“You have done as fine a work as any of the royal tailors. You are Lady Temsland’s choice,” said the king. “Besides your gold, what is the reward that you would wish for?”
“To marry the woman who sewed most of the finery you speak of, Your Majesty,” he said.
“Ah. And who would that be?”
Tailor gestured to Gretta, who came forward boldly and curtseyed.
“Is this your wish, young maid?” the king asked.
“Your Majesty,” she said, “here is an imperfect man, the only one in the world perfect enough for me.”
“Then it will be. And each year you will both come to my palace and sew my daughter a new Easter gown. For that I will pay you in gold.”
“It has been my greatest wish,” said Tailor, bowing with great dignity.
The villagers cheered, for there was nothing they liked more than weddings. The king raised his hand for silence.
“Keturah Reeve,” he called. “Come forward.”
I came forward and curtseyed.
“The queen has chosen your pie as the most wondrous thing of the fair,” said the king. “You too will have a quarter of the shoe of gold.”
He held it up to drop it into my hand, but I curtseyed again. “Please, I would ask that my share be divided among the poor of the village, Your Majesty,” I said, for I knew that tomorrow I would not need money, that tomorrow I would not be what I was today.
The king turned and said a few words to Lord Temsland and John, and I turned to join the crowd.
“Wait, Keturah Reeve,” said the king. “The gold will be distributed as you requested. But there is the matter of your wish granted.”
I returned to my place before him.
John Temsland, beside the king, smiled and nodded at me, encouraging me. There he stood, so young and beautiful and strong, and he loved me. His mother and father, too, smiled gently, even lovingly, upon me.
I could ask now to be made a lady, and John would marry me. Oh, the good I could do for my people as the future Lady Temsland!
I realized that the crowd had been waiting for my answer. I waited too—waited for the words that would come to me as they always did around the common fire, waited for the words that would begin this new story of me... The villagers seemed puzzled by my silence, as if they all knew precisely what they would ask for me if it were up to them to choose. No one appeared more puzzled than John.
I knew I must speak, and I must speak now.
“Your Majesty,” I said. He was a dear lad, John Temsland, so handsome, with hair the color of ripe wheat and eyes clear as a baby’s, who loved me...
“Speak, Keturah,” John said.
I felt the evening sunshine upon me—but what was the joy of sunshine if there were no night? Wasn’t the sunset the sweetest time of day? Could I ask for only day and never dark?
And what of my friends? Could I ask for them ever to be at my side? Already I felt them moving past me, faster and faster, while I stayed still. And oh, the peace in that stillness.
What of riches and gold? What of lands and honors? But when I thought of these things there was a silence inside me—a hollowness. It fit ill, like the wrong ending to a good story.
Everyone was happy—old and young, rich and poor, male and female. But I could not touch their happiness, could not hold it. It was a dream and not real. What was real was the sense that in this life I had never quite been satisfied, had never long been at peace, had never loved or been fully loved as I longed to be. I could not name what was in me then, but I knew that the cure was not anywhere around me—not in Grandmother’s and my friends’ smiling faces, not in our shining little village, nor yet in any of the booths of the fair.
No, all I could think to ask for was my one true love, and this not even a king could give me. It was in that moment that everything became clear. “Your Majesty, I ask”—there was an audible intake of breath from the crowd—”I ask that the great hart and his mate no longer be hunted.”
The king looked at me, astonished, and then at John. I did not look at John. I would not. I could not. Behind me the people were murmuring among themselves.
“Very well,” the king said at last. “It is a strange thing you have asked, but you shall have it. Lord Temsland, John, do you swear?”
“We swear,” John said after a brief silence, and in his voice was an accusation, and great pain.
“It is done,” said Lord Temsland, and surely there was a hint of relief in his voice.
The king motioned for me to come closer and, when I did, said quietly so that few else could hear, “It is an unusual request, Keturah, from an unusual subject. Tell me what you say of this. As I traveled past Great Town, I saw villages emptied, fields unharvested, the grain stalks bent and rotting. I saw people hiding in holes like animals, and cattle dead by the roadside, and everywhere the smell of plague. But here, in Tide-by-Rood and Marshall, is health and marrow and wholesomeness. It is my understanding that it is because of you that this is so.”
“No, Your Majesty, but because of one greater than I, and, forgive me, greater even than you.”
He studied me then, a long moment, and nodded solemnly. “Tell him—tell him I have learned something. And thank him—or I suppose I shall myself one day.”
The music began again at a nod from the king, and the villagers dispersed to their fairing. And I—I guessed that the shadows of the forest were beginning to touch my cottage, and I walked toward it.
Gretta and Beatrice saw me leaving and broke away from their men and the friends and family who had gathered to congratulate them. Gretta grabbed my shoulders.
“Keturah!” she said. “Where are you going?”
“Home. I am tired.”
Beatrice leaned her head against my shoulder. “Please don’t leave, Keturah. You are so pale, you frighten me.”
“Do not fret,” I said, stroking Beatrice’s hair. “Not today.”
“Keturah,” Gretta said, “promise us that you won’t go into the forest.”
“You have weddings to plan,” I said. “Come, I will not be gone so long.”
Then their families and lovers came laughing to steal them away, not understanding why Gretta had begun to weep, and I continued on.
XIV
A conclusion of sorts.
I entered the cottage as the last rays of sunshine fell on swirling dust motes. I straightened Grandmother’s bed, put away the bowls that had been left on the table, and went to Grandmother’s chest and unwrapped my cornstalk doll. Gently I cradled her in my arms, remembering now that she had never had a name. After a time I put her carefully away, then walked through the garden to the forest.
How thin the air felt at the forest’s edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm. I looked around me. The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting. Though the sun had not set, the moon had risen, and the village had never looked so beautiful. How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow. It was not only my own life I mourned. Wouldn’t all life end with mine? Reason told me it was not so, but my heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn’t the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn’t I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning?