I wind up perched behind the princess on a pile of folded blankets, clinging desperately to her traveling cloak and thinking that Charm would give a year of her life to be cozied up behind Primrose as she galloped into the night on a daring half-cocked rescue mission.
Even I can admit it’s pretty cool. The air is clean and sharp and the stars reel above us like ciphers or hieroglyphs, stories written in a language I don’t know. The trees are dark Arthur Rackham-ish tangles on either side of the road, reaching for us with wicked fingers while the night birds sing strange songs. My lungs ache and my legs are numb and I know Dad would have a stroke if he could see me, but he can’t, and for tonight at least my life is my own, to waste or squander or give to someone else, no matter how little of it might be left.
We stop twice that night. The first time in a grove of tall pines, silver-blue in the moonlight, where the horse’s hooves are silenced by soft needles. I don’t so much dismount as fall sideways, barely managing to keep my phone uncrushed in my back pocket. The princess makes a graceful, sweeping gesture that somehow ends with her standing beside her horse, cloak pooled elegantly around her slippered feet. Her shoulders are a bowed line.
I don’t generally do a lot of worrying about other people, except for Charm and my parents, but even I can see she’s tired. “We could sleep here if you like.” I poke the deep-piled pine needles. “It’s nice and squashy.”
Primrose shakes her head. “I’d like to be further from the castle before I sleep.” There’s a green gleam in her eyes as she looks back the way we came.
We ride on.
The next time we stop is beneath a gnarled hawthorn, where the earth is bare and knotted with roots. Primrose’s dismount looks much more like mine this time, her legs stiff, her hands clumsy. I half catch her in my arms, thinking only briefly how heroic I look before settling her between the least lumpy roots. By the time I tuck our extra clothes and blankets around her, she’s asleep.
Which is just as well, because that way she can’t comment on my intelligence or life skills as I wrangle the saddle off the horse and loop her reins around a low branch. The princess’s horse must be a patient soul, because she merely gives me a long-suffering ear flick rather than stomping me into jelly.
I pull my arms inside my hoodie sleeves and hunch against the warm leather of the saddle, looking up at stars through the crosshatched branches and doubting very much that I’ll be able to sleep.
I must be wrong, because I wake abruptly, my legs stiff and damp, dew-soaked. The sky is the profound, reproachful black of four in the morning and someone is moving nearby.
It’s Primrose, standing, her head tilted oddly to one side, her eyes wide open. There’s a sickly shine to them, like the reflection of something poisonous.
“Princess?” She doesn’t seem to hear me. She takes a step deeper into the woods, then another, as if there’s an invisible thread tugging her deeper into a labyrinth. “Primrose!”
I heave upright and stumble toward her, grabbing her shoulders and shaking hard. “Jesus, wake up!” She does. I feel the weird tension slide out of her body, her arms un-tensing beneath my hands. I release her.
“Lady Zinnia?” She looks back at me with eyes that are vague and sleep-soft, perfectly blue once more. “What—oh. Dear.”
I swallow the stale taste of fear. “Yeah.” It’s one thing to read about dark enchantments and fairy curses; it’s quite another to watch them take hold of a woman’s will and march her like a porcelain puppet toward her own doom. The Disneyland sheen of this place is wearing thin, like paint peeling to reveal black mold running beneath it.
I shrug at her with my hands shoved deep in my jean pockets. “I’ll keep watch, if you want to get a little more sleep.”
She worries at her lower lip with teeth that are too white in the dark. She nods and curls back among the hawthorn roots, arms wrapped tight around herself, hair spilling over her cloak.
I watch in silence until her body uncoils and her fingers unclench. Afterward I find myself squinting into the spaces between trees, looking for a hint of green or the shine of a spindle’s end, getting steadily more spooked by the cool touch of wind down my neck and the soft scuttling sounds of night creatures in the woods. I decide it’s a good time to check my phone.
There are several dozen more texts from Charm, mostly threats upon my person should I fail to return; a handful from Dad, their tone genial listing toward worried; one from the Roseville Public Library informing me that I now owe them $15.75 in fines and/or my firstborn child.
A few hours ago it had seemed like a perfectly fine idea to go have a little adventure, face down a fairy, rescue a princess (and maybe, somehow, myself), and zap back home like Bilbo strolling back into the Shire. But now—huddled in the cold dark with a cursed princess and a tightness in my chest that’s either terror or impending death—I’m feeling more like Frodo, whose story was full of danger. Who never did get to return home, or at least not for long.
I text Charm. going to face Maleficent and break curse, should be home in three days.
She texts back so fast I feel a hot stab of guilt, knowing she’s sleeping with her ringer on. how are you getting home??
portkey?
there’s no such thing as portkeys asshole. A brief pause. and i thought we agreed never to mention joanne or her works ever again
I consider asking her how she would explain interdimensional travel into overlapping fictional narratives, but Charm probably has at least three solid theories she would like to discuss. At length. With slides. So instead I lean over to take another picture of Primrose. Even on my mediocre camera, blurred and dim, she’s luminous. Her face glows white out of the gloom, a sleeping beauty by way of Rembrandt.
A slight pause before she replies: do not attempt to distract me with your hot imaginary friend. I repeat: there’s no such thing as portkeys
says who
says physics
hon, I respond patiently, I am currently on a quest to find and defeat a wicked fairy. pretty sure the laws of physics no longer apply
the laws of physics always apply, that’s why we call them laws
There’s a long gap while her texting bubble appears and disappears.
give her hell from me, babe
I can almost hear the rasp of Charm’s voice as she says it, the sudden sincerity that no one expects from a girl with a giant Golden Age Superman tattoo on her shoulder. There’s no reason to choke up over it, so I don’t. I send her another xoxo and power the phone off before the battery can dip below 20 percent.
After that I sit with my arms around my shins and my cheek on my knees, watching the dawn paint the princess in silver and shadow and wondering what it would feel like to sleep and keep sleeping. Better than dying, I guess, but Jesus—what a shitty story the two of us were given. I don’t know about the moral arc of the universe, but our arcs sure as hell don’t bend toward justice.
Unless we change them. Unless we grab our narratives by the ear and drag them kicking and screaming toward better endings. Maybe the universe doesn’t naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it’s only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.
* * *
“SO, WHY IS the moor forbidden?” I’m aiming for nonchalant, but my voice sounds tense in my ears. “Are there flying monkeys? Rodents of Unusual Size?”