She has no idea where she is, or which of the several old summer homes this might be, but at this hour an abandoned cottage seems far safer than the woods. When the sun has fully risen she’ll resume her search for the road.
Ivy winds along the doorframe, and Aurora wonders when the door was last opened. After tugging and shoving, dust flying into her face, the heavy door eventually budges inward with a groan.
Aurora glances over her shoulder into the whispering woods around her before entering the dark home. She leaves the door open a crack, hoping the faintest of outdoor light will penetrate the heavy blackness of the air within—and wishing she had just a small portion of Isbe’s bravery, her facility for moving about in the dark.
Think, she urges herself. Servants usually leave a lantern on a shelf just inside the door of every room. Her hands fumble along the inner walls until she trips and hears a clatter. A metal lantern. It must have been on the floor.
She bends down and feels for the handle. Thankfully, there is an old candle inside and a tinderbox attached. Hurriedly, with trembling hands, she shakes a bit of dried kindling into the lid and removes the flint, then rubs the flint against the firestone, watching the faintest of sparks fly off.
It takes several minutes before the kindling catches—a tiny, winking orange ember, which she gathers toward her mouth and blows on until it becomes a small flame. Quickly she uses the flame to light the candle before stomping it back out. It’s the first time she has lit a candle like this in all her life—normally, the servants keep fires burning in every room of the palace, for all but a very few hours of the night, and it’s far easier to light the lanterns using the already leaping hearth flames.
The dust in the air is thick—so thick she fears the air itself will somehow catch on fire. The house has clearly not been inhabited for many years, but feeling she has no better choice, she finds her way to the staircase and heads up, looking for something resembling a bedroom, where she can close the door and sleep the remaining hour or so until sunrise.
At the top of the stairs, she enters the nearest room, and can see dimly that it’s a children’s nursery. An old doll sits in the window, a clock—still ticking!—is perched on the mantel, and two small beds line opposite walls. There’s an open wardrobe, and inside it hang the forms of little girls’ dresses, glimmering as though woven not of fabric but of precious metal.
A whistle chimes, and Aurora nearly loses her breath before realizing the sound has come, oddly, from the clock. A tiny mechanical bird’s face is popping in and out. It whistles once more, and then the bird’s head retreats behind a little door below the six. She’s never seen anything like it before.
She turns and notices something luminous in the corner of the room. A large golden wheel with spokes, bigger than one you might find on a horse-drawn cart. It looks like a glowing sun, and it’s resting atop a low stand, also made of gold. Spilling from a small spool at its side is a long, shimmering thread.
Aurora moves closer to inspect it. To her surprise, even in the candlelight, it appears the thread itself is made from gold. She examines the strange instrument from which the thread flows. It must be some sort of elaborate spindle, she realizes. She’s never seen one, though she’s read about them in books. Her parents always told her that spindles were instruments of evil, bad luck to be warded off at all costs. Since it was only one of many of their superstitions, she hadn’t given it much thought before, but this particular contraption seems magical, mysterious, wonderful.
Enraptured by the spindle’s foreign beauty, she sets down the lantern and spins the great wheel with her hand, watching as it pulls the remainder of the golden thread onto the spool. The sun begins to break over the horizon just then, sending a splash of brilliance into the room, making the thread glow. She reaches out to grab the end of it, and her hand makes contact with the tip of the spindle. For the first time in her life, she feels a sharp pang. It’s a feeling, a sensation, coming from her skin. From touch. Which is impossible. And yet it’s real—she feels it, and it . . . stings, hurts, flares, thrums, sending a shock through her entire body, making her dizzy.
And then, just at the break of dawn on the very day of her sixteenth birthday, she finds she is sinking through the dazzling sunlight, the aura of gold, falling, fainting, descending into memory, into a chaos of colors.
Dreams.
Flame.
6
Belcoeur,
the Night Faerie
Threads of pink, silver, and pure light weave through her fingers as if of their own will. The soft click-clack of her loom is a love sound, warp mating with weft, over and under, over and under, until an image begins to emerge: low silver clouds mirrored in a pond, trees bending protectively as two little girls race through streaked sunlight. In the distance, a summer cottage, its windows dim. A scene she has created so often her body knows it as well as breathing.
“My Sweet Bee,” the queen of Sommeil says to her loom, “how tirelessly you work for me.” Her eyes graze over the instrument’s contours to its name, carved carefully by hand into the breast beam. Sweet Bee.
A thread catches, pulling her attention back to the tapestry. A memory pierces her heart. Someone is coming.
Her breath quickens. Belcoeur licks her finger and feeds another strand of silk through the eye of a needle. With careful precision, she hand stitches a new detail, seen only partially through one of the cottage windows: a table with a minuscule teacup on it, steam rising from its lip. Beside it, a bowl heaped with sugar. In case the visitor is thirsty.
Hours, days, and even the trees beyond the castle walls swirl by, rippling in mist. Belcoeur hangs her tapestry on the wall beside the others and steps back to take it in.
But something is not right. A coarse, coal-colored cord has braided its way into a corner, creating shadow. Before her eyes, the image on the tapestry morphs, the shadow creeps . . . and the door to the tiny knit cottage is thrown open.
PART
II
ALL TANGLED IN THORNS
7
Aurora
Aurora is on fire. The world is on fire. Her whole body is alive and tingly and in shock, yet she feels so strange, like she’s dying—no. Like she’s being born.
She’s lying on a hard wooden floor. She sits up, blinking, unsure how long she’s been asleep. It is now full morning, and sun pours through the window of the nursery room, warm and full. Outside, birds chirp haphazardly. Everything looks the same except for the spinning wheel, which has vanished. Could it have been stolen? But if the room was raided, wouldn’t she have awoken?
She feels an ache in her hand and holds it up, where she sees a tiny pinprick of blood. How can it hurt so much? How can it hurt at all?
How . . . ? she wonders.
Just as she’s wondering it, someone says the word aloud.