A/N: Thank you so, so much for reading and the support! Especially those who have followed the story since Lux Facta Est.
This will be the last part of Sybbie and George's Contes de fée, but I still have many plots to follow so stay on your toes. The next one involves a fluffy little dose of puppy love, and the Branson twins! Anyway, please don't forget to review and enjoy your stay!
Disclaimer: If DA was mine, Sybil and Matthew would still walk the Yorkshire earth. The Seventh Princess belongs to Eleanor Farjeon and La belle au bois dormant to Charles Perrault. I used Perrault's version because Disney's would obviously not yet exist at this point, but I abridged the story for time constraint and dragging reasons, and I changed the ending because I cannot for the life of me imagine how Perrault's version had become a children's fairy tale given the very, very adult themes of the plot.
contes de fée, part deux
Neither Sybbie nor George had ever stepped into the Bachelors' Corridor.
The library and garage were their domains, or rather, were Sybbie's domains where George claimed honorary ownership. The nursery was their kingdom, but in addition to their parents' bedrooms which were their mothers' rooms in maidenhood and the kitchen where Carson, Thomas and Mrs. Hughes pretended not to know that they stole cookies from Mrs. Patmoore's pile before dinner, these were all the children have known of the big house.
The Bachelor's corridor was something unknown – foreign, exciting, and frightening at the same time. It was another world altogether. It was also the place where, as they heard Thomas tell Baxter, Granny's ladies' maid, once when he thought they were not listening, a Turk guest from long, long ago was found in his bed dead. Dead. Suppose his ghost haunted the Bachelor's Corridor? Suppose they caught sight of the ghost? What a scary and thrilling experience! That made all the difference and it was decided that the Bachelor's Corridor was to be the path they would undertake to find the sleeping princess, hidden in one of the rooms which was really her chamber in disguise. Perhaps the dead Turk was also somewhere there in disguise!
"Go, dragon, go!," the valiant prince George giggled as he sat atop his noble dragon, really becoming too old to bear the weight of her growing young master but too loving and loyal to do otherwise.
The most honorable Fairy Sybbie bounced on her feet alongside them, flapping her glittering wings as she guided them through the exquisitely-papered walls that were the forest labyrinth of enchantment and terrors, made even more enchanting and terrifying by the sound of rain falling against the walls and the ever-darkening of a rainy sky at dusk.
"Banphrionsa, banphrionsa, teacht orainn a shábháil tú!*," Sybbie chanted, laughing as only a half-Galeic fairy can.
"What does that mean, Sybbie?," George inquired as they turned into a corner.
"Fairy Sybbie, George!," she insisted, her giggles ringing like bells into the darkening walls of corridor, "You're supposed to call me Fairy Sybbie!"
"Fairy Sybbie then," George conceded, "And you have to call me Prince George! And what were you singing Fairy Sybbie?"
"I was telling the princess that we were coming, Prince George," Sybbie answered, her giggles still coloring her voice, "The princess speaks Irish, you know, just like me!"
"No, she doesn't! She only speaks English," George retorted, indignant at being left out.
"Yes, she speaks Irish!"
"No, she doesn't!"
"Yes, she does!"
"Na-uh, she doesn't!"
"Uh-huh, she does!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"She's asleep, she won't hear you, Sybil!"
"Yes she would, Georgie! Princesses always hear fairies even when they're asleep!"
"No, she won't!"
"Yes, she would!"
"No, she wo –"
"Yes, she – what's happening George?," Sybbie gulped as they came into a stop in a dark, red room.
More dark and angry clouds gathered outside its window as rain continued to patter noisily. In a few minutes, the sky would turn ink-black and so would the room. Only a sliver of illumination radiated from the hall, a very tiny sliver.
"Is – is this the – the room where the p-princess is asleep, Sybbie?" George stuttered, frightened.
"N-no. I-I don't think so. M-maybe it's a trap of the witch or the o-ogre," Sybbie replied equally frightened, "M-maybe we should go."
A sudden burst of wind came into the room, closing the door with a bang and rattling the window. The curtains on the bed shook with the shock as the children, frightened beyond belief huddled in a corner, arms around each other, Isis at their feet.
Several minutes passed before Sybbie spoke, her blue eyes shining with fear in the dark.
"This is the room, isn't it" she asked, her voice calming enough for curiosity to pierce through the fright.
"What – what room?"
"The room, George," she continued, irritation dripping in her tone, "The one Anna said Thomas shouldn't talk about when he was telling Baxter! The one where – where…"
The cryptic manner in which his cousin talked empowered George whose curiosity, like his cousin's, had overtaken his fear, "Where what, Sybbie?"
"Where the man with a funny name died," Sybbie whispered, as if afraid of conjuring the dead man into the room.
A great surge of lightning penetrated the room, illuminating for a split second the bed where the children assumed the man with a funny name had died. There was nothing askew, except perhaps the curtains that the wind had blown apart earlier but logical reasoning had no place in the minds of two frightened little children who took this as a proof of the dead man's presence. The wind's howling only cemented this belief and when the room was once more plunged into darkness, George was in tears and Sybbie not far from it.
"I-it must be the witch or an o-ogre," Sybbie said, regretting bringing up the information and assuming the role of the eldest child in the room, attempting to calm both herself and her cousin enough to return to their enchanted game and away from the terrors that enveloped the room.
"It's – it's him, Sybbie! It's the man, I kno-know it is!," George was not to be comforted from his fears. Sobs racked his small body as he cried, "He – he's coming for us! The man with a funny name is coming for us! Mamma! Papa! I want my Mamma and Papa!"
