Download Sleeping Beauty - Harper Voyager Books

‘I can’t end. Not like-’‘A thousand years is too long to live.’ And I let the rock fall. Itdropped with a prolonged and continuous sound of shattering, ricochetingfrom one wall to the other, tearing away the guts that hadlet Kalla echo for so long within the last works of the Builders.I looked at my hands, torn and empty. A great weariness washedthrough me, a desire to lie myself down in the mud and let sleepclaim me. All that stopped me was the memory of a kiss, the hint ofher scent.‘No. I’ve slept long enough.’A kiss had woken me and I’d found, as we so often do, that theworld had moved on without me. And that’s the riddle of existencefor you. When to move and when to stay. Dwell too long and webecome the prisoner of our dreams, or someone else’s. Move toofast, live without pause, and you’ll miss it all, your whole life a blurof doing. Good lives are built of moments – of times when we stepback and truly see. The dream and the dreamer. There’s the rub.Does the dream ever let go? Aren’t we all only sleepwalking into oldage, just waiting, waiting, waiting for that kiss?Bleeding, smeared with muck and ash, I staggered down the hill,all that survived the purge of Bunker 17. I might be counted onemore ill to be visited upon the world, for I could hardly be called itshope. But, hope or horror, I had endured. I had been delivered fromthe thorns in fire and pain and set free.I ran a hand across the baldness of my scalp and felt my mouthtwist in its old smile, a bitter one to be sure – but not only bitter.‘Sleeping beauty, woken by the princess’s kiss,’ I said.And so I set off to find her.