Sleeping Beauty's Daughters Read Online Free

in,” entered the darkened room. She lay on her bed atop the covers, a fresh washcloth on her forehead.
    “Oh, Mama, is it bad?” Luna ran over to the bed and took Mama’s hand.
    “Not so very bad,” Mama murmured. Jacquelle had brought her a tea tray, so I poured tea, and we sat quietly beside her and sipped until Papa came in. He took a seat in an armchair by the window.
    “The tutor is settled,” he told Mama. “He seems very suitable, and looks forward to meeting you this evening.”
    “His nose is so long a bird could perch on it,” Luna said.
    “It is not!” I protested.
    “Girls!” Mama reprimanded us. “You know better than to comment on others’ appearances.”
    “Aurora says the story isn’t finished. Is she right?” Luna demanded.
    “Yes, there is more,” Papa said. “Rosamond?”
    “This part is yours,” she said to him. Papa took up the tale, his voice weaving a spell in the dim room.
    “While your mother slept, girls, the forest grew up around the castle over the decades until it was entirely hidden. Even the rumors of a castle in the wood faded over time. But then, when I was a young man of twenty, I went riding in the wood alone. I did not often ride by myself, for my friends and I loved to hunt together, but that day something seemed to call out to me. I like to think that it was your mother’s heart, ready to waken at last.” Mama opened her eyes at that, and tears spilled onto her cheeks. Papa smiled at her from across the room.
    “The way grew rougher and rougher, and before long I was lost. I was in a part of the forest I had never seen, overgrown and wild. No birds called there, and strange animals rustled in the thick underbrush. I came to a barrier of vines and thorns. I started to hack my way through them and became like a man possessed. I could not tell you what compelled me to go on. My hands were soon torn and bleeding, but I could not stop. At last I uncovered a stone wall, where I found a door. I pulled aside roots and briars and forced my way in. I thought I was entering an ancient stable, or a long-deserted farmhouse.”
    Luna and I sat breathless as Papa continued.
    “Oh, children, you would not believe what I saw inside! I was in the great hall of a castle, its marble floor so thick with dust that mice and squirrels had left their tracks all about. I walked past guards drooped over their lances, and a cook facedown in her pastry. My boots kicked up clouds of dust as I tried to wake a servant who had sunk to the floor holding a tea tray. Mice had nibbled away the sugar, but the pot still smelled faintly like tea when I sniffed it. Down in the laundry room, maidservants slept atop piles of folded clothes, and in the hallway even the dogs slumbered with their bones in their mouths. I moved through room after room, all draped in cobwebs, all silent but for the sounds sleepers make. And then I mounted the stairs to the top of the tallest tower, and I found—”
    “Mama!” Luna cried.
    Papa smiled at her. “Yes, your mother, slumped over her spinning wheel. Ah, even in slumber she was the loveliest young woman I had ever seen! Her golden hair was as bright as sunlight in that dim, musty room. I went to her and raised her head, and I kissed her. And suddenly she woke.”
    “Why, that means that Mama is a hundred years older than you, Papa!” Luna blurted out. Papa laughed, and even Mama smiled, wiping the tears from her face with a lace-edged handkerchief.
    How romantic, and how thrilling it was! I could hardly believe that this incredible tale had been kept from us so long. Why had we never been told?
    Of course Luna was first to ask. “Why have you never told us this story? Why is there no talk about it? Surely people must have known.”
    Papa shrugged. “The servants who woke with your mother did talk, for a time. But who would think it true? Few believed them, and so they gave up, and moved on. The idea of a princess who slept for a hundred years—why,