the sleeping prince

I am continuing to work on this story. My migraines keep me from writing too much but this has given me some joy.

On his lips she could still taste the sweetness of his breath, his death had not yet taken all the life from him. She leaned over him, her hair falling in a curtain of gold like spun dawn over his still features. She rested in peace for a second, looking at his face while holding the hope in her heart that she would be able to break his sleeping curse, with just the power of her kiss. 

His eyelashes were long and rested on his cheekbones, cheekbones that she could see now were fragile boned, as she pulled his face into her lap, cheekbones that were set so that they heartbreakingly tilted up to meet the eyelashes' sooty ends, his mouth pouting ever so slightly in a pink bow; with no scar or mark on his face, his hands curved over the hilt of his sword, which belied the only hint that he was not a youth and in fact a man capable of defense of himself, and others.

She, too, was armed. Her sword glinted with rubies on the hilt, finely wrought with gold, elegantly crafted for her small feminine hands so that she could deal the harshest blow. Her hands were covered in working gloves. Gloves of leather that a princess normally wouldn't wear, but she had stolen them off her sleeping stable boy.

"To see so much sleep is as if I am seeing so much death. I do not know these people, but it makes me feel bitter against the one who would do this." Audra mourned. She looked for other weapons fit to open up the vines that grew plentifully around Phillipe. Around all the sleepers. Something small enough to not pierce their skin, or if so, to give them but the kindest of cuts. With her sword, she could not accomplish that. And with his, she knew naught what she would do. She knew she had only until the dawn to do what work she must. Audra had scouted the building and she was fairly certain she had found the denizens of the castle. Were the all of palaces this large? Holding more people than Audra had ever known to exist the castle was very much bigger than any bustling town square she had hoped to see.

She took off her gloves and bit at her cuticles.

She hoped this worked and that with one kiss she could save all, rather than be fated to going around kissing the entire kingdom. Perhaps, that really was the curse. If so, what a unique eighteenth birthday present.  Although she supposed, she really was not supposed to have made it this far. Not supposed to have been given this opportunity. To save herself, to save the Kingdom....to save Phillipe. He had been filling her dreams for the past two years. She fell in love with him quickly. She wondered if he knew who she was. 

"I feel like I was to know you and that you were to know me, as well. I will do what I can to search and seek out who has done this. Who would so injure you." 

She would make them curse that she had ever been able to fall in love. As remarkable as it was, a piece of flint still smolders whenever it was stoked.

It is true, she had been born into a life of wealth and privilege. She little remembered but glimpses of her early days. More than that, she had a grateful heart for the women who raised her. While they could fuss over her, she knew that she was their sun. They called her Aurora and Princess, and she just thought it was with sweetness and affection. She preferred her own name, Audra.

She had been raised by this trio of meddlesome older women, a strange mix that one would think were related were they to look upon them; all women little, with delicate bones and large features. They never explained to Audra why she had these snatches of memory of a much larger home and taller (while kindly) caretakers, and she just took it as an evidence of something mysterious and special about her life. Her life did feel special, always, in some way.

On the half moon of every year, her Aunt Melina would always take her hand and lead her into the woods. It started slowly, teaching a very young girl the difference in flora and fauna, tracking her species, to teaching a slightly older child how to prepare her own food, how to re-fashion torn clothes, how to use a slingshot, how to light a fire. As she aged she learned more about hunting and how to track an animal, how to fight and survive the wild - whether with man or beast as oponnent. 

She also liked how her Aunt Medora would spend a week of time with her on the Months where the sun would linger longest in the sky. She would start the day stretching out her body, greeting the earth or the sky and asking her niece to join her. She would teach her to paint her world in gems. She would teach her how to dump the leavings of her tea leaves to read of her future in their mysterious language, that sometimes even as a wisp of a girl she could hear.

Is it right to like an Aunt best? If not, then Audra was at fault in this. Aunt Morgana was her favorite. She was a woman satisfied with herself and the world, so happy that she made one happy just by being around her. She set no specific time of year that she spent with Audra and chose no specific thing to do with her. She just made herself available to the girl. In their commonalities and closeness, they found happiness together as Audra grew.

On her sixteenth year, the Aunts grew thinner. They picked at their food, glancing furtively at one another, speaking rarely, never laughing. Audra knew something had happened or was to happen. Sometimes the Aunts just...knew things.

