Chapter 3
After that terrible day when Thorn slipped through the briar wards for such a brief moment of freedom and possibility, she lost reading privileges.
She was no longer allowed to enter the library at all.
Her time in the garden was limited to weeding, harvesting, and caring for their animals.
Her guardian, of course, confiscated the journal Thorn hadn’t had time to hide.
She’d had to watch as Jada burned the little journal in the fireplace.
Though it was an inanimate object, Thorn imagined the lovely, soft thing squealing in pain as it burned and, when she shed tears over it, she felt that she wept for its death more than her own loss.
Jada also confiscated all the other blank journals, sketch pads, and even loose paper from Thorn’s little bedroom. Clearly she couldn’t be trusted with writing materials of any sort.
And then there was the punishment itself.
In payment for Thorn’s transgression, Thorn spent her nights on a cot in the root cellar for an entire week.
She wouldn’t say she slept there for a week, because she tossed and turned, more terrified of the dark dampness than ever.
She kept imagining that the pale worms that dangled from the earthen walls had crept out to crawl over her skin, to burrow into her hair and ears.
She woke from nightmares that they’d crawled into her nose and mouth, suffocating her.
The endless nighttime torment rendered Thorn so weepy and fragile that, when Jada opened the cellar door and allowed in the golden morning light of the sunny kitchen, Thorn wanted to throw herself into her guardian’s arms with trembling gratitude and affection.
It embarrassed her later, that she’d practically groveled in thanks to the very person who’d jailed her in the first place.
And no amount of pleading, protesting, or promising in the evening made Jada relent in the slightest. Thorn would spend her nights in the root cellar for a week and that sentence would not be commuted.
Even when Thorn utterly panicked and fought back, Jada’s relentless and airless wings enshrouded her and thrust her into the dank room.
Locked physically from outside, the door resisting all pounding on it and attempts at thwarting the wards.
At the end of her punishment, Thorn returned to her small bedroom with pitiful gratitude for its clean wholesomeness and airy windows.
She was also grateful that, by some sheer stroke of luck, she’d possessed the wit to not mention the prince’s gem in her journal.
The lint-covered ball of sealing wax remained in Thorn’s pocket.
Her prince became her daily companion, reminding her of a world beyond the briars.
If not for the gem and the glimpses it gave her of another life, Thorn might have despaired.
Especially as the worst was yet to come.
Following the week of the root cellar, Jada again prepared to complete the journey Thorn had interrupted with her irresponsible and thoughtlessly rebellious behavior.
Despite being thoroughly cowed on any number of fronts, Thorn found her mind returning to the problem of escaping through the warded gate, gnawing at the idea with the irresistible urge that had, when she was a girl, led her to wiggle a loose tooth until it released with a stab of pain and a gush of blood.
She told herself not to think about it.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Indeed, with every bit of sorrow over some lost privilege, with every rush of exhausted anger, Thorn consoled herself with thoughts of—not revenge, exactly, but sweet rebellion and savage hope.
That wild and reckless part of her refused to give up.
She wouldn’t meekly accept being locked away when a road right outside the gate promised her another life.
It wasn’t as if Jada could punish her more than she already had.
Even if she makes you stay in the root cellar again, for even longer, forever? a cautionary voice whispered.
Even then, she told herself stubbornly, knowing it was easy to make that resolution in the light of day. Still, she would not be broken. It’s only earth.
And worms …
With the root cellar mostly a bad memory, Thorn made a show of meek obedience and slavish repentance, all the while plotting when she would attempt her next escape.
That wardbreaking technique had worked, even if Jada had somehow sensed it from afar or, suspicious of Thorn, had lurked nearby.
Perhaps, if Jada had traveled farther away, she wouldn’t know.
Or maybe it would take her too long to travel back and Thorn could run away and hide in one of those vast cities where Jada could never find her.
Or she’d find the prince’s castle and he’d protect her.
And next time, she would try going through the briar hedge instead of via the gate.
Maybe Jada wouldn’t detect a different kind of wardbreaking.
Jada didn’t know Thorn had memorized more techniques from the book than that first one she’d attempted.
Yes, Thorn would wait a full night and day for Jada to be gone and try making a small doorway in the bramble of thorns itself.
Except that Jada outmaneuvered her, as she informed Thorn the morning of her departure.
