The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 13
The woodland creatures in the forest town tracked me warily as I walked down the sidewalk.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
The woodland creatures in the forest town tracked me warily as I walked down the sidewalk. The animals, ranging from squirrels and gophers to black bears and deer, scurried out of the way as I passed them. I heard them muttering to each other angrily.
“Excuse me?” I asked a kind-looking grizzly bear. She was wearing a bonnet and reading glasses as she hobbled in my direction, blissfully unaware of my presence. Lost in thought, she hadn’t registered me yet. When she did, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Human!” she shouted in a high pitched, shrill voice.
“Shut up!” a badger in a three-piece suit hissed. “Do you want to alert the Queen’s Guard?”
“What’s the Queen’s Guard?” I asked, inching toward the cowering bear.
“Why—what—how—” the badger stammered.
“It’s okay, Bernard,” the bear said, waving the badger off. “I will handle it.”
The badger walked away, shaking its head. “Going to kill us all, she will.”
The bear turned from the badger and gave me an incredulous look. “You truly are daft, yes?”
“I’m not daft. I’m just…new.”
The bear sighed. “You should come with me, before they see you. Who knows what will happen if you stay out in the light of day?”
She grabbed my hand with her massive paw and pulled me off the path, squeezing between two houses. I couldn’t have resisted following if I wanted to. The bear was excessively strong, and even if I struggled, it was clear that there would be no help from me from the other critters in town. I had no choice but to hope for the best.
The bear opened the front door of a little yellow house—much too small for her to enter comfortably—and threw me inside. A moment later she crouched down to enter and slammed the door behind her.
“A human. Here. Of all places,” the bear said, scuttling over to the stove and turning on a burner. She placed a kettle under the faucet and when it was full, she slid it onto the fire. “Tea?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “Maybe answers to a few questions, though.”
She wheeled around to face me, jabbing the air with a teacup. “Of course you want something. That’s all you humans want—something! All we want is to be left alone, but that’s too much to ask, isn’t it?”
I backed away slightly, taking a seat at one of the wooden chairs by the small, white table. “Who is we?”
“The Woodland Creature Society of Urgu. We have a binding agreement with the queen that no humans can enter the Dream Realm through our portal. I thought we were making progress. We hadn’t seen one of you in over a hundred years. But now—well, just look at you!”
“Dream Realm? Portal?”
The kettle steamed and the bear filled her teacup, then a second one for me. She crossed the small room and sat down. The wooden chair creaked under her weight, but it didn’t break. “Here.”
“I didn’t want any tea,” I told her.
“And I didn’t want to deal with you today, so it looks like we both get something we don’t want. Drink.”
I took a sip, and suddenly my whole body felt warm and tingly all over, as if I had just finished a long kiss with Chelle. “This is…wow, this is really good.”
“I know. I’m very good with a kettle.”
I placed the tea down and looked up at the bear. “I still don’t understand. What is the Dream Realm?”
The bear lifted her eyes to the ceiling, shaking her head. “And here I thought we could just enjoy a spot of tea before getting into it, but I suppose we’ll go at your schedule. You humans are all alike.” She set down her tea. “You are in the Dream Realm right now, obviously. There are many portals all around the Dream Realm, but yours led you here, to Critterton.”
“Yes,” I said, after taking another sip of tea and waiting for it to make its tingly way down to my belly. “That makes some sense, I suppose…well, not really. I think I’m getting it, but…why am I here?”
“Why are any of us here?” The bear waved a philosophical paw.
I nodded. “That’s a good question. Why are you here?”
“I am a unique case. I came because a child named Lucy dreamt me up several centuries ago and then died in her sleep. I will remain here until I am dusted.”
“So, is everything here a dream?”
The bear shook her head. “Don’t be silly. Most everything here is real. Urgu—sorry, that’s what we call the Dream Realm—is filled with people and monsters who died in their dreams.” She sighed. “I did not expect to give a history lesson today. I retired some time ago from the school, and you are quite a bit more annoying than my usual students.”
