Don't Cry. Don't Cry. — 15 (End)

Kiiiiiing!

A translucent blue barrier flung back the thornwood that had been forcing its way into the building.

Skrrk—kakakak!

The briars scraped along the curve of the sphere, hunting for a seam they might crawl through.

I watched the soldiers darting this way and that, and the Royal Guard commander checking over them. Behind him the people who worked in this residence rushed about, sealing the windows. Frames must have been built in for exactly that purpose: set a rigid panel in place, haul the frame shut beside it, and the whole thing locked with a solid clack. By the time the workers stopped moving and began to count heads, the place where we stood had become a little shelter.

Clearly somewhere important people lived. The security was tighter than I had expected. And if a witch had slipped into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a place like this as if it were nothing, then she was powerful far beyond any ordinary ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠measure.

Few Harvesters were still awake in the capital. Some had been swept up and killed by the trunks racing out along the roads; some had taken a thorn and fallen asleep; and some were shut up in their houses, shaking, staring in terror as the thornwood crept slowly in. You could bar a door with all your strength, and still a branch would grow through the crack and stab someone on a needle point. It was not a bee driving home a stinger. The thornwood simply grew, inching and creeping — and yet the lightest prick was enough to blow out a person's mind and lay them down in sleep. Here, perhaps because of the barrier, nothing was working its way through the gaps.

"Is it safe here?"

"It won't hold for long."

The commander answered me. He was moving the soldiers with a cold, steady face. They were Royal Guard; not one of them had fallen into confusion. Some were trying to send word by magic, and others were hauling clockwork machines out from inside and switching them on. Soon the devices shed light to the sound of their peculiar whir, and before long they cast the world beyond the building up into the empty air.

Oh. A hologram.

Mana-based, evidently. There were corners of their technology that had developed in strange directions.

Seen from the height of the rooftops, enormous thornwood had grown all along the wide roads. Thick trunks ran the length of the streets, and the lesser branches were burrowing into the houses. As time passed, the Harvesters' viewpoints dwindled one by one.

And in the midst of them, one Harvester was still fighting to the very end.

Victoria.

She was shearing away the branches that reached for her with jets of water. Set aside the sleep that came with a prick, and they might as well have been ordinary trees; she passed through streets choked with thornwood without particular effort.

"A shadow? Raise the view to the sky. Now!"

I was watching the screen and the Harvesters' eyes at once when the commander, having caught sight of something, jabbed a finger at the top of the image. There must have been a camera outside, because the view climbed.

And above the city, a colossal black dragon was flying.

Arms and legs. Enormous wings upon its back. Two sharp horns above its head. It was a dragon by any measure, and yet the commander said, low:

"That's the witch. Drop the view. Don't keep her whole body in the frame — track only her feet. Otherwise she'll sense it turned back on her."

The image dropped in a rush. The witch truly seemed not to have noticed; she was turned another way.

"What do you intend to do?"

When I asked, the commander set his face hard to hide the strain.

"Don't concern yourself. Wait here. The kingdom has been preparing for the witch for a very long time."

He did not say they could defeat her. Following the screen, I saw light streaking toward the dragon from the heart of the capital. And Sorindiges was taking Aurora down into the basement of the building where she lived. From what he was saying, they had made ready to protect her. Even so, those preparations had been breached once — and so, he said, they had prepared with absolute thoroughness, that they might never fail again.

Yes. Of course.

That Aurora had fallen into a sleep from which she could not wake meant they had already failed. An ordinary person would have died long ago, but because she was a princess they had kept her alive on the strength of the most advanced technology they possessed. Kept her alive, and nothing more. They bored holes into her body to feed her nutrients, kneaded her arms and legs every day so the limbs would not stiffen, and shifted her a little at a time so the bedsores would not come. If she had not been a princess, who would ever have done all of that?

That was when Maleficent's voice came piercing straight through the building. It rang, vast and thunderous. And in the same instant, the light that had flown at her on the screen ricocheted straight back the other way.

BOOM!

It never showed on the screen, but an explosion thundered from the direction of the royal castle, and every face around me went dark at once. Only for a moment. Without warning, masses of rock erupted from the ground in gouts of flame and hurtled toward Maleficent. Not one of them reached her. They burned away in black fire all around her, and vanished.

"Worms who don't know their place. Very well. If you don't know it, then I'll simply have to teach you."

Those last words sounded, somehow, as if they were being spoken from the left and the right at once. And the effect was immediate. Glass shattered outside, and at the same moment every machine within went dead. Even the lamps died. The room sank into a darkness so complete you could not see your hand before your face.

Something rustled in that dark. Then came a scratch of striking, and soon a small flame rose.

"What is this."

At some point the thornwood had forced its way inside. The walls were already choked with black briars, and the people nearest them dropped to the floor one by one. Whenever someone fell, the thorns crept over them, inching closer. At last a terrified soldier snatched up a weapon and swung, only to be pricked by briars reaching in from every side and crumple where he stood. The commander swung his sword at the front until the very last, but soon he too fell.

And then a thorn touched me.

I don't fall asleep.

