Sleeping Beauty, the One Who Took the Really Long Nap (2 page)

On the day of my birth, I was nearly eaten by an ogre. In this case, the ogre was my mother, the Queen. Everyone's family has a skeleton or two in the closet. In my family's case, those skeletons were both real (the unfortunate victims of my mother's ruthless appetite) and metaphorical, meaning that my family had a lot of secrets to hide from the general public.

The biggest secret, obviously, was that my mother possessed a healthy amount of ogre blood, passed down from a great-great-uncle who was a full ogre. She neglected to alert my father to her true nature until after he had fallen in love with her. This did not make her a bad person, exactly, just perhaps a bit sneaky. Mother looked fully human and was often gracious and generous. She made the best pot roast in three kingdoms. But on the second and fourth Thursdays of every month, her ogre-ish tendencies rose to the surface and she sought blood. Human, preferably.

As misfortune would have it, I happened to be born on
a second Thursday. Luckily, as soon as I emitted my first wail I was whisked to safety and guarded over by the servants of the castle, all of whom had been entrusted to keep our family's secret.

I was not a handsome baby. I had one blond hair, which curled straight up on my head like a pig's tail. My skin had an odd carrot-colored tint to it, which the castle doctor promised my parents would fade in time. It was actually fortunate for me that I wasn't an example of physical beauty, since Mother banned anything of beauty from the castle. The pages, stewards, chamberlains, ladies-in-waiting, stable boys, and the cook (
especially
the cook) were all of the sort who were unlikely to find marriage partners.

It wasn't that Mother was unattractive herself and didn't want to be outshined. In fact, in the right light she was even quite pretty. Her loathing of beauty came from the ogre blood in her veins. She tried to overcome her intolerance and would occasionally allow her ladies-in-waiting to adorn her with a sparkly gown of colorful satin damask, only to rip it off after ten minutes and replace it with her usual drab brown flax dress. The only colorful object in the whole castle was a painting in the library of a girl reading on the grass. Apparently Mother had tried to remove it from the wall when she first married Father, but it was stuck there permanently. The castle carpenters and masons could not make it
budge. The only way to get it down would have been to dismantle the entire wall. Mother grudgingly allowed it to stay, but it had to be covered each time she entered the library.

The townspeople loved Mother for her unglamorous ways, believing that she dressed in such a plain style to prove that she was not above them. She was the most popular queen since Queen Melinda, a hundred years back. Melinda's portrait hung in the Great Hall along with all the royal portraits dating back nearly a thousand years — none of them as colorful (and therefore offensive to Mother) as the painting in the library. As an infant, I was brought before them and told by my father that becoming a king is a position one earns, not inherits. When one family tree dies out, then the castle goes to the most deserving young man of the noble families. Queen Melinda and her husband, King Bertram, apparently died without a son to inherit their kingdom, although when I was tucked in at night I was often told stories of an old legend about Melinda's missing daughter. I never paid much attention. After all, what cared I of princesses who lived a hundred years ago? I would inherit our kingdom when Father passed away, just as he had from his own father. My future was set. All I had to do was remember to stay clear of Mother on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. How hard could that be?

One day when I was two, Mama and I were skipping through the gardens, enjoying the warm breezes of spring. I had learned to walk early, due to a combination of the fairies' gifts of gracefulness and intelligence. It seemed obvious to me that I should get around much easier on two legs, rather than crawling on my hands and knees. Thus, by eight months I was as sturdy as a child twice my age. By a year, I could skip and twirl and run.

So there we were, just skipping along in our matching purple dresses, smelling the roses, when I reached out and grabbed one. “Look, Mama, a rose, the same as me!” (Oh, yes, I could speak clearly as well. I could also tap-dance, sing opera, and play a waltz on the piano, flute, and viola.)

“Rose!” Mama yelled in a panic. She held out a trembling hand. “Give me the flower, please.”

Somehow I had angered Mama. Unused to hearing anything other than praise for my actions, I quickly handed over
the rose. As I did, I felt a slight sting on my thumb. I held my thumb up. I had never seen my own blood before. I had seen scraped knees on the children in town, and once Papa had been wounded when a hawk landed on his head during a hunt, but I had never seen blood this fresh and bright. The red droplet on my thumb both fascinated and scared me. “Look, Mama, I'm bleeding.”

