A Spindle Splintered

Zinnia Gray is a twenty-one-year-old woman dying from Generalized Roseville Malady (GRM), a fatal condition caused by MAL-09, a chemical compound that contaminated the tap water in Roseville, Ohio, in the late 1990s. The teratogenic compound damaged infants' ribosomes, causing them to produce malformed proteins that gradually fill their organs in a process called amyloidosis. Nobody with GRM has made it to twenty-two. Since childhood, Zinnia has been obsessed with the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, ever since she saw Arthur Rackham's illustration of a sleeping woman who, on the next page, was defiantly alive: "a dying girl who refused to die" (3). She graduated high school early, earned a folklore degree, and lives by self-imposed rules: like things hard, move fast, and no romance. Her best and only friend is Charmaine "Charm" Baldwin, adopted from a Russian orphanage by American parents who never let her forget she was "rescued," giving Charm a lifelong hero complex.

On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Zinnia meets Charm at an abandoned watchtower where Charm has organized a Sleeping Beauty-themed party complete with a spinning wheel. After the guests leave, Zinnia presses her finger into the spindle hard enough to draw blood. The world smears sideways. She glimpses a thousand girls reaching toward a thousand spinning wheels across other realities. One golden-haired girl with cerulean eyes mouths the word "Help." Zinnia materializes in a stone tower room beside the girl, then passes out.

She wakes in a medieval castle and texts Charm to assure her she is alive. The girl introduces herself as Princess Primrose of Perceforest, cursed at her christening by a thirteenth fairy to prick her finger on a spindle and sleep for a century. Zinnia's arrival the previous night disrupted the curse, but Primrose warns that she can still feel its pull and wants to destroy the spinning wheel. Zinnia begs her not to, believing it is her only way home. In the throne room, the King announces Primrose's betrothal to Prince Harold of Glennwald. Zinnia senses something deeply wrong in the princess's forced smile: This is not the happily ever after the fairy tale promises. Later, Primrose confesses that Harold is not her true love and that the tower room and spinning wheel have vanished.

Zinnia proposes they seek out the wicked fairy directly. Primrose agrees and reveals a poison-bladed knife hidden under her mattress, purchased from a traveling magician when she was sixteen. Zinnia infers that the princess may have contemplated ending her own life, a suspicion that resonates with her own crisis at the same age. They ride out that night on a three-day journey toward the fairy's lair on Mount Vordred, beyond the Forbidden Moor. The curse wakes Primrose each midnight, pulling her like a sleepwalker, and the pull grows stronger each night. Along the way, Zinnia tells Primrose about Charm and about GRM in detail, explaining the chemical contamination and the legal battles her community has fought.

At the fairy's castle, Zinnia tosses the knife to the ground and asks to negotiate. She begs the fairy to lift both their curses, but the fairy tells her she cannot save Zinnia from GRM. When Zinnia proposes taking Primrose's place in the enchanted sleep, the fairy refuses. Enraged, Primrose seizes the knife and holds it to the fairy's throat. The fairy transforms the blade into a feather, touches Primrose's cheek, and whispers: "I blessed you" (50).

The terrifying castle dissolves into a cozy cottage; the entire Gothic exterior was an illusion. The fairy introduces herself as Zellandine, a name Zinnia recognizes from the oldest version of the Sleeping Beauty tale, in which a sleeping princess is assaulted by a prince while unconscious. Zellandine tells her own version: she was a maid with a heart condition. A king's son assaulted her while she lay unconscious. She sought out a wisewoman who helped her end the resulting pregnancy and taught her magic. Growing powerful enough to read the future, Zellandine saw the same story replayed across a thousand realities: a girl sleeping, a girl powerless. She dedicated herself to intervening, earning the names "witch" and "wicked fairy." Primrose's enchantment, she explains, was protection: Without it, Primrose would have been married off to a husband she could never love. The century of sleep was meant to let the world change so Primrose might wake as a free woman. Overwhelmed, Primrose flees into the night. Zinnia follows and sits beside her. Both acknowledge their fates remain unchanged. Primrose decides to return home to say goodbye, then submit to the curse. Zinnia agrees to use the spindle to return to her own world.

On the return journey, the curse intensifies. That night at the castle, Primrose sleepwalks to a hidden tower room containing a spinning wheel. Just before she touches the spindle, Harold and guards burst in. Harold smashes the spinning wheel, declares Zinnia is the fairy, and has her dragged to the dungeons.

Imprisoned and without her portal home, Zinnia texts Charm, who sends a theory she calls "narrative resonance": The same story told across infinite realities creates connections between those realities, like ink bleeding through pages of a book. Charm also reveals that her biochemistry major, Pfizer internship, and senior thesis on MAL-09 were all part of a lifelong effort to cure Zinnia. Zinnia devises a plan: If she can recreate the symbolic conditions of a sleeping beauty's story, she might open a passage between worlds. She persuades the Queen, a woman who also married without choice, to fill her dungeon cell with roses. Her phone dies. She lies among the flowers and falls asleep, telling herself a fairy tale.

In a void between worlds, she sees hundreds of sleeping beauties across different universes. She also sees Charm asleep in the Ohio guard tower, wearing a misshapen tutu and plastic crown among the dried party roses. Zinnia pulls Charm through into the fairy tale world, then turns to the other beauties and whispers "Help" (85). Some answer.

Zinnia wakes to find Charm beside her, along with three women from other realities, including a massive armored Viking named Brünhilt. They break out and race to the chapel where Primrose's wedding is underway. Charm strides down the aisle and objects. The other beauties pour in, throwing the guards into disarray. Harold grabs Primrose's wrist; when she tells him to let go and he refuses, she punches him in the face. Charm catches the stumbling princess, and the two lock eyes in unmistakable connection. Zinnia tells the confused Harold, "They're lesbians" (92). She glances at the Queen, whose performed shock barely conceals an echo of her daughter's hope, and salutes her. The Queen faints conveniently across the King's lap, buying them seconds to escape.

Primrose leads the group toward the tower by surrendering to the curse's pull. Zinnia's body fails; Brünhilt carries her. They reach the tower, but the spinning wheel is gone. Zinnia collapses. In the last moment before her vision goes black, she spots a single splinter of dark wood on the flagstones but cannot reach it.

She wakes in the ICU of Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Charm and Primrose explain that after Zinnia collapsed, Primrose kissed her, creating enough narrative resonance to open a passage between worlds. Charm carried the unconscious Zinnia home and called an ambulance. The journey cleared all accumulated protein from Zinnia's organs, but she is not cured: Her RNA remains damaged, and the proteins have begun to reaccumulate. No one knows how long the process will take. Zinnia cries openly with Charm for the first time, tired of hiding behind her rules. Primrose decides to stay in Zinnia's world, and the mutual attraction between Primrose and Charm is plain. When Zinnia considers her future, she realizes she has never had one. "I don't know," she answers, "and it's the simple, glorious truth" (109).

Over the following weeks, Zinnia realizes she is saying goodbye. Her father gives his blessing, regretting the years he spent worrying about her death instead of letting her live. She packs medication and the wooden splinter from the destroyed spindle, then meets Charm at the guard tower one last time. She tells Charm she wants to spend whatever time she has reaching out to the other sleeping beauties she glimpsed in the void, girls trapped across infinite realities. Charm tells her she loves her; Zinnia says it back, acknowledging her rule against love was foolish, and urges Charm to build a life with Primrose. After Charm leaves, Zinnia stands alone among the dried birthday roses, presses her finger to the splintered wood, and steps into a new story.