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."

"No," I said. I tapped his jaw shut in an effort to stop the snores. "Can you imagine his breath? Did they even brush their teeth back then? No. No way. That's like taking on a puppy, and there was a reason I was never allowed one of those, either. I couldn't even get my goldfish to live more than a week."

Marge shrugged. "I never said love was instant. I'm just saying, he's your Mr. Right."

"Can it be a kind of catch and release program? I could kiss him, maybe-" I raised my eyebrows "-if I knew I wasn't buying into this for life."

"You traveled all this way to help him, did you not?" She nudged me closer. "The sun is setting fast outside. If you're going to do this, now's the time."

Taking a deep breath, I leaned down and kissed him. Just a peck, just a fast brush of my lips against his. His chest rose. There was no music, no glorious return to a world of sound and color. He just sat up like a spider's mummy. A small nod he paid Marge, and then his gaze fell upon mine.

Blue eyes. Eyes so deeply blue you could drown in them.

Except I wasn't that kind of girl. "Hey," I said, looking away. "We've gotta get out of here."

"Ma dame." He took my hand in both of his and laid his lips upon it. And I didn't want to admit it, but it kind of felt nice.

The next several words out of his mouth were airy, light, and - "French?" I gasped, rubbing my temple. Marge lifted her wings in a small shrug.  "Are you kidding me? I took Spanish in high school."

A throaty growl alerted us to a darkness coming around the back of the throne. There atop a massive panther, sat the Moth. She wore the same grin as earlier.

The prince, upon seeing her, pushed me aside, reaching for a thick sword in the cocoon's remnants.

"Thank God," I murmured, scrambling up behind him, waving the dowel in front of me.

The panther leaped, cleared thirty feet in a second. It smashed into the prince, sent him tumbling backwards down the stairs, where he lay at the bottom, bleeding from the corner of his head. He didn't move. The panther prowled above him, and then, in a flash, it had fallen to its side with a dreadful scream and collapsed upon the man. The fairy hit the ground and all at once the castle blew away, crumbling to ash.

We were in the main hall, out near the art exhibit and the spindle. The prince didn't move, and with my feet sliding I couldn't push the big cat off him.

The Moth staggered to her feet, oozing blue-green from a crack in her skeletal body. Her eyes were unreadable, but she followed my movements as I rushed for the sword.

And almost dropped it on my feet, it was so heavy. With all my conditioning for softball, I could barely heft the thing, let alone point it at the dark fairy. I hit her with the dowel instead and she laughed, buzzing in the air, yanking at my hair, raking claws down my back. She lifted me into the air, higher and higher as I struggled to get her, dropping the dowel.

We rose over the fountain, whose ark waters had transformed into a writhing mass of leeches and vipers and noxious legless monsters that consumed each other. We dropped lower and lower, my feet dangling above the waiting predators.

Marge flew into the pair of us, knocking the moth across the floor. in a matter of seconds the pair of fairies ha attacked each other, snarling and tearing at each other's throats. It was over in seconds, the Moth casting aside her bleeding enemy. She flew at me, claws extended like a harpy.

This time I grabbed the nearest leg and pulled her down. She struggled against me, screaming, clawing, biting my shoulder. Wings buffeted against me as she twisted around and we fell, tumbling through the ash. In the next instant she screeched so hard I couldn't hear a sound afterward. Her left wing pulled and detached in my hand, twitching madly.

I pushed the wing in her face as she bore down on me like a frenzied wolf and kicked her hard in the stomach. Her heel hit the fountain's edge, and with one wing fluttering madly for balance, she tipped backward.

Vipers and dark crawling things swarmed her body, a writhing mass of slime and darkness as she screamed and fought and clawed- to no avail. When the screams died so did the creatures, turning to thick, still sludge.

The panther faded into the same thick liquid as the prince tried to free himself. By the time I'd reached him he'd moved into an upright position, lifting a hand to his dark hair and studying the blood as if surprised. He asked something I didn't understand. Unsure what to do, I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. "We're good," I said. "She's dead."

Marge dragged herself closer. She wave a limp hand in the air. Water burled in the fountain. The prince, still bleeding, wore jeans and a flannel button-down. He stiffened, taking slow, awkward steps and running his hands down his chest, seeming to enjoy the feel of the soft fabric shirt. If I wasn't staggering back in pain, I might've found it actually somewhat adorable.

"I thought you said magic was dead in you," I said as Marge, healed of her injuries, kicked her feet in the fountain. The people around us were still asleep, slumped on the ground wherever they'd been when the curse took effect. I wasn't sure what that meant, but as I clutched my bleeding shoulder I hoped I didn't have to do anything else to get them to return to normal.

"I have a certain amount of foresight, back in the day," Marge hummed. "I made sure I had a little something for the cleanup. My sister and couldn't undo the Moth's magic, but we could plan for the ending we wanted."

"So you're telling me it was written that this girl from Louisiana was going to wake up sleeping beauty over there?"

She rubbed her paws together. "There've been quite a few potentials. The curse had an original shelf life of one hundred years, and then the first one failed, and the next, and the next. You just happened to be the one to succeed." She my shook my hand. All at once the pain in my boy reached an agonizing peak, and then subsided. My cuts  themselves closed, until all that was left of my ordeal were a few thin scars that disappeared into my repaired shirt. "Congratulations," she said.

"What am I supposed to do now?" I asked, glancing back at the prince. He was flexing his arms, feeling the texture of his jeans, poking around the  help desk's screen with a charmingly befuddled smile. "I mean, rescuing him was great and all, but I'm a college student. I can't afford to keep him, you know?"

"He's a fast learner, I promise you. He knew what the curse entailed- and he does have family overseas, you know. Some members of the House of France have not forgotten the curse, but if you need help, I suppose I could hang around a few weeks. I've waited this long to join my sisters. I suppose I can wait a bit more."

"That's all well and good, but I still have a paper to finish."

"Ah, yes, of course. The enchantment is fading on its own, but it'll be a good few hours before time wakes up. The library is yours until then."

"Thanks." I turned back toward the prince. "Come on," I said, grabbing his hand as we walked past the unenchanted spindle. "We've got a lot of work to do."