Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

The girl smiled wanly. She was certainly game, and resilient. "And if you had, something else would have happened. I've had a bad time, but it could have been much worse. It was Dwarves who found me. It could have been robbers, who wouldn't have thought me too ugly to touch."

Lily shuddered. "From this moment on, I pledge you, you will be entirely in my confidence. I'd also like you to wear this at all times." She pulled a bracelet out of her pocket and handed it to Rosa. Hanging from the fine silver chain was a piece of obsidian cuten cabochon. By Eltarian standards, this was a mere trinket, the sort of thing a milkmaid could own. The back of it had been polished to a mirror finish. Rose examined it curiously, then put it on. "As long as you wear that, I can find you."

Rosa nodded, and fingered it nervously. "So — what do I do?"

Lily took out the potion. "Drink this. That's all. The next time you see me, you'll be free, and we'll plan what we should do from there."

Rosa's hand shook, but she took the bottle, screwed up her face and drank it down. Before she even reacted to the pleasant taste, Lily cast the net of the sleeping spell on her, the strands of it sparkling a little in the sunlight. She caught the girl as Rosa started to topple over, and laid her gently on the grass.

Lily did not trust to the reflective properties of the little pendant; she left a fragment of broken mirror propped among the weeds of the garden, in a position to reflect Rosa's image. With that in place, she escaped the scene, returning to her larger mirror. She took Jimson's mirror out of the basket, and settled down to wait.

"You timed things well," Jimson remarked, as the Dwarf that Rosa called Coward shambled into the garden, rabbits dangling from one hand, then stopped and frowned.

"Wake up, lazy ugly!" the Dwarf shouted. "No time to sleep!"

When Rosa didn't respond, his face grew red with anger. He stormed toward her and kicked her. Lily winced as Rosa's body rolled over, head lolling. The Dwarf drew back his foot to kick her again, then realized that there was something very wrong. He bent over, felt her face and cursed.

Rabbits forgotten, he lumbered for the kitchen and the staircase down into the cellar and the secret mine. Sometime later, all seven of the Dwarves emerged from the kitchen, to Coward's babbling and gesturing. Bully cuffed him into silence, and went to examine Rosa himself. By this time, her body was getting cold. After assuring himself that she really was dead, Bully vented his spleen in a round of cursing, blaming Coward in part for the loss of their house-slave. Coward cringed away, as Bully stomped angrily around the garden, cursing the Dwarf, Rosa and anything else he could think of.

Finally he threw up his hands. "Got to get that thing out of here," he said with exasperation. "Spent all day digging, last thing I want to do is dig a hole. You, and you — " He pointed to Coward and Angry. "Haul it away, dump it in a ditch."

"Who'll make supper?" Deaf whined.

In answer, Bully spun him around and marched him into the kitchen, with the rest following.

"Are you marking their passage, Jimson?" Lily whispered, as Jimson switched the view from the fragment of glass to the pendant around Rosa's neck.

"Easily, Godmother. Best go bring your Brownies through. I doubt they'll bother carrying her too far." She could almost hear Jimson's lip curl with contempt. "I must say that I have seldom seen seven beings less inclined to do anything more than the barest minimum they need to get by."

"Nor have I." She stepped through her mirror to find six of her strongest lads waiting. Now, breaking the spell was going to require more dancing around what The Tradition was trying to do. The Tradition dictated that where Snowskin was laid out in state — and eventually awakened — should be technically within reach of where the Dwarves lived, so they could all go mourn her, periodically. Never mind that this lot was far more likely to give up their illegal mine and form a kitten-rescue society than go and mourn over the body of a virtual slave. The Tradition had to be satisfied. So Lily couldn't bring Rosa back to the safer environs of her own Palace for this; it all had to be done in the woods. Also, The Tradition dictated it be in a forest glade where beams of sunlight could illuminate her lovely form. This also somewhat limited where she could do her work.

Never mind. It was worth all the fuss and bother, since so far, all that fuss and bother had managed to keep Rosa alive.

Unfortunately, Siegfried's triumphant leave-taking from the village of the boar had been marred when he ran across the only thing he feared, lying in a meadow just outside of town.

His Doom. The sleep-charmed Warrior Maid in her ring of fire. He had fled in the opposite direction as if an entire clan of dragons were after him. It was a good thing he'd had the bird to guide him, or he would have gotten completely lost in this forest.

"You don't suppose I could find a Prince about to awaken a Beauty Asleep and trade girls with him, do you?" he asked her. If only it were that easy! "You know, get him to leave the Beauty alone and come wake up the Shieldmaiden for me? Or maybe...do you suppose I could just hunt around for a wandering prince, then when You Know Who turns up again, shove him across the fire?"

"That's a puzzler. No one's ever tried," she replied. Then — "Hark!"

The bird was always saying things like "Hark!" and "Lo!" and when it did, Siegfried generally found it advantageous to peer ahead up the trail...or as in this case, into the clearing they'd come upon. And at first he thought it was Doom-Woman again, because yes, there was the ring of magic fire, and the ring of flowers, and the stone slab. But before he turned to run, he took a closer look.

It wasn't a woman on the slab; it was a really beautiful maiden. She was blonde, but she wore a gown, not armor. She didn't look frail, but she also didn't look like the sort that would be inclined to don armor and go whack at things on a daily basis. And she was asleep. He could scarcely believe his eyes, or his luck.

"Get her, Siggy!" chirped the bird, and nothing loath, he was halfway across the clearing before he noticed the sorceress.

And the other man.

Now was the moment to do some real magic. The spell to nullify the slowing potion was actually a lot more like a religious ritual, since it involved a great many symbolic components. First, Rosa had to be on something like a bier, to symbolize death, which was in turn a symbol for slumber.

One Princess on a stone slab, courtesy of some extremely strong Brownies.

She had to be illuminated by rays of sunlight, which symbolized the first rays of sunlight at dawn and the spring sun that brought the earth to life.

One Princess, bathed in a beam of sunlight streaming down through the surrounding trees.

There was the ring of rose petals and violets around the slab, which was supposed to symbolize the quickening of the earth in spring.

There was the flower crown for Rosa, which was supposed to symbolize any one of a hundred Goddesses of Spring, who would emerge from their winter slumber.

To symbolize the slowing effects of the potion, ideally one would want something that hibernated. Snakes and frogs were the easiest. After some consideration, she used a serpent-shaped ring on her finger, and one on Rosa's. She would create a circle of fire around the slab, to invoke both the cleansing power of fire to burn the potion away and the awakening power of the sun's rays.

And lastly, sprinkled all over the rock were various cleansing herbs, and the grit used to polish metal, which symbolized the cleansing of Rosa's body of the potion. Just for good measure, symbolizing itself, Lily had added the actual antidote to the potion, which would counter it, if the person in question had been awake and able to swallow it when they tasted it...which would have taken about a week.