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i.
your mother tells you stories.
most of the mothers in the village do not know how to read, but your mother does, and her most prized possession is a book of stories – tales of adventure, romance, excitement, things your small village can only dream of. you listen to her read, her voice warm and quiet but so articulate and so lovely, and then, once she tucks you in and kisses you goodnight, you take the book and turn through the pages. you look at the delicately inked illustrations and pretend that you can read the words yourself.
you decide that you want to be like the characters in the book. you aren’t sure if you want to be like the princes, going on quests and slaying dragons, or like the princesses, falling in love with men who are so passionate, charming, considerate, clever – you only know that you want great adventure, great romance, great excitement.
how you’ll find that in your small village, you don’t know.
&
there is a boy in the window.
you stop in the middle of the road, ignoring your mother’s tug on your hand, and look up into the little house with the unkempt garden and the broken mailbox – yes, there he is, a little boy with light hair and blue eyes staring out at you.
eventually, your mother gives up on pulling you to school on time and surrenders to your incessant questions: the boy’s mother died and his father left, she doesn’t know why, sometimes the old women of the village visit the boy and give him a small allowance but yes, he’s all alone in that house, and no, she doesn’t think he’s going to school.
not going to school? you wonder. surely, all the boys and girls of the village go to school. what could possibly make this boy more special than them?
and quickly, your mind paints a picture of a young prince, secluded from the commoners because of his royalty, studying the science of leadership until he is fit to rule, but feeling so far away up in his tower. he must be wishing for a friend to save him from his loneliness.
no sooner has the picture become clear in your head than you are off, sprinting to the door and banging as loudly as you can.
“wait!” your mother shouts. you don’t hear her.
you continue knocking, the hits of your fists like the claps of thunder, until the door relents. it opens to reveal the boy himself – smaller than you’d imagined, and less handsome. he stares at you as though he’s never seen a girl before.
“hello,” you say with a grin. “are you coming to school?”
&
the boy is no prince – he is a baker.
he fumbles around for words. his knees are always covered with dirt and his hands with flour. there is not an ounce of chivalry in his body. he’s about as far from the characters of your storybook as a piece of moss is from a beautiful rose.
and yet you knock on his door every morning and smile at him as you walk to school. your mother is reluctant to grant you permission at first – a young lady should not walk unchaperoned with an orphaned boy – but you cajole and plead until she relents. she sighs, and says that she supposes it’s kind of you to help out the poor little boy. you don’t correct her – you don’t say that it’s not out of sympathy that you walk with him and help him with his homework, and share your sandwiches when he forgets his lunch (which is often.)
you don’t correct her, because you aren’t really sure why you do those things. maybe because you don’t think anyone should go without friends? maybe because you’re trying to be a nice person, like the princesses who always get happy endings? or maybe because he has a bright smile when he lets it out, and can be quite clever if he tries, and is genuinely so good, with so much empathy and respect for everything around him despite all of the sorrow the world has piled upon his back?
you don’t know. you don’t think about it often. you just walk with him, eat with him, laugh with him, and listen when he tells you how he wants to be a baker because when the old women visit to help clean his house, they always put a loaf of bread in the oven, and the time when that warm smell of dough transforming into crust fills the house is the only time it ever feels like home.
ii.
one day, you catch your reflection in a shop window and realize you are beautiful.
you aren’t quite sure when it happened – for all you remember, the last time you saw yourself, your eyes were too big, your legs too long, your knees too knobby – but now, you can see how your dress curves flatteringly against your body, how the fabric brings out the blue of your eyes, how your grin makes your whole face seem to light up. you are beautiful. not storybook princess beautiful, it’s true – your dress is no gown, your frizzy hair no cascading curls – and yet lovely nonetheless.
and somehow it seems that your epiphany is contagious. the boys of the village begin to look at you as they never have. they begin to want.
&
you don’t know if he’s noticed as the other boys have, but you think that you would like him to.
and so you consider your options carefully, and you find a solution you believe credible: as you sit down to lunch with him in his shop one afternoon, you slide it casually into the conversation.
“andrew gallagher asked me to go to the harvest dance with him,” you say, unwrapping your sandwich.
he makes a stifled coughing noise, and for a moment, you’re terrified that he’s choking.
but then, he stutters, “what? he what?”
you take a bite of your sandwich, waiting for him to collect himself.
“he can’t do that!” he finally exclaims.
