The Charmed Wife

by Olga Grushin

  She remembered knowing, for a few brief hours.

  And so, in a way, the aging mistress’s revelations had been a relief, for it was clear now that none of it had been her dear Roland’s fault: the prince had already been cursed. And the dimming of that particular stretch of her marriage only made the glorious luminescence of their first two years together stand out all the more dazzlingly in her mind. Devoid of doubts, sure of her purpose, she worked on her shirt with a steady hand, and somehow, without her noticing, the year was over almost as soon as it had begun. On the eve of her twelfth anniversary, she hung the new shirt, complete and impeccable, on the chair by her bed and went to sleep in the full knowledge of a different, blissful life that awaited her in the morning.

  She dreamed of wandering in a nighttime wood. Trees loomed, leaves rustled, owls cried above her head. She was lost—there was no path before her—yet she did not mind; she liked the freedom of moving alone in the dark. After a while, she saw lights ahead and walked toward them, and soon came to a row of bright windows hanging on branches like laundered sheets on a clothesline, with no dwelling behind them. She stood on tiptoe and peeked into one, and there was her own blue-and-white bedroom, immaculate like a nun’s cell. The window next to it opened onto the palace ballroom; the window beyond, onto the dining hall. All the rooms seemed deserted, but something dashed behind the windows—curtains swayed and teaspoons rattled at someone’s passing—and then she heard knocking, as on a door. She glanced about, but there was no door to be seen. The knocking intensified, became urgent, turned into a desperate pounding. She rushed from window to window, her gaze scrambling over satin sofas and flocks of porcelain rabbits, unsure whether she herself was inside or outside, whether whoever was knocking was begging to be let out or fighting to be let in—and the urge to run, the urge to help, was still beating like some wild creature against her chest when she sat up all tangled in the sheets and listened to the frenzied knocking on the door of her bedroom.

  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, an
d 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.

  Three weeks away from her thirteenth anniversary, the shirt was nearly done, missing only the left cuff, when she ran out of nettles. She picked up her candle and went down to the kitchen to replenish her supply one final time. It was the murky hour before sunrise, and the kitchen lay deserted and still, save for the brownie who was sweeping crumbs into a corner and paid her no heed. She tiptoed to the pantry, and was in the process of filling the pockets of her nightdress with nettle leaves when a deafening crash sounded behind her.

  She swung around and, her heart leaping, thrust the candle into the dark.

  Arbadac the Bumbler stood hunched over the stove, a spoon frozen on the way to his mouth, the knocked-over pans settling noisily at his feet, a trickle of something viscous slithering down his chin. He blinked at her owlishly for a few moments before a look of recognition brightened his foggy eyes.

  “Strawberry jam,” he explained with an embarrassed cough, plopping the spoon back into the pot. “A weakness of mine. We’re all only human. And you, Your Highness, what sweet craving brings you here at this hour?”

  She pointed to the nettles cramming her pockets.

  “Ah, yes, of course, the lifting of the curse! I hope it is proceeding splendidly?”

  She shrugged.

  “Has Your Highness managed to obtain the manticore’s mane bristles, then? If you forgive me my professional curiosity?” He beamed at her. Puzzled, she shook her head. “Or the echo of the phoenix’s song? No? But you aren’t speaking to me . . . eh . . . I hope I haven’t done anything to offend you?”

  She looked at him reproachfully, gestured at her mouth.

  He frowned, seemingly confused. Then his entire face sagged.

  “Oh. Oh dear. I didn’t, by any chance, tell you that you needed to be silent?”

  She stopped breathing, stared at him. His prominent Adam’s apple jiggled in his bony neck, once, twice. It had grown so quiet that she could hear him swallow.

  “Ah. Yes. Yes, so it appears. Well, but of course, that was the working theory for a while, it wasn’t like I was suggesting anything unduly excessive. Yes. But I might have been a bit behind the times, you see, what with the dratted clock and this plague of salamanders forever setting fire to the upholstery, it was only last winter that I finally had a free hour to glance through the back issues of Magic Monthly, and, well, it seems that in the past century or two, other approaches might have been . . . That is to say, there is a growing concern in the community that women are being deprived of their voices in addition to bearing the brunt of paying for their husbands’ and brothers’ mistakes, so the imposition of mandatory silence during the performance of preliminary curse-breaking rituals has now been deemed, eh, somewhat unnecessary.” He regarded her anxiously. “So, you see, this is marvelous news, because you don’t actually have to not speak . . . that is to say . . . Your Highness? Your Highness?”

