“Come on.” Hailey tugged on Aaron’s hand, trying to convince him to move forward.

“You realize,” he said not hurrying at all, “that no one has been in here for fifteen years.”

Hailey cocked her head at him. “I’ve been here. The sleeping people have been here.

“You know what I mean. I am the second person to walk these corridors in fifteen years. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of dangerous, too, though. You’ll be a sleeping person just like one of them if you let go of my hand.”

He grinned at her. Maybe he was liking this part of his birthday present too much. “Can I sit on the throne while I’m here, too?”

Hailey worried that he was too excited, that he’d want to run all over the castle. Maybe she would forget and try to wipe her sweaty hand off on her dress and then he’d collapse like the others. She would have to try to drag him out, she decided. If his mom had any idea where they were going… Hailey shuddered.

“What?” He asked her.

“Nothing. The throne room is up a set of stairs. Let’s just see what’s closest. I don’t want to keep you in here for too long. One of us will forget and then if I touch you, you won’t wake back up.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “You told me this a hundred times. I’ll just scream, I get it. Let’s see something at least.”

“Fine.” She led him down the main staircase. She couldn’t help wishing that he were just a little more worried and less excited.

“This place is weird. You have to come up that giant hill just to get up here and then you have to go up stairs to go anywhere. Why didn’t they just make it wider?”

Hailey had never thought about it before. The castle was where she grew up. She was used to stairs. Climbing them was just part of living here. “I don’t think the hill was big enough for them to make it wider,” she said.

They passed the kitchen and he paused at the dining room. “I didn’t know there were so many bodies,” he said.

“They’re not bodies,” she told him, feeling defensive. These were the people who kept her company most days.

“Sorry. So many sleeping people. And you dragged them all here by yourself?”

She shrugged and pulled on his hand to continue. “There was no one else.”

He seemed fascinated. He opened his mouth to ask another question and then closed it when he saw the expression on her face. Something about the work that she had done in putting the people here made her feel uneasy. It was a part of her life she had never shared with anyone. Her feelings about that surprised her. She cared more about him than he did about these people and yet, they felt like they needed protecting, even from Aaron.

The knight’s chambers were closest to the main entrance that she and Aaron had walked through. She had hoped it would be a grand tour. Maybe she could bring him back and take him to the throne room. For now, she just wanted to get his present and get him back out into safety. Aaron paused and looked into the knight’s rooms.

She turned to him, “What?”

“Why is there a man on a bed in here? How did you manage?”

“I didn’t. I think he was sick.”

“It’s creepy, like he’s going to wake up any moment and wonder why we’re here.”

Hailey knew that feeling, but it was one she had had to overcome. No one ever woke up in this castle. She had decided to leave the sick man alone. He might need his blanket all the time if he was sick, so there was no point coming in here. Besides, other than the princess, he was the only one who got to sleep on a bed.

They continued down a short hallway. At the end of it was what looked to be a closet, but inside were weapons, hundreds of swords. In one corner, shields were piled up. There were spears and axes and spiky ball things. She didn’t know all of them, but she figured that Aaron would want a sword since that’s what all the soldiers carried the most and that’s what he really wanted, was to be a soldier.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He looked over the room, his mouth hanging open. It took him a moment and then he said, “Which one can I have?”

Hailey shrugged. “No one is using any of them. You can have whichever one you want. I’m going to switch hands.” She stood behind him and took the hand that didn’t work. It was smaller than his other one, but she wanted to give him the chance to touch the swords before he decided and he couldn’t do that without her taking his other hand. She let go of his good hand. Nothing happened.

She breathed out a sigh of relief. He didn’t seem to share her concern. He was touching all of the swords, trying to make a decision. His brow was furrowed in concentration. Finally he decided, “I will take that one,” he said.

She hadn’t noticed that sword among the others. It had a dragon head on the pommel with tiny rubies for eyes. The scabbard was decorated to look like it was covered in scales. She didn’t know the first thing about swords, but if she had to guess, that one would be considered a masterpiece.

