But as she told the story over and over, it grew leached of inner meaning, as a word might when one repeated it too often, and she started to find it oddly lacking. What if the slipper had fit someone else—would the prince have married the other girl instead, would he have even known the difference? Was she, in fact, all that different from every other maiden with a sweet singing voice and a patient disposition? What exactly had he liked about her at the ball—the way she waltzed, the cut of her bodice, the childlike size of her feet? Why hadn’t they asked each other’s names, or, failing that, favorite colors at least, or favorite ice cream flavors? Also, and most disconcertingly, why did the recollection of the young courier kneeling before her—the brief pressure of his hand upon her bare instep as he had helped guide it inside the slipper, the golden brown of his gaze that had lingered one moment too long on her lips, the soft burr of his accent (like her, he had come from a distant land as a child)—why did it make her feel so profoundly unsettled?
It was at this point in her ruminations that she rose and, blushing, went to see her husband. They had not been alone in quite some time. The guard at Prince Roland’s door muttered apologies while trying to bar her way into the study, but she distracted him with her most radiant smile, ducked under his elbow, and pushed the door open. The prince sat behind his massive oak desk, his elegant fingers steepled, his eyes closed, a thoughtful look on his face, while one of the Singing Maids—they only ever employed singing maids in the palace—appeared to be crawling in search of something underneath the desk, her ample uniformed rump protruding beyond the desk’s carved phoenixes and vines, undulating in some hurried rhythm.
At the slamming of the door, Prince Roland’s eyes flew open, his eyebrows flew up, and he said, his usually smooth voice rather husky: “Esmeralda, you may stop looking for that thumbtack now, my wife is here.”
She heard a choked exclamation, a rustling of clothes, and presently Esmeralda emerged from under the desk, a bit rumpled and red-cheeked, her mouth slack, her small black eyes running about her face like startled beetles. She gave the maid a polite nod, then, once the door closed behind the woman, went and sat in Prince Roland’s lap, entwining her arms about his neck.
“I love you,” she said. “Do you love me?”
Without replying, he pulled her closer with a jerk. She gasped. His gaze seemed both intent and unfocused, and before she quite knew what was happening, his lips were devouring her neck. And then that persistent warm, heavy feeling somewhere at her core flared up, and everything grew urgent and new and vastly surprising, and she was lost in the fumbling tangle of skirts, the helpless, eager need to undo his britches (which had somehow proved already undone—but no matter), the awkward struggle to accommodate their arms, their legs, their rocking to the confines of the chair, to the shamelessness of the afternoon light flooding the windows, all of it so rushed, so vital, so unlike the few (so very few) nighttime, chaste, brief, sweet, embarrassed, blanketed, invisible, horizontal couplings of their first year of marriage (and none at all since she had found herself with Angie—which she had always assumed to be the proper way of these things—so why now, why this?—but no matter, no matter)… A button popped, the chair groaned, he groaned, she felt something unexpected rising in her, something overwhelming, akin to a powerful command to close her eyes and fall backward, trusting some great new sensation to break her fall—a sensation so unfamiliar, so freeing, so imperative as to be almost frightening. But just as it had started without warning, so now, without warning, it was over, everything was over, and, still poised on the brink of that fall into the unknown that she had not taken, that she sensed she would never take now, she felt something inside her shifting, tilting, growing unhinged and unmoored.
He tipped her off without ceremony, adjusted his clothes. His eyes came into focus and were absent. Hurriedly she dropped her skirts to the ground, to cover her shame—and, to her terror, dissolved into sobs.
“Please,” he said, frowning. “I must work now. What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” she said, and pulled herself together, then added in a small voice, “I love you, Roland.”
“I love you, too.” There was a barely perceptible pause. “My dear.”
He began sifting through papers on his desk.
She fled the room.
In later months, as she lay sleepless, stroking the dome of her belly where the baby was kicking, she found herself haunted by that anonymous endearment, by that pause in his words. And since she did not wish to give in to her unease, she began telling tales to the baby growing inside her, whispering familiar old stories into the mound of taut flesh. Yet now the comfort fare of the miller’s son, and the miller’s daughter, and the beggar girl all marrying their princesses and princes failed to soothe her, even if it still made her feel just as if she were settling down to knitting in her favorite armchair. And her unease grew, until one night, as she stood by the window, watching a pale moon rise above the black park, listening to the distant wail of a lonely siren, she realized that, quite simply, she no longer wanted to do any knitting in any armchairs.
What she wanted was to leave on a journey through mysterious twilit woods full of uncanny creatures and unexpected encounters.
And so, she began to invent.
She invented a world unlike anything she had ever known, anything she had ever heard of. She was used to small villages and bustling market towns where everyone greeted everyone else by name, so she invented an improbable city—a city so immense that all the passersby were strangers to one another and every chance “Good morning” could become the beginning of an exhilarating adventure. She was used to frivolously ornamental palaces that looked like baroque wedding cakes overflowing with frills, curls, and lace, so she imagined the lines of her city to be sleek and simple, all glass and metal. She was used to rigid fairyland rules dictating every move and every outcome, so she made life in the outlandish world of her fancy fantastical and unpredictable, for in that world there existed true magic—the magic of choice.
The ease of her invention took her by surprise: it was almost as if she were describing a place she had seen in some intense, vivid dream.
“Once upon a time,” she would tell her belly, “there lived a man who had a wife and a daughter… But no, that’s not the right beginning, it’s not about the man at all. Let me start again. Once upon a time, there lived a little girl whose parents loved her, and she was happy until her mother got sick and died. Then she grew so sad that her father decided to take her somewhere far, far away from all the sadness. They climbed onto a magic silver bird, flew across the ocean, and came to a great city, and she soon knew it for the most magnificent city in the world. Astonishing things happened there day and night—and nights were as bright and full as days, for the city never slept and it never grew dark. Enchanted lights floated above pavements, palaces stretched a hundred blazing stories into the sky, the streets were full of shiny carriages that moved without horses. Thousands of wizards who knew the secrets of the universe and could turn paper into gold and dirt into diamonds jostled one another on the sidewalks, leopards and monkeys cavorted in a great menagerie in the city’s wooded heart, pictures of beautiful princesses flashed on and off above broad squares, and there were treasures to look at everywhere you turned—necklaces and shoes and toys and roses and oh, so many things, dogs, jugglers, pigeons, churches, bridges, balloons, guitar players, parks, guardsmen, marching bands, pretzels, stone lions, fortune-tellers, people laughing, people crying, people fighting, people kissing, people living.”