Once Upon a Curse

by Peter Beagle

  The shoes weren’t helping. Clym didn’t like her to take them off, but no one was going to see. And the cold, solid floor would feel good beneath her bare feet. She leaned against the wall, one hand braced against the door, the other fumbling with the tiny buckle on the inside of her ankle. The shoe fell to the floor and, thankful, she put her bare foot down, steadying herself while she undid the other strap.

  Oh, that was better. She didn’t dare shut her eyes—she’d fall—but she lowered her head, breathing the scent of disinfectant and pseudo-pine air freshener. She’d just stay here a moment until she recovered, then she’d be able to go back to the restaurant—

  No! Memory raced up through her. She felt it like a blow to her stomach. The food. The food was killing her thoughts.

  This time she didn’t stop to think it through. She leaned over the toilet, and slid her index finger along her tongue, right to the back where, if you touched it, it would make you retch…

  The vomit came boiling up her throat, all the undigested food and wine she’d forced into her body, turned sour and vile. She heard herself make a horrible croaking noise and her hand clenched on the toilet-roll holder as she was sick and sick and sick.

  It left her empty. Empty and—once again—aware. She spat into the toilet, wiped her mouth with the tissue paper, breathing shallowly though her teeth, waiting for the prickle of cold sweat, the goose bumps all over her skin, to disappear.

  So, that had helped. And—oh, taking her shoes off had helped, too. She’d remember that. And now, for the first time, it came home to her that she had to do something. She couldn’t live like this, not daring to eat, trying to pretend to Clym that she knew nothing.

  Although I still feel as if I know nothing. Something’s wrong, that’s all I know. My husband is controlling me and I don’t remember why, or how it started, or who I was before.

  Outside the cubicle, the door to the restaurant opened. “Candy? Are you all right?”

  One of the women—Adriano, Calla? Candy put a hand against the cubicle wall, bracing herself, trying to think. “I’m okay! I just felt a bit faint. Give me a minute.”

  A moment’s silence. The woman wasn’t leaving. I can’t go back out there yet. I have to think what to do.

  Then a clink in the next-door cubicle—the toilet lid going down—and a scraping sound on the wall by Candy’s head.

  Adriano’s face appeared over the top of the wall. “Candy! You’ve been sick! You’re not okay. Just hang on, I’ll tell Clym.”

  Her face disappeared. Candy heard the click of her heels as she hopped down from the toilet, then the outer door open and shut. I’ll tell Clym. Yes, of course she would.

  They’d been married for a year, and still, all their friends were really just Clym’s friends. His colleagues, actually—no, not just his colleagues, but his employees. Was that part of their job, too, to notice if she wasn’t eating or was hiding in the toilet making herself vomit, and to report back to him?

  The door opened again, banging against the wall. The sound vibrated through Candy’s head. Several heels tap-tapped across the floor. Two pairs of them, now.

  “Candy? Clym is so worried. He’s going to take you home. He’s bringing the car round. Candy? Are you all right?”

  Well, hardly. But she was stuck now. She pulled back the bolt and let the door swing open.

  Adriano and Calla peered in at her, tall and gauntly elegant, with smooth olive-skinned cheekbones and sleek dark hair. Calla, though…had her coiled hair always had that scaly sheen, as if it were not hair but the entwined bodies of snakes? And had tiny flames always flickered within the pupils of Adriano’s eyes?

  I have to deal with people who aren’t very nice, Clym had said.

  Calla moved forward. “Come on, Candy. Do you need to take my arm?” From behind her ear, something like the tip of a scaly tail curled and clung.

  “No,” said Candy, then, habits of courtesy too familiar to break, “Thank you. I’m okay.”

  As she went out of the cubicle, Adriano swooped down behind her. “Candy, your shoes. Don’t you want them on?”

  She’d been vomiting in the toilets, her husband was having to take her home early, they were worried she needed help walking, and Adriano thought she wanted to put her wobbly high heels back on?

  “No,” she said, firmly.

  “Oh, but Candy, you know that Clym—”

  Candy stopped walking. “Clym what? Clym doesn’t like me to go barefoot? How would you know that?”

