“You will never find true love,” she whispers, but I can hear her clearly. “Sleep. It’s safer.” She steps closer, and the moonlight falls on her face. Her eyes are my eyes. Her hair is my hair, and her mouth is my mouth.
The wind grows colder.
She’s cursing me. It’s all I can think, and when she takes another step toward me, I panic and dive into the tangled briar wood. Somehow the danger of the winter woods seems kind in comparison.
I’m running as fast as I can, but I’m not covering much ground. It’s hard to move between the tall thick trees since there’s no path. The leaves crunch under my boots. The pine branches and hazel twigs brush against me, snagging the silk and lace of my skirt. The beads on my train pop off and glitter in the undergrowth like dark stars.
The trees sway madly in a hard wind, filling the night with their whisper. Crystals and chimes dangle from apple and aspen trees. They gleam like ice and sing like a mother’s ghost murmuring a lullaby. Everything is black, the trees, the sky, me. Only the moon is bright, but I can barely see it through the knotwork of branches.
I keep running until the need for air is a cold knife in my lungs. I stumble to a stop in the middle of a small clearing circled by yew trees crowned with roses: red, white and black. I hear movement behind me, crashing between the trees. Either she’s chasing me or there really are wolves in this place. Everything inside me is tight with fear. My stomach has that floating feeling, like gravity has suddenly stopped working, and my fingers are trembling. My throat is dry and the curse seems to echo in my head: You will never find true love… you will never find true love.
My mother warned me: The third dreams are always the most dangerous. I was too angry to listen. I don’t know what the Shadow Lady wants from me or what she’ll do to me if she finds me. Is she the type to suck bones dry or drink goblets of blood or slip me poisoned candy when I’m too hungry to care? She’s already hurt me, though. I think of Poe and I want to scream.
I lean against a twisted yew trunk and close my eyes. I’m so tired. I’m just so tired. I just want to sleep and let the Shadow Lady claim me if she wants to. What does it matter anymore?
“Beauty.” The voice is so soft I don’t hear it at first. “Beauty.” It’s like a sad smile and then another voice joins it. “Beauty.”
My eyes fly open. The little girl in the red dress is crouching in front of me, sulking.
“You lied to me,” she pouts.
I frown at her. “Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not.”
“Did too!”
I shake my head. This conversation is deteriorating rapidly. Apparently I’d had more than my share of brattiness when I was little. “How did I lie to you?”
She crosses her arms. “You said you’d protect me.”
I look around. “Are you in trouble?”
She rolls her eyes. “Duh. The Shadow Lady is coming.”
I scramble to my feet again, suddenly not sleepy anymore. My heart is pounding like horses’ hooves in my chest. I look around frantically.
“She’s not coming for you,” I try to reassure the little girl. “She’s coming for me.”
The little girl sighs like I’m particularly slow. “I points out, stamping her tiny foot. I lift an eyebrow.
“I don’t know how to stop her,” I admit after a moment of charged silence. Every cell of my body is listening for the sound of footsteps. “She cursed me.”
A white shadow steps out between two yews. I’ve never understood the cliché “jumping out of your skin” until right now. But it’s not the Shadow Lady; it’s my mother in her faded wedding dress.
“I can’t undo the curse you placed on yourself,” she says softly. “But I can give you a blessing, daughter. You may not find true love, but it will find you.”
I suddenly feel like crying. I bite down hard on my lower lip to keep it from trembling. The little girl tugs sharply on my dress.
“She’s coming,” she says.
She doesn’t have to tell me. I can feel it in the air. Everything seems to get a little darker. My mother and the little girl step away from me. I want to grab them.
“I don’t know what to do!” I cry out.
“Only you can save yourself,” my mother says. “No one else can do it for you.” She smiles. “But I can give you a gift.” She motions to a pile of leaves and then fades away, holding on to the hand of the little girl.
All I see is a pile of wet and decaying leaves. Some gift. The wind dies down and everything is suddenly still. I know the Shadow Lady is near.
Something glitters under the torn leaves and I hesitate. I tilt my head and see it again. I dig through the wet undergrowth, desperate for anything that might help. What I find is an old mirror in a tarnished elaborate frame with a handle. A lady’s mirror from long ago. I hold it up and brush the mud and wet needles off it. I’m not sure how this is going to help me.
And then I don’t have time to think about it anymore because there she is, standing across the clearing like a piece of midnight wearing my face. She’s not doing anything, just standing there, but something about her terrifies me.
She approaches me. Panic clogs my throat. She’s not making any sound this time as her feet pass over twigs and dried needles. I take a step back, but there’s a tree behind me, and even if I run I know she’ll find me. I haven’t been able to hide from her yet.
There’s something really really creepy about being stalked by someone who looks like you. The mirror’s heavy in my hand. I hold it up. It must have a purpose. Why else would my mother have given it to me now? I turn it so that the glass flashes into the Shadow Lady’s face. Her reflection is steady and unwavering. She shakes her head.
She’s getting closer. Somehow I know that if she touches me I’ll never be rid of her. I’ll be numb and quiet and dead inside again, and this time I might not ever find my way out. I’ll go back to sleep for a hundred years, forever.
I turn the mirror over and stare at myself.
I think of what my mother said to me, trying to find an answer to this riddle: No one can save you but yourself. And in that other dream, in the snowy courtyard: You’re beautiful, don’t ever forget that.
I resist the urge to look away. I remember the strength I felt just yesterday when I looked in the mirror and saw someone I could like, when I thought of myself as an artist, when Luna kissed my cheek to comfort me, and when I opened up enough to kiss Poe. That’s beauty. I should open up enough to kiss myself too.