The color drained from her face. She grabbed me and hugged me so tight I almost couldn't breathe. A moment later she pulled back and looked at me. “You're still awake!” she exclaimed. “Oh, thank goodness!”

I was very confused. “I don't understand,” I said. I may have been smart, but mostly my intelligence fell into the “book smart” category. Except for the walking and talking, most of my knowledge was of the sort that allowed me to distinguish the varieties of birds that lived on our land, or how many eggs you were left with if you started with ten, ate three, and then the chicken laid two more. The ways of grown-ups were something I could not grasp.

Mama bent down and took my hands in hers. “Oh, darling, don't you know about the spindle? Don't you remember the old fairy's curse?”

I nodded. Of course I remembered. The story had been retold to me nearly every day by my nursemaid, Becca.
Becca was getting on in years and I never had the heart to tell her I'd already heard the story. “But what has that to do with the rose?”

Mama kissed my thumb where the blood had now dried. Her warm breath felt nice.

“I feared the first drop of blood would take you away from me,” she said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

“But a thorn is not a spindle,” I pointed out. (These were the kinds of things my supersmartness allowed me to recognize.)

She nodded. “I know. But I am not sure how specific the fairy's curse actually is. Perhaps any pointy object could do the same job as the spindle.”

I thought about this, then grinned. “But it didn't. I'm not even remotely sleepy.”

Mama gave me another hug. “No, it did not,” she agreed. “But perhaps Lady Luck smiled upon us this time. I shall still feel better if we remove anything pointy from the castle.”

So Mama hid anything that might possibly be sharp enough to make me bleed, including hairpins, combs, toothpicks, and bales of hay. The cows and horses were forced to eat only oats. After a week, Papa threw down his spoon at supper and said, “I cannot eat roast duck with a spoon! I demand a fork!”

Mama pushed her unkempt hair out of her eyes and nodded wearily. She knew when a battle wasn't worth fighting. Plus, she was tired of having spinach stuck in her teeth.

The pointy objects were allowed back, but now a twenty-four-hour watch had been placed upon my head. I was never without Becca or one of the other ladies-in-waiting. I didn't mind. The extra protection made me feel loved and protected, but I couldn't help wondering if I was still in danger. I did not want to live my whole life in fear. One morning when I was six and had a rare moment to myself in the garden, I accidentally-on-purpose scraped my finger along the bark of a tree until it bled a little bit. I figured if the curse kicked in, then at least it would be over with. But I did not fall asleep for a hundred years. All I did was ruin my favorite white gown when I wiped my finger on it. Mama grounded me for a fortnight, but I think she was relieved, too. I was still watched all the time, but we all breathed a little easier.

As I grew, the rest of my hair came in and the carrot color faded from my skin. I was growing more handsome by the day. This worried my father, but Mother never seemed to notice. I was an easy child, never requiring much. Mother once said I could entertain myself for hours with two bricks and a bucket of molasses. Fortunately Mother did not mind a messy child, since more likely than not I had dirt in my hair and molasses on my chin by the time I went to bed.

It was hard to keep help at the castle, because the staff would quite often disappear under mysterious circumstances. Word got around. Since my chamberlains and nursemaids were always quitting (or worse), I was left to Mother's care much of the time. She kept me by her side when she went into town to bring alms to the poor. The townsfolk oohed and aahed at me and tickled me under the chin. Mother seemed pleased. She even sat me on her lap and combed out the tangles in my hair when they got so bad I couldn't see.

But on a certain fourth Thursday, everything changed. I
had recently turned seven. I was supposed to spend the day with Percival, a boy I did not much care for due to his being kind of sneaky and always wanting to steal sweets from the pantry. But his father was one of Father's barons, and I often got stuck playing with him. At the last minute his mother came down with a cold and I was disinvited. Father thought I was a safe distance away, so he went hunting for stag with his friends.

