The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 22
I couldn’t believe I was inside the castle I had seen from the outside, knowing it was the size of Barbie’s playhouse.
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.
I couldn’t believe I was inside the castle I had seen from the outside, knowing it was the size of Barbie’s playhouse. There was intricately detailed pink tile which rose into a point at the top of the room. Across the floor laid a long shag carpet of deep blue, almost black, and inlaid with a large, golden crest like those from the kings I learned about in European history class. These ones featured a pair of fairy wings in the middle of them, obviously denoting the royal house of the fairy queen.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked Muirgen as we crossed the room.
“I suppose so,” she replied. “Though you should keep your questions to yourself until you entreat with the queen.”
“I don’t think she would be able to answer this, or maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate to ask her.”
“Go ahead then,” Muirgen said.
“How are you not scared all the time that everything is bigger than you?”
Muirgen let out a titter. “Well, we don’t know any other way. Besides, while we are small, we are also mighty.”
“Oh, of course. I would never think otherwise. However, the world is so scary for me, and I am much bigger than you. When I saw Chelle’s foot, for instance, I knew she wouldn’t hurt me, but I couldn’t help but be frightened that I would get stepped on.”
“Nobody would dare step on a pixie. If they did, they would face dire consequences.”
We were silent, approaching the large, golden throne decorated with golden dragons. It loomed over us, raised high by a set of stairs.
On the throne sat a purple pixie wearing a golden headdress half as long as her whole body. Under her eyes were layers of golden paint, and her robe was woven of the same gold.
“Great Aine,” Muirgen said, kneeling, “I bring you one who wishes an audience with you. She is—” Muirgen looked at me. “Kneel.”
“Right,” I said, dipping my knee to the ground and bowing my head. “My apologies, your majesty.”
Muirgen nodded slightly at me, before retreating backwards to allow the queen to address me directly.
“Who are you?” Queen Aine asked, disdain dripping from her every syllable. “And by what right do you enter my kingdom?”
“I am Rose Blair, my queen. I did not mean to enter your forest. I am only looking for a way to the Obsidian Spindle and was told this was the quickest route.”
The queen let out a great harrumph. “Yes, you and everyone else on the gods-forsaken continent. What makes you think you are worthy to speak to the Fates?”
My stomach sank to the floor. “I do not think I am worthy. I didn’t know…worthiness had anything to do with it.”
“Of course it does. The Fates do not grant the requests of anyone they encounter. If that were the case, then every inhabitant of Urgu could return to Earth.”
“Is that what you want, your majesty? To return to Earth?”
“It is what we all want!” she thundered. “Urgu is but a waystation between life and death. It is never-ending nothingness, the same doldrum day after day.”
“But…you are a queen,” I said meekly once she was finished. I was trying to remain respectful, while also pointing out maybe she was being negative. “You must have more than just doldrum to entertain you.”
“Fleeting,” the queen said, her tone begrudging. “After 1,100 years, even being queen grows tiresome.”
I looked up, careful not to meet her eyes. “That is a long time, your majesty.”
“Yes. And it’s a mere speck of time against all of the eternity I will spend here. But we’re not talking about me. I ask you again, what makes you worthy to speak to the Fates?”
My cheeks were hot. “I don’t know that I am, but I have to try.”
A slight smile flickered across the queen’s face. “That is the best answer I’ve heard yet. Perhaps you will be able to entreat with them after all.” She stared at me for a long moment. “Their door has been sealed shut since the time of Hypnos, but perhaps…just perhaps, you could be the key.”
“The key?” I asked.
The queen stood, her headdress rattling. “The key to opening the door. After all, you are the first dreamer to enter Urgu in a hundred years. There is something special about that, isn’t there?”
“I don’t feel special.”
The queen stepped down toward me, and then kicked off the ground to hover into the air with her shimmering wings. “I will help you, but first I need a favor.”
“What could I have to offer you?”
The queen fluttered nose to nose with me. “Let us examine you, run some tests on your mind and body. For that, I will guide you to the Obsidian Spindle myself.”
“What—what kind of tests?”
A voice boomed from the other side of the castle. “The kind you won’t wake up from.”
I whipped my neck around to see a woman dressed in a red cape, her lips the same red, brandishing two daggers in her hands.
“The Red Rider!” the queen shrieked. “Get her!”
Muirgen pushed up from the ground and joined four other guards who had materialized from nowhere to chase after the Red Rider. She was faster than all of them. One guard, dressed in blue velvet, charged with his lance, and she disarmed him with the flick of her daggers. She threw him into a red-faced pixie, sending them both to the ground.
Another pixie charged from behind, but the Red Rider dodged his attack, backflipping over him then sticking her daggers into his back. The pixie exploded in a hail of glitter. Muirgen was the only one left to fight the Red Rider.
“No!” the queen said. She leaned toward me and muttered, “Watch this. Muirgen is my best fighter.”
Muirgen circled the Red Rider for a moment, and then swung her silver sword. The woman dodged the blow and kicked the sword out of Muirgen’s hand. It flew across the air and landed inches from where I knelt.
The queen saw an opportunity and grabbed the sword, pointing it at my neck. “ENOUGH!”
“What are you—” I said, but the queen pressed the sword harder against my neck.
“You come for the girl, I presume?”
“There is no reason to parlay with you otherwise,” the woman said. “The Unseelie are not worth the air they breathe.”
“Unseelie?” I said. I pulled at the queen’s hands, trying to get the blade away from my skin. “But I thought you were Seelie?”
“We lie!” Muirgen said, inching toward the queen. “That’s what we do.”
“The Unseelie are unseemly creatures,” the Red Rider said. “They look beautiful and kind, but they are truly the most wicked creatures in all of Urgu.”
“That depends on your definition of wicked, don’t you think?” the queen said.
The Red Rider stomped closer to the throne. “When you are in concert with the Wicked Witch, wicked is part of the job description.”
“She is not as wicked as you claim. That was the name given to her by Ozma, bas—”
“Rightful heir to the six provinces of Urgu!”
“Says you!” Muirgen shouted. “Her claim to the throne vanished when Hypnos disappeared, and the line of succession was cut.”
“Enough of this,” the queen said. “Put down your weapons or I will kill the girl.”
“Kill me?” I squeaked.
“You wouldn’t,” the Red Rider screamed. “You need her.”
“No,” she said. “There will always be another. In fact, here comes one now. My soldiers have just finished dispatching her.”
With that, the door opened, and Chelle was dragged through the door, unconscious, flanked by pixie guards.
“This one smells of Earth, too, and we really only need one for our tests,” the queen said with a smirk. “You can’t save them both, and yourself at the same time.”
The Red Rider held her hands in the air, and then dropped her daggers to the ground. “Fine. You win.”
Queen Aine chuckled. “I always do.”
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.