  She was striding away, out of the kitchen, and down the corridor, and up the steps, and past the sleeping guards, and out of the palace, as she was, in her light nightdress and house slippers, nettles spilling in her wake. The nighttime darkness was only just beginning to recede, and the garden lay drained of color, unsteady with shadows. She descended the staircase. The predawn chill was like a slap against her cheeks, but her face remained blank. She walked blindly, ignoring the paths, crossing lawns wet from a recent rain, crashing through beds of wilting daffodils. Two or three marble nymphs gave her looks of alarm and bounded out of her way, the palace gates rushed to swing open and let her through, and frogs in a little pond behind the mill abruptly ceased their throaty chorus of “Kiss me, kiss me!” at the sight of her twisted mouth. She noticed nothing, did not know where she was going, just kept walking, kept walking, driven by some unvoiced urge to leave behind all the places that she recognized, all the thoughts that made well-worn grooves in her mind. She walked until her feet ached, until her fingers turned brittle with cold, until her fury spent itself in physical exhaustion. Then she stopped and looked about.

  She stood in a meadow. The world was hazy with the billowing light of a soft vernal sunrise, and the golden fog hummed with manifold voices of invisible bees. There was a small cottage with a thatched roof and a door painted deep blue, the color of her favorite parasol, at the foot of a hill. She had never been here before, yet it was all strangely familiar, like some story heard in a distant past. She rubbed her chilled hands together, breathed on them, waited for something. The door of the cottage opened, and a young man came out stretching, and saw her, and froze.

  She went to him, slowly, for there was no urgency left in her now. The young man watched her unmoving. When she stopped before him, he shook his head like someone snatched out of a dream and cried, “But you are shivering, and your slippers are wet! Please, won’t you come inside to warm up?”

  His speech seemed to have a slight tilt, and the words slid down it a bit awkwardly, as though not completely sure of themselves; like her, he must have come from across the sea.

  She met his shy gaze the color of honey.

  “I must warn you,” she said. “If you offer me a cup of tea, I will scream.”

  This was the first thing she had chosen to say after a year of muteness, and she meant it. He smiled, uncertainly.

  “Your Highness pleases to make jokes. That is Your Highness’s right, of course. Alas, I do not possess any tea to offer you, only cider. But I promise it will be good.”

  Aware of an
odd twinge of disappointment at having been recognized, she followed him inside. The room she entered was clean and warm, and had a nice, solid smell about it, equal parts wood shavings, baked bread, and honey. A sturdy table by the window was covered with a blue tablecloth, and on it stood an unglazed earthenware jug with some disheveled red wildflowers. The young man brought out apple cider, and in silence they sat at the table, sipping from two chipped white cups. The cider was spicy, and good, just as he had promised, and she drank deep, with keen pleasure, feeling life return to her stiff fingers and toes. When her cup was empty, she wiped her lips on her sleeve, in a decidedly unprincesslike gesture, and studied the man across from her. He, too, looked eerily familiar, with his cast-down eyes and tousled hair the color of fallen leaves, like someone from a long-ago story—like someone from her own story, she realized then, in the days when her own story had made perfect sense.

  “But I know you,” she said, sitting back. “You are Prince Roland’s courier, are you not? You—it was you who came to me with the glass slipper!”

  “I am the beekeeper,” the young man said quietly, addressing his cup. Nor was he all that young, she saw, perhaps only a year or two younger than herself.

  Undaunted by the finality of his reply, she pursued her half-forgotten memories with rising excitement. “And you brought me all that fruit, I remember, I remember! The exotic star-shaped delights, I waited so eagerly for their arrival. Yes, Prince Roland had traveled to some southern province, but I couldn’t go with him. It was the year I was with child.” Briefly, she cast down her own eyes and paused, for the sake of propriety, but a moment later was being swept off again on the current of recollections. “And then—then he came back, and I never saw you again. Angie had just been born, and I was . . . well, in truth, I was a little overwhelmed, so I didn’t notice you were gone at first, and then I had no one to ask about you, but . . . I did wonder. Did you leave the royal service?”