I read it again, then ask for a quill.
“I beg you, can I please, please, see the children?” I write at the bottom of the parchment. The messenger accepts it with renewed flourishes, pretending not to notice the tears that are streaming down my face, lifts his chin high in the air, and departs. A day, two days, three days pass, but there is no answer.
After another week, I know not to expect a reply.
At the Manor
“My dear, tell me what the bastard did to you,” Melissa asks again.
Her nine children have all been put to bed, and the two of us are sitting alone by the fire, warming our hands on mugs of hot milk.
I shake my head, then say, to change the subject: “I overheard you and Tom. Talking about the winter.”
She presses both hands to her ample breasts.
“Oh, my dear. You weren’t meant to hear that. We are happy to have you. What else is family for?”
I think of all the times I spat in Melissa’s food as a child, and flush dark with shame. “I know.” And I do know, which only deepens my guilt. “But I want to help with the household expenses.” For a moment I stare into the dancing fire. “I believe I would be good at shoeing horses. And—weaving straw bonnets?”
Melissa smiles, then stops smiling. “Oh. You’re serious. Alas, my dear. Those are commendable skills to have, even if I can’t think how you would have come by them—but the village smith already has three sons to help with the horses. And we don’t have much need for fancy hats around here.”
“I will not sit with my hands in my lap while you work your fingers to the bone, sister.” I frown at the leaping flames in the fireplace—so full of life now, yet in another hour or two, nothing but ash and cinders—and at once the perfect solution comes to me. My mouth twists at the thought, but not a small part of me revels in the bitter irony of its aptness. “Is there someone in these parts who needs a maid?”
Looking stricken, Melissa starts to say no, then hesitates.
“Please. I need to do something.” I do not add that, even more, I need to get out of this house where everyone is so welcoming, where everyone is so joyous, where I die a small death every day, every day.
“There might be a lady,” she concedes after meeting my eyes. “I hear she is rather odd. And her manor is badly neglected. But I will make inquiries. If you wish.”
“I do,” I say, “I do”—and she heeds the desperation in my voice, which is why, only two days later, I am walking the forest road with detailed directions scribbled on an oily piece of paper in which Tom brought fish for supper the night before. I soon take a less traveled path branching off the broad track, but the wood remains filled with light, transparent in the way of all autumnal woods, brown leaves fluttering down through the air. As I walk the rustling path, I let my thoughts float where they will. I wonder, not for the first time, about the mysterious life’s spark that the witch allowed me to keep at the crossroads. I try to imagine what my children are doing at this very moment. I recall, as I do now and then, the beekeeper with the honey-colored eyes and gentle lips. It suddenly occurs to me that, had I chosen differently at that forest clearing, had I gone right, to a fresh happy ending, he would have probably come back into my life, revealed, no less, as a long-lost son of some distant king, and a perfect new story would have started to unfold, from its enchanted beginning to who knows what (quite possibly grim) conclusion—and, just like that, I understand that I will not see him ever again, having chosen a thornier way. For a few minutes, the memory of our dream kiss lingers, warm and stirring; then I let go of it, and it dissipates in the morning chill, not to return.
I pull my cloak about me and walk faster.
After another half an hour, I detect an unexpected floral scent, rich and sweet, yet with the faintest trace of dampness, of rot, underneath. Presently, the trees lining the path give way to blooming rosebushes, and the lane opens onto the great expanse of an unkempt lawn crowned by a sprawling redbrick manor. Its darkened windows stare blankly through trailing ivy. Rust has corroded the wrought-iron arabesques of balcony grilles, and there is a deep layer of grime on the lion-shaped door handle, as if no hand has touched it in a hundred years.
The instructions I have been given direct me to enter without knocking.
Inside, all is oppressive silence, cobwebs, and obscurity; even the bright morning light invading the foyer has lost its cheer, become somber and dull, after straining through the gray and purple petals of the rosette window above the grand entrance. I move through the unfolding array of hushed rooms, and the echo of my footfalls gets lost, trapped in heavy gray draperies, muffled in thick purple rugs. Everything here, I notice, is gray and purple—the slate tints of veined marble floors, the striped light gray wallpaper, the faded violets of velvet sofas with tasseled lilac cushions, the flat grays of tarnished tea urns, trays, and sugar bowls arranged in fussy clusters on lavender tablecloths, the mauves of artificial orchids and chrysanthemums in prim purple vases, and, presiding over everything, the ubiquitous grays of dust, dust, dust.
This must be the house of a very old lady, I decide as I find my way downstairs and into the chilly, unused kitchen, where, as promised, a sad collection of pails and mops awaits my efficient handling.
I spend that day scrubbing the floors; the next, washing the windows; the third, dusting the knickknacks; the fourth, buffing the silver. The first two floors of the manor are deserted save for a dozen gray birds in rusty gray cages—and the birds, oddly, are always asleep, their heads tucked under ruffled wings. As soon as I arrive in the mornings, I pause by their perches to make sure that they have not died in the night; the scarcely discernible rise and fall of gray feathers never fails to reassure me, and yet I find the sight of these still, headless creatures so unnerving that I try to keep away from their cages as much as I can through the day. For the rest, I soon discover that the job suits me well, which is, in truth, unexpected; manual labor made me restless when I was a moody adolescent waiting for my life to begin. Now I move through the manor, singing softly, transforming the cluttered, dim spaces into gleaming geometries of order, and I think of how much satisfaction this simple work brings me. When I first took hold of the broom, after all those indolent years, I was surprised by the feeling of brisk self-sufficiency, almost of power, that surged from my fingers into my heart. I think, then, of how this might just be the answer—or, if not the answer, then at least an answer—to the question that used to bother me so during my empty days in the palace: What makes me different from any other starry-eyed maiden dreaming of her golden prince or her golden goose? Raised on the bland, mealy porridge of princess fantasies, I had imbibed the widely held belief that royal idleness was the only suitable reward for past misery and good behavior—but perhaps this one-size-fits-all approach could have never made me happy.