Free Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper Page A

followed her as she wandered back through the large dining hall and opened the door leading to the enclosed garden outside the high windows.
    I knew then that her expression had been the result of simple hunger. She had been so busy being dressed and fussed over, she hadn't had any lunch, and now she was starved and had remembered the apricot tree in that garden. We'd spent many stuffed and sticky July afternoons there, fighting the wasps for the fruits. The moment the door opened, I smelled them, heavy as incense, more fragrant than I had ever known them to be before.
    Grumpkin muttered something and put a paw on my hand. I stopped to hush him before following her. "Be still," I said. "You don't want her to know we're here." Then I went out after Beloved, arriving just in time to hear a fading burst of cackling laughter and catch a glimpse of a pair of burning eyes disappearing in midair.
     
    [I had let myself be seen. Now surely she would leave Westfaire and go in search of Elladine. I had put the thread in her hands a dozen times! Surely now she would go where we had planned for her to go, where we could protect what she carried, forever if need be. I faded into invisibility and remained there, watching, mentally urging her to go.]
     
    Beloved was facing me, weaving a little on her legs, a look of faint astonishment in her eyes. Though she could not have seen me, her right hand was extended as though to hand me something. It was a spindle, precisely as it had been described to me: a spiky thing that looked rather like a spinning top. I put my hands behind my back. The spindle fell even as I moved toward her, and she went down with it, crumpling, knees and hips and then shoulders and arms, falling in a loose pile, like washing. I kicked the spindle thing away and knelt beside her. Her face was quite peaceful, as though she was sleeping, as indeed she was, though a sleep of a strange and terrible depth. Her breast barely moved. Her skin was chill. A pallor had fallen over her skin so that she seemed to be carved of ivory.
    For a moment, I could not think at all. My mind was blank. I straightened Beloved out, pulled her skirts down and folded her hands on her breast, my tears spotting the satin of her bodice. I left the spindle where I had kicked it, not daring to touch it. I hadn't really ... I had thought the curse wouldn't function if it couldn't find me ... I had never considered that ... Or had I? I didn't know. Had I planned it, or not? The wording of the final curse referred to "Duke Phillip's daughter on her birthday." She was as much his daughter as I was. It was her birthday as much as mine. I had known that!
    I fled back through the dining room, seeking help, and was sent sprawling when I tripped over the body of one of the footmen lying beside a trayload of scattered flagons. In my daze, I assumed he had seen what happened to Beloved and had fainted. Even when I reached the hallway and began to find other bodies, I did not immediately realize what had happened. Only when I found Aunt Lavender fallen prone across her lute did I realize that the malediction had been modified by Aunt Joyeause not only to send Duke Phillip's daughter to sleep, but to include everyone at Westfaire. I had worried about what people would do with a princess who slept for a hundred years! It seemed they would do nothing at all, for she was not to sleep alone. When she regained consciousness, a hundred years in the future, all her court would still be around her, though it was not Beloved's court, but mine.
    I found Doll and Martin asleep in the stables and Dame Blossom asleep at her loom. In the village, everyone slept. The shoemaker and the tailor and the potter and the tanner and all. I howled for some little time, as frightened as I have ever been, while I ran about through the barns and stables, the armory, the dormitories of the men-at-arms, the kitchens, the granary, the orchards, through every house in the village by the walls.