The Wide-Awake Princess Page 3

  Annie was crossing the Great Hall when she realized that over the unceasing sound of the wind chimes she could hear the faint tap of her soft-soled shoes hitting the herb-covered floor. It was a sound she had never heard before, at least not in the Great Hall. The Hall was the heart of the castle and normally bustling with activity at all hours of the day and night. The sounds of people talking, dogs barking, pages playing games, and, lately, the music of the minstrels had made it one of the liveliest places in the castle. She had never heard it so quiet before, and it made her stop and listen. The people were still there, of course, draped across the tables and sprawled on the floor where they’d landed when they collapsed. Some of them were even snoring, but the faint sound was lost in the huge room, and for the first time that day, Annie began to feel afraid.

  She walked more quickly now, still hoping that she might find someone awake. When she discovered her father sitting upright on the oversized chair in his private meeting room, she thought for a second that he might not have fallen prey to the curse, but as she approached she realized that he, too, was asleep and that the wide curving back of the chair was all that kept him from falling over like the nobles around him. Annie left him there, unable to help him any more than she could her mother or sister.

  She was walking through yet another corridor when she glanced out the window and an idea occurred to her. Retracing her steps, she entered the Great Hall and looked for one of the little dogs that some of the ladies of the court always kept with them. She found one at the feet of an old lady she’d never really liked. She hadn’t liked the dog, either, but he was small and easy to carry, so she picked him up, petting his head to calm him when he came partially awake.

  Stepping around the sleeping guards at the door, Annie crossed the courtyard and reached the drawbridge. It was still down, but with no one to guard it she wondered how long it would be before someone who had no right to be there wandered in. The little dog seemed perkier now that they were outside, and Annie began to think that her plan might really succeed. Maybe the curse worked only as long as its victims were inside the castle. Maybe she could bring them out and everyone would wake up.

  Thinking that the soft tinkling music she heard was part of the magic in the castle, Annie ignored it when she knelt to lay the little dog on the ground. “Ow!” she exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. Prickly rosebushes had started sprouting from the normally soft grass and she nearly stumbled over one that had sprung up behind her. Retreating to the road that led to the drawbridge, she set the dog near the edge of the moat. Although the dog had been alert enough to lick her hand just moments before, as soon as she was no longer touching him the little animal’s eyes shut and he went limp, making breathy sounds as if he had inhaled too much dust.

  “So much for that theory,” Annie muttered as she scooped up the little dog. Cradling him in her arms, she recrossed the drawbridge, returning to the courtyard within the castle walls as the climbing roses twined around the taut cables. She stopped once she was past the portcullis and looked back. The roses had already covered the drawbridge, but didn’t seem to be growing past the walls. Instead, they twisted and looped around themselves, reaching higher than her head and creating an impenetrable barrier armed with long, razor like thorns.

  Annie shuddered and hugged the little dog tighter, disliking the roses even though they weren’t a bad idea. Everyone in the castle was sound asleep and likely to stay that way for years, if she remembered the curse correctly, which meant that whoever had made the roses grow around the castle wall had probably done it to keep people out rather than in. Even so, a wall like this would protect her family and friends better than any guards. Unfortunately, it also meant that Annie was trapped, or would have been if she hadn’t known a secret or two about the castle.

  Annie had no intention of staying in the castle. If she did, she’d be long dead before anyone in her family woke up. There had to be something she could do to end the curse, but she’d have to leave the castle to find whatever it was. Her family should be fine where they were until she got back, which wouldn’t be long if she was lucky.

  Hurrying to the Great Hall, she paused before stepping inside. Although she was used to the faint music of the wind chimes and was able to block them out, there was something different, or at least she hadn’t noticed it before. Everyone was just as she had left them, and their breathing was just as deep and regular, but now it was more uniform. All the people seemed to be inhaling at the same time, and exhaling in unison. The noise was faint, but it almost sounded as if the castle was breathing. It frightened her enough that she tiptoed across the stone floor, positioned the dog beside his owner as quietly as she could, and tiptoed out again.

  Annie crept up the stairs, on edge now in a way she hadn’t been before. The sound of breathing wasn’t as obvious in the stairwell as it was in the Great Hall because there weren’t as many people there, but she could still hear it each time she stopped to move someone she had overlooked, or to glance behind her, which she did with increasing frequency. She had the strongest feeling that someone was watching her, yet as far as she knew, she was the only one awake in the entire castle.

  “Is anyone there?” she called out once, but the only response was silence.

  Queen Karolina’s eyes were moving behind their lids when Annie knelt beside her. “Mother,” she said, hesitating only a moment before placing her hand on the queen’s shoulder.

  “Mmm,” the queen murmured, frowning slightly.

  “Mother,” she said again, giving the queen’s shoulder a shake. “I have to talk to you.”

  “Whatizzit?” her mother mumbled, opening one eye a crack.

  “It’s the curse. Gwendolyn pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and now everyone’s asleep. There must be something I can do.”

  “There is,” said her mother. “Lemme go back to sleep.”

