Nibbles, however, had grown enamored of his goosedown pillows and breakfast sweets, and, too, at this sudden encounter with violence, the more militant lessons of his adoptive mother Brunhilda stirred in his breast. He determined to offer resistance. “Blood is a mere accident of birth,” he preached from inside the pumpkin in which he had been imprisoned. “It is merit alone that should be rewarded—and no one dances the mouse polka better than I!”
Two of the mice set to guard him were swayed by his eloquence, helped him escape, and became his Right-Paw and Left-Paw Captains in the eventual civil war of the Mouse House against the usurpers Nibbles the Sixth, formerly Maximilian, and Brie the Fifth, formerly Lady Bruschetta, Maximilian’s sister and concubine. In the end, the Blood Faction prevailed, albeit after many violent battles and regrettable casualties. Unluckily, Maximilian himself perished of his wounds in the final skirmish, and it was his son who assumed the title of Nibbles the Seventh to rule with his mother (and aunt) by his side. Maddened by their loss, the victors showed no mercy to the defeated and had the headless body of their enemy, the unfortunate Nibbles the Fifth, flung into the sewers. A hushed crowd of sorrowful rats brought it before their beloved Sister Charity, formerly Brie the Fourth. Heads bowed, they stood around her in the underground dimness, as she cradled what was left of her twin brother and lamented the senselessness and cruelty of the world.
“Oh, my dear heart,” she cried, her fur matted with blood and tears, “do you see where your foolishness has gotten you? And all for what—the love of chocolates and a few absentminded pats from a frivolous, moody princess who can’t tell any of us apart and treats us like wind-up toys, just because we are little? I do not blame Maximilian—like my poor brother, he, too, was a misguided fool, and he paid for his own mistakes dearly. No, I blame her, I blame her!”
She moved her eyes along the wall of silent mourners, her piercing gaze burning into them with unmouselike fire. When she spoke again, her tears had dried and her voice was a low, fierce chant: “My brother’s blood is on her hands. All of our blood is on her hands. And I curse her, I curse her, I curse her. As long as she walks the places turned red with the spilling of our lives, she will never know a day of peace but will be gnawed by discontent, fear, and sadness, just as we gnaw our daily bread. I bind her to her misery by the truth in our blood.”)
The princess hoped that her unborn child would be a girl who might benefit from being thus imbued, while still in the womb, with brave examples of free and unconstrained living. Yet when the child was born, it was a boy. They named him Roland, after his father the prince. Since the old king, too, was Roland, as the king’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been before him, it made her son Roland the Sixth. She felt secretly disappointed, even a little betrayed, as if all her marvelous inventions had been wasted—more, as if she had made some vast, courageous effort to do something different and it had been in vain.
And seemingly out of nowhere, despair descended upon her.
“‘An insipid blue cupcake,’” the fairy godmother quotes, her voice frosty. She has seated herself in an ample leather armchair she has summoned out of thin air and is brushing invisible specks off her cloak. “I never took you for an ungrateful kind.”
“As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with the busybody here,” the witch says as she stirs the potion. “Also, I must tell you, it’s not very reasonable, expecting the prince to remain eternally enticed by you no matter what. Because, let’s face it, you did not exactly overwhelm him with personal accomplishments or depths. Preserves and polkas, did you say?”
“But.” My eyes are stung with unexpected tears. I blink them back, quickly. “But that is what princesses are supposed to do!”
“Is that so? Well, I don’t claim to be an authority on princesses. All the same, it might have done you some good to develop a real interest or two along the way. You could have studied astronomy. Just for instance.”
“Or practiced watercolors,” the fairy godmother chimes in suddenly.
“Or become a rock climber,” says the witch after a beat.
“Or founded a charity that rescued homeless dogs,” adds the fairy with a sniff.
“Or learned another language.”
“Or discovered a new species of butterfly.”
“Or played in a band.”
The witch is ticking off the items on her fingers now, and they are nodding at each other.
“Or opened a bakery.”
“Or gone to law school.”
“Or taken piano lessons.”
“Or gotten involved in local politics.”
“Or volunteered at a school.”
“Or—”
“Stop!” I cry. “Stop! I—”
And then I, too, fall silent. The realization that neither of them seems to like me all that much is surprisingly painful, and I want to justify myself somehow—but I do not know what to say. When I try to catch their eyes, neither woman will look at me. Everything is very still around me. The winds have long since abandoned the crossroads. The grasses are not moving in the fields, the flames under the cauldron have become coals. The world seems perfectly flat and gray, all dust and weeds.
“Well, like I say, you get out what you put in,” the witch concludes dryly. “Let’s move along, then, shall we.”
“By all means,” the fairy godmother says. “None of us are getting any younger, and some of us have real things to get back to. Like clients who appreciate what we do.”
Feeling deeply ashamed, I return my gaze to the cauldron, in whose turmoil another stretch of time has already passed.
The End of the Middle’s Middle
One morning, as she lay on the sofa in her godmother’s visiting chamber, her tea grown cold, she drew a breath and made a shocking confession.
“I’m not very happy, Fairy Godmother.”
The matronly woman looked up from her knitting, her bulging eyes amplified even more by the rainbow-colored butterfly-framed glasses.
“Don’t be silly, my dear. ‘And they lived happily ever after,’ remember? The story is very clear on that point. Another cup of tea?”
She shook her head. “I know I should be happy. I’ve done everything required, I’ve followed all the rules. Only I’m often sad, and the prince never seems to be there, and sometimes… sometimes I even wonder…”
“Yes?” The fairy godmother stared without blinking, one knitting needle poised like a pen in her rosy hand.
“It’s… hard to explain.”
“Do try, my dear. Verbalizing your feelings helps with tension reduction.”
“Oh.” She crumbled a scone into dust on her plate. “Well, sometimes I wonder if this story hasn’t… hasn’t gone wrong somehow. Because sometimes I almost feel like I don’t belong in it. Like maybe I’d be happier in some other story—even in some other world, a really different world, if only I could figure out how to get to it…”
Her anxious voice trailed off.
The fairy godmother sighed.
“My dear child. There is no other world. There is just this world. And in this world, I assure you, stories never go wrong. All of us get exactly what we deserve. Villains have their punishments, heroes win their princesses, and if your story has a happy ending, then it is simply your matrimonial duty to be happy.” She paused to ponder. “Still, you know, stories don’t always run in a straight line. There could be something you’re overlooking, some twist to the plot. Of course, all twists are properly catalogued in the royal library. I’m afraid our hour is up now, but I want you to read up on fairy tales this week, and we’ll continue at our next session. As always, Tuesday at eleven. Let me jot it down for you, you’ve been a bit forgetful lately.”