She acted sweetly, she sorted the cabinets, she did Aunt Melody's and Medora's exercising in the morning and sampled all of Morgana's cooking (she had been making a lot of extra cookies, of late) so that it was good that she did the other regiments. Nothing brought that glow back to the Aunts. The sparkle that ran through their veins. 

Finally, she sat them down at the table of knotty pine a week before her Natal day.

"By the Goddesses bosom! Why are you all so vexed?" She intoned while hugging them fiercely from behind.

It was then that they told her. On the first blood moon after her sixteenth year, she was to go to her other Aunt. 

Audra beamed at the trio of sobbing women.

"You never told me you had A SISTER!" She exuded.

Melody pinned her with her gaze, "We don't consider Maleficent that anymore." Melody snickered and grasped Audra's hands. "Shrew more than a sister is she!"

"She invited bad energy," Melina whispered. 

"Gods Breath and Goddesses lungs!" Medora looked at her hands and commenced on crying EVEN MORE RAPIDLY.

"It's clear that there is...something about your sister that you have been keeping from me. Is it something you can tell me, or will I find out myself?" 

And in a way, even though they had raised Audra, they did seem like wondrous ever precocious children in a way to her.

In the back of her mind, Audra did not want to be here. She wanted to be back in the forests near their cottage - well; relatively near, she had learned a thing or two from Melody's lessons after all. 

It was there that she had met the strange Man-boy. 

She had snuck upon him, as quiet as a mouse, and watched him with wide eyes. It was extraordinary to see a man alone in the woods. She could count but this one ocassion. 

She had never seen one that handsome, that well dressed, that hilariously occupied with nothing...Beating his beautiful sword against the trees, kicking at the ground, a regular cyclone of destruction...

She had snuck upon him in the woods; she as quiet as a poison. She was caught unprepared by his very visage and watched him through the leaves with wide eyes. She had never seen a man that handsome, that well dressed and that hilariously occupied...with absolutely nothing! Bating his beautiful sword against the trees, kicking at the ground, a regular cyclone of destruction. The men and boys of town were all practical and looked as if regular work was their only goal in life, while some became beggars as a practice. He looked as if he had not worked a day in his life, his dreamy stare projecting someone who did not intend to. She sensed real strength incipient in Phillippe's ocean foam eyes, a targeted intelligence. It was almost like she could hear the words forming in Phillippe's brain before he spoke them, 

"Maid why have you been following me?" He stared right at her as he asked this with his azure eyes. She shrank back from his penetrating gaze. "Playing mute?" Phillippe had approached her grabbing her arm, and she could have sworn her forearm had grown hot to the touch before she felt his fingers. This man boy who swings swords at nothing while chattering to himself, kissing his horse as he fed her, was now menacingly walking up toward Audra, rounding his shoulder's with authority. It did bring her eyes to he arrows on his back.

Audra reached down as if to unfashion her shoe from a root. She threw her slipper up in the air at him running towards him, to distract him as she tried to get away. As she zigged around him, picking up speed as she fled him despite her hurled shoe; the shoe drawn towards his face, hitting him. Her golden hair snapped in the sun as it drifted behind her, her skirts tucked up to run and hardly impeding her, her face hidden from him in profile. Then she turned, her smile luminous and wide, her eyes gleaming with good humor and without fear of him. She quickly lost herself in the brambles, running flight of feet, ahead of him. He reached down and unplucked her remaining shoe. It was plain hewn, hand sown, of worn and well loved material, and not costly. It smelled of the Earth. It spoke of a woman not used to fancy things, but perhaps well cared for. He flashed on the color of her hair as it hit the light, saw how her eyes glowed. He wanted to hear her voice, to know her. He felt he must.  

He gingerly made his way over to the path she had carved out in the woods over many a trip, her feet fast and spry, following her back to the cottage.  Inside the cottage:

Audra faced her Aunts, who perpetually looked like someone had exposed them to a noxious smell. Their faces were pinched and worried. Medora ate sweet bread that she had baked that morning, Melina shuffled through peices of Angel crystal, Melody had a whet stone and her hunting knife to sharpen. Audra knew these women. They had raised her and been her only family.  

"Tell me, good nurses, pray what happened to your sister? Why are you upset that she will take charge of me?"

Audra choose to kneel on the floor rather than go to a chair. Trying to look into all of their faces at once. Melina broke at the scrunity first. 