  “In a minute. I need you to help me remember exactly what the curse said. First that wicked fairy said that if Gwennie pricked her finger on a spinning wheel, she’d die. That’s right, isn’t it, Mother?”

  Annie gave her mother another shake when she didn’t answer. The queen, whose hair had begun to turn gray, muttered, “That’s right. The fairy Voracia.”

  “And then that fairy with the revolting name stood up and changed the curse.”

  “Sweetness N Light. Lives in the Garden of Happiness.”

  “That’s right! She changed the curse so that instead of dying, Gwennie would sleep for a hundred years.”

  “And wake when the love of her life kisses her on the lips,” said the queen. “She said he has to be a prince. Won’t work otherwise.”

  “I can’t do much about the hundred years, but I can find a prince,” Annie said. “Maybe he’ll be able to help me with the hundred years thing.”

  “Go get Digby. He can kiss her,” her mother replied.

  Annie frowned. “I will if I have to, but that man is such a twit.”

  “Maybe so,” the queen murmured as her daughter took her hand away. And once again the only sound was breathing.

  Annie got to her feet and looked around the room. The ladies would have to stay where they were; she wasn’t about to take them all back to their beds the way she had Gwendolyn. Even her mother’s room was too far to take her.

  She was about to leave the room when she noticed the piece of parchment that her sister had dropped. Gwendolyn couldn’t read, so it was no surprise that she hadn’t even glanced at the parchment. Annie, however, had made a point of learning to read and write. In fact, she had tried to learn many things that Gwendolyn couldn’t do, mostly because she had no desire to compete with her sister in all the things she could do perfectly. Where Gwendolyn was as light on her feet as thistledown, and was the belle of every ball, Annie had crept away to learn dancing from the Gypsies, who didn’t care how gracefully she could twirl on her toes. Gwendolyn rode sidesaddle like a lady and wore beautiful clothes. Annie put on boys’ clothes and had the sta
ble master teach her how to ride bareback. She had a groom teach her how to juggle, something Gwendolyn would never have considered doing. An old soldier taught Annie how to handle a bow and arrow. She made friends with the servants’ children and asked them to teach her how to swim in the Crystal River and catch fish from its bank. Every time she discovered something that Gwendolyn couldn’t do, Annie tried to learn how to do it.

  There were many things that Gwendolyn could do perfectly. There were many more that Annie could do very, very well. Unfortunately, reading the writing on the piece of paper wasn’t one of them. It took her a minute of scrutinizing the florid writing with all its curlicues and whorls before she was able to make out the simple message. Happy Birthday was all it said, but the writing was so fancy that it looked as if there might be more.

  Annie had been so worried about everyone in the castle that it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder who had sent the spinning wheel. She’d assumed that the evil fairy must have sent it, but few fairies were able to write, and she’d never heard of any sending notes. The note was on nice enough parchment, but it was the kind her mother might have had, certainly nothing fairy-made.

  She turned the note over, hoping there might have been some indication of who had sent it. When there wasn’t anything else on the parchment, she bent down beside the trunk and examined it down to the smallest detail. It didn’t look like fairy work. Although it was beautifully made, she saw a few places on the bottom where the marks of the adze hadn’t been smoothed away; a trunk made by a fey craftsman would have been flawless. The man who had delivered it had appeared human as well and not like someone an evil fairy might have sent. Whoever had sent the trunk had been human, not fairy, and that was the most puzzling part. As far as Annie knew, neither Treecrest nor Gwendolyn had any human enemies.

  CHAPTER 3

  ANNIE STAYED IN THE CASTLE for the rest of the day. She made sure that everyone was safe and comfortable, from the highest nobles down to the boy who cleaned the pots for the scullery maids. She put out all the fires in the fireplaces, lifted the bucket from the well that was dangling from a sleeping groom’s hands, and tried, unsuccessfully, to close the drawbridge facing the town. The climbing roses kept the drawbridge from moving, so Annie walked along the battlements to see how far the roses had encroached on the castle grounds. She was relieved to see that they had stopped on the other side of the moat and hadn’t come any closer than the portcullis on either of the two drawbridges.

  Annie was standing on the battlement facing the road into town when she noticed movement in the distance. The roses had overgrown the road for nearly a quarter mile, but beyond that it looked as if people were gathering. Wagons heading to the castle had stopped on the road, unable to get past roses that had grown higher than the horses’ heads. Men on horse back were milling around the wagons, gesturing to one another and pointing at the castle.

  Annie was concerned about what could happen to the sleeping inhabitants of the castle, but until now it hadn’t occurred to her that the rest of her parents’ subjects might be in danger as well. With the king asleep and not likely to wake any time soon, Treecrest had no one to make important decisions. And because most of his army was garrisoned in the castle, they were sound asleep as well, leaving only the soldiers currently on patrol to protect the people from bands of thieves, marauding trolls, and flocks of harpies. Annie wished she could get in touch with even one patrol, but she had no idea how to find any of them. If only there was someone she could turn to for help! She was sure that her uncle Rupert would come if she could get a message to him, but he was commanding the forces stationed at Delaroo Pass, high in the White Mountains. Even if he could leave someone else in charge of keeping the mountain trolls from entering the pass, it would take at least a month for word to reach him, then another month for him to make his way through the dragon territory that lay at the base of the mountains and cross the land that was said to be the most dangerous in all the kingdom. Annie didn’t think she had that much time. Once word got out that the curse had taken its toll, unscrupulous people and nasty creatures would be pouring into the kingdom.

