THIRTEEN

1. The Curious Kiss

We raced down the slick, wet streets, gas lamps only barely illuminating the cracks in the cobblestones. The rain was beginning to fall quite heavily, but I was too worried about being late to bother with an umbrella. The contraptions never seemed to work in my hands anyway, my own little curse.

Following closely at my heels, my friend George was struggling to open his umbrella with one hand while holding his lab notebook in the other. "Bloody nuisance," he muttered under his breath, falling behind as he fought with the metal tubing that held the pieces together.

"Henry, a hand?" he called out.

Instead of slowing down to wait for him, I increased my pace. I'd never been late for class before, and I wasn't going to give up that record on his account, especially not in my first week at Hampton University. My school bag was weighing quite heavily on my right shoulder, but I ignored the pain and continued running, taking heart each time my foot met the pavement.

There was nothing to be done for it, though, except to get to class as soon as possible.

The trouble with evening labs was that they sneaked up on you when you least expected them. Just as you got comfortable after eating your dinner, you found yourself running late to the last class of the day, the one you forgot you even had.

But I was a born runner, as my stepmother liked to say, and I never ran late.

I checked my watch as I drew nearer to the Bolton Science Laboratory Building, a modern research facility in the trappings of a much older, gothic styled building. Three minutes and thirty three seconds to go.

There was enough time, I thought, to take an appreciative look at what I knew would be my favorite building for the next four years. It had great arched doors with carvings depicting different historical events from years gone by, and I observed them as I walked in through the center arch. One of them seemed to show a fairy lancing a young maiden straight through her heart. I shuddered and moved on and into the main hall.

I jumped a little as I heard the rumble of thunder from behind me. I thanked my gods that I was finally safe from the storm outside and continued in, dripping water onto the floor as I moved.

The hall was beautiful, with high, vaulted ceilings and beautiful murals on display. I gazed up at the arches above me and slicked the rain-water off my hair and face. I observed several smaller arches on either side of the narrow hall, leading to the various different sections of the building. Bolton was solely dedicated to research and laboratories, a marvelous bastion of scientific study.

On my hand, I had written down my classroom number, but the ink had washed away somewhat in the rain, leaving a black smudge on my palm. Thankfully, I still remembered it; C-109. I looked at the letters beside the arches, trying to figure out which way to go.

Wet shoes squeaking against the floor alerted me to George's presence in the hall. He was dripping wet and struggling to shut his over-sized black umbrella. "You're really too fast for your own good, Henry," he said, panting. His voice bounced around, echoing off of the walls and ceiling. "I can't believe you're stopping for a break, even after all those books in your bag!"

I smiled at him and shook my head. George would never understand the importance of books. "Let's go. We have a good minute and a half left."

George paled. "Oh dash. But I only just got here!"

I shrugged and then began to run again, through one of the arches to my left and down the stairs, checking to make sure George knew which way to follow. I nearly slipped once or twice on the stone steps in my zeal, but managed to keep my footing. When I finally came to the right floor, I dashed down the hallway before I finally came upon the right classroom.

George and I entered looking like drowned cats. We put on goggles like the other students and then joined them at the back of the room, around the dissection table. I was still trying to catch my breath when George tapped my shoulder gently, pointing to the golden pocket watch in the palm of his hand.

We had made it with seven seconds to spare, and it appeared that my record for perfect attendance remained untarnished.

For an introductory biology lab, it was a bit too hands-on to be considered proper. From what I could tell, at least one of the students had fainted upon coming to class today, and others had fainted shortly afterwards.

The scandal in question was a girl, wrapped in a white sheet and placed rather unceremoniously on the dissection table. Upon first inspection, she appeared to be dead, so pale was her complexion. Her blond hair was tied tightly at the nape of her neck, revealing her rather large forehead and defined brows. She seemed immaculate, with not even the slightest bit of sweat or dirt on her figure, as far as we could see, anyway.

Having observed her for but a few minutes, it became obvious that she was not dead, however. Indeed, she mumbled and twitched, which caused us all a great amount of distress as we stood around her. I was standing just near her head, close enough to see her eyelashes flutter once or twice, close enough to note her dusting of freckles.

It gave me pause.

"It wouldn't be so bad if she were actually dead," said a mousy looking brunette, unintentionally interrupting the professor just as he was about to begin giving instructions.

"Were you saying something, Ms. Desjardins?" Dr. Nguyen asked. There was something merciless in the way he had pounced on her words. "Perhaps you'd like to introduce the subject of study yourself, young lady?"

The girl glanced around and tried pass it off as though she hadn't spoken, but it was painfully obvious that it was her, since she was the only female present. "Uh... all right then," she said, and then took off her rather large goggles. "Sorry, they make my nose itch." She looked as though she were sharing a private joke with us, but none of the other students were brave enough to admit that the goggles were uncomfortable.

Her eyes were a very bright blue, and she didn't seem so mousy now, without her goggles on. There was a certain intelligence to her general appearance, a refinement that came through education, but there was also a spark of energy that could not be denied, present on the curve of her lips and the smile in her eye.

