I walked into my mother’s chambers, “Mother,” I asked, “Would you like to see what Lilith taught me today? It was incredible-” I stopped. My mother was lying facedown in her bed. She never went to bed while wearing her crown, “Mother?” I asked as I poked her in the shoulder, “Mother this isn’t funny,” I flipped her over onto her back so I could see her face, “Mother get up!” Her eyes were shut, and she had no pulse, “Father!” I screamed. He came down the hall from his royal office, “Helena darling, what’s wrong?”
He glanced at my mom, panic in his eyes, “Get Maddox now,” he demanded.
I flew down the cobblestone stairs and ran across the courtyard where our kingdom’s sorcerer Maddox had his chambers. After climbing up the never-ending flights of stairs to get to his room at the very top of the tower I started to frantically bang on his door, “Maddox, get down here quick! I think Mother is ill.” The bolts on the door squeaked at me and warned me to get out of its way before it slammed into the side of the wall where it had left indents from the last several times it had done so. And, as usual, the door slammed open revealing Maddox standing in his royal robes with his perfectly chaotic mustache and his scepter which was always held on his right side.
“What is it Helena? What happened to Queen Beatrice?” he demanded with worried tone.
“I don’t know,” I whimpered, “She’s asleep on her bed but she doesn’t have a pulse.”
“Hold on to me,” Maddox said.
“Why where are we going?” I asked.
“You’re going to teleport with me,” he said. In normality, I would be extremely excited, I have been waiting for him to teach me how to teleport, but the circumstances prevented me from being happy. So, I held on to his red robes and listened to him mutter the spell. I tried to memorize it but once he finished speaking, we had already entered this vortex between reality and imagination. There were stripes around us and images of random places that flew past us. These must have been the places that Maddox had already been to if the teleportation book that I read was accurate. He had seen beautiful places that had flowers in every color and some places that had no flowers at all. I believed those were called deserts, but I wasn’t completely sure. I saw the homes of the sirens and the mermaids that lurked under the ocean. I gazed at the beautiful world that Maddox had seen and envied him. All I knew were the castle grounds around me. But how could I be thinking of this right now? My mother was in danger and all I could think about was my own selfish desires. I reprimanded myself for that short moment of indulgence and remembered why I was there. I watched Maddox’s eyes roll to the back of his head, and then snap! We arrived inside my mother’s chambers.
“My king you must move and let me have a look at her,” Maddox said brushing past my father.
“What has happened?” my father inquired with a worried look on his face.
“No…” Maddox muttered, “no, no, no!”
“Speak man!” my father yelled, “What has happened to her!” his face flushed red as it usually did when he was frustrated.
“Who was in here last?” Maddox asked, his voice trembling with anger.
“It was…” my father thought, “the maid! I sent her up to help Beatrice get ready.”
“’Twas no maid you sent up here,” Maddox said, “because our queen is cursed. The only other person in the kingdom who could have done this was-”
“The Mystic,” I interrupted, “she can take on any form she wishes as long as it is not a carbon copy of a single person. For example, she can disguise herself as Maid Celia but have my nose.” Finally, my reading of ancient myths was being put to use, “But she isn’t real. I thought she was only a myth.”
“If only,” Maddox sighed, “I have confronted her before. She is powerful and always had a vendetta against the kingdom. And now, I know the potion she used. When the materials in my potion cabin
et went missing, I assumed it was Helena trying to concoct another greenery potion.” I turned red. Last time I made a greenery potion, the rose flowers blocked the doorways and I couldn’t get back inside the castle, “but now, I know that it was a sleeping potion.”
I smiled. Sleeping potions were the easiest to break. All that my father needed to do was kiss Mother and we would be fine, “Kiss her father,” I said, “She will wake up.”
“No,” Maddox said, “this potion is not like the ones from the fairytales you read Helena. I need to find a collection of ingredients, 101 of them to be exact, and make a potion to wake her up.”
“101 ingredients!” my father yelled, “How long will that take? Beatrice cannot stay asleep that long.”
“The best estimate I can make is two years,” Maddox said. My father sat down next to my unconscious mother, “What am I supposed to do without her,” he thought to himself.
Maddox exited the room with his robes flowing behind him. I stopped him right before he walked down the stairs, “Maddox!” I yelled, “When do we leave?”
“We?” he asked.
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