Dream Trysts: A Sleeping Beauty Story (Passion-Filled FairyTales Book 4) (13 page)

James’ eyes widened, the fear that Dwennon had wished to bestow upon the young man quite present now. “Which powers did she take?”

“I don’t know,” Dwennon said. “But Eldred assures me she has been there, and she has taken powers she feels will be of use.”

James swallowed and was silent for a while. Soon he took a deep breath and looked Dwennon in the eye. “Do you think you can combat her powers?”

“Not as effectively as I’d like,” he said.

James nodded. “If she wants to stop me,” he said softly, “then she’ll likely do it as we get closer to the castle. On the morning of the third day, I’ll send Bayard back. The three of us will face her together.”

Dwennon nodded. One less person to protect. “There is one more thing you should do,” Dwennon said.

“What?”

“If Rose comes to you in dreams again, be with her,” he said. “Even in dream sleep, her power strengthens you, and you will need every ounce of strength you can get in facing Maurelle.”

Blissa and Rose had spent the day practicing. Rose felt she was doing well controlling the wind, but part of her wondered if it was only in her mind.

Yes, she knew that she was in dream sleep, so all of her practice, all of her feats were only in her mind. But would that be enough? When she awakened, would she have the skill? More importantly, would she be able to use the skill while she was still sleeping? Would she be able to aid at all in the process of helping James awaken her? Could she send a leaf on a breeze to guide James to her location? Or use the wind to ward off attackers?

“Mother,” she said to Blissa, who was sunning herself on a blanket, seemingly trying to enjoy this pleasant day.

“Yes, Rose?”

“Do you really think my powers can work to move things beyond the dream realm?”

Blissa sat up, and nodded. She tucked a stray red curl behind her ear and looked her daughter in the eye. “Yes, I do,” she said. “It already has. Hilly has seen it. I think, however, that you need to concentrate on having it work on the outside. I suspect your powers have been present for a while, but Hilly only stumbled upon them because you were dreaming of something in the outside, which projected your powers there. Do you remember any such dreams?”

Rose bit her lip and closed her eyes, trying to sort through her memories. For whatever reason, this enchanted dream sleep allowed Rose access to much more of her life than she could usually remember while with James. She thought back to her dreams. In recent months, they almost exclusively involved James. She could think of no others. She shook her head. “No, Mother.”

Blissa sighed, looking a bit down, but then smiled. “No matter dear. I think you’ll figure out a way to use them, regardless. Powers don’t bestow themselves upon fairies who are incapable of using them.”

Rose quirked an eyebrow. “Whatever do you mean, Mother?”

She turned to Rose, a look of surprise flitting across her face, as she raised her hand to her chest. “Oh my, I’ve never told you,” she said. “Well, all fairies hear the stories as children and since I’d given my powers back to the Sacred Pool, I thought you’d receive none, so I never bothered with the stories. It seemed almost cruel to tell of these things you wouldn’t experience. But you are experiencing them, so I suppose I should explain.”

Blissa crossed her legs and looked to the sky briefly before beginning. “There has always been magic,” she said, her voice soft and ominous. “From the beginning of time, before there were fairies, before there was man, before there were animals and trees and light, there was magic. It is this magic that sprouted all that we have come to know and love about our earth. The fairies were created by the magic to help take care of the earth, and each fairy at birth was bestowed a type of magic to help her care for all the things. There are fairies who care for the waters, and those who care for the trees, the animals, even fairies to care for people. The powers fairies receive are bestowed by the Sacred Pool, a place of magic similar to the magic that created all. When a fairy is born, she receives magic from the Sacred Pool. When she dies, her magic returns to the Sacred Pool, and it can be bestowed upon another fairy. What is important for you to know is that the Sacred Pool knows how best to distribute fairy magic. It will only bestow magic upon a fairy who is capable of using it.”

“But how does it know?”

Blissa raised her shoulders in a half shrug. “We are but fairies, dear. We cannot presume to know how it knows. All we know is that from generation to generation, we have told the story of the Sacred Pool and that it always seems to know who is capable of using magic well.”

Rose looked around at the beautiful landscape of her dream. “What about Maurelle? This is not magic used well.”

