Sleeping Beauty's Daughters Read Online Free Page A

it’s the stuff of legends. And so it became a kind of legend. It’s a tale told to children in the nursery now, nothing more.”
    “Well,” Luna said brightly, “at least it ended happily, Mama. You woke, you married, you had us.”
    Mama shook her head in sorrow. “Though your father brought me great joy, it was not entirely a happy wakening,” she told us. “Think of it: A hundred years had passed. Everyone I had known, except for the servants who also slept, was dead. Most of the court was traveling with my parents—your grandparents—when the curse took hold. Manon’s cruel magic kept my mother and father from ever finding their castle again, and they grew old and died searching for it, while I slept. The world had gone on without me. I had been . . . left behind.”
    I tried to imagine what that might feel like, but it was too strange. Too terrible.
    “And there was something else,” Mama continued, her voice quavering. She gazed at me, and I felt a shiver of dread.
    “What?” I asked, clasping my hands together.
    “We did not have a christening when you were born, Aurora. I was so happy then, and I did not want to tempt fate. But a fortnight after your birth, I took you for an outing in the gardens of your grandfather’s palace, where we lived at the time. As I walked the autumn paths, holding you close, I met an old woman who sat at the edge of the fountain in the garden’s center. I thought she was a tinker’s wife, come to sell baubles, or a pauper, begging for alms. Then, when she pushed back the hood of her cloak, I knew at once, though I had seen her only as a newborn infant, that Manon had returned.”
    My eyes widened, and my breath caught in my throat. “Why . . . why did she come?” I asked, feeling my mother’s fear.
    I had to lean in close to hear Mama’s anguished reply. “As she had spoken to me when I was a babe, so she spoke to you, Daughter. She cursed you as you lay dozing in my arms, saying, ‘Aurora, like your mother you shall prick your finger and sleep for a hundred years.’”
    “Oh, Mama!” I cried in dismay.
    Mama reached for my hand and took it in her own. “Manon was not finished,” she said, gripping my hand so tightly I flinched. “She pointed to me, as I tried to back away from her, and said, ‘But your daughter’s sleep shall be solitary. None but she will slumber. No servants, no courtiers, no family will sleep with her. She will sleep on as you live out your life and die. And she will wake entirely alone.’”

4
    Of a Fate Not Foreseen
    M ama could speak no more, so we left her to rest. As we stood outside her door, the hallway swam through my held-back tears. Even Papa’s arm around my shoulders didn’t give me strength. Luna, though, was thrilled by the story.
    “Mama didn’t want to make the same mistake her own mother made, did she?” Luna asked. “That’s why we live so far from anywhere, and see so few people. It’s to keep Aurora out of harm’s way.”
    “Yes, child,” Papa affirmed. “Manon never said if her evil spell was to take hold when Aurora was sixteen, as it did your mother, or earlier, or later. So we had to be vigilant. We left my father’s castle and spent months trying to find Emmeline to see if she could help, as she’d helped your mother so long before. But she had disappeared completely. We even consulted with other fairies to see what could be done. None had the power to reverse Manon’s curse, for her magic had grown and strengthened over the years. I had Castle Armelle built in this remote place to safeguard you, to try to keep the fairy’s prophecy from coming true. And to keep Manon from finding us, should she decide to make sure the curse comes to pass.”
    “And you forbade all things sharp, so Aurora couldn’t prick her finger!” Luna exclaimed, and Papa nodded.
    “But why have I been subjected to the same rules?” Luna asked. “I was never in any danger. It isn’t fair.”
    “We could not