"Just like you, maid, we were sixteen were the closest of sisters. Malifecent did not learn of her gift on the rise of the moon her sixteenth year. But she did get a promise that great power would come to her. From that day on, she was not as close as she used to be to us, resentment baked into her like a thorn in her side. We went on training daily in what we were picked to do: each a different form of magic given by a different goddess, Mal always lurking and watching for two years. Then, when it was to be her seventeenth birthday, she grew disintrested. She had met a boy. Not just any boy - a prince. We tried to explain to her that he would not be able to be hers, but she was in love. She disregaurded his title, thinking that the "great power," that was to be hers was a crown. She was to be Queen. If so, she could give up magic. Magic for Love did not seem to be such a great loss," Melina went back to shuffling her Angel crystal, finally looking up."Your Aunt Medora has explained to you what happens when you lay with a man? Well, Mal did. And a baby began to grow in her belly. She was proud as a peacock was she. She told none of us, she didn't have to. Her cheeks glowed with rubies and her lips itched to tell secrets. She became so beautiful, ethereal. Then, Johannes told her that he could not marry her -"

Audra shot in, "Wasn't that my Father's name? Then this woman is my mother." Audra's voice belled in the small, warm room.

 

Melody said "No, Audra. Listen to the tale."

Melina continued speaking, "Johannes told her he could not marry her, for he had been promised to another. Mal screamed at him, why would he not have broken ties with her? Was it not only looking out for himself, to take her maidenhood and then give her this information, after making promises to her by which she had based their bond?," Melina took a large inward breath;

"Before that day it was a very long time before any of us saw our sister again. We worried about her, we worried about the babe in her belly. If only we knew what she had in store...for all of us." Melina scraped her knife on the whet stone, assesed the sharpness of the blade. "It turns out that she was not away licking her wounds, as we thought, but somewhere deep in the Eastern border, dabbling in magics none of us had used. Name it, Mal was acruing the knowlege, waiting for the great shift in her power. Unluckily, that was to occur when her water broke, it fled and the dam inside her broke, as well. She raised her son for a year. Never seeing us, in fact hiding the birth from us. Hiding the well spring of her power from us until her eighteenth year. That was the year you were born, Aurora. And such a happy year it was. Celebrations were held and it seemed as if every day was a Spring time moon. We had a new king and queen that year. All came to name King Johannes' daughter. We came to give her a gift, as well. Little did we know, hardly could we have told that Mal would pick such an auspicious day as that day to get her revenge. And in the slaughter of your Mother and Father with her babe being passed from weeping, bloody king and queen in the throne room with subjects moaning and shaking in terror she did. In the revolt one of us finally became tired of the carnage and grabbed you as you passed."

Medora piped up, "and I held onto you something tight," 

Melody, "And we rode a ray of sunlight from there to here before she caught us smuggling you," she laughed, pleased with the memory.

"But she did find us and send us magics over the years explaining her agreement...with us to take you before your eighteenth." Medora scowled.

"Why does she get a claim to me at all?" Audra sliced into the conversation with her own smart and steely blade. "So Johannes is my Father? And Queen Gwinthrope my Mother? I am kidnapped and we are not family at all?" Her face was drawn and the color of chalk.

"We knew not what Mal would do with you. What vengence she could break on a child so young. The scene on that day still haunts me! I don't know the woman my sister has become, and I fear what she will do with you when it comes her time to take you for the month." Melina scooped her stones from one palm to another, the sound gentle and soothing amid the tumoult in Audra's eardrums being caused by her heart. "We only made this...agreement...with her because we feared what she would do to you otherwise. What she might do to all of us!" Medora keened.

Melody pitched in, "and don't forget, we know not yet of what has happened to Mal and Johannes' child. We don't know how...dilliosional she has become. What lengths she may go to for vengance." 

"You fear she may kill her own child? Myself? And because of what you did in giving me these years, are you not in her wrath, as well? I will not let her hurt you!" Audra leaned towards the three women she loved with a fire in her eyes. She felt no fear of this woman, but she did feel intense love and protectiveness blossoming in her soul.

"We shall not let her hurt you, either! Not with any breath left in my body!" Melina reached towards Audra, touching her gently on the cheek. These women had raised her. They were the only family she knew and she did not know how but she would protect them. 

Audra's voice wavered, "When must I leave here and go to her?" She would not let herself cry in front of them. They were doing enough crying for her.