  Adriano looked taken aback. “Oh—well, Clym, everyone knows he—”

  Calla cut in. “You don’t want to upset him, do you, sweetie? Here, let me steady you, and Adriano will just slip them on…”

  They were doing it almost before she realized. Adriano had stooped and put a slim, cool hand on Candy’s ankle, raising her foot so she could slide the sandal on.

  “I said no!” Candy snatched her foot back and Adriano overbalanced, landing inelegantly on the floor.

  Calla looked appalled. “But Candy. You know Clym likes—”

  Candy shook herself away from her. “Clym likes. Well, for once Clym can just do without what he likes.”

  Adriano came to her feet. Her eyes were flickering blue now, the flames larger, licking outside the edges of her pupils. “That’s enough. Calla, hold her.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Candy flung off their arms. “Touch me again and I’ll—” What? Tell Clym? Run away? I don’t even know where I am. Desperate, she fell back on playground tactics. “I’ll bite you.”

  Calla laughed, coming closer, smiling into Candy’s face. “Oh sweetie. You’re not the only one who can bite.” From the back of her head, something gave a dry rustle. Something hissed.

  “No,” said Adriano. “Clym would be furious. Let’s just get her to him. Let him deal with her.”

  Calla laughed again, a dry rustle to match her hair. “You’re so sensible, Adri. Come on, then, little girl. Let’s get you to your…husband.”

  They kept close beside her as she went back out into the restaurant. It seemed unnaturally quiet. The candles burned steadily, reflected and multiplied in the dark windows all around the restaurant.

  By the door, car keys dangling from his hand, Clym waited for her. In the low light of the candles, she couldn’t read his expression.

  The women fell behind her, but she had to walk toward him all the same. Where else would she go?

  But what will I do? What am I going to do? He’s the ruler here—how can I possibly not end up doing exactly what he tells me?

  “Put your shoes on.”

  She’d reached him. She stared up into his face, feet firmly on the floor, and didn’t move. The shoes—they really mattered. Maybe even as much as the food. Why else, for a year, would he insist she wore them, get angry if she forgot? Okay, he could probably force her to put them back on—he had plenty of support, after all—but she was damned if she was going to do it for him.

  “Candy. Put your shoes on.”

  “Why?” she said, standing straight, feeling, oddly, taller than she had in all the high heels he’d ever bought her.

  He stared at her a moment, unblinking, and she felt her face screw up slightly as if she were bracing herself for a blow.

  “Because you look cheap.” The words came with a sharp-edged emphasis, a twist like the lash of a whip. Intended to strike her, intended to make her flinch.

  She didn’t flinch. Not this time. Not anymore. She lifted her chin, keeping her eyes on his. “I do not. I look powerful. You know that, and that’s what you don’t like.”

  “Powerful? With your shoes off, like a streetwalker, like some cheap nymph—”

  That word did strike her, but with a shock like a dash of water, like a leafy branch springing up against her face, cool and green-scented.

  “A what?” she said.

  He faltered. She saw him hear his last word, saw—for the first time—something like fear enter the dark face.

  “A
streetwalker. A whore—”

  “That’s not what you said. You said a nymph.” And as she spoke the word, more words came, unexpectedly pattering into her mind like falling, rain-drenched blossom. “A dryad. A nature goddess. That’s what you don’t want me to look like. Why? What are you scared of? What are you hiding?”

  Fury rose in his face, swamping the fear. “You don’t get to speak to me like that. I’m hiding nothing—”

  “Oh, you so are. There’s no point, Clym. I know you’ve done something to me. It’s why you insist I eat, it’s why you’re trying to make me put my shoes on. Tell me—why don’t I remember our wedding? Why does our maid wear chains?”

  He hadn’t realized she’d noticed that. She saw his face freeze a moment, as shocked as if she’d thrown something at him. The sight sent courage shooting into her veins, bright, intoxicating.