It could be said that she was pretty.

The class was silent, so she cleared her throat and began again. "The, uh, subject was known as Talia when she was born, no surname. Her life as she knew it ended when she was sixteen years old, an effect of fairy enchantments."

Dr. Nguyen did not look particularly pleased but could not fault her answer. "Now, someone else, please tell us of what class these enchantments were."

There was a short silence as no one volunteered the answer. The brunette put her goggles back on and stuffed her hands in her lab coat.

"Did anyone do the reading?" he asked.

I raised my hand, hoping to calm the professor. "It's Sleeping Beauty class, Dr. Nguyen. She's in permanent stasis."

George snickered. "No kidding," he whispered into my ear.

The professor narrowed his eyes at George but didn't say anything to admonish him. I hated that George could get away with things like that when no one else could.

To me, the professor said, "That is correct, Mr...?"

"Henry Watson, Sir."

"Mr. Watson, yes." He began passing out a rulebook to each of us, and continued, "The subject is under a Sleeping Beauty class enchantment, and she's been in stasis for just over a hundred years now."

Sleeping Beauty class enchantments no longer occurred- in fact, Talia was probably the last true case of it. The fact was that most of the fairies who were powerful enough to pull off magic that strong no longer existed. Some people said that fairies forgot their old ways, or that they were cursed by their gods. Personally, I never saw any fairies outside of zoos, and the zoo fairies looked more like sickly insects than anything else.

"There are many folk tales surrounding her enchantment," Dr. Nguyen continued, "the truth of which have never been verified. What we want to study is how her stasis was induced and if we can replicate her situation in other organisms using science, not magic."

Using magic was, of course, out of the question for humans. In the old days, humans had their own brand of magic, but like fairy magic, it was lost to time. Every day, though, people were finding applications for science, new ways to replace the magic of old.

"Are we actually going to be cutting her up?" a timid voice to my left asked. Some of the boys began to whisper to each other, no doubt suddenly considering the image that the question had brought to mind, and soon the entire class was off-track, with different students arguing the merits of letting the girl sleep or using her body for science.

"She's not really a girl anymore, is she?" one boy asked, pointing at the dissection table. "What girl do you know s'been alive for a hundred years? Wonder if her insides are rotting, I do."

The pretty brunette, Ms. Desjardins, she had been called, snorted. "Small wonder your mum can't even find a cousin for you to marry, Harrows!"

Judging by the boy's deep red blush, her barb had hit its mark.

Dr. Nguyen paged through his roster before clearing his throat. "Mr. Cleaver," he said, his voice cutting through the buzz of excess conversation, "to answer your question, we will not be cutting her open... today, at least. I hope there are no sentimental creatures amongst you, class. I simply don't have time to deal with that sort of backwardness."

A few of the students backed away, while others gasped. The rest of us steadfastly stood our ground, doing our best not to appear weak or sentimental.

Looking at the class, it was easy to tell who had come from the smaller cities and who among us had been born and raised in academic circles. Those students who had not had the privilege of being out in society were a bit out of place, but most of us, I hoped, were forward enough to understand the nature of science and the duties that came with it.

It was a bit too hands-on for an introductory course, but it was a wonderful opportunity to learn. At least, that was what I told myself. The subject of our study, blond and freckled, probably felt differently, if she could feel at all.

"Today, we will only be taking a blood sample from our subject and analyzing it, following the procedure outlined in your manual. Since it appears none of you have read it, you should do so immediately." The professor sent us to our desks at the front of the room to do the preliminary reading and finish the prelab, a luxury he told us he wouldn't afford us next week.

I looked over the reading, though I had already read it the night before. There was a short historical summary which prefaced the lab procedures. It described how Talia's parents, simple peasants, had sheltered twelve fairies who were hiding from their wicked sister. They promised to bestow a number of gifts upon Talia, who had no fortune or future, in return for shelter and protection.

The exact identification of all the gifts was not known, though folk tales indicated that January offered Talia soft, white-gold hair, and that April awarded Talia with the gift of song. Many postulated that June's gift was lips as red as a rose, though no one reached any agreement on which particular breed of rose she was referring to. For the most part, the gifts were useless and asinine; they were well-intentioned, but of little practical use to a peasant girl.

The last fairy to bestow a gift upon Talia was the fairy named December. It is thought that she was going to bless the child with the ability to ice skate, but before she was able to cast her spell, someone knocked on the door of the cottage. The manual was a bit unclear as to what happened afterwards, but it seemed that their older sister had followed them more closely than they had thought. The fairies flew from the house; some went out the chimney, others took the back door, and one of the fairies even slid through a crack in the window. December, the youngest of the group, became confused, as young fairies often did, and hid in the broom closet.

The family was bewildered, but they could not forget their good manners, opening the door after the fairies had vanished from sight. A formidable fairy, a veritable Queen of Air and Darkness, stood at their humble door, and asked the peasants what they knew of her sisters' whereabouts. The thirteenth fairy had searched for them all throughout Little Pendleton, she explained, and it really was getting late, and their mother was cooking boiled tree leaves, August's favorite dinner. The lumberjack and his wife thought that the fairy spoke well, and told her all they knew about where the fairies had gone, which frankly wasn't much. They were certain that October had headed due south, though November and February, always rather contrary, had headed southeast, and they were not certain at all of where August had gone.

