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The dwarf in the middle said nothing. He was holding his stone tightly, not dropping it or losing it, and was concentrating on nothing else but this. The stone was a ruby, roughhewn from the rock and the size of a hen’s egg. It was worth a kingdom when cut and set, and would be easily exchanged for the finest silks of Dorimar. It would not have occurred to the dwarfs to give the young queen anything they had dug themselves from beneath the earth. That would have been too easy, too routine. It’s the distance that makes a gift magical, so the dwarfs believed.
It seemed both unlikely and extremely final. She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices. In a week from now, she would have no choices. She would reign over her people. She would have children. Perhaps she would die in childbirth, perhaps she would die as an old woman, or in battle. But the path to her death, heartbeat by heartbeat, would be inevitable.
She called for her fiancé and told him not to take on so, and that they would still be married, even if he was but a prince and she a queen, and she chucked him beneath his pretty chin and kissed him until he smiled.
Sleeping people are not fast. They stumble, they stagger; they move like children wading through rivers of treacle, like old people whose feet are weighed down by thick, wet mud. The sleepers moved towards the dwarfs and the queen. They were easy for the dwarfs to outrun, easy for the queen to outwalk. And yet, and yet, there were so many of them.
“This is not honorable,” said a dwarf. “We should stay and fight.” “There is no honor,” gasped the queen, “in fighting an opponent who has no idea that you are even there. No honor in fighting someone who is dreaming of fishing or of gardens or of long-dead lovers.” “What would they do if they caught us?” asked the dwarf beside her. “Do you wish to find out?” asked the queen. “No,” admitted the dwarf.
They felt the castle long before they saw it, felt it as a wave of sleep that pushed them away. If they walked towards it their heads fogged, their minds frayed, their spirits fell, their thoughts clouded. The moment they turned away they woke up into the world, felt brighter, saner, wiser. The queen and the dwarfs pushed deeper into the mental fog. Sometimes a dwarf would yawn and stumble. Each time the other dwarfs would take him by the arms and march him forwards, struggling and muttering, until his mind returned. The queen stayed awake, although the forest was filled with people she knew
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Who are you?” Names. Names. The old woman squinted, then she shook her head. She was herself, and the name she had been born with had been eaten by time and lack of use. “Where is the princess?” The old woman just stared at her. “And why are you awake?” She said nothing. They spoke urgently to one another then, the little men and the queen. “Is she a witch? There’s a magic about her, but I do not think it’s of her making.”
The queen said, “It’s always the same with your kind. You need youth and you need beauty. You used your own up so long ago, and now you find ever more complex ways of obtaining them. And you always want power.”
“Love me,” said the girl. “All will love me, and you, who woke me, you must love me most of all.” The queen felt something stirring in her heart. She remembered her stepmother, then. Her stepmother had liked to be adored. Learning how to be strong, to feel her own emotions and not another’s, had been hard; but once you learned the trick of it, you did not forget.
There are choices, she thought, when she had sat long enough. There are always choices. She made one. The queen began to walk, and the dwarfs followed her. “You do know we’re heading east, don’t you?” said one of the dwarfs. “Oh yes,” said the queen. “Well, that’s all right then,” said the dwarf. They walked to the east, all four of them, away from the sunset and the lands they knew, and into the night.