“I’m sorry. You must understand I’m very, very confused.”
“Quite, I would imagine. It’s not every day you fall into the Dream Realm. Though, I’m not sure I’m going to make you feel any better about it, honestly. I am, in the end, only a bear.”
“Please try…I’m sorry. I just realized I don’t know your name.”
The bear smiled. “It’s Ursa.”
I chuckled. “That’s the name of a bear on Earth, too.”
“I know. The child who dreamed me up wanted to befriend that bear, and so, she did, in her way.”
“Well, Ursa, please. Tell me anything about this place."
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Well, why do dreamers come here at all?”
Ursa leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. “Were you ever told, in your youth, that everybody is born with a spark of the divine?”
“Sure, something like that. But that’s just an old wives’ tale, something they taught us in church.”
“Not an old wives’ tale. Many things have been lost in translation between the history of the universe and the religions that try to make sense of it, but that part is true. Everyone is born with a spark of the divine.”
“I don’t believe you, Ursa, and I am prone to believing most things.”
“That’s too bad, because it’s the truth,” she said, leaning back and sipping her tea. “The gods placed a spark of themselves inside of you when they molded humanity out of the universal clay. However, while your minds are strong, they made your bodies brittle and weak so you could not rebel against them. You cannot contain their spark for long. As it builds inside of you, your body fights to keep it controlled, but if it builds too great, then you will simply die.”
“Curious.”
“The Dream Realm was the god’s solution to that problem. Every night, when you dream, your soul travels here into the belly of Urgu. The excess energy from that spark of the divine is deposited here, in the Dream Realm, and that spark powers everything in our world. Then, when you have deposited everything, you return and wake up.”
I set my teacup down. “That sounds farfetched, even for a talking bear.”
Ursa shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s also the truth. Everything, even that tea you’re drinking, is powered by the spark of a billion people built up over thousands of years.”
“Okay, then why am I not going back to Earth? Why am I still here?”
The bear’s eyes dropped to the ground and she was quiet for a moment. “You must be in a coma, or dead. When the soul has no body to return to after it deposits its spark, or cannot wake its body, it ends up here. There are makings of the imagination here in Urgu, like me, but most of its citizens are monsters, or humans like you, who either fell into a coma or died in their sleep.”
“If bodies can just end up here, why am I so special?”
Ursa shook her head. “You’re not special, dear. You’re a nuisance. We filed a grievance with the queen to prevent humans from coming through our portal to the Dream Realm, and it was honored until this very day. Honestly, humans believe they are special. You’re just another dead girl lost in Urgu. The problem is—”
I was quiet for a few moments, mulling all this over. Truth is, my thoughts were racing, and I could hardly breathe. “I…can’t be dead.”
“Did I say dead? I’m sorry. I might have misspoke. You might be dead, of course. You might not be. You’ll never know. The only ones to know for sure are the Fates at The Obsidian Spindle, they are the only ones who can send you home. It’s a long and treacherous road to meet them, but if you survive, they will grant you one wish.”
I stood up. “How do I get there?”
Ursa looked up at me, surprised. “Through the woods, but you don’t want to go there. The woods are—”
A crash from outside made the bear turn toward the window. The house next door was on fire. I looked up to see a scaly, two-headed dragon blowing fire down on the town.
“Dragons!” I shouted, backing away from the window. “There are dragons out there!”
“Oh no,” the bear shrieked, her eyes darting between the door and the window. Her hands shook uncontrollably, until her teacup fell out of her hand and smashed onto the ground. “The Queen’s Guard…” she uttered breathlessly. “They have come for you.”
“What do I do?” I said.
“Pray,” the bear said. “If they find you, you will become the property of the Wicked Witch, and subject to her experiments. She has been obsessed with dreamers since she came here, and now she hunts for you.”
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.