I lean closer to the glass and kiss myself on my imperfect mouth. It makes me smile. It makes the Shadow Lady smile too, even as she stops moving and comes apart like the black sky at dawn.
She wasn’t cursing me after all, I think before I wake up. She was warning me.
12
When beauty woke that
Friday evening, she set to work redecorating her room. She tore pages out of books and framed them: Millais’ Ophelia, Burne-Jones’ Sleeping Beauty and Waterhouse’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. She framed poems Luna had read to her and hung them over her desk and set them up on her windowsill. She dug out all of the emergency candles her father kept in the junk drawer in the kitchen and stuck them in old bottles. She draped scarves over her lamps and night tables. She spread an old quilt over her bed and hung necklaces on the posts.
Pleased, she took the rest of the candles downstairs to the basement. She might only have one little corner, but she would make it into her own studio. She scattered the candles about like stars and tossed pillows on the floor in one corner. She found an old blanket, painted swirling designs over it and then hung it over the back of the ancient couch. She opened one of the windows, cut an armful of roses and set them in glasses by her worktable. Outside, the cold snap dug in its heels and snow began to fall.
Inside, she painted like a woman gone mad. It filled her up and then emptied her out. She smeared acrylic paint in thick layers over a wide new canvas. She worked from me
mory and painted her mother asleep in her wedding dress, smiling sadly in a white bathtub set in the middle of a medieval courtyard garden. A tower rose in the distance and a forest crouched in the right-hand corner. White roses grew thick in her hair and scattered over her body. White lace foamed at her feet and on her wrists, where a single red rose grew between white buds. She brushed the thorns with silver glitter.
After a few hours, she wiped her hands and went upstairs, rubbing the back of her neck. The house was dark and quiet, but the wind was pushing fiercely at the windows. She’d heard her father come home a few hours earlier, but he hadn’t said anything to her, and she’d been too caught up in her paints to care. She avoided the third step, which creaked, and slid into bed, sleeping dreamlessly.
First thing in the morning, she went straight downstairs and picked up a brush. She mixed ultramarine blue and violet, added a little white and more glitter. She opened a new tube of red paint. She mixed more colors and dotted them onto the canvas.
She painted until her fingers cramped and her shoulders were sore. She stepped back, finally, wiping a paintbrush clean, and looked over what she’d done with tired eyes. She smiled. It was far from perfect; she could probably work on the perspective and the layout, but the details were good and the moonlight glowed. It was what she’d been trying to paint for weeks now, and finally, finally, she could look at her mother and smile a little. Thaw a little.
When she went upstairs, she found a packet of needles left carelessly on the counter. Tears burned her eyes and she looked around, half-expecting to see her father. She still hadn’t spoken to him, and he was at work now. She didn’t know when he’d left the needles out or what he was thinking. She didn’t test the liquor cabinet, didn’t look in the fridge to see if the cheese was sliced or the cantaloupe cut.
Silver needles on the counter was enough.
On Sunday she dressed in a pair of jeans with a satin slip and a sweater over top. She tied her hair back in two braids and wrapped a long beaded bracelet she’d forgotten she owned around her wrist. She was finding funky clothes in the back of her closet that she’d completely forgotten about. She lined her eyes in black.
She brought her painting upstairs to dry and hoped her father would like it. She still hadn’t seen him; he was doing inventory at the hardware store and probably wouldn’t be home until late again. After the sun had set and she’d spent a weekend alone and actually enjoyed her own company, she bundled into her winter coat and carried a mug of hot chocolate outside.
The sudden early storm had killed the roses, shriveling them on the stems, but she didn’t mind. The snow was thick and swallowed the sound and made her smile. She watched her breath fog, sipped hot cocoa and wondered if it was too cold for Poe to be out on his back porch with his guitar. At least he wouldn’t know she was listening.
There was nothing but the sound of branches creaking under the weight of snow and someone shoveling out on the street. She was about to go back inside when something sailed over the fence into her yard. She didn’t know what it was, but it landed in the snow. It was followed by another shape, but this one grunted when it hit the ground.
Poe stood up and looked at her, grinning goofily. Snow dusted his arms and legs like icing sugar. There was a striped scarf wrapped around his neck.
“Hi,” he said.
She blinked. “Hi. What are you doing?”
“I got your e-mail.”
She cringed, blushing. “Oh. I suppose it’s too late to ask you not to read it and to toss your computer out the window?”
He just kept grinning. “I loved it.”
“Look, I know…” She paused, tilted her head. “What?”
“You heard me.”
She grinned back. “Want to come inside for some hot chocolate?”
“Sure.” He dug his guitar case out of the snow and followed her inside. He sat at the kitchen table and shook snow out of his hair. She poured a cup and gave it to him, not meeting his eyes.
“You’re embarrassed.”
She thought of the little girl in her dream. “Duh,” she said with a half-smile.
“I get embarrassed too, especially when I have to sing alone without the band.” He unlatched the case and pulled out his battered acoustic guitar. He propped it on his knee and tuned it without a word.
Then he sang to her, her favorite song, soft and intimate, while the snow continued to fall from white white clouds.
epilogue
Several months later,
when Beauty’s father’s fear of needles and sharp things had mostly passed, she found herself at a tattoo parlor. It was winter, and ice coated the streets and the sidewalks. It glittered like a painting.
She left with a small tattoo on the inside of her left wrist— a red red rose, the same color as her hair.
Born in Montreal, Alyxandra Harvey-Fitzhenry studied creative writing and literature at York University. When not writing, she is a belly dancer and yoga practitioner. Her hobbies also include jewelery-making, art shrines and collages. Alyx lives in rural Ontario with her husband and three dogs, Medusa, a Bouvier, Yoda, a Corgi, and Hannah, a Cockapoo.
Alyxandra Harvey, Waking
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