“why not?” you ask. you widen your eyes in the innocent look that used to get you out of trouble with your father. (it never worked on your mother.)
“because ... because!” he says, emphatic. “because ... well ...”
you wait.
he opens his mouth to speak, then seems to decide against it and closes it again. and yet, the rosy red spreading across his cheeks tells you all you really wanted to know.
“do you want to go to the harvest dance with me?” you say slowly.
he stares at you for a long moment. it’s only when you raise an eyebrow at him that he seems to remember a question demands a response, and nods.
“well.” you grin. “find yourself a better costume than that old suit your father left behind, and I’ll consider it.”
&
he spends six months of his savings on a new suit for himself, and another two months on flowers for you.
he stands on the edge of the makeshift dance floor, hands shaking and eyes bugging out. he seems terrified that if he takes one step, he’ll somehow burn the entire barn down. you sigh and pull on his arm until he follows you.
“this is a dance, so we’re going to dance,” you tell him. “no getting out of it.”
and, of course, you step on his toes, and he pulls at your skirts, and attempting a turn nearly topples over the refreshment table – but you’re laughing the entire duration, so it’s all right, really. there’s nobody else you’d rather be dancing with.
after the dance is over, he walks you home, hand nervously reaching for yours as you step out beneath the starlight. it’s chilly out, enough that he offers you his jacket. (you don’t take it, because the offer is all the warmth you need.)
at your front door, he stops, runs his hand through his hair. he stutters something about having a great time and he would like to see you again – well, much as he sees you all the time anyway – and are you going to say anything, because he’s really dying here –
in answer, you take two steps forward, stand up on your tiptoes, and press a kiss to his lips.
after a few seconds of what you think must be pure shock, he responds – too quickly and too much, opening his mouth and, wow, okay. that is definitely his tongue.
you pull back and stare at him. “what was that?”
his face goes red. “um, sorry? is that not how people kiss?”
“not for a first kiss, no.”
he makes to apologize, but you smile and move in closer again.
“it’s okay,” you say. “we’ll practice. and practice. and laugh about this later. and –”
and this time, he’s the one to kiss you.
&
life with him is easy, natural.
you’ve been friends for so long that you already know everything about him: his favorite foods, his favorite jokes, his favorite place in the meadow to lie on his back and look up at the clouds. little changes, except that the physical part of your relationship develops slowly, from awkward and nervous to wonderful and exciting.
and you know – you know not to expect great chivalry, romantic gestures, or grand speeches. your dreams of princes from storybooks are pushed to the back of your head replaced by simpler worries about flour prices and temperature changes.
one morning, as you walk down the road to market, he stops you. and there, in the middle of the dirt road with chickens clucking nearby and the sun rising behind you, he drops to one knee and unearths from his pocket a small, gold ring.
he gets as far as, “I – I want to spend the rest of my life – if you would only –” before you pull him to his feet, throw your arms around his neck.
the whole village comes to the wedding. you wear white, there are flowers everywhere, the old women nod and say they saw this coming years ago. he can’t stop smiling.
and then, once the guests have left and your feet have grown tired of tight slippers, he picks you up in his strong arms and carries you to the small house on the edge of the wood. carries you home.
you will learn to bake bread and pastries, all that the village can eat. you will give sweets to the children. you will put aside your storybook. your home will always smell of warm dough baking.
you will be happy with him, if you tell yourself that you are.
iii.
you want a child.
you aren’t sure entirely why – perhaps because it seems that all the other young women in the village are mothers and you feel left out of their discussions of first words and breastfeeding, perhaps because your husband seems less and less like the boy you befriended every day and you hope a child can bring him back, perhaps because you want to read your storybook again and reading it to a child is the best excuse you can manage, perhaps for a reason greater or less than all of those together – but you know that the desire is there, more potent than any desire for gold or jewels. gold and jewels are impossible for a baker’s wife, but a child? a child, you can get.
you tell him one night, as you slip into bed and curl up against his side. “I want a child,” you whisper.
and his arm around you, usually so warm and tender, goes stiff.
“what?” you pull back and look at him, concerned.
“you want a child,” he repeats.
you nod. “more than anything.”
“but I ...” he hesitates, then says, “I don’t know if I can be a father.”
your eyes narrow. (wrong answer.) “but it’s not all about you, is it?” you snap.
he pulls away, his face ashen. you remember the little boy you saw in a window, how he looked so scared and alone – and yes, it isn’t all about him, but it isn’t all about you¸ either.
