And when he saw her looking so lovely in her sleep,
he could not turn away his eyes;
and presently he stooped and kissed her,
and she awaked, and opened her eyes, and looked very kindly on him....
-The Sleeping Beauty, Grimm's Fairy Tales
Chapter 3- An Old Fairy Tale
Night had swept across the sky, as though some midnight angel had lain a black veil across the day's blue heaven. Shadowy clouds lit by starlight stretched across the surface of a cheshire moon, making the world silvery and ethereal.
This particular natural loveliness went unnoticed by Kagome, who was instead looking at a gigantic mess. Actually, it was a very neat mess, all organized into tables, graphs and charts, with the occasional symbol for pi inserted into it. She'd been studying her geometry again for the last half hour, and due to being tired from the day's wandering and generally not feeling like working anymore, the formulas and equations had turned into a gigantic, super organized blob on her paper, which was smeared by erasure marks and fresher scribbles. The latest doodle was of a smiley face, which she was idly adding dog ears to for some incoherent reason. Finished looking at the circle with a line for a mouth, dots for eyes, and triangles for ears, she began to smudge it back out of existence with her eraser. Inuyasha was pacing restlessly around now that it was evening, and she didn't really want to know what he'd say if he caught her drawing what could be mistaken as a tacky rendition of of him.
She began to doodle Shippou instead, who was running around playing in the clearing before her. They'd spent the entire day scouring the castle and the adjacent turrets, finding all kinds of interesting things. None of which, unluckily, seemed to have anything to do with the sleeping community. Slowly, each of them had begun to adapt a little bit to the constant presence of the sleeping people, though it remained eerie. They'd chosen the only empty room available as that night's camp, no one wanting to remove the brambles over a sleeper and then move them. It would be like moving the dead, though not dead. A little more comfortable with being there, but there was still a line no one really wanted to cross. It was just too creepy.
The empty room was fairly large, a lofty ceiling with hanging vines draping from it with more closed, bell shaped flowers. It had taken a little while to clear away the floor, but the varnished wood had eventually been revealed, and they'd set up for the night. Set inside one of the castles' connected turrets, it was on the base level of the structure, and with all the covered tables, paper and drawing equipment that had been found there during the floral removal, it was easy to guess this was the artists' makeshift studio. All of the said artists must have been on the donjon's second level when the spell took effect, leaving it empty.
When the sun set, they ate. Kagome still had a couple cups of instant ramen left, which of course made Inuyasha rather pleased. They'd found a kitchen and a working well in another section of the complex, though any food laying around was stale or spoiled. Right now, she could hear the murmuring sounds of Sango and Miroku laying out sleeping rolls, and uprighting the room's partitions, which had been folded and tucked away into a corner. She'd taken the opportunity to slip away and try to get some homework done. It had only taken a couple minutes for it to turn into the merciless Blob of Math. A few minutes later, a bored Shippou emerged, with Kirara following. The firecat curled up on the porch, her twin tails over her nose gracefully, and closed her eyes for sleep.
The artist's room was set up toward the back of the turret, opening onto a small verandah and then leading to a sloping hill. Just beyond the tilting land, she could make out patterns, evidence of a garden. Before her though, the grass was thick and heavy, though she was still able to see Shippou running around and chasing one of the multitude of fireflies that lived in the woodsy area, attracted to the plants and to the water that had to be feeding them, hovering like a blinking cloud. Shippou had apparently made a game of it, running around and trying to capture some of the glowing bugs. So far, he'd been unsuccessful.
There was a light thumping noise beside her, accompanied a, "Feh." Inuyasha sat himself down on the next roof support beam along the verandah's ledge, tucking Tetsusaiga against his shoulder and trailing one leg off the edge. He cut his eyes at her, taking in the oversized book with squiggly lines and the sheets of notebook paper in her hands. "Tests?"