Blissa shook her head, and eyed her daughter sharply. “It knows who is
capable
of using magic well. That does not mean the person will use it well. I thought Maurelle wouldn’t do this, but I was wrong. Still, she didn’t abandon you to a permanent sleep. She left an out for you for a reason, I think. At the time she cast her magic curse on you, a part of her regretted it. A part of her wanted it to be alright. A part of her wanted for you what she wanted for herself: an instant solution, something that would make everything bad go away. A kiss from your true love would cure all your ills. Though, I don’t think in her heart of heart of hearts she believes that there are instant solutions. She’s never figured out how to let go of her anger, and she didn’t surmise that you would be able to find such a solution.”

“And now?” Rose asked. “Do you still think that somewhere deep inside she wants me to awaken?”

Blissa looked down at the grass, her fingers gliding over a few springy tendrils. Finally, she looked up at her daughter. “No,” she said. “I believe Maurelle has become consumed with anger and vengeance and is lost to us. She will try to stop your awakening. Which is why I should leave.”

Rose’s eyes widened and she reached out for her mother. “What do you mean? You came here to help me. You can’t leave.”

Blissa took her daughter’s hand and spoke softly. “I need to leave for several reasons, dear. The first is one you’ll like.”

Rose rolled her eyes, unable to imagine her liking her mother leaving for any reason.

“You need to pull James into your dreams again and you need to be intimate.”

Rose’s pulled back, the idea instantly repulsive. She shook her head. “Mother, no. I almost killed him.”

“But I don’t think you did, which makes me believe that your intimacy strengthens him. Even in the dream sleep, it strengthens his physical body. And he will need strength if he is to fight Maurelle.”

Rose still shook her head. “Mother you didn’t see him. You didn’t see how awful he looked.”

“Rose, if you two focus on the single activity and you send him back, he will be fine. You can’t let him get caught in the dream sleep. You can’t let him linger. But if you are with him, and you send him back, know you will send him back stronger. Perhaps strong enough to evade Maurelle and awaken you.”

Rose wasn’t entirely sure she felt convinced by her mother’s words, but she didn’t want to argue the point either. “And the other reasons you need to leave?”

“I want to see if I can find out what is going on. I want to try to contact Hilly. She put me in this dream sleep, so I have a decent chance of speaking with her. But I need to climb higher.”

Rose was confused. “What do you mean, higher?”

Blissa looked around at the landscape. “Everything you see is part of your dream conscious. You are deep, deep inside of sleep.  Think of sleep as a big bowl. On the bottom of the bowl is the deepest sleep one can achieve. That is where you are, where we both are. But if we could climb slightly higher, toward the top of the bowl, we’d be in a lighter layer of sleep. From there, it would be easier for me to contact Hilly. I might be able to speak to her the way you and I used to when you were smaller.”

Rose sort of understood. “But why can’t you reach her from here?”

“The sleep is too deep,” her mother said. “You must be extremely powerful to reach so far. That’s why it was surprising to me that you were able to pull James in. Though it’s possible you were still in a higher layer when you pulled him into the dream with you, especially since it happened shortly after you fell into the enchanted sleep. We don’t go immediately into an enchanted sleep. It takes a bit for us to sink through the layers of dream sleep.”

“So how do you climb?”

Blissa pursed her lips and looked around, as if seeking inspiration. Finally, she said, “It’s hard to describe, but you have to think of yourself as getting lighter, as moving up through the layers of dreams. Imagine yourself a bird or a kite, soaring higher and higher. Eventually, it should take you as high as you’re able to go.”

“And how high is that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “For me, I might even awaken. I agreed to this dream sleep so that I could find you. In my regular sleep, you eluded me because you were too deep. But the enchanted sleep sent me deeper. My hope is that I can climb higher, high enough that I can encounter Hilly in her own dream sleep. Though, I could possibly even climb high enough to wake up, since Hilly’s sleep is not a curse. It was a gift she gave me to help me.”

But mine is a curse
, Rose thought. “Do you think I can climb higher?”

Blissa thought for a moment. “Your powers are strong, dear,” she said. “I don’t know. Perhaps. You’d definitely not be able to climb high enough to waken. But high enough to reach James. High enough to pull him in with you and send him out safely.”