“I’m sorry,” you say, putting a tentative hand on his arm. “I know it’s a scary thought, but I want this, I really do. and I’ve seen you with the other children when they come to our shop, how you’re always so patient and kind. you could be a father. and besides, don’t you want to meet the child we’ll make?”
he is silent for a long moment – long enough that you fear he’s going to refuse you – but then he pulls you close and says, “okay.”
“you want to have a child?” you ask.
he nods. “I do.”
“alright, well, no time to lose!” you exclaim, grinning at him.
&
the witch claims your house is cursed.
to be honest, it’s an odd kind of relief to hear her tale of his father’s stolen beans and the sister taken in payment. even though your husband has that old lost, lonely look in his eyes, at least you know that you aren’t doing something wrong. at least it isn’t your fault – you had begun to worry, after months and months of trying to no avail.
this problem, this curse, is something that can be fixed. it’s tangible. it’s simple. really, it’s nothing more than a glorified shopping list.
go to the wood and bring me back: one, the cow as white as milk; two, the cape as red as blood; three, the hair as yellow as corn; four, the slipper as pure as gold.
the task is not complicated, and yet it is somehow still exciting. you want to go to the wood and search for magical ingredients – it’s been so long since you’ve last been in the wood, so busy with home, husband, bakery. you want to go out and search, have an adventure like the ones in your old storybook. there may not be princes or dragons, but at least it would be more interesting than bread.
plus, how many of your friends will be able to say that they had to reverse a witch’s curse to have their babies?
your husband doesn’t want you to go with him. he doesn’t understand that this curse is as much yours as it is his – the baby will belong to both of you, after all. perhaps you have been happily married too long, and he has forgotten that he needs you, but does not command you.
you follow him. (he forgot his scarf.)
&
it is easy to fool the boy.
you don’t think about it, really. he has the cow, you need the cow, you must get the cow. it’s only logical. if a bit of trickery is necessary to obtain what you need, then so be it.
your husband stares at you afterwards, as though he can’t quite believe what you just did. you don’t know why he’s so shocked. does he not want the child as much as you do?
he orders you to go home again, and, honestly, the more you speak to him, the more you begin to resent him. does he believe you frail, weak, incapable? does he forget how strong you have always been?
you obey, if only because arguing with him would waste valuable time, and the cow does need to be brought home. and so you walk away, bearing the cow behind you and your anger on your back.
(but you turn – for only a moment – and look. there is guilt in his eyes and there is fear, as plain as the scarf around his neck. it’s almost enough to shake off your fury.)
&
“he’s a very nice prince,” she says.
you find it difficult to believe her. “nice” is not a word you would ever use to describe a prince. “dashing,” perhaps. “charming.” “heroic.” but “nice”? never. “nice” is for old women who give cookies to local children, or schoolteachers who forgive pupils for not doing their homework, or bakers who agree to have children because their wives want it more than anything.
princes go on grand adventures. they charm princesses. they make huge, romantic gestures. they simply can’t be nice.
still, you nod and smile as the girl talks to you, you agree to let her hide, because she seems to be in distress and you don’t mind helping –
and then, all of a sudden, there he is – all gold and blue, handsome smile, perfect teeth, bright eyes – as though he rode straight out of your storybook. you can’t think, you can barely breathe – but you still somehow manage to lie – tell him that no, you’ve seen no girls run through (and, true, she didn’t go through, but it still feels like lying.)
“the woods can be a dangerous place,” he tells you, voice smooth as velvet.
he leaves you standing there, wondering if you’re dreaming, or you were just hit with a battering ram, or what. you never thought you’d meet a prince.
and, strangely, now that you have, you’re hungry for more – but you focus on the girl’s golden slipper, on arguments you can use tomorrow night to persuade her to give you one.
&
you apologize to rapunzel, but you aren’t sorry.
after all, why should you be? you only took a small amount of her hair. she doesn’t need it for anything, but you need it desperately. you need it to have a child. (the need has grown inside you – from a wish to a demand, sharp and painful beneath your skin, taking all your courage and wit and determination and you give willingly, give and give until you’ve given all that was fake about you.)
rapunzel will be fine. you only hurt her for a couple of seconds. and besides, there’s still plenty of hair left for her prince to climb up.
(rapunzel has a prince, the girl with the slipper has a prince, everyone has a prince but you. you have only a baker. you tell yourself that you aren’t jealous.)
