Peeps opened her beak to snip across Briar’s throat when the door behind Briar opened, bathing Peep’s birdhouse with a glaring illumination. Briar fell backward onto the gleaming parlor floor planks, right between Poplar and Ash. In the commotion the enormous sparrow fluttered away. She landed on her brood and voiced an angry objection with a few sharp chirps.
Briar lay on the floor, covered in stray straw and loose down.
“I heard her sing that time,” Poplar said.
“I thought one of us gave her the gift of song,” Ash complained. “That was just awful.”
Myrtle spotted Dax on hands and knees at the far side of the birdhouse, and she clicked along in her sturdy heels to examine him. He knelt nearby, his face was pale green and his eyes were fixed like a melted doll. Myrtle held her glasses up to scrutinize the boy. “What in the Goose’s name is this about?”
“Oh dear!” Poplar scurried and fussed over Dax, helping him to stand.
Sherman was draped around Myrtle’s shoulders as always, and she petted him. He lifted his head and saw Briar. “Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Ingrate. Come scurrying back to shelter like one of the Three Piggies, have you? Well you’re too late,” the fox said. Then to Ash he said, “Make them go away. We have serious matters—and none of them concern her.” He jumped from Myrtle’s shoulders to an oversized wingback chair. He tucked his nose beneath his tail and ignored her by pretending to sleep.
Myrtle strode like a stork back into the parlor, stepping over Briar who was still sitting in stunned amazement. Myrtle posed against a locked bookcase, folded her arms across her chest and drew her ruby lipsticked lips tightly together. “So, you’ve brought…a friend.”
“It’s not like I had a choice,” Briar said. She stood up and brushed off loose feathers and straw. “He and I were attacked. I had to bring him with me for safety.”
“Attacked!” Poplar said. She was already walking with Dax tottering him toward the antique couch. Poplar already began fussing with his hair and wiping smudges from his face. “He needs a little of my special tea,” Poplar said.
“Chamomile, right?” Briar asked.
“Oh don’t be silly,” Poplar clucked. “This calls for the Wolfsbane, Poison Sumac, or maybe even Dragon’s Blood. Poor thing’s nearly out of his mind with fear. Oh—” Poplar stopped her rambling and thought for a moment. “Unless, of course, he’s just out of his mind in general. What’s his name dear?”
“Dax,” said Briar.
Poplar suddenly brightened. “I know what will help!” She suddenly slapped Dax’s face.
“How was that supposed to help him?” Briar asked.
“Oh don’t be silly,” Poplar said. “That was just for me.”
Dax blinked a few times and then began to rub his jaw where Poplar had smacked him.
Myrtle marched over to Briar with her librarian’s posture. “We haven’t a moment to lose.”
Briar erupted in a flurry of raw emotion now that there were no more immediate dangers. “I think—I think we’re too late.” She thought of Leon and realized that all of this was happening because of her. There was nowhere to hide her feelings, and she began to cry. “The attack—it was out of control.”
“What do you mean?” Myrtle asked, the lines beneath her eyes deepening.
“They got him. Whoever you thought was after me took a friend of mine. Someone changed him into a frog and vanished. Then two wolves—” She couldn’t finish. Leon was gone and there would be no getting him back.
Ash, now dressed as a Japanese geisha, with a white silk kimono and wooden sandals, rushed to Myrtle’s side. “The Lady Orpion’s work.” He straightened the chopsticks stuck in a V-formation in his black hair bun, which looked outrageous in contrast to his short-cropped beard.
Myrtle hesitated. “A worthy guess, Ash. But how can we be sure? You know as well as I that those who would profit from either success or failure of the child are legion.” Then she turned her attention back to Briar. “How was it done?”
It took Briar a moment to choke down the pain and return to the present moment. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Myrtle simmered, but contained it. “I mean how was the boy altered?”
“A cloaked woman—blue hair—tattoos on her face. She had this totally pimped-out hand mirror. She stuck him in the side— my friend Leon—and took his blood. And then he just— changed.”
Myrtle and Ash nodded to each other. Ash snapped open a small painted fan and whooshed himself with it.
“Indeed. The speculum. Blood magic.” Myrtle’s eyes slowly tracked back and forth. She turned tautly and paced. “This is quite serious. There are three days remaining before your sixteenth birthday, and our protections wane with the setting of each sun.” She reached out to trace the outline of Briar’s key. The key responded by glowing bright blue. Then it faded, like a burning fire poker doused with water. “And when the sun sets on the third day, nothing will stand between you and the Lady Orpion.”
“Who is this Lady Orpion? What the hell does she want from me? What did I ever do?” At the mere mention of Orpion’s name, Briar’s heart throbbed as though she were dangling from a cliff. Her breath became unsteady, and she had to consciously work to regain control.
“There are those who believe that you alone can champion the Realms,” Ash interjected, flashing his shadowed eyes at Myrtle. “The Lady Orpion sees you as a direct threat to her throne, to her power.”
“The Realms?”
“Our home,” Myrtle said. “Your true home, Briar.”