Unguarded, I wandered out into the garden. Since the gardener wasn't allowed to plant any pretty flowers, most of the garden was used for herbs and vegetables. But I had discovered a single flower bed, deep into the garden, where roses still grew. The path there was narrow, and I don't think anyone but me ever visited. Once far enough away from Mother's ears, I began to hum a little tune. I swore I heard a voice humming along with me, but whenever I looked around, no one was there. On my way to my secret rosebush, I stopped at the swing that had hung from the old oak tree for generations. I climbed up on it and imagined my father and grandfather swinging from the same spot when they were boys. Below me was a small, cracked fountain with a marble mermaid on the top. Father said water used to come out of her mouth. Mother said the gurgling sounded too much like music, so it had been drained long ago.

The mermaid looked sad, and I did not want to ruin my
good mood, so I moved on. When I reached the rosebush, I bent down and rubbed the petals between my fingers. I smiled when I saw the stain they left behind. Even though I spent much of my time alone, I was not unhappy. I played with the petals for a few more minutes, then realized that since no one was watching me, I might as well try to find the old building I had heard whisperings of. Supposedly the mysterious building was so overgrown with ivy and leaves as to be virtually indistinguishable from the forest around it. No one knew exactly where it was. The servants heard from their grandparents, who had heard from
their
parents, that the building was haunted and that no good would come to anyone who went near it. But I had a mother who was part ogre; I was not scared of a ghost.

“Don't move,” a voice growled from behind me. I froze in my tracks, one foot already in the forest, one still on the lawn. I had never heard a voice like that. Had a strange man wandered onto the grounds? Where were the castle guards? Surely we still had some guards.

I slowly turned around, and let out a sigh of relief when I saw Mother standing there. I smiled and reached out to her. But she did not embrace me. I could see her shaking as she spoke.

“Run into the woods. NOW!”

Her eyes, usually a light brown, were now as black as my
nightmares. I ran. I ran farther into the woods than I'd ever run, not paying the slightest attention to where I was going. Squirrels darted out of my way. Startled birds filled the air. Eventually I realized no one was behind me. Mother had controlled her ogre urges to keep me safe. I leaned against a tree, panting hard. The tree suddenly gave way, and I fell backward and landed in a thick brush. What I thought was a tree had actually been a huge overgrowth of vines and leaves. I tried to stand, but my feet were stuck.

I wrenched my feet free and took a closer look at my surroundings. A stone wall was barely visible through layers of vines and entwined branches. I had found it! The mysterious building! I scratched away at the thick growth, but it held firm. I pushed harder, but it did not budge. The hunting bugle rang through the forest and I jumped back, almost falling again. Father would be very worried if he knew what had happened today. I needed to get back to my bedchambers before running into either parent.

The very top of the castle tower was visible from where I stood, so I knew which way to head. Luckily Mother was still out hunting, so I made it safely to my room and pushed the dresser in front of the door. At suppertime, one of the maids came to fetch me and escorted me down the back stairway, to the private dining room, which is where Father and I always ate on the second and fourth Thursdays.

Father was there when I arrived. “Did you have a nice time at Percival's?” he asked, polishing off his second mug of mead.

Unsure what to say but hesitant to lie, I merely coughed.

“Good,” he said, seemingly satisfied. “I think you need to spend more time with boys your age.”

I nodded. When you're a prince who will someday be their ruler, the other boys aren't very anxious to be your pal. And since the staff knew better than to bring their kids to the castle, I didn't have any real friends.

That night at five past midnight, I heard my door open. I knew it was Mother. She came to check on me every second and fourth Thursday at this time. Usually I didn't even fully wake up, but tonight was different. I quickly sat up in bed. She sat down next to me. I stiffened for a second. When I saw her hurt expression, I felt bad and moved closer.

“I won't always be able to control it like today,” she said sadly, not meeting my eyes. “That was too close a call.”

I nodded.

“Let us not speak of it anymore,” she said, fluffing my pillow. “I expect never to see you on those days again.”

“I promise,” I said. She kissed me on the forehead, which is something she had only done a handful of times in my memory. It might have been worth the day's scare.

For a few days Mother avoided me. She claimed she was
too busy to take me into town with her or to play a game. Perhaps she believed it was easier on both of us this way. I knew she was embarrassed, but I wished she wouldn't be. We can't help our own natures.

Even though things settled back into their routine, my relationship with her was never the same. With Father off doing kingly stuff most of the time, and the servants never staying long enough for me to get to know any of them, I was truly on my own now. I was still only seven years old.