Beloved was facing me, weaving a little on her legs, a look of faint astonishment in her eyes. Though she could not have seen me, her right hand was extended as though to hand me something. It was a spindle, precisely as it had been described to me: a spiky thing that looked rather like a spinning top. I put my hands behind my back. The spindle fell even as I moved toward her, and she went down with it, crumpling, knees and hips and then shoulders and arms, falling in a loose pile, like washing. I kicked the spindle thing away and knelt beside her. Her face was quite peaceful, as though she was sleeping, as indeed she was, though a sleep of a strange and terrible depth. Her breast barely moved. Her skin was chill. A pallor had fallen over her skin so that she seemed to be carved of ivory.
For a moment, I could not think at all. My mind was blank. I straightened Beloved out, pulled her skirts down and folded her hands on her breast, my tears spotting the satin of her bodice. I left the spindle where I had kicked it, not daring to touch it. I hadn’t really.… I had thought the curse wouldn’t function if it couldn’t find me.… I had never considered that.… Or had I? I didn’t know. Had I planned it, or not? The wording of the final curse referred to “Duke Phillip’s daughter on her birthday.” She was as much his daughter as I was. It was her birthday as much as mine. I had known that!
I fled back through the dining room, seeking help, and was sent sprawling when I tripped over the body of one of the footmen lying beside a trayload of scattered flagons. In my daze, I assumed he had seen what happened to Beloved and had fainted. Even when I reached the hallway and began to find other bodies, I did not immediately realize what had happened. Only when I found Aunt Lavender fallen prone across her lute did I realize that the malediction had been modified by Aunt Joyeause not only to send Duke Phillip’s daughter to sleep, but to include everyone at Westfaire. I had worried about what people would do with a princess who slept for a hundred years! It seemed they would do nothing at all, for she was not to sleep alone. When she regained consciousness, a hundred years in the future, all her court would still be around her, though it was not Beloved’s court, but mine.
I found Doll and Martin asleep in the stables and Dame Blossom asleep at her loom. In the village, everyone slept. The shoemaker and the tailor and the potter and the tanner and all. I howled for some little time, as frightened as I have ever been, while I ran about through the barns and stables, the armory, the dormitories of the men-at-arms, the kitchens, the granary, the orchards, through every house in the village by the walls. Everyone was asleep, guests and all. Every living thing. The cattle in the byre were asleep, and the chickens in their pens, and the swine, the piglets laid out like rows of barely breathing bottles at their mother’s swollen teats. Wasps slept on the fruit on the sunlit walls. Spiders slept in their webs. The weevil slept at the heart of the rose. Papa’s dogs lay indolently in the sun, as unmoving as the painted wooden saints in the chapel.
And in that chapel Father Raymond slept beside Papa—who had arrived home only that morning—both of them on a bench, propped upright by each others bodies. Papa’s mouth was open and the faint, infrequent breaths hissed across my ear when I leaned down to shake him. I inadvertently dislodged him so that he fell sidewise, onto the bench, but his sleep did not break, nor did that of Father Raymond when I clung to him, wetting his surplice with my tears. He held a piece of paper in his hand. Evidently something he and Papa had been looking at. It caught my eye because I saw my name on it.
It was addressed to Father Raymond. “Tell Beauty that I love her forever,” it said. “Tell her I honor her always. Tell her I would never have done anything to hurt her. Tell her no matter what distance separates us, I will love her still.” It was signed by Giles. Father Raymond had not shown it to me. He had shown it to Papa! I hated them both for that, but I could not stand there doing it. I put the letter in my pocket and ran on.
The sleepers included even Sibylla and her mother. I found them in the scribe’s office, lying atop Mama’s marriage contract in an uncomfortable looking heap. I left them that way, hoping when they woke they would have cramps. Of all living things in all the lands of Westfaire, only Grumpkin and I were free to move about because we were cloaked in magic and invisible to the enchantment. Grumpkin wanted to leave my pocket, but I did not dare let him go.
I cannot remember what I did then for a while. Though a few other guests had been expected, none arrived. It was as though the castle had been set aside from mortal lands. The sun sank slowly, and I with it. For a time I huddled on the stairs, crying, Grumpkin patting my face with his paws and making the small, trilling noise he makes when he seeks catly companionship, his love call.
