The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 44
She has to come. She has to come. She has to come. Please come. “What are you doing?” Rose asked, sliding into the pew next to me.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
She has to come. She has to come. She has to come. Please come.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked, sliding into the pew next to me.
“Nothing.”
“Oh. It just looked like you’re praying, is all.”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “That is what I’m doing, Rose. I’m praying for aid.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t tell her that I had lied to her this whole time. I couldn’t let her know that the great and powerful Ozma didn’t believe in the prophesy when I told it to her, and she hadn’t sent me to fetch Rose.
Ozma would believe me if I could give her proof, I knew it. And I had proof. The girl had come to Urgu a hundred years to the hour that the prophesy said she would. That wasn’t a coincidence.
“I’m praying that Ozma hears my calls to her and sends me a sign of where to find her.”
“What do you mean, find her?” I said, pissed off and confused. “I thought you knew where she was.”
“I do,” I lied. “However, she moves around so much to avoid the Wicked Witch that we often need guidance to find which base she is hiding in.”
“That sounds stupid. Are you lying to me?”
I needed to keep the lie floating for a little while longer. Ozma would see the truth about the prophesy and I would be vindicated. She’d even apologize for thinking I was crazy. I would be the one who brought peace to Urgu again.
“I don’t think I’m capable of lying,” I said, lying again.
“Well that’s just not true. Everybody can lie. It’s only a matter of whether they’re good at it.”
“Fair enough. I have never been very good at lying.”
“I’ll bet you’re good at a lot of things with a thousand years to practice. Besides, if you were good at lying, you wouldn’t tell me. You would lie about it. Now, what’s really going on?”
Before I could answer the door opened. Ozma. Please let it be Ozma.
I turned around to look at who was coming inside, but when the door closed, it wasn’t Ozma standing before me. It was a half-gorgon with snakes for hair.
“Chelle!” Rose said, rushing up and wrapping her arms around the gorgon.
“Welcome back, Chelle,” I said. “You look like you have more snakes than last time I saw you.”
Chelle kissed Rose long and hard, then turned to me. “Nope. The same amount. What are you doing?”
“She’s trying to find Ozma,” Rose replied before I had a chance to do so.
“Wait,” Chelle said, her lip curling indignantly. “This whole time you’ve been leading us to her, and you don’t know where she is?”
A flash of light exploded through the church and I covered my eyes. When I looked again, the ceiling of the church was glistening with a thousand lights, like stars in the sky. They lit up the entire ceiling, each pinpoint light slowly fading until only one remained, emanating from the painting of Hypnos, directly on his forehead.
“That looks like a sign,” Chelle said.
“It is,” I replied, disappointed. “She’s in the one place no sane person wants to go.”
“Where is that?”
“Underneath Oz. Her first hiding spot after the usurper took her throne.” Hopefully it would not be her last.
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.