What the lumberjack and his wife had not realized was that this thirteenth fairy had already killed off many of her elders, and she wasn't actually looking for her sisters to feed them dinner.

The dark fairy, the thirteenth, did not deem their answers to be worth her time, and would have simply left well enough alone, but then suddenly heard the baby Talia laughing. When she went to view the baby, she noticed the spells that her sisters had cast on the baby, still shimmering on the surface; a pretty fabric of magic. The fairy was enraged that the lumberjack should profit from her misfortunes, and so she bestowed her own gift upon the baby.

It glowed red, blanketing the other spells in a tight knit. The details of the gift were never agreed upon, but it was common knowledge that by the time Talia reached the age of sixteen, she became entranced in a deep, frozen slumber, unchanged from that day until now.

A high-class enchantment, unbreakable.

It was tragic, in a way, that a girl's life was cut short for the mistake of her parents, and the thought that Talia herself was faultless made me feel quite uncomfortable as I imagined the lab assignments of the next few weeks.

George noticed my discomfort as I fidgeted in my seat. "Oh, don't be so down. It's not like she has anything else to do."

"It just feels a little wrong to kill her," I said, though I supposed it would be a mercy to her, to finally end her enchantment. And besides, some things just had to be done for the sake of modern science.

My friend was amused at my apprehension, the corners of his mouth teasing at a smile. "It depends on your definition of wrong, Henry," he said to me. "Don't make me repeat all of Mrs. Crimble's lectures on Ethics to you."

I sharpened my pencil with a blade and then dropped the shavings onto his desk without ceremony. "Please, don't pretend like you remember anything from that class," I said, recalling with amusement our year 10 Ethics class, which George had mostly slept through.

He wiped the pencil shavings off his desk and onto the floor. Taking a long look at me, he flipped both of our lab manuals shut and then grabbed me by the crook of my elbow. "Come on, we're going to go look at that girl so that we can get over whatever's bothering you," he said.

We went to the back of the room with the ruse that we had finished our prelabs early, which in my case was true, and that we were now going to wash out our lab tools. But instead of washing tools, we stared, transfixed at the sleeping girl.

She was no beauty, that was for certain. In fact, if I were being honest, which I usually was, she had quite a large nose; not at all delicate or fashionable. No, she was no beauty, but there was something sympathetic about her, something sweet. "Do you think she'll wake up if I shake her?" I asked George.

"You're the scholarship student, dolt. Don't you think they've already tried that in the past, oh, hundred years?" He poked her in her side, and got no response.

I knew he was right, but she looked so alive that it seemed hard to believe that a simple touch wouldn't wake her. Nothing in her look betrayed an enchantment; she looked as normal as any other sleeping girl. Certainly her complexion was not so healthy as it could have been, but she was living, she was breathing. There had to be a way. Everyone woke up- some people just took longer than others.

George handed me my goggles and then put his own on. "There's only one way to be sure, Henry, that we've exhausted our every resource."

"And how is that?" I asked my friend, uncertain where this was going.

He put his finger on the girl's forehead and then looked back up at me. "Sleeping Beauty class enchantments were rumored to be broken by true-love's first kiss. If we kiss her and she doesn't wake up, at least we can say we gave it our all."

My mouth curled in disgust. "That sounds like a stupid idea. Besides, everyone knows that there's no such thing as true love! That sort of thinking is almost as old as our subject here."

George nodded. "True enough, Henry, but here she is. Just put on your safety goggles and do it."

There was no such thing as true love, and I repeated as much to my friend. He of all people should have known better, considering how many hearts he had broken.

"If it's true," he said, "and there is no such thing, then you won't mind giving her a small peck on the lips, would you?"

I clenched my teeth together. Once challenged, I didn't back down. Besides, these were my moral foundations he was questioning, the very core of my beliefs. I wrapped the goggles around my head and tightened them, for no explicable reason, other than that if anything went wrong, I wanted my eyes, at least, to be safe. It didn't do to not follow laboratory safety procedures, after all.

"Don't be so morose, Hen. Just think of it as scientific method, if it helps you sleep tonight."

"Love is nothing but serotonin," I reaffirmed to myself, looking around to make sure no one would see what I was going to do next.

I leaned towards the subject's mouth, and noticed that, in addition to her freckles, she also had a mole, just above the right corner of her upper lip. I felt my face heat up. My gaze went from her freckles to her China rose lips, so like the color of the roses in my late mother's garden. I heard George laugh from behind me; apparently my hesitation was mistaken for admiration of the girl. I quickly placed my kiss, wanting to get it over with. It was odd, because it felt very much like kissing a normal girl, almost as if she were kissing me back.

And that was when I felt a hand in my hair. I opened my eyes, and saw two brown eyes staring back at me.

We both screamed.

Author Note: "New" story! Would love feedback, since I'm not sure if any of this made sense. If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer!