Ever Cursed

by Corey Ann Haydu

  The day the spell was cast was so close to my own Thirteenth Birthday that preparations had been well underway. Mom and I had chosen the ocean as a theme. I’ve never seen one, but I was fascinated by the idea of an expanse of water so large you couldn’t see the other side. My Thirteenth Birthday was going to have seafood entrées and waves of water beneath glass floors and the smell of salt in the air. The witches had agreed to help make it so. Olive made me an ocean dress in blues and greens, waves of fabric that swished and swayed with such force I could have imagined I was caught in a tide’s pull.

  But when it was time for my Thirteenth Birthday, I spent it in a corner, and I called Olive ridiculous for making the gown. I refused to eat a last meal. If I think too hard now, I can still feel the pain of it. How good it felt to topple a tray of bonbons. How I wanted to punch my hand through a window or kick a prince.

  It’s there even now, deep down. A simmering rage I’m barely holding back.

  Nora knows it too. We are both thinking about last year’s party for Grace. And two years before that when Alice turned thirteen. A royal Thirteenth Birthday used to be a joyous moment, introducing a princess to her future. She’d meet princes and princesses from other kingdoms. She would be given a silver-and-emerald crown. She would be given a title. Princess Mara the Clever. Princess Emily the Listening. Princess Betsy the Strong.

  Now we are given our spell and nothing else. Princess Jane Who Can’t Eat. Princess Nora Who Can’t Love. Princess Alice Who Can’t Sleep. Princess Grace Who Can’t Remember. Princess Eden Who Can’t Hope.

  “Who cares about Birthdays and dresses?” Nora asks. “Who cares about any of this?”

  I’d be better off ignoring Nora, but I can’t. She’s so present. Her body looks the way mine used to—thick around the hips, rounded at the breasts, at the belly. Sturdy and sweet.

  I squeeze my hands into fists and wonder what it would be like to shove her, hard, against a tree.

  What would a queen do? my mind interrupts. Be a queen. I pull my shoulders back and lift my chin and take on the pose of a ruler.

  Nora raises her eyebrows at the way the lace of my dress drapes, clings, tries to thicken me up, fails. Because the spell is a Slow one, I can’t waste away entirely, I can’t die of starvation, but I can’t imagine getting any skinnier than I am right now. I suppose that makes sense. One way or another, we are near the end.

  I push the thought away. You will be queen. I will not die from this spell.

  “Mom loved the food at the Thirteenth Birthdays,” Nora says. I can’t tell if it’s meant to be cruel or matter-of-fact. I don’t think Nora knows either.

  “The only taste I remember is apple,” I say.

  “Apple, huh?” Nora says. She stands up, and her dress falls down around her, a mint-green cloud.

  “It’s sweet,” I say, licking my lips like some phantom taste might still be there. “Tangy. Watery. A pinch of a taste. The kind of thing you could eat for hours and never feel full from. Is that right?”

  “That’s about right,” Nora says with a sort of smile. “The Prince of Soar loves apples. Dad told me. The chef will be making them baked with cinnamon for him.”

  “He’s the redheaded one?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “No, that’s the Prince of Nethering. The Prince of Soar is the tall one. Glasses. Dimples. Soft voice.”

  I nod. It’s hard to keep track of these things. When I was allowed to eat, names and faces and locations felt like distinct, graspable ideas. Now it’s all hazy, and my anger keeps rising and rising, obscuring things even more.

  Be a queen, I tell myself again. I try to stay still and silent. It’s harder than it sounds.

  I remember reciting the Royal Rules with my mother before bed every night. I loved the rules. If I could follow them, I would be queen, and all would be well. At rest. The way it was meant to be. I can almost hear my mother’s small voice singing its way through the long list of things I was supposed to be.

  Then the moment’s over, and she’s just a woman in glass again, just a trapped queen, just someone I used to know.

  Once upon a time.

  2. REAGAN

  I run all the way there.

  Magic brings me across the ocean, from my banishment in AndNot to my home of Ever. But my feet have to do the rest, taking me from the edge of Ever to the moat. I want to see my bedroom with its mauve walls and thick blankets. I want to see my cousin Willa and my mother and grandmother and my best friend, Abbott. But first I have to see the king in his castle.