Rose nodded. They were back to James again. “And you really think he needs the strength he derives from me?”

“Did I ever tell you why Maurelle hates your father? Why she cursed you?”

Rose shook her head. “Not entirely. You said she was angry at you for marrying a human.”

“Not just any human, Rose,” she said. “The son of the man who murdered her mother.”

Rose narrowed her eyes and breathed in, the shock of it settling in. “My grandfather? Father’s father murdered her mother?”

“Yes,” Blissa admitted. “My father, King Roldan, had a sister, Radella. Her husband, a kind fairy named Albaforth, died young, and she raised her daughter happily for many years. But one day while in the forest, she met a young human king, Errol. He, too, had lost his wife. She fell in love with him. She laid with him. She thought he loved her back. Only, he didn’t. He was simply using her to gain strength. Radella was responsible for the nymph fairies. He convinced Radella to send her nymph fairies to lie with his men so they could gain strength in battles. She had no idea that his biggest battle would be with my father, for control of the fairy realm.”

“But how?” Rose asked. “Human men have no magic.”

“No, they don’t, but if they have super strength and can defeat the king, they can get access to the Sacred Pool. They can try to draw powers from it.”

Now Rose was utterly confused. “I thought the Sacred Pool only gave power to those it thought worthy of using them.”

“Not worthy, dear. Capable. And what better way to show capability than to overthrow the fairy king?”

Rose shook her head. “But that still makes no sense. Why offer powers to the wicked?”

Blissa gave her daughter an understanding look. “The Sacred Pool tries to even the slate, to make the world equal. It tries to balance the magic in the world, ensuring there are not too many wood fairies when we need more animal fairies. In this way, it understands that there must be balance. It understands that there will be evil as well as good. That is why it would have given Errol the powers if he had killed my father. He would have laid claim to the Kingdom and the ruler of the realm may command the Sacred Pool to offer it additional powers. Most don’t, but if our nation is in peril, the Sacred Pool is a source of additional power. If the Sacred Pool gives out powers that will be used for ill, it also will give powers, strong powers, to someone capable of doing great good. If Errol had succeeded, the Sacred Pool also would have empowered someone able to stop Errol’s evil. The Sacred Pool offers balance that way. It doesn’t meddle directly in the lives of the world, but does offer a counterforce to powers gone bad.”

“So it would have distributed powers to a fairy that could overcome Errol?”

“Presumably,” she said. “Though, since Errol was a human, it is possible it would have given powers to a human to correct the balance of power.”

Rose shivered involuntarily. “Is that possible? For humans to get fairy powers?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it’s rare. I’ve only heard of it happening in old folk tales.”

Rose nodded.

“I’ve gotten off track. I haven’t fully explained what happened with my aunt. When she realized what Errol had planned, she begged him to stop. And when he wouldn’t, she tricked him. She slit her own throat.”

Rose gasped. “What?”

“She killed herself in front of him, and he had heard that drinking fairy blood gave men the same strength they received from intimacy. So he and his men sliced her open and feasted on her blood and then they stormed my father’s castle, with great success, until they reached the throne room. They got in and battled, but their strength faded quickly and my father and his brethren slaughtered them all. While it was true that drinking fairy blood can make mortals strong, what the men didn’t know was that fairy blood taken without the fairy’s consent fades quickly. And when it fades, it leaves the taker weaker than when they started.”

Rose sat in contemplative silence for a while, then looked at her mother, whose face wore a certain melancholy of which she’d never seen before.  “So, Maurelle hates Edmund because his father killed her mother?”

Blissa shook her head. “She hates him because she is still angry that her mother is gone. She hates him because he is a man, and she believes all men to be as evil as the one who murdered her mother. And yes, because it was his father who murdered her mother, she holds a great antipathy toward Edmund.”

“But you don’t?” Rose asked her mother.

“Do you believe your father blames me because my father killed his?”

Rose shook her head. Though she’d never really considered it before.

“And I no more blame Edmund for his father’s attack of my father and the kingdom. When we met, we did not know each other’s history, and we fell in love knowing only of each other’s kindness and grace. That is how it should be. When we did learn of it, we chose to leave the past where it was. Maurelle hasn’t been able to do that.”