A sharp point had sunk into my skin, and I was not sleepy in the slightest. My body moved without trouble. I caught hold of the plant — a thing with no light in it, and no warmth — and twisted reality.

Crrk.

To my surprise, it resisted. Just a little. Drawing on what I had learned in the second world, I laid the force on carefully and compressed it down to a single point. There was a sensation like a soap bubble bursting, and a white branch appeared above my hand.

I gripped it and swung, and the thornwood drew back from me. Just as I'd thought. I swung again, and the branches that had crawled in through the window swelled and smashed the panels that had been holding them shut.

Mm. I more or less see how to use it.

Branch in hand, I climbed. It must have taken the measure of my method when it entered me, because there was no killing intent in the thornwood. Astonishingly, these briars held no direct wish to murder anyone. So this would not let me lay a hand on Maleficent herself. I would simply have to go and meet her.

I went out through the window. Thornwood crowded everything around me, but a swing of the white branch and it shifted aside of its own accord. Once I was clear and looked up, the witch was no longer in the sky. She was not hard to find even so. Harvesters who had gained powers were fighting her.

There were more than three hundred of the empowered in the capital. Forty-three of them had chosen to fight the witch, but their numbers were steadily falling — torn open on the claws of the witch in her dragon shape, roasted in the fire she breathed, melted down by magic. Even so, they fought desperately. They did not merely loose their abilities. They folded them together, and they turned the ground and the stone against her. But time was on the witch's side. One by one the Harvesters were slaughtered by her, or pricked by the black thornwood and dropped into sleep, and she did not leave the sleepers where they lay. She went out of her way to trample them dead, sneering that the weak had no worth in living, that crude techniques of that sort would never work on her, the most wicked of all.

The empowered died one after another, until at last a single person remained.

Victoria Vett.

Through the Harvesters' eyes I had watched her nearly fall, again and again. But when the openings came, Maleficent did not take them. At first I thought it chance. Then Victoria poured water at her with everything she had, and Maleficent ignored it to kill the person at her side, and I understood. She had been leaving her alive on purpose.

And when Victoria was the last one left, the black-scaled hand of the dragon closed around her torso.

"Ahh, you insignificant little lady. Did you truly think you could overcome the power of hell?"

Victoria's middle cinched inward. Maleficent, wearing the shape of a dragon, tightened the hand that held her. Victoria shuddered with the pain, then drew blood out of her own hand, shaped it into a spear, and hurled it at the witch. Even in the form of a dragon, she must have thought the eyes would be weak. But the thorn Victoria threw caught on the dragon's eyelid and glanced lightly off.

"Haha! A darling little trick. But it won't work on me. Tori. That simply isn't enough."

Victoria startled. She stared at Maleficent, then opened her mouth, stumbling over the word.

"Mally?"

"Ahh, yes. Mally is my pet name. Not Merryweather's — Maleficent's. Remember that, Victoria Vett."

Like a cat toying with caught prey, Maleficent giggled, and — leaving her arm a dragon's arm — changed into the familiar shape of the escort. Which meant she had not transformed into Merryweather's likeness. That form had been Maleficent's from the very beginning.

"What did you do to Bell!"

Victoria shouted it.

"Ahh, that monster? By now she'll have been pricked by the thornwood and fallen asleep. And even if she hasn't, she won't be escaping this prison of briars. I watched her a long time, you know. Her own power never seemed all that strong."

Maleficent laughed.

"No one can help you, Tori."

And slowly, she put her strength into the arm.

"Why... are you doing this."

In the end the tears spilled, drop after drop, and Victoria asked it in a voice thick with crying.

"Because I'm the Queen of Evil, of course? Ah — it isn't as if I have no reason at all. A very long time ago. Around the time you were only just born. The king insulted me, you see. So I made him pay the price, and what do you know — he used some cowardly trick and slipped right out of it."

She was talking about Aurora. I had thought the names rang oddly familiar, and here was the tale of Sleeping ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Beauty, being performed in the flesh.

"The king trampled my honor, so the kingdom will have to pay it back."

A senseless reason. Victoria couldn't even force her voice out properly; she mumbled it in a strangled whisper — you're doing all this for that? No. From the pain I could feel, it was because Maleficent had her crushed in that grip.

And I had arrived at the place where the two of them were fighting. At this rate Victoria looked about to burst, so I thought I would draw the witch's eye. Someone like a villain out of a fairy tale would take an interest in a nursery rhyme, surely.

While I was at it, I put into the song the wish that Victoria might set her heart at ease. Swinging the pure white branch, clearing away the black thornwood that covered everything around me, I walked toward them.

The moment she heard the rhyme, the strength ran out of Maleficent's hand. And then she let Victoria go. Victoria hit the ground and coughed, hacking. Maleficent did not so much as turn an eye toward her. She stared straight at me and asked:

"Who is Santa Claus?"

She asked it with anxiety and agitation driven deep into her face. So I told her.

"Someone who doesn't give presents to bad children. Merryweather. You had me fooled for a moment."

"My name is Maleficent. Monster."

Maleficent answered with a growl.