Just the one word was enough. "Studying for them, yeah," she admitted, setting aside her pencil and giving the paper a frustrated look, before caving in with a defeated sigh and just shutting it altogether. "It just looks like a mess of numbers right now though...I can't concentrate here."
"Why? They're so important to you all the rest of the time."
Kagome gave him a narrow look. "Mou...did you come here to pick a fight?"
"Feh."
She shook her head and leaned up against the nearest support post, resting against the wooden beam and she half closed her eyes, looking out across the miniature forest spread out in front of them. Behind the verandah's clearing, thicker grasses grew, and there was evidence of a stepping stone trail leading into the denseness, a garden gone to wild, placed there for aesthetic purposes, somewhere for the daimyo or his wife to stroll and enjoy the scenery. It would have been a calm place, soothing rather than the constant unnerving feeling of being awake among so many sleepers. Kagome wondered how bad the garden had become, with no one tending to it for what seemed to be quite awhile.
A wall of roses, all built up and surrounding a sleeping castle. Vaguely, it reminded Kagome of a story she had read a long time ago. What was it again? A foreign fairy tale Mama had probably told her sometime when she was little. Something about a sleeping castle, cursed along with it's princess, who would only awaken to the first kiss of true love.
"Sleeping Beauty."
"Eh?" Inuyasha's ears pricked up a bit at Kagome's softly spoken words.
She shifted a bit, keeping an eye on the playing kitsune. He was looking a bit defeated at the moment, shoulders slumping over as he seemed to give up, heading back towards the steps where Kagome and Inuyasha sat. "Sleeping Beauty. It reminds me of this place," she told him, making a small gesture at the area. "It's an old fairy tale from somewhere in Europe."
"Europe?" Inuyasha repeated, not knowing where she meant. Shippou, though, took that moment to get interested in something other than chasing floating fireflies. Curious, he asked,
"It's a story?"
She arched her eyebrows, putting her chin in her hand and considering thoughtfully. "You want to hear it?"
This apparently was enough to get his mind off of his lost game of catch with the fireflies. Perked up a bit, he exclaimed, "Yeah!"
Kagome smiled, then looked up at the sky for a moment as she tried to sort out the tale in her head. Shippou sat himself down on the step below her, watching her face and waiting expectantly for the story to be told, while Inuyasha grumpily folded his arms around Tetsusaiga, not really caring about stupid fairy tales, even if they did somehow resemble what was going on here.
After a moment, Kagome slowly began, "Once upon a time, there was a great kingdom with a good king and queen. The queen had a baby daughter, and they invited all the fairies in the land to come to the celebration of her birth. But unfortunately, one of the fairies was not invited, missed by the lord's servants. All the good fairies began to give the new little princess a gift. She was given things like beauty, grace, wisdom and kindness by the different fairies. Right before the last fairy gave her a gift, the uninvited fairy stormed into the party, furious because she found out she was not given an invitation."
Shippou was listening intently, head tilted to the side to watch Kagome as she spoke, remembering a little more as she went along, making hand gestures expressively, to make her points. Trying to keep his eyes in the sky and bored looking, Inuyasha slipped a glance at her animated storytelling, though not really seeing what this had to do with anything at all.
"The evil fairy was so angry because she wasn't invited, she placed a curse on the princess, saying that she would prick her finger on a spindle and die when she became..." Kagome halted, trying to remember what year it was. After a faltering moment, she continued, a note of question in her voice, "When she turned fifteen? But she would die. Then the evil fairy laughed and left the party since she had her revenge.
"Then last good fairy stepped forward. She hadn't given her gift yet, but though she couldn't undo the evil fairy's curse, she could soften it. So the last good fairy cast a spell saying that the princess wouldn't die, but sleep, for a hundred years." Kagome finished that portion with a firm nod, feeling surer of that number. "The princess grew up to be all the things a princess should be. Beautiful and graceful and kind. After the curse had been placed, her father the king had all the spinning wheels...."
