Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales by Sharon Lynn Fisher Read Free Book Online

was the same as hers: dragon’s milk, to make me strong. My father wed me to the blade before I could walk. My sword, too, came to me by way of the Silk Road, the hilt’s gold filigree and ruby embellishment designed as a companion weapon to Aurora’s fire. She and I are the defenders of Roussillon, and as such neither we nor our family ever want for anything. Nothing required for our survival or comfort, anyway.
    But on the night watch, I burn. The desire for another sort of life consumes me like the potter’s fire. I can’t even say what sort of life I would prefer. I only know that when I sleep, and especially during certain phases of the moon, I feel like
color
is billowing inside of me. Like if I don’t hold my breath I’ll erupt in orange and vermilion and gold.
    I nudge again at Aurora’s ribs, and she drops in through the mouth of our cave. From here we’ve got a sweeping view of the valley, and it’s on clear nights like this when outsiders creep up on us from the south, or our own countrymen from the north. My costly sword has never drawn blood—except by accident during my training. The threat of Aurora’s fire has been enough to turn back many a would-be raider.
    Inside the cave, Aurora spits flame at the wood we collected at the end of the last evening watch. We keep our fire small for most of the night, but I allow myself more light between sunset and nightfall so I can work. The walls of the cave are bright with my paintings. It’s the only way I can contain the storm that rages inside me—by letting out the colors, one brushstroke at a time.
    My mother is a potter. My brother, an apprentice to the most skilled pigment chemist in the village. There are few here who don’t earn a wage from the ochre dust in our hills. But I was not given a choice. How long, I wonder, will the paintings be enough? Already, I feel they’re not enough.
    Aurora settles in the mouth of the cave. Wings at rest, amber eyes alert. Great paws crossed like a dog’s before the fire. She glances at me, huffing smoke before returning her attention to the world outside. She feels my discontent, though she doesn’t understand it. She doubles her own vigilance when I’m distracted by my painting. I’d trust no one but Aurora to watch our valley alone. Day or night—even in the transition between—her eyes miss nothing.
    I stare at the final whitewashed section of cave wall, near the back where the light is poorest. After I’ve covered it, I’ll have to resort to painting the ceiling from Aurora’s back. Or find another cave that’s big enough to hide both of us.
    Or have Aurora fire-blast it all away and begin again.
    My eyes roam over the work of previous weeks and months. I’d started with shimmering, serpentine rainbows—my attempts to channel the colorful chaos inside me. Then familiar scenery—lavender fields and vineyards. I tried the smaller scale for a while—baskets of fruit and rows of fresh-baked bread in the market—but soon tired of the inanimate and began to paint living creatures. Horses grazing below the village. Chickens pecking crumbs from the cobblestone streets.
    At last, perhaps inevitably, I began to paint dragons. I painted Aurora as she rested, curled like a great wolfhound. I practiced catlike eyes, ridged brow and torso, and curving fields of burnished scales. From there I moved on to dragons of every color, whole skies full of them. Teeming, writhing hosts descending over the fields. The full rich and varied palette of fire dragons. The humble deltas—slinkers and creepers that threaten with venom instead of fire. The regal northern ice lizards with their hoary breath. And rarest of all, the great Celtic Silvers, bellowing thunder that cracks mountains and breathing fog over emerald hills. No one knows for sure if these last are truth, or a fiction created to warn invaders away from Ériu’s ragged shoreline.
    In this last series I’d truly lost myself, though I’d gradually circled