Excerpt: The Tale of Sleeping Mercy

Max strolled up the hillside. The tree atop the green crest beckoned to him, urging his feet to mutiny into a sprint, but the tenuous magic that quivered around him was more than enough discouragement. It would break open at the slightest misstep, or misthought.

At the summit, if it could be called that, the world was cold and quiet and open. The tree’s contorted branches, groping skywards like crippled hands, were all that blocked a complete view of the encircling horizon. It was grayish-yellow now, almost green, fading into star-flecked cobalt blue. Max patted his coat pocket to make sure that the sprig to bring him back was still nestled there securely.

His body meandered in a loose circle around the tree while his mind meandered around his destination: Jennifer’s apartment. The immaculate white walls with their rounded corners, the translucent vase with its flowers (perhaps poinsettias now), the beige minimalist furniture—

And he was there. He promptly toppled over and hit the side of his head on her coffee table.

He managed not to moan.

When the blossoms of light and agony had faded somewhat, he opened his eyes. The view from the window opposite showed that it was evening, as it had been in Faerie. He guessed and hoped that Jennifer was not at home; he remembered how she would flinch and fret at any small noise, let alone the sound of someone collapsing in her living room. He had found it endearing. Before. The mound of small things from Before—and he had begun to think of it with a capital letter, as though it were his own B.C.—that no longer made sense to him was growing into a mountain that would soon be insurmountable, he feared.

However, there was no time to meditate on these things. He got to his feet and commenced his search for the jewelry box. He had only seen it a few times in their time together. It was an elegantly proportioned rectangle covered in a slightly fuzzy cream-colored material. It would fit in his hands easily. His mind scoured across the possible places where Jennifer would stow it. The dresser in her bedroom sprang to mind.

With a slightly wobbly stride, he made his way to the familiar door. It was open. The bed was made as tidily as ever, the lamp on the nightstand was off, and the surface of the dresser was bare. He chose the top right drawer, and pulled it open by its delicate ring of a handle.

The interior was quartered into sections for combs, brushes, hair curlers, and pins.

He closed it and moved to the next. An assortment of makeup utensils.

The next several drawers that clattered open and shut were equally fruitless, and Max found himself loath to go further. He suspected it would become personal and take him dangerously close to Before.

He turned and surveyed the rest of the room, and hoped that an easy answer would present itself in the gloaming light.

Remarkably, it did.

From under the edge of the impeccable ivy-patterned comforter peered the corner of the little beige box. Like a devout worshipper, Max was on his knees at once. It was most unlike Jennifer to leave anything on the floor, let alone something of value, but there was no time to wonder at it. He picked up the box, and with a soft click he unfastened the lid.

Draped around the top of the pile of jewelry was a fine silver chain. It was connected to an amethyst that resembled a large lavender raindrop. It startled Max not because of its size or its beauty, but its unfamiliarity; he didn’t remember ever seeing Jennifer wear such a thing.

He rummaged on. After a few seconds of clinking and rustling and near-panicking, his shoulders finally relaxed. The bracelet was there at the bottom. As he fished it out, the cerulean oval seemed to glow with recognition. He marveled at how he could have ever given it away, how the magic could have ever escaped his notice.

Someone unlocked the front door. Max’s heart stopped, then hammered hard. He closed the box silently and slid it back to its place half-hidden under the bed. Although he remembered the room well, his head spun in search of an escape as though he had never seen it before. He couldn’t leave through the doorway—whoever had come in would surely see him. His only option was the walk-in closet.

He turned the handle and eased it open, frantically thanking its hinges for moving smoothly. He crept in and closed the door behind him. A soft, heavy thicket of fabric pressed against him from all sides.

A pair of chattering voices echoed up from the entranceway. He knew one was Jennifer’s, and there was something familiar to the other as well.

Max could see nothing in the closet, except for the faint line of light at the bottom of the door. He willed his heart to beat more quietly and not give him away.

”I thought the singer who played Escamillo was the best,” Jennifer said happily. “What do you think?”

“Oh, I agree. Don José was too overblown, even for opera.” Max recognized the voice. It was Sean, from work, the last person Max would have thought interested in opera.

“Carmen was luminous.”

“You know I didn’t notice that.”

Jennifer laughed, and said “aww”, and there was some mumbling and some silence.

“Max would never go to anything like that,” Jennifer said eventually. “He didn’t understand the stage at all.”

“He wasn’t the most cultured type, you know.” Sean sounded apologetic.

“I think most people are that way. Most.”

More silence, except for a few shuffling noises.

“But there were lots of other things he didn’t understand,” she continued. “It wasn’t just the stage. He didn’t understand art, or why I wanted to travel the world, or even how to plant a garden.” Max thought he heard her sigh, but he wasn’t sure.

“Well, I don’t know that I’ll always understand those things either, but I’ll try, and I’ll always listen.”

“Well, thank you.” The sound of a pecked kiss. “That’s more than I’ve been able to ask of most people in my life.”

Max felt as though he were trying to bend the entirety of his life into a loop, but the Before part of it was too brittle. What did he do all this for? A few little people who could do magic, some talking animals, and a tyrannical queen who might be a little less tyrannical if a certain curse was broken. But she might stay perfectly tyrannical, or get worse, and have him hanged for being such a—

Seemingly of its own accord—but only seemingly—his hand went to the pocket where the sprig rested. He took the rough, crooked, narrow thing in his fingers. He turned his mind away from the people on the other side of the door, and toward the hill and the tree and the cold, open space—

He gasped, but didn’t fall over this time. Night had swept over the sky completely. Clouds swirled under the inky expanse.

“Max!”

Something small was trotting up towards him. Poe.

“I have it,” Max said simply. He held out the bracelet with the cerulean stone.

The leopard made a graceless hop of joy on his three remaining legs. His tail swished. Max laughed in spite of himself, and knelt as Poe drew near.

“We have a chance.” Poe’s voice threatened to overflow with excitement. “We have a fighting, fighting chance.” His whiskers tickled Max’s hand as he examined the trinket.

A shifting of the clouds allowed the moon to shine through for a sliver of an instant. The light caught on the leopard’s fur, a silvery-cream sea with loops and dabs of black. Max could just see the awkward stump where Poe’s left back leg had been.

He thought again of bending his life into a loop, and now he knew what it was for.