"Spinning wheels?" Shippou interrupted.
Kagome halted in her story, and tried to conjure in her mind the image of a spinning wheel. "It's a big wheel...and you sit next to it...and run wool and things through it, to make thread and cloth. The spindle...that's a sharp thing that holds the fabric you use. Or make...I'm not sure. I think it's what's before you run it through the wheel," she demonstrated, as though there were a gigantic wheel in front of her, and she were running it.
"All the spinning wheels were burned. But on her fifteenth birthday, the princess went exploring the castle, and found a room in the highest tower. One of the spinning wheels had been missed!" She clapped her hands together, and Shippou's eyes rounded slightly. Kagome reached out with a hand, as though about to touch something. "She was so curious about it, since she had never seen a spinning wheel, that she reached out to touch it. She pricked her finger on the spindle," Kagome jerked her hand as though startled, staring at it. Then she grinned a little down at Shippou and said, "And instantly fell into a deep, deep sleep. All the good fairies had been waiting for this to happen, and they came back to the castle, using their magic to put everyone to sleep, along with the princess in the tower."
"There's only soldiers in the tower here," Inuyasha commented, keeping his eyes on the topmost tower, which he could just make out over the sloping rooftop of the turret they were staying in. "No princesses."
Kagome lifted her eyebrows, surprised he'd been listening. Instead of speaking to Shippou for a moment, she kept her eyes on Inuyasha as she continued, "The fairies also knew that people might come to the castle and disturb the ones sleeping, so they made a giant wall of roses around everything to protect them. That's what reminds me of this place, Inuyasha. The rose wall and the sleeping people."
"Feh."
She shook her head, then looked at Shippou. "A hundred years passed, and people in the countryside told stories about the enchanted castle and the princess inside. Many tried to get through, but none could for a hundred years. One prince decided he wanted to try, because he wanted to see the sleeping princess for himself. Since it had been a hundred years, it was time for the spell to be broken, and the prince was the only one who was able to get through all the thorns. He got inside, and found the princess in the tower."
Kagome hesitated dramatically for a moment,
one finger in the air as though pointing. "There is only one way to break
a sleeping spell. When the prince saw the princess sleeping, he instantly
fell in love with her, and leaned down to kiss her. When he did, the spell
was broken, and everyone inside the castle woke up. The prince and princess
were married, and they lived happily ever after."
"There's still no princesses in the castle,"
Inuyasha repeated stoutly, scowling at Kagome and Shippou now. "And no
one to kiss them even if there were. That's a stupid story." He decided,
and returned to his observations in the night sky.
No one to kiss them even if there were? Kagome gripped the pile of books in her hand a little tightly, digging her nails into the cardboard cover of the textbook, biting her lip to keep a smile off her face. Somehow, that made her feel a bit good, a little warm in her chest and on her cheeks. Princesses were supposed to have their appointed princes, and she was glad there seemed to be no random damsel in distress for them to awaken in the traditional way here. Though that still left them with the problem of not having a clue of how to wake these people up. They'd found nothing, and it bothered her. They would be turning in to sleep soon, and leaving in the morning without having helped at all. It almost would have been easier if there had been a princess in the tower. It was a romantic story, but actually walking through a coincidental recreation of it was strange, and somewhat frightening. If she didn't have Inuyasha or the others along with her, she wondered how much more nervous she would be. Either way, it would be over at dawn tomorrow, unless something appeared in the night.
She was interrupted by a muted gasp from Shippou, who was sitting with his eyes crossed in front of her, making a great attempt to get a look at the firefly that had just alighted on his nose. It was comical, the little kitsune trying to stare at the bug while he slowly raised his arms, half flapping them, as he moved his hands to catch it.
"I got it, I got it..." he began to half chant, then jerked his hands together over his nose, just as the firefly took off again, floating out of reach as he smacked himself in the face, toppling over backwards.
