Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

"Thank you!" he called, as they turned and padded back into the forest. "I will not forget your kindness!"

The bird flew to him, followed by Luna, as the bear and wolf vanished into the undergrowth. The twitching bone fragments attempted to roll away from Luna as she paced near them. Most of them succeeded.

As one, they all looked toward the tangle of black, bare thornvines, most of which had thorns as long as Siegfried's arm. The windowless stone tower rose above the thicket, grim and gray. There was a terribly long distance from where the thorns began to that tower.

"Let me get my breath," wheezed Leopold.

* * *

"This is very, very dangerous," said Jimson.

"I know that," Lily replied tensely. "I'm just glad that all four mirrors survived. We can lose two, and this can still work."

"I'm not trying to dissuade you — "Jimson swallowed. "All right, I am trying to dissuade you. I wish you wouldn't do this."

"And you know very well I have to."

He sighed. "Alas, yes. I do."

"All right, then." She concentrated on the image within a tiny crystal ball. It was all she had the power to spare for. It showed the four identical mirrors lying together on the ground outside Desmond's stronghold. Now she deeply regretted that she had taken her travel-mirror away when she had made off with the sleeping Rosa, for if she had just left it there, she wouldn't have to do this now.

"This" was a calculated adaptation of the sort of spell used to join two objects, except that this adaptation was not meant to join them, but to merge them, and do so seamlessly. The sort of mirrors that you could pack on a horse's back, even though she had enchanted them to allow her to pass through them, were not big enough for her to travel through. Two of them together would be big enough for her Brownies to attempt to bring a bigger mirror through. Attempt, because no one ever had successfully done so to her knowledge; she had the feeling that the problem was that it was like trying to transport a horse on the back of a horse. She didn't want to try that unless she had to.

Three of them might be big enough for her to squeeze through.

Four would be perfect. Although doing so was going to require some flexibility on her part....

Concentrate, Lily!

She wove delicate strands of magic through her spell, inching the first two mirrors together bit by bit. The frames touched. The frames butted against each other so tightly you could not have gotten a silk thread between them. With little stroking motions, she suggested to the frames that they should be one.

Reluctantly, the frames obeyed her.

With further motions of her fingers, she suggested to the frame bar in the middle that it should move to either side and allow the glass to merge. The bar didn't care for that, but eventually — it flowed, sulkily, off to either side. Both sides thickened. She tickled the mirror that had been beneath it.

The mirrors were not as reluctant as the frames. They rippled a little, then merged.

She let out the breath she had been holding. "That's one and two," said Jimson.

"I'm going to do three and four first," she said aloud. "It occurs to me the symmetry will be better."

"I — " Jimson began, then stopped himself. "No, you are the magician. I am not. Just be sure you are ready. We won't get another chance."

She refrained from telling him that she knew that, and bent her concentration on the second pair of mirrors.

The four companions stared at the wall of thorns. "We aren't getting anywhere trying to stare a hole into it," Siegfried said finally. With a stiffening of his back, he walked toward it, sword at the ready, prepared to start chopping his way through.

But the hair on back of his neck rose when, as he neared it — the vines started to move. They uncoiled like sleepy snakes just aroused, then they reached for him. Slowly at first, then —

With a yelp, he leapt back just in time, as a vine with one of those evil thorns on it whipped through the space where he had been, and buried the thorn all the way into the dirt where he had been standing. He looked at the huge tangle of the things — hundreds of vines, thousands of thorns — he tried to imagine himself chopping through them and fending them off at the same time.

It wasn't possible.

He had to try.

"No" said Luna sharply. They all jumped, and turned to stare at her. She took a deep breath and dipped her horn. "No. It is our turn, I fink. Yes, bird?"

"Definitely,"trilled the firebird. "Why else would the Godmother have transformed me?"

"Then fowwow," Luna replied with immense dignity, and walked forward, her horn leading, as if she was planning on battering her way through the tangle.

The vines seethed and writhed, as if they weren't quite sure what to do about her. As she reached the edge of the tangle, several of them reared back to strike — but then reversed themselves, and buried themselves in the mass of their fellows. It was clear that they didn't want to get anywhere near Luna, her horn, or both.

She stepped right into the edge, confronting the thicket with her presence, and they withdrew from her in what looked like a panic, leaving her standing in a hollowed-out alcove of thorns. Luna moved in deeper, her horn glowing faintly in the gloom, then deeper still. The thorns slowly began to move to close in behind her.

That was when the bird moved in.

With a trumpetlike call, she dived after Luna, and when she got just inside the wall of thorns, she hovered and burst into flames, a fire so intense that Siegfried winced and looked away for a moment. That was when the vines screamed. They sounded like mice screaming, a thin, high-pitched keen.

The firebird continued to hover, and burned brighter. The vines turned themselves into knots in an effort to escape the fires. In vain. They caught and burned with a sullen green flame and an ugly green-black smoke that gave off a stench like burning carrion. When the vines around the firebird were truly dead, she hovered forward a little, deeper into the wall of thorns, following Luna.

Luna keeps them away, and the firebird can kill them without getting hurt!Siegfried was astonished. It was brilliant! The firebird moved deeper still, into the wall of thorns, leaving behind her a charred tunnel. Soon she was nothing but a ball of fire at the end of the long, blackened expanse.

Then — suddenly, the fires vanished.

"Siegfried!" cried Leopold, but Siegfried was already racing for the thorns, his heart sinking. But it rose again when Luna emerged from the tunnel of char, head hanging, the firebird clinging exhausted to her mane. She was sweating as badly as the horses had at the end of their run, and it was clear that she and the bird were at the absolute end of their strength.

"Luna! You are brilliant!" Siegfried cried, throwing his arms around Luna's neck. With a sigh, she rested her chin on his shoulder. He could feel every muscle in her body trembling with exhaustion.

"We know,"sang the bird. "It took both of us — Luna to make the tunnel, me to burn it in. The thorns can't cross the threshold of their own purified dead."

Luna pulled her chin off Siegfried's shoulder and tapped him with her horn. "Now go," she said. "Wescue your Pwincess. We'll fowwow when we can."

Siegfried kissed her nose, then turned and ran into the tunnel of dead, crackling thorns, Leopold beside him. And the sudden thought that he was off to rescue a Princess by crossing what had been a ring of fire gave him a sudden burst of hope that the Tradition might once more be moving in his favor. And just as he thought of this, he looked up at the sound of flames. There was still fire up there in the thorny canopy, fire that winked out just as he crossed beneath it. Just as the magical ring of fire around his Aunt would have. Hoy-yo toho!