“Oh yes, dear,” Poplar sang. “Born in our cottage in the Squirrel’s Province, you were. We hid you ourselves here, among the commons, when you were just a day or two old. Do you remember how sweet she was?” she asked Myrtle, clucking. “Always putting that key in her mouth!”
Briar realized that once again she had put the key pendant in her mouth without thinking. She let it fall out.
“Lady Orpion vowed to find and destroy you, so we sealed off the gateways between the Realms and the commons ourselves,” Poplar continued. “That way no Realmsmen or common could ever cross between them.”
“…Nor find you.” Myrtle finished Poplar’s thought. “But sixteen years have almost passed. Our protections run thin. Interested parties have begun their own quests to fulfill one omen or another.”
“Omen?” Briar asked, looking alarmed.
“Many have waited for your return,” Poplar said, nodding assuredly.
Myrtle raised her hand above her head making a quick geometric shape with a finger. In turn, the bookcase behind her unlocked with a loud clink and the doors opened wide. “The thing of omens is that details change from one seer to the next.”
“Sister,” Poplar said. She took on a singsong voice like a school teacher instructing. “Circumstances change. Omens must change with circumstances.” Myrtle raised a single eyebrow and sucked her lips together as though tasting a lemon. Then Poplar said, “Always had her doubts about old Rapunzel and her visions, she has.”
“Rapunzel?” Briar asked looking into the faces of Poplar, Myrtle, and Ash. “Wait a minute—you mean, like the fairytale character, Rapunzel?”
Sherman made his way to Myrtle from his sleeping place on the old plush wingback chair. He hopped to her shoulder and wrapped himself around. “Why do commons insist on calling dillywigs by that distasteful name?” he asked. “It’s absolutely degrading. And coming from Miss Ingrate, it’s even worse.”
Briar looked confused.
“We’re dillywigs. Not fawyries, you absurd pretender!” Sherman shouted.
Poplar snapped back. “Don’t you have a chicken coop to raid somewhere?”
Sherman just snuffed and looked the other way. “That, madam, is a stereotype that goes unappreciated by me.”
Myrtle looked down at the floor. The only sound in the room was the pop and crackle from a burning log in the fireplace.
“Well, tell the girl, sister,” Poplar insisted. “She must know what she must—”
“Enough of this dithering!” Sherman flashed his tiny white fangs. “Either you tell the girl this instant, or I will.” Briar searched the faces of Poplar, Myrtle and Ash. The three of them eyed one another, but remained silent. Then, without waiting for a response Sherman blurted it out. “Very well. You are Briar of the Black Woods, fated to the Tale of Briar Blackwood and the Grim Sleepdeath. There! Was that so difficult?”
“Sherman, so help me, I’ll have a herd of huntsmen with bugles and bloodhounds after you!” scolded Poplar.
Sherman curled up around Myrtle’s neck with a smile that showed his pointy front teeth. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel much better,” he said. Then he bit his own tail to form the usual fluffy loop around Myrtle’s shoulders.
“Grim Sleepdeath? What is he talking about?” Briar asked.
“Oh—details, details,” Myrtle said. She made a gesture with her hands like shooing flies from a picnic. She stammered for a moment, seeming to chew each word over in her mind before saying anything further. “Well—it involves a curse, a spindle of a spinning wheel, and, well—I think the rest is self-explanatory. It’s all in your Tale—”
Watching Briar’s open mouth and bugged eyes, Poplar intervened. “Sister,” she said, “you’re scaring the poor thing.” She turned to Briar and took her hands. “It’s not a real death, dear. We softened it as best we could with enchantments.” She looked down at Briar’s pendant. “You’ll just enter a kind of, well, sleep, for a long time.” Then she smiled as if what she just said made everything better.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Briar asked.
“Oh—there’s that potty mouth again,” Myrtle said.
“So, you’re telling me that it’s already fated that I’ll die from some sleepdeath when I turn sixteen?”
“Not die, dear,” Poplar said again softly. “Just sleep. For a long, long time.”
“How long? A day or two?”
Sherman perked up, “Longer.”
“What, like a week?” Dax asked.
“Longer,” Sherman tittered.
“How long?”
“I’ve heard the sleepdeath can last for a hundred years, maybe more,” Sherman said unable to suppress his glee.
Briar sat down on one of the ornate chairs and put her hands to her mouth. Everyone remained solemn faced, mute, staring at the ground. Briar recalled her experience in the stone chamber, and her awful, uncontrollable obsession with the spinning wheel she found there. She realized just how close she came to pricking her finger. She looked at Ash with wide eyes. He subtly put the fan across his ruby bow-lips and almost imperceptibly shook his head.
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that I am—I can’t even say it. It’s too outrageous.” She laughed out loud. “That I am the sleeping beauty?”
“Beauty might be a bit of a stretch,” Sherman sassed.
“Sherman!” Poplar thundered. “How would you like to be a piñata at a hyperactive child’s birthday party?”
“Humph!” Sherman pouted, and scampered down from Myrtle’s shoulder. “I was only trying to lighten the mood.” He trotted into the kitchen, his nails clicking irritably against the floor.
