She tumbled out of bed, tugged the door open.
Nanny Nanny panted on the threshold, the ruffled nightcap of her own wool askew on her grizzled head, both front hooves lifted. Before she had time to ask—before she had time to realize that she could not ask, bound as she was, for a few hours longer, by her need for silence—the ordinarily dignified Nanny Nanny bleated shrilly: “Angie’s been ta-a-aken ba-aa-ad, she neeeds you, she neeeeds you! Run, Your Highness, run!”
She stood for one uncomprehending instant, then, as she was, barefoot, without grabbing a robe, flew down hallways and up staircases, the labored staccato of the elderly she-goat’s hooves soon fading into echoes some landings below. As she ran, she tried to recall when she had last seen her daughter, when she had last seen her son—really seen them, really looked at them—and, to her sudden horror, could remember nothing beyond a vague sequence of perfunctory homework checks and good-night kisses, delivered and accepted in a cursory fashion, stretching back for silent days, silent weeks.
The door to her daughter’s bedroom gaped open. It was so dim inside that for one unbearable moment she thought the bed empty—thought that something horrific, something unspeakable, had happened. Then her eyes adjusted to the light of the bedside candle. Its flame dipped and flared as though gusts of wind were tearing through the air of the small chamber, and Angie tossed in the pillows, her hair plastered like feverish snakes against her moist forehead, her eyes white with fear. She threw herself before the bed, grabbed her daughter’s clammy hands in hers. Something was hurting her child, something was wrong with her child, and this was not a fairy-tale side plot, and nothing else mattered, nothing else existed, only this, only her worry, her worry swelling and gusting in the light of the crazed candle.
“Mama,” the girl whispered wildly. “Mama, the sofas, the sofas are after me—”
“Where is the doctor, why isn’t the doctor here?” she cried. Her voice was hoarse and unsteady, barely recognizable after having been lost for so long, but she did not notice, did not even notice having spoken. “Someone call the doctor now!”
She was enveloped in the smell of wet wool, and Nanny Nanny’s soft, milky-white face loomed out of the dimness like a homey moon.
“But she-e-e isn’t sick,” the nanny bleated. “Shee-e-e had a ba-aa-aad dreeeam, she can’t sleeeep, she’s been calling her ma-a-a-ma—”
Sinking to her knees, she gathered her daughter close to her, felt Angie’s small, anxious heart fluttering against her nightgown. All she knew was relief, immense and rolling like some vast, warm ocean. Not sick, not sick, her Angie was not sick… And then she tasted the rusty shapes of the recent words in her mouth, like a gush of blood from a tooth yanked out with great violence—and understood what she had done.
“There, there,” she said, and her voice rang dead in her ears.
“The wood, Mama, the wood,” Angie muttered hotly. “There were sofas in the wood, chasing me, and the bunnies shattered when I tried to pet them, and—and—”
“There, there,” she repeated.
“Tell me a story, Mama.”
She pulled the blanket over the child, shifted the pillows.
“You should sleep now.”
“I will never sleep again. Never!”
But already, she saw, the girl’s terror was draining away and her awareness of her age was returning to her—nearly eleven, she had begun to wear dresses that descended to her ankles, and slippers with small heels that clicked against the marble of the floors in the most satisfying fashion; and a shy page in tight crimson stockings had smiled at her in the hallway only a week ago. The girl’s breathing steadied, and her eyes peeked almost slyly through the turmoil of her matted hair. “Unless you tell me a story. Like before. You never come to tell me stories anymore.”
And just like that, she felt that her heart would break with the enormousness of her guilt. Had she loved her prince better than she had loved her children? No, she had not, of course she had not—and yet, having spent all this time trying to rescue him, had she not missed so much of their childhood? Because here was another year wasted—a year when she could have played with them, laughed with them, told them stories…
A year she could never get back now.
She sat on her daughter’s bed, took a breath.
“Well. Once upon a time—”
“There lived a man who had a wife and a daughter,” Angie rejoined.
She hesitated briefly.
“No,” she said then. “This is a different story. There lived a girl. A beautiful girl who loved to dance. She had these shiny red shoes, and—”
“Ooh, I know this one, too!” Angie interrupted happily. “The girl was naughty, she loved her shoes more than anything, and one day she stepped on a loaf of bread and was punished.”
“No,” she said again, more confident now, for she was suddenly aware of words—dozens, hundreds, thousands of words—that were beating in the column of her throat, fluttering at the roof of her mouth, all struggling, all demanding to be released. “This is a different story still. This girl lived with the gypsies, and she was a bit naughty, true, but no more than was good for her, and she loved the shoes, yes, but she also loved the old grandmother she lived with, and the young cousins she took care of, and she loved the mountains, and she loved the rain, and she loved the wind in her hair. She traveled with her people from village to village, and wherever they set up their tents, she danced. Her dance was like a summer sunrise, and when dour, stolid peasants watched her, they felt tiny flames of joy start up in their tired hearts. One day a passing horse thief saw her. And even though she was whirling ever so quickly, the girl saw him, too, she saw him standing in the crowd of villagers, because he was not at all like them. He was a full head taller than everyone around him, and he wore a bright red kerchief around his neck and a black shirt unbuttoned all the way to his navel, and when he noticed her looking at him, he laughed, and his teeth were like white lightning in his dark face. So, after the dance, the girl—”
Nanny Nanny issued a slight cough from the armchair in which she had settled with her knitting.
“Is Your Highness certain that this is an appro-o-opriate story for your daughter?”
“Angie likes it,” she replied, somewhat curtly. She felt aggrieved at being questioned. Had she not just given up a year of her life for the right to tell whatever story she desired? But when she glanced over at the bed, the child was asleep, her mouth half open, her hair no longer the writhing snakes of a restless nightmare but merely messy tresses framing her peaceful heart-shaped face.
And so she sent Nanny Nanny away and sat by the bed, quietly holding her daughter’s hand, until the sky started to fill the curtains with a pale glow. Then she kissed the child’s warm cheek, and stood, and walked across the still-sleeping palace, her bare feet soundless against the floors, every bit as though she were a ghost of some long-dead princess haunting the scene of a gruesome matrimonial crime. Back in her room, she unraveled the finished shirt with unhurried hands, first snipping off the two pearl buttons and carefully setting them aside. The orange sun of her twelfth wedding anniversary was just rising above the world when she sat down by the window, a pile of crushed nettles at her feet, and, in an undertone, continued the tale of the beautiful dancer and her horse thief, until the lovers rode off into the wind on a stolen black mustang.
“The end,” she whispered then, and, clamping her lips shut, started on the third shirt. Of course, three was the traditional number of fairy-tale trials, and she saw the inevitability of her two failures. The third labor, she knew, would be her last, and she had to accept it, as one accepted the natural order of things. Her work, the third time around, progressed smoothly; her days assumed a certain hypnotic rhythm. True, now and then she felt flashes of uncharacteristic, searing anger—anger toward the nettles stinging her hands, toward the palace walls closing around her, even, irrationally, anger toward the poor prince himself—more, this entire drab, predictable world of repetitious sartorial redemptions, whimsical teapots, and True Love—but such moods passed quickly, and she subsided back into her trancelike state, during which she no longer debated the past, no longer imagined the future, only wove, and slept, and watched her children’s innocent pastimes in the magic mirror, and, occasionally, wondered what her stepsisters’ days were like or how Brie and Nibbles were faring, and slept again, and wove again.