sleeping beauty - revisited

CHAPTER SIX

For a moment, Artemis felt tempted to prick her finger in the spinning wheel.

She didn't know why, but the curiosity occurred to her. Maybe it was the exhaustion she felt, but there was something extremely tempting in that spinning wheel - like it was calling to her. She wondered if Aurora had felt the same.

She looked away, focusing on the amount of different shades of green in front of her.

The whole place wasn't really big. It seemed to be almost the same height of a mill. Artemis could barely see the rock walls behind the heath, but they seemed even older than the castle, like it was about to fall down. It was a miracle that it hadn't been reduced to ruins already, almost as if it was conserved intentionally, to protect a treasure - or something even more valuable, Artemis thought.

She got closer, scanning the area with her eyes, with the impulse of putting all those barriers down with the strength of her sword. The thick ivy almost formed a hedge against the walls, preventing any passage. Artemis couldn't see any sign of door or windows, although she was sure they were there, somewhere. She reached to move some branches away. But she had barely touched them when a growl escaped from her lips and she took a step back, startled, as she felt a piercing pang on the palm of her hand. A deep cut had opened in her skin, as if made by a proper blade.

She looked up, noticing now the subtle thorns camouflaged in green, placed exactly to hurt no matter where the unwarned touched it. They spread all over the long branches. There was only one way to do this. Artemis drew her sword.

It wasn't easy as it seemed. Some of the twigs, however thin they looked, were as hard as tree trunks; Artemis felt her pulse hurt as she pressed the sword against them. A storm was forming on the sky above her, the wind stirring the branches even more disorderly.

It was like cutting off the heads of a Hydra; Artemis could swear they even multiplicated. The further she made progress on her way in, the more the branches tried to stop her - like they had a will of their own. The thorns seemed to get bigger and sharper as she opened passage. Artemis felt them scratching her arms, her ankles and holding back the edge of her cloak.

She noticed the absence of bodies around the entrance, and she thought it was weird. Had the Fairy lied when she said a lot of Princes had tried to save her? The remains of those who had died before they reached to her should definitely be there, somewhere. Maybe they stopped coming after the forest around got bigger, she thought. Or maybe they didn't go that far.

The wind gusts seemed to keep getting stronger, working precisely against Artemis. She hit back with her sword, trying to open her way into the tangled branches. As if in response, a branch slapped her in the face. She leaned back, her hand touching the side of her face that seemed to burn.

But although the injury paralyzed her for a moment, the anger burned inside her to, and Artemis cried. She cried not because of the pain, not because of the hatred she felt for those vile beings - both the plants and the Fairy-, but she cried for Aurora. The Fairy's words echoed in her head. You're a fool if you think she doesn't want to be saved.

With a growl, she cut the twig in half in a quick movement, just like she had done to attack the Prince in the beginning of the story. On her other side, she felt a twig piercing her shoulder - deeper than any sword blade could have.

The scream that escaped from her lips was louder than any thunder that echoed around the castle. She felt her shoulder burning inside. Her tired feet failed for a moment, but she couldn't let them fail. If she failed now, the heath would take advantage against her. The raindrops that fell on her face felt like stones being thrown. Stumbling on the fallen branches, Artemis ran as fast as she could, covering her eyes with her arm, trying to ignore the branches that tried to stop her and the thorns that scratched her on her way. Her sword was raised blindly in a pathetic way.

Her cloak got stuck in a branch. Artemis tried to get rid of it, but in the half second she stopped to do that, furtive branches wrapped around her ankles, violently pulling her back. The girl didn't even have time to blink before she saw her face meeting the stone floor.

She tried to pull away, but doing that was difficult while her face was dragged against the floor. Her feet kicked desperately. Maybe it all ends here, she thought with herself. Maybe I got further than any of them have, but not further enough. Maybe now I get to sleep as Aurora does - forever, with no curse to save me from the eternal slumber of death.

Gathering all the strength she had left, she plunged the sword in a hole on the floor. She tried to ignore the way the scars on her left hand were aching when she held tight onto the sword hilt. If she let go now, it would be all over. When she fought against the branch that kept trying to pull her, the pain in her shoulder almost yelled in her ears; it was so strong Artemis's fingers let the sword scape.

It all happened in a fraction of second. In a moment, Artemis was almost suspending from the branches that wrapped her ankles, her arms swinging in the air. A moment after that, she reached with her left hand, her sore fingers reaching to the sword stuck in the ground. Using the sword hilt as support, she managed to hold it with her two hands. The branches let her go, and her legs found the floor with a thump.

For a moment, she couldn't move. Thrown at the floor, she tried to remember how to breath, her paralyzed hands still holding on the sword hilt. She faced below herself for a moment. The ground resembled the floor of a cavern, covered by a lot of holes and cavities - one of which had conveniently saved her life.

Artemis stood up and looked around. The heath and the dead flowers kept covering the ground until her eyes could reach, but those didn't try to block the passage anymore. They seemed asleep, just like everything else in there, forming a path that seemed to go down. Forcing herself to walk despite her aching shoulder, Artemis followed the path of flowers until it ended. She found herself in a huge underground chamber. It was so dark it took her a long moment to notice, but when she did, she was sure she was in the right place.

A large staircase rose before her. Above, Artemis could see the bed where the Princess slept.