Primrose stares at me for a long second, then nods. “Mother says he spent months riding the countryside, holding bonfires in every village. He was trying to save me.” I can hear the weariness in her voice, the exhaustion of being unsavable. Dad used to spend hours on the phone with specialists and experimental labs and miserly insurance companies, mortgaging the house in his search for a cure that doesn’t exist, trying so hard to save me that he nearly lost me. He stopped only when I begged.
“Hold on a second.” I slide my phone back out and start to text Dad, wimp out, and write Charm instead. can you tell mom & dad I’m not dead pls?
already done, she writes back, because she is, and I cannot stress this enough, the best.
“Okay, continue.”
The princess appears to brace herself for a grand speech. “I am cursed, you see. Twelve fairies were invited to my christening feast. But a thirteenth fairy arrived, uninvited!” I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person speak with so many implied exclamation points. It’s exhausting. “A most wicked creature who placed a curse upon me—”
“To prick your finger on your twenty-first birthday and fall down dead? That sound right?”
Primrose deflates slightly. “An enchanted sleep.”
“Lucky you.”
“You think it lucky to be cursed to sleep for a century—”
“Yeah, I do.” It comes out harsher than I mean it to. I swallow hard. “I’m sorry. Look. I’m—cursed, too. Last night was my twenty-first birthday. I was in my own world, minding my own business. I pricked my finger on a spindle as a joke, and all of a sudden I was here. In an honest-to-Jesus castle with an honest-to-Jesus princess. And historically inaccurate furnishings.”
The lines have reappeared between Primrose’s brows. “Was it a wicked fairy that cursed you, as well?”
I consider trying to explain that my world doesn’t have curses or fairies. That my fate was determined by lax environmental regulations and soulless energy executives and plain old bad luck. “Sure, yeah,” I say instead. “Except I’m going to die, not sleep, and there’s nothing anybody can do to save me.” But hope flutters in my chest again. I’m in a land of magic and miracles now, not ribosomes and proteins. Who knows what is or isn’t possible?
“I’m sorry,” says the princess, and I can tell she means it. Most people don’t know what to do when I tell them I’m dying. They flinch or look away or step back, as if bad luck is contagious, or they go all maudlin and grip your hands and tell you how brave you are. Primrose just looks at me, steady and sorry, like she knows exactly how much it sucks, and neither pities nor admires me for it.
I feel snot gathering in my throat and cough it away. “It’s not a big deal, it’s fine,” I lie. I can tell that she knows it’s a lie, because she’s spent roughly twenty-one years telling herself the same one, but she doesn’t call me on it.
“Well. Thank you, however you came to be here. I’ve never met anyone else…” Cursed, I think, but she says, “Like me.” She gives me a furtive, hungry look that causes me to suspect the life of a cursed princess is several degrees lonelier than the life of a dying girl.
Primrose clears her throat. “And thank you for saving me from my curse. At least for now.” She looks toward her bedroom door, eyes flashing eerie green. “I still feel it calling to me. I haven’t slept all night for fear I will wake in that tower room, reaching toward that wheel. Perhaps if I destroy it—my father would surely burn it if he knew—”
“No!” Panic makes my voice overloud. “I mean, please don’t. I’m pretty sure that thing is my only ticket out of here. It must be a portal or something, a match to the one back home.” A sly little voice whispers are you sure you want to go home? I elect to ignore it.
Primrose looks doubtful. “But what if it sends you into an enchanted sleep, as it would me?”
“Maybe. I don’t know the rules, man.” I run my fingers through the greasy tangle of my hair. “I’m just saying don’t set it on fire yet. Give me a second to think.”
Primrose opens her mouth to respond, but a light tap comes at the door. A voice calls, “Your Majesty. Your father requests your presence in the throne room.”
I watch the pale bob of her throat as the princess swallows. “Of course. A moment, only.” She spins back to me. “I have to go. Stay hidden until my return.” It’s an order, casually issued, as if she can’t imagine anyone disobeying her.
I bow my head as she sweeps from the room.
I scroll through the ten or fifteen messages I’ve missed from Charm (are you okay tho? are there pharmacies in fairyland??) and type back: I only have 35% battery so I’m turning this off in case of emergencies. xoxo
ummmm this IS an emergency. why are you not freaking out. why are you not trying to come back.
I start to type because but can’t decide what comes next. Because I don’t want to, at least not yet. Because I’ve fallen out of my own story and into one that might have a happy ending. Because this is my last chance to have a real adventure, to escape, to do more than play out the clock.
In the end I just write i’ll come back. cross my heart, before turning my phone off. Then I wallow my way out of Primrose’s ridiculous bed, steal a gown from her wardrobe, and slip out the door after her.
3
WHEN I WAS eleven, I used my Make-a-Wish Foundation wish to spend a night in the Disney castle and get the full princess experience. It was a total letdown. I think I waited too long: eleven is old enough to see the cracks in the plaster, to sense the pity behind the megawatt smiles of the staff. It was like trying to play with my Barbies a year after I’d outgrown them, perfectly remembering how it used to feel but unable to feel it again.
Primrose’s castle is about a thousand times better. The stone is smooth and cool beneath my tennis shoes and the torch brackets smell of oil and char. My dress isn’t polyester and plastic; it hangs heavy on my shoulders, literal pounds of burgundy velvet and gold thread. I try to walk like Primrose, a glide so delicate it suggests my feet touch the earth only by happenstance.
I pass a pair of women who I think might be actual chambermaids and they pause to stare, mouths slightly open. Maybe it’s my haircut or my shoes, or the fact that I couldn’t figure out the laces and strings in the back of the dress and left it gaping open like one of those terrible paper hospital gowns. Whatever. Surely they’re used to inbred nobility with eccentric habits of dress.
I wave cheerily at them and they fall into belated curtsies. “Which way to the throne room?”
One of the maids points wordlessly down the hall. I attempt a regal nod in return, which causes one of them to giggle and the other to elbow her.
The throne room looks exactly like you might expect a throne room to look: a long hall with vaulted ceilings and high windows. There are honest-to-God knights stationed along the walls, surrounding a small crowd of people who look like lost extras from the set of A Knight’s Tale, all puffed sleeves and sweeping trains. A ruby-red carpet splits the room, leading to a man and woman sitting on golden chairs.