  She went closer to him, walking tall in her shoeless feet, feeling as if she drew strength through the bare soles. “I wasn’t supposed to notice, was I? What else is there, Clym? What other nasty secrets am I not supposed to see? What is your work, that I have to be kept away from it? Who are these friends of yours you get to follow me and spy on me? Who are you?”

  She was staring into his eyes now—up into his eyes. She’d forgotten how tall he was, and the bright wave of courage ebbed a little, leaving her feeling too weak, too small.

  Without stepping away, without taking his eyes off her, he snapped his fingers. Except…no, he couldn’t have, because there was a glass in them. A glass filled with red liquid. She’d seen something like that before and, although she couldn’t remember when or where or what it had done to her, she started to shiver.

  She should have stayed out of reach. She made to take a step away and his free hand shot out and grabbed her arm, fingers closing around her wrist. His eyes bored down into her.

  “I’m your husband. That’s all you need to know.”

  He brought the glass to her lips. The liquid swam in it, a brighter, sharper colour than blood. And, unlike her blood, this wouldn’t cut through the clouds, wouldn’t shred the tapestry and let her step through, back into her own world. It smelled very sweet, like fruit and syrup. The scent woke a half memory. She had seen this before. She’d drunk this before, nearly a year ago, and that was when the world had dimmed and faded and turned into something she didn’t want.

  She pulled away, lips tight shut, head averted, but he wouldn’t let go of her arm. He jerked her back, pinned her between him and the nearest table edge.

  “Drink it, Candy. You’re not happy fighting with me like this. Drink it, and we can go back to being happy.”

  “I don’t want that kind of happy!” she flashed, then tried to clamp her lips shut. Too late. His hand came up, forced the edge of the glass between her teeth, tilted it so the liquid ran into her mouth.

  No. No. This was how it had started. She wasn’t going to let it start again.

  She twisted in his arm, closing her throat against the sweet, sliding liquid, and thrust her hand, fingers clawed, at his face. His head snapped back. His grip slackened and the glass tilted, the dark liquid spilling down her chin and onto the breast of her dress. She spat after it, tried to push away sideways, get out from under his arm, but he was too strong.

  He yanked her back and jammed the glass up into her mouth. Bright pain splintered into her lip, her tongue, the gums at the base of her lower teeth.

  She shrieked. The blood flooding into her mouth drowned the noise, turning it into a gargled sound, and her body lost its fight, went loose against the table.

  “Candy,” he said, and let her go. She felt herself start to slide toward the floor, and reached out to grip the table, fighting the blur in her eyes, fighting to stay upright.

  “I’m sorry. Oh Candy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  His voice became a garbled background noise with no sense to it. She put up a hand to her mouth and pulled a wicked sliver of glass, slick with moisture, out of her lip. The skin around it clung, dragging, and the pain shot along every nerve, razor blades turning her skin to prickling ice. Liquid—sickly, salty liquid—flooded into her mouth and she swallowed instinctively, not thinking any more about what the drink would do to her, blind to everything but the pain and the fear of broken glass—broken glass—stuck in her mouth.

  Another shard of glass in her lip, one in her tongue. She drew them out too, trying not to think how much damage they’d done, trying to do it while she was still brave with shock. More liquid slid over her tongue—warm, salty, metallic—and she swallowed again.

  His voice came through the pain, pulsing, loud then soft, as if something had gone wrong with her ears. “Candy. Candy, let me help you.” And his hands over hers—so cold they felt as if they burned her skin.

  She jerked away, felt the floor shift under her feet, and fell. Her teeth came down hard onto her lower lip and fresh blood spurted from the open cuts. She cried out, choked on it—

  “Spit it out! Don’t swallow. Candy—”

  She heard the panic in his voice—don’t swallow—and a last bit of stubbornness rose within her like steel through her spine. She swallowed.

  The pain cleared, not much, but enough so her eyes unblurred. She put her hand to her mouth and felt no more splinters of glass. She looked up.

  She was facing the wall of windows that faced out onto the river, the meadows beyond it. All over them shone the reflections of the candle flames, a multitude of little amber petals suspended in darkness.

