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Sleeping Beauty

A kiss woke me. A cool kiss pulled me from the hot depths of my dreaming. Lips touched mine, and deep as I was, dark as I was, I knew her, and let her lead me.

‘Katherine?’ I spoke her name but made no sound. A whiteness left me blind. I closed my eyes just to see the dark. ‘Katherine?’ A whisper this time. Damn but my throat hurt.

I turned my head, finding it a ponderous thing, as if my muscles strove to turn the world around me whilst I remained without motion. A white ceiling rotated into white walls. A steel surface came into view, gleaming and stainless.

Now I knew something beyond her name. I knew white walls and a steel table. Where I was, who I was, were things yet to be discovered.

Jorg. The name felt right. It fitted my mouth and my person. Hard and direct.

I could see a sprawl of long black hair spread across the shining table, reaching from beneath my cheek, overhanging the edge. Had Katherine climbed it to deliver her kiss? My vision swam, my thoughts with it – was I drunk … or worse? I didn’t feel myself – I might not yet know who I was, but I knew enough to say that.

Images came and went, replacing the room. Names floated up from the back of my mind. Vyene. I had a barber cut my hair almost to the scalp when I left Vyene. I remembered the snip of his shears and the dark heap of my locks, tumbled across his tiled floor. Hakon had mocked me when I emerged cold-headed into the autumn chill.

Hakon? I tried to hang details upon the void beneath his name. Tall, lean … no more than twenty, his beard short and bound tight by an iron ring beneath his chin. ‘Jorg the Bald!’ he’d greeted me and fanned out his own golden mane across his shoulders, bright against wolfskins.

‘Watch your mouth.’ I’d said it without rancour. These Norse have little enough respect for royalty. Mind you neither do I. ‘Has my beauty fled me?’ I mocked sorrow. ‘Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in war, Hakon. I surrendered my lovely locks. Then I watched them burn. In the battle of man against lice I am the victor, whilst you, my friend, still crawl. I sacrificed one beauty for another. My own, in exchange for the cries of my enemies. They died by the thousand, in the fire.’

‘Lice don’t scream. They pop.’

I recalled the bristling of scalp beneath palm as I rubbed my head trying to find an answer to that one. I tried now to touch the hair spread out before me across the steel but found my hands restrained. I made to sit up but a strap across my chest held me down. Straining, I could see five more straps binding me to the table, running across my chest, stomach, hips, legs, and ankles. I wore nothing else. Tubes ran from glass bottles on a stand above me, down into the veins of my left wrist.

This room, this white and windowless chamber, had not been made by any people of the Broken Empire. No smith could have fashioned the table, and the plasteek tubes lay beyond the art of some king’s alchemist. I had woken out of time, led by dreams and a kiss to some den of the Builders.

The kiss! I flung my head to the other side, half-expecting to find Katherine standing there, silent beside the table. But no – only sterile white walls. Her scent lingered though. White musk, fainter than faint, but more real than dream.

Me, a table, a simple room of harsh angles, kept warm and light by some invisible artifice. The warmth enfolded me. My last memories had been of cold. Hakon and me trudging through the snow-bound forests of eastern Slov, a week out from Vyene. We picked our path between the pines where the ground lay clearest, leading our horses. Both of us huddled in our furs, me with only a hood and a quarter inch of hair to keep my head from freezing. Winter had fallen upon us, hard, early, and unannounced.

‘It’s buggery cold,’ I said unnecessarily, letting my breath plume before me.

‘Ha! In the true north we’d call this a valley spring.’ Hakon, frost in his beard, hands buried in leather mittens lined with fur.

‘Yes?’ I pushed through the pine branches, hearing them snap and the frost scatter down. ‘Then how come you look as cold as I feel?’

‘Ah.’ A grin cracked his wind-reddened cheeks. ‘In the north we stay by the hearth until summer.’

‘We should have stayed by that last hearth then.’ I floundered through snow, banked along a break in the trees.

