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to craft another spinning wheel.” The fairy sighed. “I tried to warn the king that this would happen, but he would not listen.”
    “What happened to Rose?” I asked. “Why was I the one who slept? And why only for a year?”
    “You sacrificed yourself to break the enchantment, so the spell did not work for the hundred years it otherwise would have. It only lasted for a year. It took another day for you to awaken.”
    “Where is…the princess?”
    “She’s in her rooms, playing, most likely.”
    “So she’s still…” I hated to say it.
    “Yes.”
    “There is nothing you could do?”
    “The spell awaits the seventh part, still. It goes like this:
     
    “Beloved by all, with
    Beauty the most perfect,
    Elegance the most graceful,
    Temperament the most amiable,
    Judgment the most sensible,
    Music the most lyric,
    And wit the most keen.”
     
    The fairy wiped her eyes. I could have sworn I saw a tear. “And only I can cast it.”
    “What prevents you from casting it?”
    The fairy pursed her lips for a moment. “Because I had to cast a spell to weaken the curse. Since the seventh part of the Sevenfold Spell is missing, it left her diminished in that area. She can never be anyone’s wife or mother. The prince sees her daily, but to her he is nothing more than a playmate. His heart is forever broken.”
    I thought of Prince Andrew, waiting for his wife, and trying to prepare himself to take another. It seemed so unfair to me. The princess didn’t ask for any of these blessings, which had done her more harm than good. Why could her parents not have been satisfied with an ordinary daughter? Did they fear to have an ugly one, like me?
    “Why couldn’t you cast another spell?” I asked.
    “Alas. By an ancient treaty woven into the fabric of magic, any one fairy can cast a spell on any one mortal only one time.”
    “Only one time?” I echoed. I thought of Harla. Had she known this, surely she would have taken another swat at the fairy.
    “There are a few exceptions, of course. Magic is almost like a living thing. Magic cast for good appreciates goodness. That’s why you didn’t sleep for a hundred years.”
    I wondered if it worked in the reverse—if magic cast for evil appreciates evil.
    I finished dressing and we left the room. I needed my breath to descend the stairs, so we did so in silence. As I rested at the foot of the stairs, the fairy turned to me.
    “As I said, the king will reward you. I wish to give you my own reward, as well. You may have anything you wish for. Remember I can cast only one spell.”
    I thought for a moment.
    “I wish you were able to cast the seventh part of the Sevenfold Spell.”
    The fairy’s eyes flew wide, and then they filled with crystal tears. When she smiled, I knew the magic would work.
    ***
    After the fairy blessed Aurora, it was as if the entire kingdom came out from under a spell. As on the night of her christening, people danced in the street. Only this time, I didn’t have Willard to dance with. I was much too weak to dance in any case. The king lavished gold upon me and insisted that I convalesce at the palace. But the lung sickness still consumed me, and of that, there could be no recovery.
    Aurora came to see me every day. Already she looked different from the beauteous simple maiden who had visited our shop. The restoration of her intellect—which, after all, was now “wit the most keen”—put a certain look in her eye that both detracted from and enhanced her former beauty.
    “Of course I remember you,” she said on her first visit. “You were Aunt Tally, my friend.”
    I smiled. “You called everyone Aunt Something.”
    “No. Only those I was close to.”
    “Do you remember when those boys wanted you to go in the drain?”
    She nodded. “I blamed you for that.” She looked ashamed.
    “You were only five years old. And besides—” I cut myself off, unwilling to say the rest.
    She finished it for me. “I was simple.”
    “What was it