The Wide-Awake Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

along the battlements to see how far the roses had encroached on the castle grounds. She was relieved to see that they had stopped on the other side of the moat and hadn’t come any closer than the portcullis on either of the two drawbridges.
    Annie was standing on the battlement facing the road into town when she noticed movement in the distance. The roses had overgrown the road for nearly a quarter mile, but beyond that it looked as if people weregathering. Wagons heading to the castle had stopped on the road, unable to get past roses that had grown higher than the horses’ heads. Men on horse back were milling around the wagons, gesturing to one another and pointing at the castle.
    Annie was concerned about what could happen to the sleeping inhabitants of the castle, but until now it hadn’t occurred to her that the rest of her parents’ subjects might be in danger as well. With the king asleep and not likely to wake any time soon, Treecrest had no one to make important decisions. And because most of his army was garrisoned in the castle, they were sound asleep as well, leaving only the soldiers currently on patrol to protect the people from bands of thieves, marauding trolls, and flocks of harpies. Annie wished she could get in touch with even one patrol, but she had no idea how to find any of them. If only there was someone she could turn to for help! She was sure that her uncle Rupert would come if she could get a message to him, but he was commanding the forces stationed at Delaroo Pass, high in the White Mountains. Even if he could leave someone else in charge of keeping the mountain trolls from entering the pass, it would take at least a month for word to reach him, then another month for him to make his way through the dragon territory that lay at the base of the mountains and cross the land that was said to be the most dangerous in all the kingdom. Annie didn’t think she had that much time. Once word gotout that the curse had taken its toll, unscrupulous people and nasty creatures would be pouring into the kingdom.
    Annie’s eyes grew wide as another horrible thought came to mind. Without the king’s army, other kingdoms could invade Treecrest and be in control of the kingdom long before her family woke. Her parents could open their eyes to find themselves prisoners in their own kingdom. If Annie were to locate a prince to kiss her sister and wake everyone in the castle, she would have to do it quickly or the kingdom would be lost. Too bad she’d never traveled more than a few minutes’ ride from the castle and knew only what rumor and books had told her about the rest of the kingdom.
    Annie’s first inclination was to start on her journey right away, but it was almost dusk and she wasn’t ready to go. Deciding that she’d leave as early as she could in the morning, she went to the kitchen and collected food to take with her, then ate some cold ham and cheese and drank a cup of cider before returning to her room for the night. Although she had seen for herself that she was the only person awake in the castle, she felt uneasy and dragged a heavy trunk in front of her door to block it.
    She was up before dawn the next morning after a restless night spent starting at every creak of the castle walls and whisper of a breeze outside her window. The sound of the wind chimes was so faint in her room that she could barely hear it, but the moment she openedthe door it grew louder, serving as another reminder of everything that had happened the day before.
    Dressed in the boy’s tunic and breeches that she had worn when she learned how to ride, she tucked her hair inside a boy’s cap, packed a gown, a few coins, and the other items she planned to take with her into a worn leather satchel and returned to the chamber where her mother still slept. Annie checked on her mother and sister. Reassured that they were sleeping peacefully, she went down the stairs to see her father, who, like everyone else in the castle,