And then she dreamed.
Rose Red steps down the ladder like a spider descending its thread, then glides from the cottage on a breath of wind. No one, not even Beana, notices her passing, for she is dreaming and invisible. She glides into the wood and climbs the mountain, higher and higher, to where the rocks are dagger sharp. But they cannot hurt her, for she has no substance.
She approaches the cave at last.
In the odd, moonless light of dreams, it looks more like a wolf’s head than ever. But Rose Red enters without fear or hesitation, and now she sees as well in that close darkness as she does in broad daylight. The cave leads downward, and soon she comes to a subterranean stream. The water flows silently, not even a trickle disturbing the quiet. It pools in a hollow before continuing its long journey through the mountains. The water in this pool swirls and steams.
She approaches. Till this moment, she has felt neither hot nor cold in this dreamland, but the steam rising from the pool is scalding. Nevertheless, she kneels at its edge, removes her veil, and looks into the turning water.
A face not her own looks back at her.
“Princess,” speaks a voice as smooth as the night sky, “you come again to visit me.”
“Silly,” says she. “I always come.”
“And always it is such a pleasure to me. How fares your lonely life?”
She shakes her head and shrugs. “Right enough. Nothin’ much different.”
But he gazes at her from his pool and sees many things in her face. “What secret are you keeping from me?”
She licks her lips and shrugs again.
“I see that you are hiding something. Tell me, my princess. Why should we have secrets from each other?”
“You knows that you hadn’t ought to call me ‘princess,’ don’t you?” she says.
“That is what you are,” speaks the one in the pool.
“That’s a silly game from when I was a bit of a girl! I’m grown up now; I’m nearly ten! I don’t need to play games no more. No pretend.”
The one in the pool looks upon her with narrowing eyes. Then he says, “You will always be a princess to me.”
“Hogwash,” she snaps. “Beana wouldn’t approve of such things, not even in dreams, if she was to know.”
“Beana doesn’t need to know.”
“I don’t keep secrets from Beana. I even told her about the boy.”
“What boy?”
Rose Red gets to her feet and backs away from the pool, not wanting to look in his face anymore. The steam rises like thin hands beckoning her back, but she crosses her arms and turns away, moving all the way to the cave’s entrance. Standing in this spot, she looks out on the vast spread of the kingdom below her, its detail impossible outside her dreams. She sees the twelve baronies separated by deep gorges. She sees all the shining white bridges—built by Faerie hands, the legends say—that span the gorges so that no one ever need enter the dark woods that grow below. She sees the beautiful houses of the barons, more beautiful even than Hill House, which, in her mind, is very fine.
But her gaze lingers longest on the Eldest’s House, with its tall minarets and gleaming gates, and its gardens and parks extending over more than thirty acres. How she longs to see that place up close, especially to see the magnificent garden of roses about which the man she calls father has told her so much.
Yet even in her dreams Rose Red dares not travel down from the mountain. She has promised Beana that she won’t. Besides, the Eldest’s House is no place for the likes of her.
“What boy?”
She shivers at the voice, the only sound besides her own voice that she can hear. Even the wind touching her bare face is silent.
“Just a boy.”
“A friend?”
“I think so.”
The voice says nothing for some time. Then it says in a whisper that could carry across miles, “You will forget me.”
“No!” Rose Red cries. She marches back to the pool, her hands on her hips as she glares down at the face in the water. “That ain’t fair, and you shouldn’t say such things! I ain’t goin’ to forget you. But remember, you’re just a dream. Cain’t I have any real friends?”
“I am your only friend.”
She shakes a finger at the pool. “I have Beana, and she’s the best friend I could ever have.” She opens her mouth to speak of her Imaginary Friend but finds she does not like to. Instead she finishes with, “And I have old Dad.”
“They are not the friends to you that I could be, princess. They do not know who you truly are.”
“Ah. And who am I, truly?”
He does not answer.