The Dark Fairy

Chapter Twenty-One

After a while, Carabosse finally managed to tear herself from the mirror within the gloomy room in Aurora's mind. She looked at the depressing walls. They were still decorated with dusty cobwebs and were dripping with mouldy damp.

"What's going on Carabosse? What do you mean you'll never leave me alone again?"

"Just that, I will not leave you. I cannot. I - I cannot trust him," Carabosse said vaguely, whilst involuntarily glancing at the clouded, enchanted mirror.

"Who?" questioned Aurora. The shake of the dark fairy's head made her sigh with disappointment. "Why do you always refuse to tell me anything?" she huffed.

Carabosse didn't say anything, instead she strolled around the small space available within the dark room, then stopped and looked at a free corner. With a graceful wave of her hand, she made the ground tremble, and a seat grew up from the stone floor. She sat down, her raven wings lay comfortably underneath her.

"You mean it don't you?" Aurora asked, her gaze not leaving the stone throne that the dark fairy created with her magic. "You really are staying? You're not going to leave me?"

"That's right," Carabosse said and crossed her legs, as if to physically show the princess that she meant it.

"I don't understand. What happened?" Carabosse's drifting gaze sparked the frustration Aurora felt towards her stubborn captor. She stepped closer, getting into the fairy's face, refusing to back down. "Tell me, Carabosse. You owe me some sort of explanation."

Carabosse looked her straight in the eye with an intimidating glare.

"I owe you do I?" she asked mockingly.

"Well," the princess began. The confidence she felt surprised her. "This is my dream and I say you do owe me. So just tell me. Now!"

The decibels within the last word that left the princess's mouth, magically took hold of Carabosse's reluctant mind, and her mouth opened against her will.

"I have found out that I have been following the wrong path. I was following the Dark One blindly, and I don't want to be blind anymore."

"The Dark One?"

"Yes, he was the one who taught me the dark arts. It was from him that I learned the curse I put on you. All this time he had manipulated me," Carabosse explained, her eyes unblinking as if she was in some sort of a trance.

"What changed?" the princess pressed, taking advantage of the sudden power she had over the dark fairy. "Why can't you trust him anymore?"

"I learned the truth, and he killed my only friend before my eyes." Carabosse stared into the abyss as a memory she had been trying to run away from for the longest time entered her mind. "He died just how my Mama died," she uttered so quietly, the princess had to strain to hear her. "With a hole in his chest and a missing heart..."

As she said that out loud a thought suddenly entered her mind. She shook herself from the princess's power, got up from her seat and rushed towards the mirror.

She placed her palms against the glass and squeezed her eyes shut.

When she opened them again, the gloomy room had gone and she found herself kneeling where she once knelt years ago; within the Great Oak, in the centre of the Enchanted Forest.

She managed to enter her own memory, and with her new perspective, she was able to lift her head, even though her past self was hiding her face in despair. She saw her class being herded out by Heartha as the green flames of her past self's panic-filled outburst spread around the room. Everything moved slowly like a crawl as she focused hard on all that happened on that dreadful day.