‘I didn’t like the company.’

I had no answer for that. Exhaustion had its teeth in me and my bones lay cold in white flesh.

The house in question had stood implausibly deep in the forest, so isolated that Hakon had been convinced the tales of a witch were true.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I’d told him. ‘If there’s a witch living in the forest and she eats children then she’s going to want to live on the edge, isn’t she? I mean how often does a little Gerta or Hans come wandering this far in?’

Hakon had caved beneath the undeniable weight of my logic. We’d gone to ask for shelter, and failing it being offered, to take it. The door stood ajar – never a good sign in a winter storm, and the snow in front of the porch lay heavily trodden, covered with a fresh fall that obscured detail.

‘Something’s not right.’ Hakon unslung his axe, a heavy, single-bladed thing with a long cutting edge, curved to bite deeper.

I’d nodded and advanced, silent save for the crump of fresh snow beneath my boots. Reaching out with my sword, I pushed the door wider. My theory about little girls and the middle of forests didn’t survive the hallway. A child lay sprawled there, golden curls splashed with crimson, arms and legs at broken angles. I advanced another step, my nose wrinkled against the stink. Blood, the reek of guts, and something else, something rank and feral.

A hand clamped my shoulder and I nearly spun to hack it off. ‘What?’

‘We should leave … the witch—’

‘There’s no witch living here.’ I pointed at the corpse. ‘Unless she’s got teeth big enough to bite a girl’s face off, a taste for entrails, and a nasty habit of shitting in her own hallway.’ I pointed to the brown mound by the foot of the stairs, which, unlike the girl’s guts, was still steaming ever so slightly.

‘Bear!’ Hakon released my shoulder and started to back away. ‘Let’s run.’

‘Let’s,’ I agreed.

A big black head thrust out from beneath the stairs as we retreated to the horses. I saw another bear, larger still, through the broken shutters to the side of the house, licking out a bowl in the kitchen. And, as we reached our steeds and started to hurry away, a cub watched us from the attic bedroom, its wet muzzle thrust out between the winter boarding, teeth scarlet.

Why did it have to be bears? If it had been a witch I’d have stuck my sword through her neck and moved in. Bears though … Better to run, even if it’s out into the killing cold.

Each step sapped my strength as the heat left me, stolen a scrap at a time, squandered into the night air with every breath.

I plodded on, deep in myself, refusing exhaustion. It had been time to leave Vyene, whether winter was approaching or not. I might regret it now, freezing in the pathless forest, but I’d stayed too long. Sometimes the dream of a place sucks you in and before you know it you’re part of that dream too. In a city as grand and as old as Vyene the dream is one of glory, steeped in history, but like all dreams it’s an illusion that will use you up while grass grows under your feet, while thorns spring up, dense on all sides, and hem you in. A kiss had woken me there too. Elin, leaving with her brother, Sindri, to their halls and duties in the north. Hakon had wanted to stay, but he’d had enough of the ancient capital and wanted to see the provinces, to slum it with the King of Renar. And so we’d left, escaped the trap of intrigue and politicking that was Vyene, shook ourselves free before its soft jaws closed entirely around us, and moved along.

Full night and a bitter moon found us some miles further on, breaking from the treeline and setting out across a snowfield where the land turned stony and started to rise. Snow began to fall once more, large-flaked, ghostly, ponderous at first, then rushing as the wind picked up again.

I lay on the steel table remembering – seeing lost days unfold. The dreams that had wrapped me still clung, leeching away urgency and care. It occurred to me that some drug pulsed in my veins, some sleeping draught to keep me dull. I jerked my body within the bands that kept me on the table. Nothing moved. The thing must be bolted to the floor.

Each strap had a buckle. One free hand and I’d be out of there. So all that truly held me was the binding on my wrists. I strained to break a hand free but the bands weren’t made for breaking.

‘Fuck.’

I stared around the room. In the top corner, opposite me, a glass eye watched, a short black cylinder ending in a dark lens.

