied.

  Sara was coming with us, of course. She had never been farther than the outskirts of town and we were both ready for a change of scenery. The ride was long, but we made it fun by singing silly songs and guessing what kind of animal would cross the road in front of our carriage next.

  I asked Papa if his relatives minded that he was a king while they were just regular nobility. He said that not everyone wants the responsibility that comes with ruling. I had not considered that before. It took a special person to give up their personal freedom in order to protect and provide for hundreds of others. I reached over and gave Papa’s hand a squeeze.

  The first thing Sara and I did when we arrived was change into our swimming dresses and jump in the lake. We splashed around like two little kids. My cousins joined us. They really WERE two little kids, so we had fun with them. For lunch we were served a whole platter of local delicacies outside on the veranda. We sipped cold tea and tried a little bit of everything. One of the dishes tasted so bad that Sara whispered, “Are you sure you didn’t cook this?”

  After a game of croquet on the lawn, Sara yawned and suggested we both retire to the room we were sharing for an afternoon nap. I agreed, but when we got there I wasn’t the least bit tired. Sara fell asleep instantly. I put on some walking clothes and tiptoed out of the room. I felt slightly guilty for not telling Sara I was going out, but how much harm could I get into? Their whole estate was not much bigger than our Great Lawn!

  I decided to explore the grounds. Even though the estate was small, it was quite pretty and well kept. I wandered toward a cottage with a thatched roof and a welcoming aroma. In fact, it smelled so good, I decided to knock on the door and ask for the recipe. It would truly impress my family if I could cook something as delicious-smelling as that.

  An old woman answered the door and ushered me inside happily.

  “You are here to pick up your dress, right?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. “When a young lady knocks on my door it is usually to pick up her dress for the big ball. All the eligible men in the area will be there. And you are of marriageable age, are you not?”

  I nodded. By sixteen, many girls were engaged to be married. My old friends Bethany and Tabitha had been engaged for a year already. My parents had never tried to fix me up, though, for which I was grateful.

  “Well, never mind all that,” the woman said. “What can I do for you today?”

  I was about to inquire after the delightful aroma, when I noticed a big wheel on a wooden stand in the center of the room. I walked toward it, never having seen anything like it. “What does this do?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Why, it weaves things.”

  I had never seen a wheel that weaves things. “May I try?”

  “Of course. Here, you just lift this and pull that and push this, and that’s all there is to it.”

  So I sat down as she instructed, and lifted and pulled and pushed. Two large pieces of wool crisscrossed each other in a beautiful pattern. I’d finally found something I did well the first time. I repeated the steps.

  “You are a natural,” the woman said. “You might put me out of business.” Smiling, she said, “Here, try this, it will make it go faster.”

  I wasn’t watching what she was handing me because at that moment the door banged open and my parents and Sara stood there, out of breath. I grasped the object in my hand at the moment the three of them yelled, “NOOOOOOOO!!!”

  I saw the confusion on the old woman’s startled face and looked down at my hand. Even though I had never seen one before, I knew without a doubt that what I now held could only be a spindle. I opened my palm wide to release it, but it was too late. A tiny drop of blood had already begun to form on my thumb. Mama ran over and tried to blot it away with her skirt. It stopped bleeding nearly instantly, since it was just the tiniest of holes.

  Mama and I stared frantically into each other’s eyes, both wide with fear and panic. She was holding on to hope, but I was not. I already felt a subtle change in the air around me. Everyone started to seem far away, instead of crowded around me. They were screaming my name and weeping but I could only faintly hear them. I tried to tell them not to worry about me, that I would be all right. All I could croak out was “I love you.” Then all was black. Again.

  Ever since Percival had heard me calling out for Rose, he had not left me alone. “I shall find out on my own,” he threatened, “so you might as well tell me.”

  I refused. So Percival took it upon himself to use his many connections in town, and eventually found out almost as much of the story as I had. I knew this because every time he learned something new he was only too quick to share it with me. Half the time when I arrived at the old castle, no matter what the season or weather, he was already there with his own set of tools. He even had a special tool made for him by one of the engineers at the castle. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I wished the fleas of a thousand armies would take up residence in his armpits.

  I watched as he used his new device to hack away at the vines. To my horror and dismay, they snapped! He turned to me with a huge gloating grin on his face, but in that second, the vines curled back in and reaffixed themselves. We couldn’t even see where the breaks had occurred. His smile faded.

  I left him there, trying again and again, but getting the same result. It finally sunk in, after nearly two years, that neither Pervical nor I nor anyone else was getting in there until whoever or whatever was protecting the princess decided to let us in. That day’s events convinced me that until the ten decades had completely passed it was no use trying. The only problem was: I didn’t know when exactly that day would be. My only solace was that I was quite certain that Percival was still unaware of the whole hundred-years aspect of the curse. This gave me the slightest advantage.

  Weeks went by without Percival ever going into the woods. He studied with whichever tutor was still there on a given day, or he played polo in the fields, or visited friends in town. I did not much care what he did, as long as he stayed away from the old castle. I tried to