"I – It isn't him, George, it isn't! He – he won't come to get us," Sybbie attempted but her voice began to crack. She willed herself to stay calm – only babies cry. She was five now, she was no longer a baby. If she waited long enough, Mamma and Da would find her. The witches won't get them. The ogres won't get them. The man with a funny name won't get them. No one will get them.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the room – and the dead man's bed once more. Sybbie's resolve was broken by the time the dark had settled again.
"Mamma! Da! Mamma! Da!," she screamed at the top of her little lungs, tears flowing in torrents down her alabaster cheeks, "Where are you, Mamma?! Da! I want my Da! I want my Mamma!"
Poor Isis was beside herself. She rubbed herself against the children's feet in an attempt to comfort them but to no avail.
The rain continued to howl and flashes of lightning intervened. On and on the children cried for their parents – oh where were they? Mamma and Da and Aunt Mary and Uncle Matthew? Surely, surely they would come before the dead man did! Surely they would come before the man who died on the bed came to haunt them and perhaps devour them!
Five minutes passed. Ten minutes.
But to the frightened children, it felt like an eternity.
"Mamma! Da! Where are you? I want my Mammaaaaaa! I want my Daaaaaa!"
"Where are my Mamma and Papa? Mamma! Papa! Mamaaaaa! Papaaaa!"
The children's cries resonated throughout the Bachelors' Corridor but they seemed unheard.
Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.
"Miss Sybbie? Master George? Isis?," Thomas exclaimed, Jimmy at his side.
He opened the door wide allowing light to flood into the room. At the corner by the far wall were two children, huddled together with a dog at their feet. Their faces were wet and their eyes red and swollen. Miss Sybbie's lilac dress was in disarray and so were here wings. Master George's clothes were crumpled and his cloak on the floor. And on Isis – why the very idea would have given his Lordship a heart attack! – were two of Miss Sybbie's hair ribbons! It was a relief it was not Mr. Carson or the Dowager Countess who had found them, their state would have caused a fainting fit within seconds!
Gathering Miss Sybbie in his arms and motioning to Jimmy to do the same with Master George, he cooed at the little girl, offering her candy from his pockets that no one knew he kept as they walked back, Isis at their heels, towards the top of the staircase, but she remained inconsolable, calling for her Mamma and Da even as Master George's cries had long since subsided into sobs. Damn that old bat of a nanny! She was no Nanny West, of course, but how she could leave her charges long enough to allow them to get lost infuriated Thomas, especially as he felt his heart break over Miss Sybbie's desperate cries.
"I want my Mamma and my Da! Where are my Mamma and Da, Thomas? Mammaaa! Daaa!"
"Sybbie?," Mr. Branson's voice resonated from the bottom of the stairs, now rushing to his daughter, taking two steps at a time, a worried Lady Sybil on one side and an equally worried Mr. Crawley on the other. Never in Thomas' entire career in Downton had he been so relieved to see them!
"Come here, darling," Mr. Branson cooed at his daughter as he took her into his own arms, allowing her to bury her wet, curly head into his neck while Lady Sybil stood beside them, rubbing Miss Sybbie's back and whispering sweet nothings to comfort the crying child who was babbling incomprehensible nonsense about a princess, a witch, a fairy and the ghost of a dead Turk (Mr. Crawley raised his eyebrows at that!) in the red room of the Bachelors' Corridor.
Master George was in his father's arms, happily munching on a chocolate bar produced from Jimmy's pocket when Nanny came rushing in looking exhausted.
"My lady, Mr. Branson, Mr. Crawley, I am so very sorry. I – I left the children in the library to tidy the nursery and…"
So frightful was the look she received from Thomas that she instantly excused herself, leaving her charges in the hands of their parents.
"…and then the door just banged and the curtains just wooshed and it was so, so dark," Little Sybbie Branson recounted later that night as she lay between Mamma and Da in Mamma and Da's bedroom, Catherine clutched in one hand, "I tried to tell George it was only the pretend witches and ogres in the story of the sleeping princess, I tried, Mamma and Da, I did! But it was so scary and…and…Thomas said that, but he didn't know George and I were listening so it was not his fault, a man with a funny name from Turkey from before, died in that bed! Well he didn't say that exactly, but he said they found the man with a funny name dead in that bed! We were so scared!"
Mamma and Da exchanged a perplexed look above her little head while Da ruffled her curls in a comforting gesture and Mamma held her little hand. It had been decided that neither child, shaken as they were by the belief that "The Ghost of the Man with a Funny Name" would follow them to the nursery, would spend the night there. As it was, after dinner which Mamma, Da and Uncle Matthew had taken in the nursery despite Granpapa and Gran Violet's protests on impropriety, each child was whisked off to what were once their mothers' childhood bedrooms to spend the night with their parents.
"But Thomas and Jimmy found us and you came and – and," Sybbie's eyes became wide as saucers as the real purpose of their quest came back to her, "George forgot to kiss the sleeping princess!"
Da laughed at that and Mamma's gaze changed from perplexity to amusement.
"I suppose the princess would still be asleep then?," Mamma asked, unable to disguise the laughter in her voice.
"No, I don't think so," Sybbie answered earnestly, "If I were her I would have woken myself the very next day. It would be awfully boring to wait a hundred years for a prince when I could do so many, more interesting things instead! It's George's loss!," she finished using the phrase she once heard Cousin Rose use when she talked of a suitor.
"A suffragette at five, just like her mother!," Da exclaimed, adoration coloring his tone, "Really, there are few as free as my Sybils!"
*Banphrionsa, banphrionsa, teacht orainn a shábháil tú! - Princess, Princess, we have come to save you. I only used Google Translate for this so please correct me if I'm wrong.