The tubes that ran, from bottles on a steel stand to needles in my arm, hung tantalisingly close. Straining until my neck screamed and my vision blurred, I could almost touch the nearest of the trio with the tip of my tongue. Close! But ‘close’ can be the difference between cutting a throat and slicing air.

I stared at the tubes, hating them, trying not to let the drugs drag me down again. I felt myself sinking, the whiteness of the ceiling filling my mind.

Sinking.

I had felt myself sinking into a white embrace when we left the trees behind. The snow crust lay too thin to hold my weight and beneath it, cold soft depths where a man could flounder. In the drifts a man would lose the last of his heat quick enough, and find at the limits of his strength that the snow became almost warm, a cradle into which he might relax, and perhaps sleep, just for a moment, to recover himself.

‘Here!’ Hakon held the haft of his axe for me to grab hold and hauled me onto firmer ground.

‘Why did we leave the woods, again?’ I asked the question with numb lips, the words coming out blunt-edged. At least my teeth had ceased to chatter, which seemed as if it should be a good thing. The wind scoured the hillside. In the forest the trees had muted it.

‘Nothing beats a cave for shelter.’ Hakon pushed me on.

‘Cave? Where?’ I could see little past swirling snow and darkness.

I’d promised Sindri to send his cousin back alive after his trip to Renar. So far it looked as though it was Hakon keeping me alive. ‘And where’s my damn horse?’

‘Back in the trees with mine. I saw a light. We’re checking it out. You’ll remember when you’re warmer. Let’s get to the cave.’ Hakon kept up a steady pace and I stumbled after him.

‘Cave? There’ll be bears!’ I remembered something about a baby bear with a red muzzle, and a girl with golden locks and no face. Swords and axes aren’t a match for a bear’s strength. Put a length of steel through one and the beast will still kill you before it realizes it’s dead.

‘This is a medical facility, Jorg. Look in the skin-flask.’

‘The what?’

‘It’s on your back. Depress the third, seventh, and sixth button.’

I took the cylinder from my shoulder and set it down before me by its strap. I knelt and pressed the numbered bumps as directed, glancing down only briefly, expecting to be rushed. I leapt back as the lid began to unscrew along a previously unseen seam. The top fell away with a hiss and I leaned forward to peer at the contents.

‘Pink slime.’ For some reason my stomach rumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten in … well, a very long time. ‘Does it taste as bad as it looks?’

‘Nu-skin. Touch it to your hand.’ Hakon turned his head, the ugly array of rods emerging from his eyes now pointing at my injury.

I didn’t trust Kalla but knowledge can be power and my half-flayed hand hurt badly enough to stop me concentrating. With my good hand I dipped a fingertip into the muck and felt it writhe, the sensation similar to holding a slug. I touched the slightest smear of it to the raw flesh of my other hand, still tight around the plague vial. The effect came within seconds, the livid pinkness of the slime flowing into something more skin-coloured, spreading, thinning, the feeling of insects crawling … and finally, a patch of new skin little wider than a fingerprint.

‘If you help me you can walk away with many such treasures. Wonders of the old world. I could explain them to you. A man with that kind of magic on his side could rule—’

‘I already have a kingdom, ghost.’ I sealed the cylinder and set it over my shoulder again.

‘Is it enough?’ she asked, Hakon immobile, her voice rising from his chest. The sweet smell of rot hung about him. A fly buzzed about his head, settling by the corner of an eye.

‘Nothing is ever enough.’ Habit led my fingers to the old burns across the left side of my face, still rough and puckered. ‘You didn’t want me pretty? Or doesn’t your gloop heal burns?’

‘It was made for burns. Burns are its speciality. But that injury is curiously resistant. There’s an exotic energy signature … If our physics laboratory were operational then …’

I backed toward the mouth of the cave and the green riot of hook-briar. The drone of bees reached me now, the call of birds. High summer outside, the seasons had turned whilst I slept.