&
he is different in the woods.
it’s strange: the boy you befriended years ago was small and lonely, but still so kind. the man you married was unsure of himself, but not of his love for you. the baker you wanted to have a child with was stuck in his ways, afraid of change, but willing to try for your sake.
and now, the person you see before you in the woods is unafraid. his movements are faster, his smile is brighter. he pulls you to him and spins you around, singing, and you sing back.
you aren’t quite sure how this change came about – somewhere between cow and cape and hair, breaking the curse became less task and more adventure, and you revel in it.
it’s unlike any story you’ve ever read. the plot is supposed to be: prince meets princess, prince saves princess, prince marries princess. but perhaps – perhaps your story is more complicated than that. your witch is not evil, only overprotective of her greens. your obstacle is no dragon, but a shopping list and some paths through the woods.
your prince is only a baker, but he can be just as charming.
your need to have a child is greater than ever, and yet it is not quite the same as it was before. it consumes you, and it drives you, and you allow it.
you told him that you wanted to meet the child the two of you would make, and that is now finally beginning to become true.
iv.
he asks you what you want to name the baby.
the question comes unexpected – you are lying in bed when he brings it forth, exhausted from another day of cooking and cleaning and baking with a ripening treasure in your belly.
you are exhausted, so perhaps that is why you suggest the first thing that comes to your mind: “why don’t we name him after your father?”
“NO!” he shouts, too loud in your quiet cottage.
“no,” he repeats a moment later. he is apologetic, and you hold tight to his arm around your shoulders to let him know he is forgiven. “my father put a curse on this house, and then abandoned me instead of learning to live with it. he doesn’t deserve for his name to be remembered, much less passed on.”
naming sons after fathers is a tradition in your village as old as time, but you understand. you think for a moment, watching the moonlight shining through the window to form patterns on your sheets.
“we will give our child a name all his – or her – own,” you finally say. “a name untouched by the generations before, with which they can do as they wish. and we will raise that child to be proud of us, but unafraid to question us when we are wrong.”
he sits up, turns around, then leans down and kisses you – first on the lips, then the heart, then the resting place of your child. you think that this child will have more love than it will know what to do with.
&
your child is beautiful.
more than simply beautiful – he is wonderful, he is perfect, he is everything you wanted and more. and his arrival in your home marks a divisive line: no more witches, no more curses, no more traipsing about the woods.
everything is back to normal, except – except now, there are diapers to change, and temper tantrums to soothe, and early wake-up calls every single morning, the vast majority of which your husband refuses to help with because he believes his son doesn’t like him. and even with all of that, there is still bread to bake, clothes to clean, counters to wipe, dinner to cook ... you need to be in a million places at once, and none of them are exciting.
honestly, there are days when you just want to put the baby down, run into the woods, and scream as loud as you can.
your husband tries his best, of course – he takes on more responsibility, or tries to. he makes you laugh when you’re so tired you can barely stand, and he brings you flowers nearly every day. he is more vocal now than you ever could have hoped for, before.
and yet, you can’t help thinking that if you were a princess, you would live in a beautiful castle with servants attending to your every need, no cooking or cleaning or waking up early if you didn’t wish to. you know the thought is selfish, but you can’t help it rearing its ugly head sometimes, when your back aches and you’ve barely slept in days.
this is the life you’ve wanted with the child you’ve wished for. (telling yourself that over and over doesn’t make it true.)
&
the giant comes and turns the world upside down.
you feel an odd kind of relief, even though you can’t find your house or the village or any familiar pathways at all. you are terrified for your life, of course, but no house means no cleaning, no village means no hungry people demanding bread. this isn’t exactly how you envisioned a vacation, but you’ll certainly take whatever you can get.
you go into the woods once again. your heart is racing, your mind is full – so many questions, who did this and why did it happen and how can we fix it? how are we going to get back home?
do I want to get back home?
you don’t allow yourself to dwell on that for too long. answer the easier questions first. cross that bridge when you come to it. (or burn it. who knows.)