  Sometimes at night, these past years, I would think about those people, my home, the long afternoons spent learning spells that we had to promise never to use, the work of protecting a kingdom that had lost a princess. Sometimes I would think about Willa’s smile and Mom’s layers of skirts and the view of the castle from our Home on the Hill.

  But mostly I would think about him. The king. His suffering.

  I would sit on the edge of the shore, letting ocean water lick my toes, and I’d imagine a hunch in his shoulders, the way they must shake when he cries. I’d convince myself that he was awake too, staring out at his kingdom, wishing he could undo all his mistakes, knowing that he couldn’t. I want to see the dark circles under his eyes and his slow shuffle as he moves from one room to the next, regretting everything he’s ever done.

  I wonder if he’ll find his way onto his knees, to beg me to help his daughters break the spell.

  Abbott will like to see that. I will too.

  The last mile of my run is the hardest. The kingdom of AndNot, where I was banished to five years ago, is supple. Warm and muggy with oversize flowers growing out of everything. They grew inside the small cottage my mother had brought me to. There were no floors in the spare space, just dirt, with orange and blue flowers sprouting like a blooming carpet beneath my feet.

  It’s not like that here. It’s hard to run in Ever. The air is dry and cool, there’s a breeze that stings my arms, and my heart is racing with excitement. My skirts tangle up in my legs, the one heavy layer from the Spell of Without slowing me down the most. When I was a child, I said I’d never cast such a heavy spell. I didn’t want to have to carry it with me. But it was worth it. It will all be worth it.

  Five years is a little like forever, but I still know the paths that take me from the place I began to the place I want to be. A patch of shore that is shaded and a little hidden, tucked around a corner, not where all of Ever gathers daily to watch their royals across the water.

  By the time I make it there, to the edge of the moat, where I have a perfect view of the king’s tower, I’m breathless from the run and from the thrill and from the anticipation of finally seeing what I’ve been dreaming of: a broken king.

  The castle looks the same. The queen in her box does too.

  Yes, five years is a little like forever, and it’s a long, long time to be alone with your thoughts. But I worked hard not to think of the queen. Seeing her here, now, stops me and maybe even stops my heart for one half beat before it resumes thumping again.

  Another long look and I see two of the princesses next to their mother and an attendant watching them from a different part of the yard. The princesses are in gowns. I try to see their faces, but they are turned away from me, looking only at the queen.

  It doesn’t take much waiting for him to appear. He has always loved watching his kingdom, standing in the fresh air and reminding them he is there. His white hands grip the balcony wall, and I start to smile. His head is lowered. There’s the hunch. I think I maybe even see a tremble.

  I surge with pride. I did it. I fixed the kingdom of Ever. I punished the king. I will be carrying the weight of my spell forever, a heavy burlap skirt, but it will feel light as air now.

  Except.

  His shoulders unhunch. His hands ungrip. What I thought was a tremble was a laugh.

  The king is smiling. He is waving.

  And then he is speaking.

  “Good people of Ever!
Thank you for gathering to wish our Princess Eden a happy Thirteenth Birthday. Our youngest child, we are so proud to celebrate her today.”

  There is a cheer from the subjects of Ever. They aren’t far from the small part of the moat I’ve claimed as my own. They are in their best clothing, which isn’t very nice at all. And they smile at the king.

  My heart twists, and I tell it to stop, that it’s fine, that everything’s fine.

  “We hope you will celebrate with us, across the moat, and as a special treat I’ve sent champagne for you to toast with. We are in this together. One kingdom. One Ever.”

  An attendant appears next to the king with a flute of champagne. I watch her body for signs of fear, and it’s unmistakable. She is the one with the hunch, the tremble, the worry. She bows her head. She doesn’t look up.

  I wrap my arms around myself, holding myself together as hard as I can.

  A team of horsemen travel the length of the moat, handing out bottles of champagne to whoever reaches up to take one. The sounds of corks popping and fizz pouring fill the air.

  The king raises his glass. “A toast!” he says. His smile widens.

  “No,” I say to myself. It’s a whisper. I have been whispering words to myself for five years. I have been quiet in my waiting. Patient. There’s no magic in AndNot, no other people around, no visitors. I have only had one companion: my hatred for the king.