“I’m going to sleep the whole time you’re gone?” Thorn echoed, not quite able to believe it.
“A kind of sleep,” Jada amended. “An enchanted rest, where you will not feel the passage of time. You’ll close your eyes and when you open them, I will have returned.
” Jada reached across the kitchen table, where they had all their most important conversations, and patted Thorn’s hand.
“You won’t be troubled by loneliness this way, nor will you feel trapped.
It will be as if no time passed for you at all. ”
“But … But what if I need to visit the necessary? What if I get my menses?” She was due any day. Thorn felt on the verge of tears, from crushing disappointment or frustrated wrath, she couldn’t discern. Perhaps both. “Food, water!”
“Your body won’t need any of those things. You will simply sleep. In truth, I could leave you that way for a hundred years and you wouldn’t age.”
“No!” Thorn gasped in horror. “No, please, you wouldn’t. You can’t.”
“I can,” Jada replied meaningfully, “and I would, if you made it necessary for me to do so, but I won’t. Not yet. Not for any longer than a few days, like usual.”
“But how will I know it’s only been a few days?” This wasn’t the aspect to fix on, Thorn knew, but her thoughts flew in scattered shards like bluebirds when the hawk passes through and she couldn’t seem to order them again.
“Stupid girl, I will tell you how long it’s been. Would I lie to you?”
Yes, whispered that sullen, rebellious voice that had led her into so much trouble. “Please don’t do this,” her mouth said aloud.
“If you had obeyed me, I wouldn’t be forced into such an extreme measure. But there’s no need to fear. You’ve done this before with no harm. You will sleep and my wards will protect you.”
“Before?” Her mind and heart snagged on that, the sunny kitchen taking on a glare of cruelty, the whites too white, the sky outside mockingly blue.
“What do you think I did when you were an infant, a toddler?” Jada asked incredulously. “You didn’t imagine I left you alone to your own devices before you could care for yourself, did you?”
As with so many things, this had never occurred to Thorn. “I don’t remember,” she whispered. But … maybe she did. Old, vague, and distorted memories fluttered at the edges of her mind, of lying frozen, unable to move, but awake.
“There was no reason to tell you,” Jada said, waving that away.
“I put you to bed at night, invoked the Sleep of Ages, then awakened you when I returned. See? Totally harmless and you never suffered. I have never wanted you to suffer, Thorn. I hope you know that. All of this is only to keep you safe.”
Safe. Thorn was beginning to loathe that word. “What about Nessie and the chickens?”
“They will also sleep, safe in their beds, just like you.”
“What if you don’t return to wake me?” she asked, at last voicing the fear that plagued her the most.
“I always return,” Jada answered. Somehow, the words sounded like a threat.
“Just in case, though,” Thorn persisted, hearing the desperation in her own voice, feeling it in the cold sweat slicking her palms, “I should stay awake. I won’t try to go out.”
“I can’t take that risk,” Jada replied. “One day you will understand.”
Thorn doubted that.
“Now, you have a choice,” Jada continued briskly, casting a glance at the position of the sun outside. “I can put you to sleep where you sit and you’ll awake with a crick in your neck that will take days to dissipate, or you can cooperate, lie down in your cozy bed, and awake rested and refreshed.”
Thorn wanted to refuse to cooperate, but her hands, still bruised from pounding on that immovable cellar door, reminded her of her powerlessness.
She could not force her way out. Only via guile could she escape this concentric series of briars that bound her.
This time, she would sleep. And later, she would find a way to research this spell.
The Sleep of Ages. With a fancy title like that, the enchantment would be in a book somewhere.
“I’ll lie in my bed,” she replied with quiet dignity.
“Good girl,” Jada said. And that, too, sounded like a warning.
Thorn opened her eyes to find Jada standing over her, wearing a different gown and a smugly satisfied smile. “There now,” the sorceress said. “Wasn’t that sweet and easy?”
Except … it hadn’t been.
Thorn had slept, immobile, not needing to eat or pee, her uterus slumbering uncramped, but she’d been aware the whole time.
Not enough to count the passage of minutes, to track the days and nights.
But she’d been awake, screaming inside her skull until it felt like she’d clawed the fragments of bone from the inside to lodge painfully in her brain.