At the last moment, she changed her mind and put it in the little silver pouch attached to her girdle by her chatelaine. A once living thing, wherever it was from, didn’t deserve to be pressed like an inanimate object—filed away like an ancient manuscript. The princess would keep it with her until she figured out what to do with it.
She thought of a different feather she owned and let out another sigh.
Instead of going to sleep, she sat down at her pretty little table, took up her white swan quill, and set herself to solving the math problems on the precious scrap of vellum before her.
After fortifying the castle, making living arrangements for all within, and working out whatever magical source of food she managed, Maleficent had turned to Aurora’s education. The king and queen had neglected everything for their unwanted daughter—basic reading and writing skills, needlework, the sort of useful hobbies royal ladies were supposed to know, even etiquette and geography. The new queen immediately set out to rectify this with a half-dozen tutors, adding things to the mix that weren’t necessarily “princessy.”
Like math.
Which Aurora was terrible at.
Some things came to her naturally: singing, playing the recorder, kindness, patience in sewing—even if it would be years before her needle skills were up to that of a twelve-year-old’s. Her fingers were often covered in tiny pinpricks from embroidery, and Maleficent had suggested, with a kind laugh, that she put off carding and spinning until she could be trusted with the sharp point of a drop spindle.
But numbers…and anything having to do with numbers…that was another thing entirely. Aurora privately wondered if there was a reason princesses weren’t taught math or alchemy or the workings of the world; maybe they just couldn’t grasp it.
Still, she forced herself to pay attention when the old castle treasurer patiently demonstrated the magic of adding and subtracting amounts with tally sticks and abaci, and the castle carpenter showed her the measurement of forms with string and weights.
When she tried to do the exact same problems on her own, however, they never made sense. The numbers swam in front of her and the little counting lines seemed to multiply of their own volition. Her ability to draw was negligible, and her squares often looked like mush.
But Maleficent was trying so hard with her adopted niece that Aurora forced herself to keep working in secret, in private. She kept herself going by imagining the look on her aunt’s face when she finally showed how she could divide an ink flock of sheep into five equal smaller herds.
Aurora drew a tiny ugly scribble of a sheep. Then she drew four more. She counted them. There were five. She drew two more, farther away. Now there were six.
Aurora frowned, looking at the paper.
Maybe seven. Eight?
She tried it on her fingers, pretending each one was a warm white ball of wool.
Did you count the beginning one and the last one, too? Or was it like pages of a book, where you didn’t count both ends?
She spent ten more minutes trying to make the two groups of sheep add up. She was pretty sure it was around seven, but the lack of precision was giving her a headache.
Finally, she threw herself on her bed in frustration.
She would never be as smart and powerful and elegant as her aunt.
Sometimes she felt that the queen was just humoring her.
Sometimes she felt the slightest stirrings of anger at always being told what to do. “Go take a nap.” What was she, a child? “Oh, you couldn’t possibly help out with these unimaginably complex party preparations.” Aurora was meant to be queen someday! She could handle a party.
Sometimes, in the secret safety of her canopied bed, in the blackest reaches of her mind, she wondered if her aunt really had the best intentions for her.
Why couldn’t she be let in on the magical runnings of the castle? Why couldn’t she watch and maybe learn how Maleficent summoned the food, drink, and other luxuries they managed to consume despite the destruction of the world Outside?
And how long did they have to stay cooped up in the castle anyway? When would it be safe enough to go Outside—even for a short while?
There was a story a priest had told her once—the poor priest who somehow wound up Outside the castle when everything happened—about the first time the world was destroyed. By water, not monsters. After enduring the flood in a boat for weeks, the surviving humans had sent out a dove or a hedgehog or some other bird to see if there was dry land anywhere yet.
Couldn’t they do that?
Couldn’t they send out one of the inhuman guards? Couldn’t they leave to explore and come back—using some of Maleficent’s magic somehow to protect themselves?
Had the minstrel really made it all the way Outside and back?
The Exile, the only one ever forcibly sent out of the castle, had never returned…but he probably didn’t want to face the queen’s wrath. He had challenged her right to rule; he was a real king, he had said, not “some strumpet of a fairy too big for her britches.”
It was, upon reflection, lucky for him she didn’t just obliterate him on the spot. Maleficent had a streak of temper, though she tried to shield her niece from it.
Aurora grumpily spun over on her bed and put her pillow over her head. These were the thoughts she was most ashamed of. Ungrateful thoughts about the woman who had saved what was left of the world. Aurora had too much of her parents in her. She seemed to lack basic human gratitude for what she had.
She wished she had magic powers.
No, her mind quickly said, not like what her parents had received. Not even as much as Maleficent had. Just a little. Just to be able to see. Either what the world was like out there now, how it was changing or healing…or what it had been like before, back when there were animals and people and the books all worked properly. It was getting hard to remember, another effect of the evil, changed land.
She wished…
…and a book fell on her head.
PRINCESS AURORA SAT UP, surprised by the sudden cascade of parchment pages that fell to the floor. Not a book…a deck of cards. Brightly colored, intricately painted cards whose pictures were all still intact.
She picked them up with just the tips of her very careful fingers, as if at her touch they would disappear back into her imagination.
The first few were familiar. They were the kind used for games that people in the castle often played to pass their long hours of confinement. A three of swords, a nine of cups, a two of hearts, all in the bright and simple heraldic colors of the kingdom. An eight of chairs. A thirteen of dolls. A zero of castles.
The numbers were elegant, elongated, and golden, just like the ones she drew in the air when math was easy.
A strange ache throbbed where she had been hit in the head by the cards. What golden numbers? When was math easy? That never happened, except perhaps in a dream….
She shook herself and flipped to the next card.
A joker.
Aurora frowned at this one. The figure sported the usual impish grin of his kind—but his motley seemed ragged. His face was long and narrow, and instead of a scepter or wand he carried a lute. He looked, all things considered, a trifle too much like the minstrel.
And after him came even stranger cards of equally bizarre suits.
A one of suns: a shining yellow ball, golden rays streaking out sharply to the edges of the card. Aurora held it close to her face, wondering at the detail. She wished the artist had left some room for a hint of the blue sky she couldn’t remember anymore. The sun seemed so joyous at its own energy that its eyes were simple curves, squinted shut, its mouth almost nonexistent.