  Annie’s eyes grew wide as another horrible thought came to mind. Without the king’s army, other kingdoms could invade Treecrest and be in control of the kingdom long before her family woke. Her parents could open their eyes to find themselves prisoners in their own kingdom. If Annie were to locate a prince to kiss her sister and wake everyone in the castle, she would have to do it quickly or the kingdom would be lost. Too bad she’d never traveled more than a few minutes’ ride from the castle and knew only what rumor and books had told her about the rest of the kingdom.

  Annie’s first inclination was to start on her journey right away, but it was almost dusk and she wasn’t ready to go. Deciding that she’d leave as early as she could in the morning, she went to the kitchen and collected food to take with her, then ate some cold ham and cheese and drank a cup of cider before returning to her room for the night. Although she had seen for herself that she was the only person awake in the castle, she felt uneasy and dragged a heavy trunk in front of her door to block it.

  She was up before dawn the next morning after a restless night spent starting at every creak of the castle walls and whisper of a breeze outside her window. The sound of the wind chimes was so faint in her room that she could barely hear it, but the moment she opened the door it grew louder, serving as another reminder of everything that had happened the day before.

  Dressed in the boy’s tunic and breeches that she had worn when she learned how to ride, she tucked her hair inside a boy’s cap, packed a gown, a few coins, and the other items she planned to take with her into a worn leather satchel and returned to the chamber where her mother still slept. Annie checked on her mother and sister. Reassured that they were sleeping peacefully, she went down the stairs to see her father, who, like everyone else in the castle, hadn’t moved since the day before.

  It felt odd creeping around in her father’s private meeting room while he and his nobles were there, but she needed one of the maps kept rolled up on a row of narrow shelves. Finding the map of Treecrest and the surrounding kingdoms, Annie kissed her father on the cheek, something he never would have allowed when he was awake. He woke only briefly at her touch, but not enough to know that she was there.

  The king was already snoring again when she pulled the tapestry away from the wall and reached for the latch of the hidden door. The fabric was heavy against her back as she slipped behind it and entered the secret passage that only members of the royal family knew existed. Wrinkling her nose at the musty smell, she stepped onto the landing and pulled the door closed behind her. It was dark inside the passage, but she’d been this way before. With the flint she’d brought with her clutched tightly in her hand, Annie patted the rough wall beside her until she found one of the torches kept for emergencies. She used the flint to light the torch, and descended the circular stairway that led down past the lower floors and through the center of the dungeon. Closed off from everything around it, the stairwell had little ventilation and the air felt damp and heavy.

  After what seemed like forever, she reached the last step and the long, low tunnel that led out of the castle. Years before, a magic spell had been placed on the tunnel to keep it intact; Annie didn’t dare linger for fear that her lack of magic might make the tunnel unsound. She walked holding the torch in front of her, relieved that she could no longer hear either the tinkling of the chimes or the collective breathing of the sleepers in the castle.

  When the floor began to angle up, she hurried, anxious to get out of the tunnel. She finally emerged into a small cave and pushed aside the undergrowth that hid it from view of anyone passing by in the forest. Stepping out of the cave, she raised her face to the early-morning light filtering through the leaves overhead and paused to listen to the songs of birds, an ordinary sound that she’d missed while in the sleeping castle.

  It occurred to her that she should go back and tell th
e townspeople what had happened to the king. Perhaps someone there could help her find the closest patrol or even go fetch Digby. She shouldered her satchel and tried to get her bearings. Knowing that the tunnel led straight from the castle, Annie figured out from the direction of the cave which way she’d have to go to reach the road.

  She was picking her way through the bracken and fallen twigs when she heard voices up ahead and smelled bacon cooking. Although she was about to call out to them, she pressed her lips closed when she heard the tone of their voices. She drew closer, slipping as quietly as she could from tree to tree so they wouldn’t see her, until she was within a stone’s throw of a makeshift campsite. A wagon was parked between her and the men, and she recognized it from the shape of the seat and the faded paint on the side as the one that had been used to deliver the trunk.

  There were three men at the campsite, two of them sitting beside a smoking fire while a third held a pan of sizzling bacon over the flames. Roughly dressed and unshaven, they looked and sounded like the vagabonds she had feared would take advantage of her kingdom’s helplessness.

  “No one’s seen that princess on the battlements yet today. What do you suppose she’s doing in there?” said one of the men.

  “Doesn’t matter as long as she doesn’t get out,” replied the cook.

  “How could she?” said the third man. “No one can get past those stinkin’ roses. Soon as you hack ’em out, they grow back again. Can’t go a foot without those things wrapping around you and tearing at your fleshy parts.”