He wasn’t wrong. I actually thought I was worse than dead.
But Prince Nikolai was here with a plan to reverse this. To save me.
If only there was anything I could do to help him. But I could only stand there and hope that Ivan didn’t end up dissuading his liege.
So far, he hadn’t, as Nikolai insisted, “If we have to resort to a light form of necromancy, we will. I came all this way to establish unprecedented, and necessary ties with the West, and I’m not leaving without them. Now, stop stalling and go collect her body.”
Ivan finally gave up, his shoulders slumping. “As you wish, Your Highness.” Then he beckoned to two other men to follow him.
I followed the three men, looking forward to returning to my body via the door they’d open. But they barely set foot on the castle’s threshold, when the ground rumbled and shook, knocking them back.
We all watched in shock and awe as giant, black briar thorns tore the ground and shot up, blocking the door. In the span of the next few breaths, they spread to encase the whole castle in an impenetrable shield of sharp, twisting vines.
Snapping out of his shock, the knight unsheathed his sword and slashed at the enormous thorn bush, with the other two joining in, to no avail.
Ivan finally stopped, panting harshly, “Is this part of the curse?”
Nikolai gazed up at the castle in baffled frustration that mirrored my own. “It could be some sort of test.”
“This is no doubt fairy magic,” an older man, who’d remained by the glass coffin said, “Perhaps Ivan was right, and we shouldn’t get involved?”
“We did not come all the way here to be scared off by some vines.” Nikolai unsheathed his sword, and beckoned for the rest of his party, and they all joined the other men.
But it was useless. Every strike only seemed to strengthen and increase the vines, until the castle all but disappeared beneath their lethal tapestry.
Afterwards, Nikolai attempted casting spells to make the vines retreat into the earth. Then he summoned a storm to tear them away, and even set them on fire.
Nothing worked. That thorny barrier was here to stay.
But the men were not.
By nightfall Prince Nikolai had given up and ordered his men to move out.
As they rode away, I heard the knight assuring Nikolai that they’d stop in Orestia, find that other troubled princess whose family would gladly be rid of. One who was wide awake, and only had a mad father.
In ever deepening dejection, I passed through the thorn-encrusted door, floated back to my body, and continued my wait.
For what? I couldn’t tell.
Days passed with me lingering in a dissociative state.
To combat the maddening monotony and isolation, I started exploring the castle. I’d come to realize I could move away from my body within its confines. I examined every nook and cranny, over and over, fixating on the catacombs and the centuries-old remains within. Anything to escape the fact that I had been torn out of my body, and robbed of my ability to feel, to be seen or heard.
Then it finally sank in.
I was no longer a person, but the resident ghost of a rundown castle.
This was my afterlife. And there was no end in sight.
Whenever voices approached the castle, I no longer bothered going outside to see who they were, or how they fared. I knew how it would end. They all failed to bypass the thorn barrier, and left in frustrated defeat, leaving me to sink into yet deeper fathoms of despair.
Why couldn’t my fairy godmother have just left the curse alone, and let me die in peace? Her amendment hadn’t saved me, it had cursed me twice over.
At some point, I tired of haunting the castle, cycled back to the room where my body lay, asleep and untouched by time.
In spite of my body’s restless slumber, the turquoise silk dress with the chiffon pink skirt overlay, that my ghostly form mirrored, was unwrinkled. I hadn’t gotten thinner, or paler, and my hair hadn’t become oily or disheveled. My skin only had the scent of the delicate lavender soap I’d last used. There wasn’t even the faintest layer of dust on me.
The curse was perfectly preserving me, like I was a morbid trophy, a breathing, suffering taxidermy.
As I helplessly watched my face twisting and my body twitching, something occurred to me.
If my body was mirroring the misery I was experiencing, could I possibly control it at will?