My sister is serving breakfast. The table is laden with jugs of cream, platters of forest berries, mugs of milk. The children are devouring stacks of pancakes. The redheaded man at the head of the table—this must be her husband, Tom the royal woodsman—is slathering a thick slice of bread with butter. His shoulders are broad, as are his teeth; he is not at all good-looking, his face seemingly carved with a few wide strokes of an ax, but he exudes solid sense—he exudes goodness. When Melissa passes behind him with another bowl of yogurt, I see her touch him on the back of his neck, see him place his hand over hers. Every time one of the children speaks, he stops eating, swivels toward the child, and listens, and when he offers a few words of his own, everyone pays attention. I am finally able to count their heads, some red like their father, others dark blond like their mother—two, four, seven, nine. Nine children, six boys, three girls—no, not nine, ten, for now I notice the still-hairless baby permanently attached to Melissa’s hip. They discuss the health of a lightning-struck linden in a nearby clearing, fish hatching in a stream behind their meadow, the vegetable garden. The children laugh easily.
Wholesome, I think as I look at them. Happy, I think.
They are talking in hushed voices—so as not to disturb me, I realize now—but I do not alert them to my presence. I watch them closely, avidly. At last the man stands, stretches, gathers Melissa to his green-clad chest in a bear hug, and plants a kiss squarely on her mouth, in front of everyone. My entire life, I have never had a kiss like that—solid, certain, open. When he leaves, the children, too, rise; the boys scamper out after their father, the girls start gathering dishes off the table, sweeping away crumbs. And I understand what I will do.
“Melissa,” I call.
She looks up.
“You’re awake!” she cries. “Come down, come down, I’ll make more pancakes.”
“Can I have something to write on first?” I ask. “And something to write with.”
And then I am seated on another tree-stump chair, before a tree-stump table, with a sheet of paper and a feather quill (“From our beloved goose Martha,” Myrtle tells me proudly as she hands it over). For a while I sit frowning. Writing has never been easy for me: there is something about imprisoning my thoughts in neat rows of words on a page that confounds me every time. But my stomach rumbles with hunger, and at last, I dip the quill into the inkwell (“Daddy made the ink out of blackberries,” Myrtle has informed me, “and I found most of the berries!”)—and start.
“Dear Roland.”
But he is not dear to me—certainly not now, and possibly not in years. I tear the narrow strip with the greeting off the top of the page, crumple it up, and try again.
“King Roland.”
But queens do not address their spouses as kings, no matter how estranged they are from each other. I tear off another strip.
“To His Majesty from Her Majesty.” No. “To whom it may concern.” No. “To my husband.” No. “To the evil wretch who calls himself my husband.” Tempting, but no. As I rip off greeting after greeting, the page is getting shorter and shorter, until I am left with a mere stub, no more than a paragraph’s worth, which will never fit all the lofty sentiments about love, faithfulness, and decency that I have planned to include in my long, well-thought-out letter. Myrtle is playing with her velvet pouch in the corner, putting some shiny pebbles in, taking them out, putting them in again, humming softly. When I ask her for more paper, her little face falls.
“But this was the only sheet we had in the house,” she whispers.
And so, I consider the tortured, uneven fragment before me, then dip Martha’s feather into Tom’s blackberries, and write decisively: “Roland. I want a divorce. I want the children, who have never been of any interest to you. And I want half the kingdom.” But I do not want half the kingdom, for what would I do with it? I cross out “kingdom,” write “palace” above it; but I do not want half the palace, either, for I will never again live under the same roof with that man. I cross out the entire sentence—I trust he will know how to make proper arrangements—and finish simply: “I am staying at the woodsman’s cottage with my sister. Please send your reply there.” I study the period at the end of the sentence, listen to my heartbeat, and change the period to a comma, and add, my hand somewhat unsteady now: “by a courier.” Perhaps… But I do not wish to complete my unvoiced thought, not even in the privacy of my mind.
The note rolled up, I go looking for Melissa. I find her in the yard, clipping a new load of laundry to the clothesline.
“I need to get this to the king,” I say. “Urgently. I know the palace is far and the way to it treacherous, there are wolves and wicked spirits and—”
But she is already calling for Tom Junior. Another holler later, the boy pops up out of nowhere—a red cowlick, a smudge of mud across his freckled nose, dirt under his fingernails, a sleeve torn over a scraped elbow. She gives him the note and a smack (“You lot must think clothes grow on trees!”) and dispatches him promptly.
“But he is too young to go on such a long, perilous quest!” I exclaim as I watch him disappear into the trees at a run.
“Long? Perilous?” She laughs. “See the forest road that starts right over there? It’s broad and well maintained, carts travel it weekly. It will take him to the palace in two hours. Three, if he stops to chat with the miller’s daughter over at the village. And no wolves around here—Tom takes care to keep them away. And even if there were, Tom Junior could hold his own. A wild boy, like all my sons, not afraid of anything, always full of mischief. Don’t know where they get it.”
She sounds exasperated and proud at the same time.
As I give her a hand with the laundry, I wonder, silently, about the willow girl at the brook in the heart of the forest and the mysterious path through the brambles that brought me here—but already, much of my journey is fading from my memory, like a shimmering starlit dream. The autumnal air is crisp; the sky, luminous as stained glass, is filled with the flapping of starched white shirts; and all at once I feel hopeful. Perhaps, I think, King Roland will want to be rid of me himself.
Perhaps this will all be over quickly.
My hope, however, will diminish over the next two days, will fade completely by day four, will turn into sullen despair by the end of the week. I help with the chores around the house as much as I can, but I am conscious of Melissa always trying to take all the work upon herself, always giving me the best of everything, always fretting about my discomfort. Late one night, wandering lost about the house again, I happen to pass Tom and Melissa’s room and overhear them talking, in whispers, about how best to survive the coming winter on what little they have, what with the appetites of their six sons growing faster and faster, and, too, having to provide for their sister the queen. “But of course, she is welcome to live with us always, always,” Tom offers staunchly, and on the other side of their door, my heart breaks a little. I intend to speak to them the following morning, right after breakfast, when our meal is interrupted by a horn trumpeting in the meadow.
I must confess to my breath quickening—but the man who enters the house is in his middle years, with an expressionless face that resembles a door handle, and I quickly pretend to myself that I have not been holding out hope of anyone else darkening the threshold. The courier hands me a parchment with the royal seal (depicting a unicorn in a field of daisies), then doubles up in a series of ridiculous bows and flourishes, and steps aside to wait for my answer.
My hands tremble as I break the seal open.
“My beloved queen,” the letter starts. “You have tricked us, drugged us, left us without a word, but your attempt to humiliate us in front of our entire court has failed. We have announced that you will be visiting your ailing stepsister through the end of the year, as befits your charitable nature, and no one shall expect your return before the first snows. We feel that three months of an impoverished existence in a woodsman’s shack with no allowance will be enough for you to regain your sense of priorities. At the end of that period, we expect you to return chastened to the palace and resume your spousal duties. As you well know, they do not consist of much, but we require your presence by our side for propriety’s sake. In the event you choose to disregard our royal wishes and stay away, we will consider the divorce proceedings initiated, but we promise you that you will rue the day you turned your back on our marriage. You will lose the children and will be left homeless and penniless. The law, as you will be sure to discover, is on our side. Consider this a fair warning. Yours always, King Roland Ferdinand Boniface Frederick Reginald the Fifth.”