‘There’s no escape that way, Jorg.’ Kalla followed. ‘Hook-briar was one of our works.’

‘Yours?’

‘Well, not mine. But from this facility. This was a big place once. Three hundred people worked here. Chamber upon chamber, waiting now for a man with enough vision to excavate them. Hook-briar – a cheaper, self-renewing razor wire. Highly effective engineering. For warmer climes than this of course if you want all-year protection. They never did get a strain that wouldn’t die back in the winter.’

‘And your … “projector” is out there?’ I tilted my head toward the midst of the thorns. ‘You’re not worried I might call on you in person?’ I gave her my dangerous smile. I hadn’t felt like smiling since I woke but now the edge of an idea sliced through the fading fog of Kalla’s drugs.

Hakon nodded. ‘It’s safe enough from you even if you wore armour and carried shears. Naked and without weapons you pose no threat. I tell you this to show you how hopeless your situation is. Work with me and power beyond your dreams could be—’

‘I’ve dreamed enough, ghost,’ I said. ‘Time to die. Goodbye, Brother Hakon.’

His lips twitched, a snarl of effort, and words stuttered out. ‘B-b-beauty. S-s-sacrifice.’ His own voice, free of Kalla’s control. The mutterings of a broken mind. Or perhaps his memory of our joking in Vyene about the price we’d pay to see our enemies burn.

I set my strength to untwisting the top of the vial.

‘No!’ Hakon started forward, Kalla shouting from his chest unit.

The lid came free and I flung the container over his head, back along the corridor. Kalla had said it held death, a plague that might scour mankind from the world. I’d called it Pandora’s Box. I turned and ran, shrugging Hakon’s reaching fingers from my shoulder. I built up speed, barefoot across the stony cavern floor.

I’d released Pandora’s ills and back along the corridor a klaxon sounded, wailing like a thousand banshees. Angling toward the extreme left of the cave mouth, I reached the impenetrable wall of thorns, and leapt, high as I might, diving forward.

‘Purging. Repeat – level 0 viral breach. Repeat. Full Purge!’

Pandora’s Box held all the world’s troubles … but at the bottom of it, last to emerge, trapped among nightmares, lay Hope.

The hook-briar gave before my weight, thorns snagging at my skin, slipping in, tearing, slicing deeper, holding, until at last they arrested my advance and I hung among them. Trapped as I’d been trapped years before, pierced by the same sharp and sudden pain, but this time by my own volition.

I heard rather than saw the hot white tongue of fire that roared from the cave mouth, a spear of incendiary rage surrounded by billowing flame that spilled to either side, spreading, engulfing.

The klaxon felt silent, leaving only the roar of flames, the crackle of burning, and my screaming as the margins of the inferno reached me, naked amongst the thorns.

Unconsciousness is a blessing in such times, but horrifically late in coming. I felt my skin crisp, saw my hair shrivel and burn as the hot breath of the fire blew around me. I saw the skin melting from my hands before the heat took my sight.

Unconsciousness is a blessing, but only a temporary one.

I found myself amid a forest of blackened coils, thorn-toothed, stark against the blueness of the sky.

Rolling my bald and weeping head, I saw with blurred eyes a corridor cut through the midst of the hook-briar where only fine white ash remained. The silver-steel of the cylinder lay beneath me, scorched but unharmed. I jabbed at the buttons with sticky fingers, some welded together with molten skin, clumsy in a pain that admits no description.

Three times I tried the numbers. I would have wept but I’d gone past tears. At last, infinitely slow, the lid rotated off and I dipped my hands into the nu-skin. I daubed the slime across each finger. As the stuff writhed across them I held each digit wide, despite the pain. I smeared slime across my face, into my mouth, into each eye, down across my body as far as the remaining thorns would let me.

Whatever science or enchantment the nu-skin held it proved to be powerful. The unguent worked different wonders depending on where it found itself, repairing my sight, flowing down my windpipe and healing my lungs to the point where I could scream once more, building new skin across my arms while the dead stuff sloughed away.

