Counting Sheep

3: Diamondback

What had been a buzzing library at three o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday before midterms was little more than a ghost of itself. There were people, all of them asleep, bodies draped across stone and branch, propped up in desks and snared in vines. It was as if an ancient jungle had risen up through the floors, destroying the library as I knew it. Trees lined the walls, vines and sharp thorns made the path off the stairs a painful mess for someone like me in shorts. The strangest thing though, I noticed, stepping over crackling leaves, was that the world seemed to come from the books themselves. Thousands lay open and scattered, roots pulling up through covers and yellowed pages. I reached out to touch a branch, and my fingers came away stained and inky.

The ceilings seemed to stretch on into endless night sky, though there was a heavy presence above me, as if the ceiling were still there and actively trying to press down on me. The darkness was so thick I could nearly cut it with the dowel. Sounds and whispers blew on a cold wind, promising threats that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

Find him, Marge had instructed me. How hard could it be in a library, with a finite distance and floorplan? Well, nothing felt finite here.

And yet there was nothing, nothing that came to me in the dark, not for a long time. I walked through rustles and whispers, winced as sharp, inky thorns cut my legs and arms. Once, something rushed through the floor, large and shadowed like a leopard, but I ducked beneath a desk and pulled a sleeping girl's body across mine.

The creature sniffed and strode atop the desk, its heavy stride pacing just overhead, but then it too was gone, and I made my way further into the thorned forest.

The further I went, the worse things got. The trees and vines closed in, until I was slipping over logs and climbing around stretches of wild bramble, until I was nothing but a shadow myself. Bats swooped at me. Horned owls with ghastly eyes and glowing wings swooped across the path ahead. The woods, dark and quiet, began to pale. It was as if a white snow had fallen upon the land, thick, lacy tendrils that clung to my skin as I passed.

The vines shriveled and died. The well of novels dried up into plain grey stone, a floor- a castle floor, I thought, pressing forward with an eye out for eight-legged scuttling arachnids. The webbing thickened, falling over the stonework as I walked through deserted halls, until there was nothing before me but a wide, webbed room and a throne. Across broad steps lay a prone, dark shape. The closer I got, the more I saw. It was a human, certainly, but it had been cocooned tight in webbing. I ripped it apart with my fingers, almost dreading what I'd find within.

But it wasn't a desiccated corpse with life sucked from it. It was a handsome young man with dark hair and a shirt straight out of a renaissance fair. I tried not to stare too much at his square chin and high cheekbones. Even though he'd never know it, I didn't want to be creepy, even as I cleared the webbing from his face. As soon as I pulled the strings from his chin his mouth dropped open and he started snoring.

Roaring, really. The bullish sound echoed through the throne room despite it being covered in thick webs.

"Not hard, was it?" A voiced rasped in my ear. I saw back on the stair, looking up at a toothy grin.

"I was expecting a little more danger," I admitted, resting the dowel on my lap.

The white fairy ran a paw through her silvered locks. "It's a curse made in haste and spite. The danger lays in its creator, than the curse itself. This cure is quite simple. He'll wake up with true love's kiss," she said.

I  stared down at the snoring man, then back up at the pale fairy. "Look, I don't believe it in the movies, and I don't believe it now."

"It's your destiny."