“Yes,” Myrtle said, crossing the room to sit on the proper edge of the couch. She smiled weakly, straightening her red skirt and touching the small top hat that seemed to defy the laws of gravity sitting at the impossible angle on her head. “Commons often refer to this Tale in that fanciful way,” she began after clearing her throat. “They know it only from dream and distant memory; our worlds have been separated from times before our own. The Tales are never true as remembered by commons. But most important for you to know, Briar, is that the Tales are our fate. Yours and ours; none can escape.”
“There are rumors, though,” Poplar interrupted. “Rebels, talebreakers, they call them.”
Myrtle turned pointedly to Poplar. “Sister, I think it may be time for tea.” Poplar smiled broadly, clapped her lace-gloved hands and scurried into the kitchen. As usual, Poplar got pots and pans clattering behind the swinging door.
Myrtle arose and sat straight-backed next to Briar. “Your friend Leon was altered and stolen only to draw you into the Realms—away from our protection. True, the Lady Orpion may have him, but others with designs of their own may have him as well. There’s no real way to know. But one thing is for certain: you or your friend would fetch a price at market.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Dax said. To Briar he said, “What have we gotten into?”
“We? I am not exactly thrilled that you’ve been dragged into our little situation,” Myrtle said with a precise clip in her tone. She poised her hands upon her lap and her pearl-button cuffs glistened in the firelight. “Yet, here you are.” She drew her lips into an annoyed smile, and then her face fell.
Briar stood up and then sat beside Dax. She took one of his hands and leveled her gaze to meet his. “We can’t leave Leon there—in those Realms, wherever he is.” Then Briar asked Myrtle, “How can we bring him back?”
“There are two things, for now anyway,” Myrtle said. She traced some triangles and squares in the air with one hand. Suddenly, one of the bookcase’s built-in drawers snapped and clinked as a dozen or more internal locks released. A drawer at the center of the cabinet, big enough to hold a large book, opened. From it flew a leather-bound volume the size of a dictionary. It soared across the room like a bee into Myrtle’s hands.
Ash spoke up, heat in his pancake-white face. “You can’t send the girl into the Realms. It’s too dangerous. She has no skill. Not yet, anyway. How will she survive, Myrtle?” It sounded to Briar as though this conversation had occurred many times before.
“If she stays here, the boy’s fate is sealed,” Myrtle said without looking at Ash. She thumbed through the pages of her book. “— As is hers. If she finds the boy and the book before three days, she can return to our safety.”
Myrtle’s usual, sensible approach never sat well with Ash. He was visibly shaking in his kimono. “She cannot find the book. We cannot find it, ourselves. What madness is this?”
“What book?” Briar asked.
“There is a certain compendium that was once in our possession,” Myrtle said like an old mother reading a child’s story. “The Book of Cinder and Blight.”
“Sounds like a real page-turner,” Briar said. “What kind of a book is it?”
“A book of dark things. Wicked, vile things,” Myrtle said.
“Why would you want it then?” Dax interjected.
“I think I liked this boy better when he was scared out of his wits,” Myrtle said. “We need it—you need it because within the Book of Cinder and Blight is the antidote for your Leon.” Myrtle placed a hand on a page of the tome in her lap. “In our possession, Orpion cannot use it for her own ends.”
“This is suicide,” Ash insisted.
Myrtle made a motion, midair, with her index finger and thumb that mimicked sewing with a needle and thread. Ash fell back into his chair, grabbing at his mouth. When he moved his hands, Briar saw that his mouth was now sewn shut with zig-zagging sutures. Briar gasped; Dax looked like he might vomit.
“Well, what say you, Briar of the Black Woods, champion of the Realms?” Myrtle asked with a penetrating stare and an air of anticipatory triumph.
Briar turned to Dax, a strange look in her eyes. From that look, Dax understood that life as they knew it up to now had come to an end. There were things that must be done now— matters of life and death.
“I can’t go back, Dax,” Briar said. “Not to that place. Not to that life.” Dax could not answer.
He shook his head and bit a lip. “But think about it, Briar. What can you do about magic? What can you do about plots that have been hatching for who-knows-how-long? And so what if you go to wherever they’re suggesting? Don’t you think someone is waiting for you to follow the trail to Leon? You’ll step right into their trap.”
Briar shook her head. “As screwed up as this sounds, Dax, if I don’t do something—if I don’t act now, they’ll just find me and finish me off anyway. We’ve already got wolves creeping out of every corner. I either do something, or I just wait around to be killed.”
“She is correct,” Myrtle said. “Magic is the only way to stop the forces at play now. She may not know much of magic yet, but she soon will. And a master of it she shall become.”
Dax looked into Briar’s face and saw a fire of determination burning. He knew that Briar would likely do this alone, if need be. But she shouldn’t. Now was the time to stand by her side and see her to safety. Things would be different, he knew it. But there didn’t seem to be another way. He took Briar’s hands and nodded with a smile.
“I always liked this boy,” Myrtle said.
Briar turned to Myrtle with a daring smile. “So tell me more about this book.”