----------------------------------------

Aaron had found a sword belt that was the right size and they had managed to get it on him. It was a careful dance of her threading the sword onto the belt and him holding onto one of her arms while she did it. She was terrified that he would let go.

He stood so close to her as she wrapped the belt around his waist, that it made her uncomfortably aware of how handsome he was. Heat rose in her cheeks and she almost let go of him. She shouldn’t have let herself get so distracted. Once the sword belt was on the sword looked almost too long. Maybe it was one of those swords that soldiers wore on their backs. They didn’t have time to readjust and she didn’t want to try.

“Can I please see more of the castle?” The way that he smiled at her made the heat rise in her cheeks again and she wondered if he noticed.

Acting like it was a huge bother and that she had other things to do that day, she agreed. He gasped when he saw the throne room. It was a huge room with tables and chairs in the back. The throne itself was a red cushioned, carved monstrosity. It looked like it could fit two people. “Come sit in it with me,” he said, giving her the boyish grin that she loved.

They sat in the throne and made proclamations about how the kingdom was going to be run henceforth. “The king will be hosting a royal ball for anyone who would like to attend. Nobles are not invited,” said Aaron.

“Servants eat first every Tuesday.”

Aaron grinned at her “Why Tuesday?”

She shrugged. “There’s never anything fun going on on Tuesdays.”

He looked at the dark floor, the paintings on the walls. “It must be nice to live here.”

“It was,” she said. “When it was filled with people, I mean. Now it’s just so big and so quiet. Come on, I have other things to show you.” There was a ladies room for seamstresses on this floor. It had three large windows that let in light. In the center of the room was a dress form wearing a light blue dress. Hailey had found it as it was in the center of the room but someone had only starting to stitch the the lace that edged the bottom of the skirt. The skirts were so full that it was going to take forever, but it was coming along nicely and her stitches were getting smaller and less noticeable.

“Will you wear it when you get done?” He asked her.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it fits me, but I learned to stitch and I can even fix some my own things now.”

“You should make a dress just for you,” he said.

“I actually don’t know how. They cut the fabric into pieces and stitch it together. Sewing the lace on seems to be the easy part, but I have learned a lot working on this one. I’ve always thought that tailors had the best jobs.”

In the kitchen, she showed him the vines she was painting around the ceiling. She had sketched them with a pencil and then traced those lines with paint.

“Those are really good,” he told her. “What else have you been working on?”

She had painted birds and trees in the room she had shared with Margaret and Esmerelda but she didn’t want to let him in there. It wouldn’t be proper. She did need to find another room to start in on, soon though. There were several things but nothing else that she could show him. She had learned to cook, a painstaking process to make a meal for just one person but in the castle, things didn’t go bad unless you burned them and so she would cook too much and let it sit until the next day. There were no flies, none that were awake anyway. She could bake bread, and she had discovered a fondness for reading, something she had little time to do since she was little. Now it seemed that she had too much time on her hands.

“Are you ready to go back?” she asked him.

He nodded, and looked back at the castle with a regretful look. “Maybe I’ll bring you back again,” she told him.

He smiled and they walked together out of the castle. Getting out might be as tricky as getting in had been. She really needed to work on making her invisibility bigger so that it would fit him in it. She sighed. It had been nice to have him in the castle. It made it feel so much less lonely.

They ducked between two carts, one of fish and another of pork. Aaron frowned. “You don’t think anyone saw us go in, do you?”

“No, the streets are too busy. Besides, I comet here all the time and no one sees me.”

He didn’t looked convinced, but they stepped forward anyway with him in the lead. Maybe he was just hoping he would have the opportunity to use his new sword. They ducked under the rope that marked the edge of the spell. Hailey saw an old man with really dark skin. He smiled at her and then someone came up behind her and threw a sack over her head. She tried to pull it off, but her hands got all clumsy.

“Hey!” Aaron shouted.

Hailey tried to breathe. There was something inside the sack, a smell that was making her dizzy. She stumbled and someone caught her and then she fell asleep.