  She focused on the flames, trying to pull herself together, trying to brace herself to fight, and saw the color bleach out of them, saw them go cold and bright, tiny points like specks of twinkling glass. The window lost its reflected gleam, darkened, melted away into the…

  …into the sky. It was no longer the familiar landscape of river and meadow, but sky: high, clear sky, stretching away farther and farther, endlessly into the distance. And the lights were no longer candles, but stars.

  The windows had gone. She was looking out of the mouth of a cave. Below her, the hillside fell away. In the starlight she could see the short, scrubby mountain grass. Wind swept in at her, scoured clean with the scent of snow.

  “Stop! Stop—Candy, don’t!”

  But he was too late. She was already scrambling to her feet, and as he grabbed at her she flung herself out of the cave, out across the rock ledge at its entrance, onto the grass. It was sparse, now, in wintertime, and her hands brushed through the blades, straight onto the frozen-hard earth beneath.

  The shock hit her like lightning, driving up her hands, her arms, all the way through her body. And memory came back, starkly lit—one flash after another.

  She’d wandered here, farther and farther up the mountain, gathering narcissi, singing, and the chariot had come, its wheels shaking the mountainside. The driver had glanced at her as it thundered past, and then dragged on the reins, bringing his horses to a slithering, screaming halt.

  “Candy…”

  Clym came out of the cave. Behind him the restaurant, the candles, the people—all had slid away, melted into the darkness. She looked up at him and recognized the face of the chariot driver. Memory flashed again—the feel of his hand, icy on her bare arm. The sound of his cold voice.

  She sprang to her feet. Even that short contact with the earth had done its work. She could feel her cuts healing, feel the power that was her inheritance pouring up through her, like tree sap wakening in the springtime.

  “I said no,” she said. “I said no and you took me anyway.”

  “I couldn’t help it. Candy, I fell in love with you, and you wouldn’t come—”

  Another lightning flash. She had struggled, screaming, the narcissi falling in a scatter all around her. He’d clamped one cold hand across her mouth and nose, crushing the screams back down her throat, cutting off her breath. Bundled her into the chariot and careened down, into the darkness—darkness blacker than she, an earth goddess, could have ever known, blacke
r than she could bear.

  “That wasn’t love,” she said.

  “It was. It is. Candy—”

  “You poisoned me! You gave me that juice—from fruit grown next to Lethe’s waters—you wiped out my mind! You—” She stopped as another thought came. “You changed my name. You called me Candy. What the hell sort of name is that?”

  “I couldn’t let you keep a tie to who you really were. I couldn’t lose you—”

  “That was the shoes, too, wasn’t it? Even in your damned fake kingdom, you couldn’t risk me touching the earth with bare feet, couldn’t risk it recognizing me and calling me home. Well, you lost. It reached me anyway. Twice I lost my shoes, did you know? The wall broke down and the earth took them, held onto them, let me know something was wrong.”

  He didn’t speak, just stood still, looking at her.

  “Does my mother know? Does she know where I am?”

  He said nothing, and she read the answer in his eyes.

  “She doesn’t, does she? She doesn’t know. She must think I’m—” She looked around, seeing as if for the first time the dry, wintry grass, the bare-branched trees, stark in the cold light of the stars. “And this—I’ve been gone for a year. This should be springtime. Is that what this is? Does she think I’m dead?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “She’ll know by now.”

  “But a year! A year of mourning!” She spun away from him, every moment feeling stronger; the earth’s strength rising through her.

  His voice came from behind her, heavy as earth on a dead man’s eyes, cold as the coins they paid to cross the Styx. “Better than eternity.”

  She knew perfectly well he meant himself, but she didn’t care. All those others—his sycophantic colleagues, the shop girls and waitresses, poor Mari with the chain on her ankle—Lord of Death, it was his right to keep them. He’d never had a right to her. She was going home.

  She began to walk down the mountain. In the distance she could see the waterfall in the sacred grove, from here nothing but a shining starlit thread, apparently motionless against the cliff face. Farther still, down in the meadow, her mother was waiting for her. Mourning, but holding onto enough hope that summer had stayed there, only there, in the meadow where their house stood.