Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

The person taking the liberties was actually propelled over her head and off to the side by the force of the blow. As soon as his weight was gone, Rosa scrambled off the place where she had been lying. She tumbled from what turned out to be a stone slab and leapt to her feet, looking around herself for a weapon of any sort. She didn't see one, but she did see the Godmother, whose right eye was twitching, and who had both her hands over her mouth, her wand sticking out at a comical angle.

Rosa staggered over to her side, and turned toward her attacker, but it was obvious that he was in no shape to take any further liberties, and probably would not be for a good while. He was alternating between gasping and groaning and was curled up in a fetal position with both hands tucked between his legs. She felt a moment of intense satisfaction, seeing him like that. Served him right, taking liberties with a girl he thought couldn't defend herself.

Stifled laughter was leaking between Godmother Lily's fingers.

Surprisingly, Rosa felt a laugh bubbling up inside her, too, and she had to fight to suppress it. There was a heavy, sorrow-filled sigh to her right; she glanced over, and realized there was a fourth person in this forest clearing.

A very blond, very large man picked himself up out of the grass and flung himself at her feet, babbling at her. She tried to sort out what he wanted, but his accent was so thick she couldn't understand a word he was saying. For a moment, Rosa wondered if she had gone mad, and this was all some delusion or other. Or maybe Coward had hit her over the head and this was some sort of brainstorm. Why else would she be standing in the middle of the forest with the Kingdom's Fairy Godmother and two men she had never seen before, one of whom didn't seem to be able to speak reasonable Eltarian, the other of whom was a libertine?

But his words definitely had an effect on the Godmother. She stopped trying to stifle her laughter and sobered, but as the blond man tried to grasp her hand she stepped back and snapped,"Silence!" Rosa's eyes widened. Granted, she had not seen Godmother Lily all that often, but she didn't ever recall the Godmother using that commanding tone of voice before. Nor one so overflowing with irritation.

The blond shut up abruptly, his guileless blue eyes going very wide indeed, and Lily strode over to Rosa's victim. She made a perfunctory gesture with her wand, one that didn't produce any of the usual fairy dust; and the man stopped groaning and slowly began to sit up.

"I — " he began.

"Shut up," snapped Lily. "Here is an order. I do not, ever, want to hear a sentence from you beginning with 'I' again. You very nearly ruined everything. So did you," she added to the blond, who dropped his chin and looked up at them both with a hang-dog gaze. She contemplated them both; her expression softened just a little, looking at the blond. Rosa looked from one to the other of the men. On the one hand, she wanted to feel sorry for the blond, and he hadn't yet done anything to her, but on the other, that was all she knew about him. For all she knew, he and the other man were confederates. She supposed that there might be a good explanation for why the dark-haired man had been doing what he had. She couldn't think of one — all right, granted, she had been asleep, and the Beauty Asleep was supposed to be awakened with a kiss, but it wasn't supposed to be that sort of kiss. "Both of you, get up," the Godmother ordered, looking frighteningly stern. "Stupid, interfering — I don't know why you're here. I don't know where you came from, but since you managed to insert yourself into this situation, you are coming along with us. I strongly suggest that if you do not care for this option, you pick yourselves up, start running and hope I don't feel like lobbing any curses at you. You might,might, be useful. But I am going to use you for target practice if you foul things up again. They are bad enough as it is."

Rosa almost gaped with astonishment. She had never, ever heard the Godmother talk like this! Did Godmothers ever actually curse anyone? Was that allowed? Why was she so angry with them? If The Tradition had brought them here, surely that wasn't their fault... was it?

Evidently neither man was intimidated enough to turn around and run. Either that, or for whatever reason, they had both decided that sticking with Rosa and the Godmother was very important. That probably meant that either The Tradition was beating heavily on their doors, or they saw an opportunity.

As soon as the blond was standing, a small, brown bird landed on his shoulder and twittered at him. The man listened for a moment, then spoke in a voice still heavy with an accent Rosa didn't recognize, but at least she could understand him this time. "Aye, I agree. Maybe we had just better go find a kindly little shepherdess."

She blinked. Had he been talking to the bird? And why would he need a shepherdess?

Lily fixed the big blond man with a glare that made him wilt. It was rather funny, actually, to see such a big man almost cringing in the face of the wrath of such a small woman. "Follow me," she barked. "And don't dawdle." That didn't make much more sense to Rosa than the man talking to the bird. A moment ago, Lily had told them to run...

Well they hadn't run, so perhaps Lily thought she was stuck with them.

The Godmother stalked off into the trees, her lace-edged skirts swishing with indignation, down a path that looked as if it had only recently been beaten into the grass. Rosa followed her closely, the men at a discreet distance. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that her gown was definitely the worse for her adventure, and that the "bath" she had had was a sketchy one at best. Fortunately it seemed that the aroma of the flowers, and not something a lot less pleasant, was what was lingering around her as they passed single-file through what was a very wild forest. The trees towered above them, fifty feet in the air, at least. It was gorgeous, actually, with golden beams of light slanting down through breaks in the foliage, lighting up the peaceful, green gloom. It was hard to believe that this was the same forest that had so terrified her in the storm.

At the end of the path was a huge wooden cart pulled by two glossy brown draft horses waiting in a primitive track, a couple of ruts in the grass that led through a kind of tunnel through the trees. The rear of the cart was full of very small men in earth-colored clothing. Rosa was extremely happy to see the cart, but she wondered just how the two strangers were going to take being told to ride in the bed with the tiny people. They didn't look like the sort who would take to that.

"I don't suppose either of you have horses?" Godmother Lily asked wearily, as she paused beside the cart with her hands on her hips. The two men shook their heads. She fixed them with glares again, as if she somehow suspected they had come without mounts on purpose to annoy her, then held out her hand to one of the men in the cart. "Mice, please," she said.

Mice? Rosa thought at first. Then she remembered. She grinned a little; if the men were not familiar with the Ella Cinders tales, they would have yet another surprise in store.

The little fellow reached under the seat, and brought out a little wooden cage with several mice in it. Rosa had thought that all mice were gray, but these seemed to also be black, brown, and some even had splotches of white. The Godmother started to reach in, when the mice squeaked and the blond spoke up.

"Excuse me, Lady Magician, but the brown one with one white foot says he would like to come out, and the fat black one says that he is up to my weight?" The man sounded very doubtful when he said this, and the Godmother looked at him, startled, then reached into the cage and let a brown and a black mouse climb up on their own into her hand. She put them on the ground, and waved her wand in a complicated pattern over the two mice. Little drifts of sparkles fell from the tip of her wand, like dust sparkling in a sunbeam. She swirled this stuff around and over them, and as she stepped back they began to grow and change.