Aurora's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Aurora carried the book back to her rooms and sat with it for an hour. The walls of the castle felt too close. Every corner held a shape she now had to name correctly. A footstool was not a spindle. A loom was not a spindle. She kept testing the words in her head until the words stopped meaning anything. She needed air. She told no one. She wrapped a plain cloak over her shoulders and slipped out the side gate before her mother's ladies could ask where she was going. The path down to the forest was soft with old leaves. Her boots made almost no sound. For the first time in days her chest opened up. She walked until she found the well. It sat in a clearing, its stone rim hidden under a bloom of roses and vines. Petals had fallen into the water. Aurora leaned on the rim and looked at her own face floating there, pale and tired. She dropped a pebble in to break it. "You should not stand so close to the edge." She turned. A boy stood in the tree line. He was near her age, thin, dressed in a dark coat stitched with pale thorn patterns. His hair was black. His eyes were a cold blue that did not match the warm light in the clearing. He did not step closer. "I know how to stand by a well," Aurora said. "I meant no offense." He looked at the water, then at her. Something moved behind his face and settled. "You're Seelie." "You can tell?" "I can tell." He did not say what he was. He looked away as if the question hurt. She should have been afraid. A stranger in the woods, alone with her, knowing what she was. Instead her shoulders dropped. He had not asked her name. He had not asked about the curse. He was the first person in weeks who was not watching her for signs of falling. "I came out to breathe," she said. "The castle listens too closely." "I know that castle," he said. "Not yours. One like it." They talked a while. About small things. The petals. A tower he had seen once, wrapped in vines, that grew flowers up its stone. She laughed twice. He did not laugh, but he watched her when she did. When the light shifted she stepped back from the rim. "I have to go home." He nodded. "Then go." She took three steps and turned. "Will you be here again?" He waited a beat too long. "Maybe." Aurora walked back up the path lighter than she had come down. She had gone out for air and brought back a face. She did not know his name. She did not know he knew hers already, or what he had chosen not to do. She only knew she wanted to see him again, and that the wanting was new.