Medora seemed to be having trouble looking Audra in the face. "We tried to save you from this. She could have come at any time and...under different means...but at your next name day, she will. One the day that you turn seventeen she will come to get you and take you to...wherever...she lives. All we know is that she has promised not to harm you and to only keep you for a year. No, it is not fair, but little in this life is. And, yes, she is not your mother. You can hold onto your tumultuous feelings for what she did to your parents. Little good will they do you. Do not try to get revenge on her for your own sake, my dear. And, perhaps, you don't understand why we did what we did. Step in and saving you like that. But we had been robbed of our chances of raising our sisters' child. Of having our sister to ourselves. Perhaps a selfish wish. We came to your christening to gift you with a blessing and our protection was the best we could do under terrible circumstances. We only found it right to then give you the best we could then."  

The door crashed open with the wind. Melody was quicksilver to her feet to close it. She peered out into the forest greenery from the safety of their cottage, tension pinching the muscles of her back as she alerted herself to something in the woods. Audra knew her posture well enough from hunting with her. "What do you see?" 

"A man...a boyish man. He isn't dressed for it, but geared well for hunting.I have never seen him. He could be anyone.He is of medium build and range, handsome, well dressed but not noble while certainly not lacking." 

"Tell me more Melody so that I can ask him for his cape sizing." Audra blandly stated, winking at her aunt, snidely.

"He wears no cape...bother! Girl, don't dither. He is on his way here. I do not think it is due to any of us." Melody gestured to her sisters. 

"And I know of no reason he should be coming to see me!" Audra haughtily retorted in a stage whisper so that all in the room could hear. 

Medora whispered under her breath as the youth approached the door, her eyes seeking out his features, trying to see in them what she hadn't seen for so many years, "Save one." The same sixteen year old fear squeezing her heart even tighter in its grasp.

He approached the door. His hat layed a shadow over his face, the brim hiding his eyes and some of his features. The ladies could still see enough to know that he was handsome and very, very young. Even in the darkness Audra thought his face to be kissed by sunshine, a face that it seemed hard for him to keep the smile (while always in  his eyes) off his face. Because of the night and the shadows and Medora suddenly blocking her with her frame she could not really see his features. She could see that he had brilliant, beautiful eyes. Eyes like Melina's jewels. Like her saphire, emeralds'. Something that could catch a light and fill with rainbow. 

"Hello goodly mothers. I have come in search of a younger...lady." The Youth had a clear voice and spoke well. He didn't seem to want to fill them with any sort of fear. In fact, two of the women breathed again, while Audra and Medora's faces paled and hearts raced. 

"We have nothing for you." Medora said. With all of her will, she had pushed Audra behind her and sneered at the young man with an uncaring look on her face. The look bespoken of 'go away.' She tried to shield Audra from his sight with her powers, but did not know if her magic would exceed his reach, if he himself had powers of his own. She could only try and hope with all of her might. She could tell from his aspect and nature that he did not know if he came here for any ill intent. He did not seem the type of young man to bend to another's ill wishes - but one never knew. She reflected on how she had not even known her own sister. Medora wondered if he was Mal's child and if he had any idea what she really was like, and if so, did he know who they really were? 

He stepped forward, speaking in a kind but firm tone, "I know she is here and I will not leave until I have have her." 

Melina cut into her physical barrier, wryly stating, "Youth, pray tell why are you here? My neice is very pretty, but is not the sort to be taken from the house at all hours without a chaperone." 

A high color leached onto his cheeks. "No...It is nothing like that. I am here to get her for my lady. She is to be in her service. The lady says you knew -" 

Melody's voice rang out like a warning bell to cut him down, "but it is but early yet. We thought she had until her naming day..." 

"It will take us many moons to travel to my lady and by her naming day we will be there. The pink moon will rise on her name day, right?"

At that a collective moan and wail started among the women who thought they had had more time with their beloved "daughter." Audra chose to step forward from Melora's confines with her chin up, though her face was shining with tears. 

"I am the one you seek. May I pack a small bag?" 

He seemed like one struck by a strong waves at the sight of her. It took him a moment to answer. "Y..yesss...of course you may, my lady." 

Audra who had just found out that she was highborn, huffed at being addressed so, and sumarily turned around, embracing all of her aunts, murmuring sweet platitudes to them and took off towards her rooms to collect what few small items meant something of value to her and what few clothes she had. This would be the hardest and longest trip from her home she had ever taken and the first without her "Aunts." She didn't know what was wrong with the young man who was to take her to her his 'lady,' a woman she could only surmise to be the fourth sister. Sometimes the butchers dimwitted son acted like that when he saw her. She had always thought that it was because of his nature, the product of being dropped on his head as a baby. But, this young man's wits seemed fine until he saw her. She crinkled her brow and huffed again as she slung her bag over her shoulder. It was time to leave her home.