Inuyasha snorted, half grinning as Shippou turned red and rubbed his offended nose, then saw the hanyou's amusement. "Oy! Stop laughing at me!"
The chuckling stopped as Inuyasha shrugged, looking bored again. "Why? You just whacked yourself in the face." The kitsune balled up his fists, though was looking embarrassed as well as angry.
"Inuyasha..." Kagome began warningly, finally setting aside her textbook beside her pencil on the verandah.
"What?"
She opened her mouth to osuwari him, then changed her mind with a sigh. It seemed a little pointless at the moment for some reason, and she was feeling a bit too tired to just yell. Lowly, she grumbled as she ran a hand through her hair, "Never mind."
He blinked at her a moment, realizing she gave up for the time being. Shippou had taken the moment to hop off the steps, and was now making a serious contest out of catching one of the floating insects, apparently his way of showing that he could too catch one, and not look like an idiot by smacking himself in the nose. A serious expression was on his face as she chased them around, Kagome blearily watching him, Inuyasha blankly staring, knowing he really didn't have anything else to do. Two voices were still steadily murmuring behind them, the din of sleeping preparations complete. After a moment, Sango's agitated voice was raised, then some soothing sounds came from Miroku, minus the customary crack of Sango's hand on his face. She must have caught him before he managed anything, Kagome thought distantly, half closing her eyes, ready for sleep. A cool breeze rippled through the yard, and she hugged herself for a moment, eyelids drooping further. She really should go inside for bed. Keeling over outside wouldn't be the best of ideas....
"Oy! Shippou!" Inuyasha suddenly snapped, jolting Kagome out of her vague doze. The hanyou was on his feet, and she looked up in time to see some of the growth of weeds rustle, where the slope of the hill led out of sight. "Shippou! Get your ass back here!"
The sound of someone sticking out their tongue and mocking him was the reply, which just pissed Inuyasha off further. Kagome rubbed her eyes and stood, heading quickly after Inuyasha as he tore off into the undergrowth, intending to catch the kitsune and haul him back. It was a bad idea for Shippou to go running off on his own, even if the area seemed safe enough, though creepy. Inuyasha would probably grab Shippou by the tail and drag him out, which would start another fight, and someone would have to stop it.
"Kagome-chan?" Sango stuck her head out the door, hearing the noise. "What's going on?"
"Shippou ran off into the weeds," she replied before she passed into the line of brambles herself. "I'm going to stop Inuyasha from pulverizing him. Be right back," she waved quickly.
"Wait, I'll come with you," Sango started to say, and she reached inside for hiraikotsu. Kagome, though, had already waded into the unruly grasses. With a sigh, she turned back within to see Miroku watching her with a curious expression on his face, hands full of the transcripts they found earlier that day. "Kagome-chan just took off after Inuyasha and Shippou."
He shook his head and stood, setting aside the papers and reaching for his shakujou with resignation. "I suppose this means you think we should go after them?"
With a brusque nod, she turned away and asked,
"Kirara?" The firecat's head sleepily lifted from where she was curled
up, mewing at the sound of her sleep's interruption, who was hefting her
weapon. "Come on. Hopefully this won't take too long."
~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~
So the fairy tale is told, and we have just
a touch of Inuyasha/Kagome waffiness...::sighs:: Ah, I admit it, I'm hopelessly
unromantic. This chapter is mostly to introduce the European story of Sleeping
Beauty into the sengoku jidai, and to set up the happenings in a good
portion of the rest of the fic...I know, it's moving rather slow, but the
pace will start to pick up soon. ^_^ A bit more waff in the future
(how rarely do I put anything in a romance category? even if it is the
secondary category?) and the introduction of the other fairy tale in this
fic.
The version of Sleeping Beauty that Kagome
tells is the Grimm's version, not Disney's. According to my lovely book
here, the princess was fifteen, not sixteen, and there were several fairies,
not three plus the 'evil fairy.' ^_^
Until next time.
~Queen
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