“Who are you?” I demanded, shrinking back. “Are you the fairy who cursed my sister?”
The fairy snorted, still spinning. “Of course not. Do I look like the fairy queen to you?”
Since she was the first fairy I had ever seen, I had no answer for that.
The wool lumps were dingy when she fed them in, but gleamed like gold when they came out. The fairy looked at me, her feet still working the pedals. “I’m your sister’s fairy godmother. I’m the one who saved her.”
Not that she had done a very good job of it. Turning “prick her finger and die” into “prick her finger and fall asleep” was, admittedly, an improvement. But it wasn’t as good as, say, “Prick her finger and turn everything she touches to gold,” or, “Prick her finger and sneeze,” or, you know, “Prick her finger and nothing will happen, enjoy your sixteenth birthday, Rosalin!”
But I wasn’t about to bring that up. The court minstrel said ordinary fairies didn’t have enough power to cancel a curse set by their queen. He also said they were sensitive about that subject.
“If you’re Rosalin’s fairy godmother,” I said suspiciously, “shouldn’t you be helping her?”
“Maybe that’s what I’m doing,” the fairy said.
She didn’t particularly emphasize the maybe. But I noticed it.
I focused on what was important. “Where’s Rosalin?”
The fairy smiled. Her teeth were too small for her mouth, and there were too many of them. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the question. What’s the answer? I need to make sure she’s all right.”
“Do you?” She spread her wings. They were long and gossamer, like a dragonfly’s. “Maybe you should worry about yourself instead of running after your sister. Maybe today you’re the important one.”
It was like she had reached right into my heart and pulled out my deepest, most secret wish. Fairies are good at that.
But they’re also tricky, and dangerous. And good at distraction.
“My sister,” I said again. “Where is she?”
The fairy’s fingers went still, and the wheel came to a stop. There was already a thick coil of gold thread wound around the bobbin.
“Too late,” she said. “The one who calls himself a prince has already found her.”
She snarled slightly on the word prince, like she meant something else entirely.
“Obviously the prince found her,” I said. “He found her, he kissed her, that’s why we all woke up. But where is she?”
“Come here,” the fairy said. “Spin some thread for me. While you do, I will tell you where your sister is.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Sorry,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea. I’ll go find her myself.”
“You might not like what you find,” the fairy warned.
I turned and walked out of the room without responding.
The door opened onto a landing, the top of a curved stairway. The stairs went steeply downward, curving around and around a slick stone pillar. There were three narrow windows set high in the outer walls, but the light that filtered through them was weak and dusty.
I don’t like heights. I took a deep breath, put one hand on the damp stone, and started down,
down,
down,
down,
down.
My knees creaked like I was an old woman, or like I hadn’t moved them in years. Both, I supposed, were sort of true.
But as I descended the stairs, my legs warmed up, and I started feeling more like myself. Aside from the stiffness in my muscles, it felt like I had been asleep for no more than a night. There was no dust in my clothes, there were no cobwebs on the stairs, and my nails were trim—they had been cut for Rosalin’s party.
I let a small part of myself believe that only a single day had passed. That made it easier to stay calm as I trudged down the stairs toward whatever waited for me.
I hadn’t known our castle had towers this high. And I couldn’t tell how much farther I had to go. The stairs circled the pillar so tightly that I couldn’t see more than six or seven steps below me. I also couldn’t hear anything. Not a sound.
The one who calls himself a prince has already found her.
The fairy had said it like it had just happened. And she hadn’t said he’d kissed her. What if he hadn’t? What if Rosalin hadn’t woken?
If she hadn’t, nobody had. That was how the curse worked.
What if it was so silent because I was the only person in the castle who was awake?
A shiver ran up my legs, and suddenly they were too rubbery to hold me up. I stopped walking and leaned against the outer wall. The stone was cold and rough, and a jagged bit of rock dug between my shoulder blades.
I pushed down my rising terror. Don’t panic, I told myself. It won’t help.
We can deal with this. That was what my father, the king, used to say every time the curse came up. We can stop it.
I had never really believed him. I don’t think he even believed himself.
One last breath, and I pushed away from the wall and kept going down the stairs, around and around. I started feeling dizzy, and the muscles in my legs burned, but oddly, I had no trouble going forward. It was like my body was trying to tell me I was tired, but I wasn’t actually tired.
My head was spinning when I finally reached the bottom. The stairway ended at a door, thick and solid and very, very shut.
And locked? Was I locked into this tower, with the spinning wheel and the fairy godmother?
Don’t panic. I put both hands on the door and pushed with all my might. It swung open so hard it slammed into the wall behind it, then rebounded with so much force that I had to use both hands to catch it.
Okay, then. Not locked.
Once the echoes of the slam faded, everything went back to being silent. The hallway stretching in front of me was empty.
Nobody was coming to check on that bang? The castle was crawling