I tore free of the thorns, only to snare myself on new ones, but allowing the application of my dwindling stock of slime to new areas, groin, legs, back. The skin’s work drew on my own strength, an exhaustion rising through me that dragged me into a torpor despite the crawling agony of it all.

At last a light rain woke me. I stood, caught amid the skeletal remains of the briar, impaled on black thorns, smeared with ash, but unburned, clad in a new hide.

Even burned and brittle the hook-briar took its toll on me as I struggled through. By the time I reached the corridor of ash I ran with blood from a hundred wounds, the last of the nu-skin exhausted early in the escape. The rain came heavy now, but warm, sluicing down across my body in a crimson wash. I stood in the mud and ash and let it clean me.

I returned to the cave, finding it still hot, the stone ticking as it cooled, no trace of Hakon save a stain around the blackened drug stand. Wincing at the heat beneath my bare and bleeding feet I made my way along the dark corridor and found my sword. And thus dressed I left the bunker.

At last, before my strength failed once more, I picked my way around ancient remnants of razor wire and came to where the top of a sunken pillar of Builder-stone emerged from the mud. The stone had been cracked by the fire’s heat and a little less than a foot of it lay exposed. Despite the weathering and corrosion it took more effort than I thought remained in me to slide the top to one side. The hollow interior stretched down beyond sight, the inner surface crowded with myriad crystalline growths, all interconnected with a forest of silver wires, some thick, some finer than spider silk. Many of the crystals lay dark, but here and there one glowed with a faint light, visible only in the shadow.

‘Found you.’

‘Don’t.’ Kalla’s voice, weak and pulsing from the interior.

I pried a rock from the muck about me. A heavy chunk of what might once have been poured stone. Grunting with effort I lifted it to the lip of the column. It would fit down the inside with an inch or two to spare.

‘I can’t end. Not like—’

‘A thousand years is too long to live.’ And I let the rock fall. It dropped with a prolonged and continuous sound of shattering, ricocheting from one wall to the other, tearing away the guts that had let Kalla echo for so long within the last works of the Builders.

I looked at my hands, torn and empty. A great weariness washed through me, a desire to lie myself down in the mud and let sleep claim me. All that stopped me was the memory of a kiss, the hint of her scent.

‘No. I’ve slept long enough.’

A kiss had woken me and I’d found, as we so often do, that the world had moved on without me. And that’s the riddle of existence for you. When to move and when to stay. Dwell too long and we become the prisoner of our dreams, or someone else’s. Move too fast, live without pause, and you’ll miss it all, your whole life a blur of doing. Good lives are built of moments – of times when we step back and truly see. The dream and the dreamer. There’s the rub. Does the dream ever let go? Aren’t we all only sleepwalking into old age, just waiting, waiting, waiting for that kiss?

Bleeding, smeared with muck and ash, I staggered down the hill, all that survived the purge of Bunker 17. I might be counted one more ill to be visited upon the world, for I could hardly be called its hope. But, hope or horror, I had endured. I had been delivered from the thorns in fire and pain and set free.

I ran a hand across the baldness of my scalp and felt my mouth twist in its old smile, a bitter one to be sure – but not only bitter.

‘Sleeping beauty, woken by the princess’s kiss,’ I said.

And so I set off to find her.

Footnote

This was the first Broken Empire short story I wrote, prompted by a reader daring me to do a Jorg/fairy-tale mash-up. It’s framed around Sleeping Beauty but has a nod to Goldilocks and even Rapunzel! Chronologically it takes place between the two threads in Emperor of Thorns, before the Wedding Day thread in King of Thorns, on Jorg’s return to Ancrath from his first visit to Vyene. Hakon is a character seen in The Red Queen’s War trilogy.

Did Katherine wake Jorg using her dream-magic, or was it just a failure of the ageing machinery? That’s for the reader to decide.