For Harringrove Harvest, day 2 prompt: Sleeping Beauty
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a powerful king. He ruled his land with an iron fist and struck down any who opposed him. He was a cruel and power-hungry monarch, and the people suffered under his reign.
The king had a queen – a bride from the North – whose beauty was unparalleled in all the land. That was not the only reason why the king had married her, though – no, the reason why he took her from her people and made her his wife was because of the magic that ran through her blood.
You see, despite the king’s ruthlessness, and despite his power, he was only a man. He was well aware of time passing, and feared that one day, death would come for him, as it comes for all men. He found that his wife’s magic could keep him young and strong, so he kept her close at all times, and allowed no one else to approach her.
But in using her for her magic, he was draining her. His advisors, knowledgeable in all magical things, warned him that there simply wasn’t enough magic in her blood to sustain both her own life and the king’s.
There was a solution, though, they said.
Which is why, a year later, the queen gave birth to a child. A golden boy, with pale blue eyes; the spitting image of his mother.
The king was pleased. His advisors told him that since the boy had his both mother’s magic and his father’s blood, spilling the boy’s blood on his eighteenth birthday would be enough to grant the king eternal life. His son’s life, for his own immortality.
The first couple of years of the boy’s life, he was allowed to stay with his mother. The king – who still needed his wife’s blood to keep himself strong – would sometimes come into the queen’s rooms and just look at the two of them together. Sometimes, he smiled. It was a cruel smile, as if he was counting down the time to his son’s eighteenth year, and the queen despaired.
As soon as the boy started to walk and talk unhindered, the king locked him in his own room, at the top of the castle’s tallest tower. The child was fed three times a day, but the door stayed locked in order to protect the king’s property. The queen was allowed to see her son a measly one hour per day, but it wasn’t enough, and the boy didn’t understand why she had to leave, and why no one came for him when he cried.
Unbeknownst to the boy, and the king himself, the queen had devised a plan. One night, she used her magic to put the guards outside her rooms to sleep, and she hurried up the stairs to the tower. The guard outside the boy’s room was similarly made to slumber, and the queen snuck inside and stole her own son right out of his bed.
The boy didn’t wake as she held him close to her chest, and he didn’t wake as she fled down the stairs and through the castle. He didn’t wake until she was at the gate, and held him out through the iron bars to the awaiting hands of her handmaiden. He awoke, then.
“Mom …?” the boy said, and rubbed at his eye. “You … you came for me.”
“Yes my darling Billy,” the queen said, holding back tears and ruffling his hair through the bars. “My baby boy, I love you so much. Remember, mommy loves you more than anything else in the entire world.”
With that, she gently touched his forehead with the tip of her fingers, and put him to sleep. A sleep full of wonderful, colorful dreams, from which he would awaken rested … and safe.
“Go,” she told her handmaiden, and turned her back on them so she wouldn’t have to see them leave. She sunk to the ground, but didn’t let her tears fall until she could no longer hear the retreating steps.
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