&
he does not want to let you go.
it’s ironic, you suppose: the last time you were in these woods, he was so eager to send you away, and now, he is so sure he needs you with him. but it is logical, to split up. it is the best plan: find the boy, decipher the full story, and then you can deal with the giant. (no, not deal with – you deal with laundry, or filthy floors. you defeat a giant.)
you tell him your logic. you insist. he knows you are right – he has been more willing to listen since the baby was born – and he lets you go.
putting down the baby is so easy – like dropping a loud of dirty dishes in the sink and telling yourself you’ll do them tomorrow. it barely occurs to you to worry how capable the girl might be at caring for your child. all you can think of is the adventure – if doing a witch’s shopping was exciting, imagine how amazing defeating a giant will be!
your husband gives you his scarf, and it takes most of your strength not to snap at him that you do not need it. you are brave, you are clever, you are capable. (some part of you, a buried part you dare not acknowledge, knows that although he needs you, you do not need him.)
you will take a hundred steps, then turn back. it does not occur to you that he might not be there upon your return.
(you do not turn back.)
&
a prince kisses you, and you kiss him back.
he is a good kisser, you suppose. he uses the perfect amount of pressure, waits the perfect length of time to coerce your mouth open with his own, pushes you against the tree with the perfect amount of strength. his kissing is all practiced finesse, as though he’s done this a thousand times with a thousand women and collected surveys from each on the points of most pleasure.
he must be a good kisser, but it’s difficult for you to say, with so little experience in the area. when your husband kisses you, it is often awkward, bumping noses and clumsy hands, but he is always so eager – as grateful for each new contact as though it’s the first. this prince is no oaf, but he seems so empty – the passion is all for the kiss itself, not the person on the receiving end.
(but does that matter? if there is passion and a prince, surely you can overlook the small details.)
you tell yourself it is stupid, to think of your husband while kissing a prince – to think of life while trapped in a marvelous dream. and yet, he is all you can think of. are you unfaithful? are you horrible? will you be able to hide it? could you have been a princess in another life?
your baker is certainly no prince, but perhaps ... perhaps you were in the wrong story from the beginning.
“I will not forget how brave you are, to be all alone in the woods. and how alive you have made me feel.”
and he leaves as quickly as he had come – the dream fades into reality. passion flees into the trees, the paths, the rocks. and the world is somehow dimmer, without a prince in it.
you have spent much of your life restricting your imagination – forgetting your storybook, reminding yourself that dreams are impossible, convincing yourself that you are happy. but now that you’ve lived a dream, if only briefly, it all comes flooding back in a rush. you see yourself in an elaborate ball gown, tiara upon your head, standing with the prince before an audience of a thousand cheering subjects.
you could do it, you’re certain. you could be passionate, charming, considerate, clever – you could be a queen. and suddenly, you are so angry to have wasted your life as a baker’s wife, always tired and stinking of bread, always –
you are clenching his scarf in your fist, clenching it as though if you squeeze hard enough, you will squeeze its owner’s head clean off. his favorite scarf, given to you for luck even though you don’t need it.
carefully, so carefully, you untangle the scarf and hold it out in front of you. and as easily as you saw yourself in a ball gown, you see him smiling – as he had smiled on your wedding day, and as he had smiled at your newborn son.
perhaps, in another life, you could have been a queen. but in this life, you are a baker’s wife as strong as a queen, married to a man better than any king. it will have to be enough.
&
you do not remember the way.
seventy-seven, seventy-six, seventy-five. a prince kissed you, and now you are lost. seventy-eight, seventy-seven, seventy-six. you are lost, but you will find your way. seventy-nine, seventy-eight, seventy-seven. you will find it.
you do not allow yourself to think that none of these paths are familiar. if you allowed yourself to think it, you would fear it, and then it would be true.
count and turn, count and turn, search and search and – and then, suddenly, the ground is shaking, as though from faraway thunder but the thunder is close, it is here, it is approaching you – fight or flight has never been much of a struggle for you, your instinct has always been to confront and so you run –
the giant approaches. the ground shakes. the world ends.
you don’t see the cliff until it is swallowing you.
&
in your final moments, you are sorry.
not sorry that you kissed a prince – you are sure you would be forgiven, and anyway, it was something of a worthwhile learning experience – but sorry that you parted from him without turning back. sorry that you didn’t tell him you loved him one last time. sorry that you were so quick to abandon your child for an adventure.
and then, as the pain overcomes you and the sky fades to black, you think – no. he would not want you to be sorry.
you close your eyes and you whisper, thank you.
thank you for making me laugh. thank you for giving me the greatest treasure I could ask for. thank you for –
your time is up.
but you are certain that someday – after he has raised your child with love and warmth, after he has lived a full life, after he has given all he can – he will follow you.
he will follow you. (you forgot your scarf.)