  “To the Spellbound princesses of Ever!” the king says.

  “To the Spellbound!” the crowd bellows back.

  “No,” my voice says, louder than a whisper, so loud that people yards away turn and look at me.

  I run.

  * * *

  I studied the royal family for five long years, preparing for the perfect way to have them break the spell. I know what fruits Alice is allergic to and how many freckles Eden has. I know their father is from Farr. And I know, like everyone knows, the story of the taken princess eighty years ago. I tell the story in my head now, to distract myself from the other thoughts trying to push their way in. The princess was stolen, the kingdoms fought over who took her, the witches tried to stop the fighting, and ten of us vanished in the process. No one ever learned who took the princess, but our magic eventually ushered in peace, and we were given the Home on the Hill as thanks for our work. We promised to keep the kingdom at rest; we gave them Enchanted Candles to help the princess find her way home; they promised to leave us to ourselves up on the Hill, to protect us from other kingdoms; and mostly everyone kept their promises.

  Until five years ago, when I learned what the king had done.

  They had told us the other kingdoms were who we needed to fear.

  They hadn’t told us to fear our own kingdom, our own king.

  He has to pay, I think for the thousandth or millionth time. I look back again, hoping to see some hidden pain on the king’s face. There’s only a grin. No, I think. This is all wrong.

  And: I was all wrong.

  Before I cast the Spell of Without, I could run easily, light silks and sheers flapping against my legs. Now the burlap skirt leaves me breathless.

  My grandmother is even less able to move. She is so weighed down by her impressive collection of skirts, each layer the result of a spell cast. Velvet, wool, and dozens of layers of cotton and linen encircle her waist and pin her to her chair in the living room.

  A kind of throne, if witches were to have thrones.

  Sometimes it looks more like a prison.

  My skirt today reminds me of her, reminds me of what I’m afraid of becoming. The weight of a spell is only worth it if the spell works. I didn’t even notice the heaviness of the burlap until right now, this very instant, seeing my spell fail.

  When I finally reach the door of my home, I stop outside it. They should be expecting me, but there’s no fanfare, no cousins peering out the window looking for me. Even my own mother isn’t at the door, doesn’t feel me nearing her, isn’t eagerly sitting on the lawn, open armed and grinning at being reunited with me after all these years.

  Eighty years of the people of Ever waiting by enchanted candlelight for a princess who will never return, and no one has been waiting for me.

  It hits me hard, the pain of it, the loneliness. But there’s nothing else to do, so I open the door and let myself in.

  “Hello?” I call to the empty foyer, the familiar wooden floors and beams and heavy curtains and strange mix of magical smells. “I’m here.”

  There’s a scurry of footsteps that I hope are my mother’s, but I quickly see they belong to my cousin Willa, who thrusts herself onto me. She wraps her long brown arms around my white shoulders. Non-witches have been surprised that we are cousins—maybe because of our skin or maybe because Willa’s energy is so light and bright and mine is heavy and twisty and wrong. Her happiness at seeing me after all this time is real and easy, and it feels so good I want to fall into it.

  My mother is behind her, a little less exuberant but smiling warmly and letting her eyes fill with tears. “My girl,” she says, pulling me away from Willa and into her arms. I hug her gently. It’s the only way to touch her.

  “My mom,” I reply, and it makes her laugh a little, or at least smile bigger. She takes me in, and there’s no hiding anything from her.

  “You saw him,” she says.

  I nod.

  “It hasn’t been good,” she says.

  “You warned me it wouldn’t be,” I say. “I was so sure—” I look for the end to the sentence, but that confidence, that assurance that I had ruined the king, made my point, and was returning to victory, feels so childish here and now.

  “You have a chance to make it better,” Mom says.

  “I want to make you better,” I say. We are whispering. I wish I could have come back weeks earlier, spent time on the roof with my mother figuring out what to do, how to feel, who to be, before telling the princesses how to break the spell.

  But all we have is this moment, right here.

  “Well, what you did—that was never going to fix me, Reagan. I’m not the only broken bit of this whole mess,” Mom says. Her hands flicker in and out of visibility. I want to hold on to them, make them stay right here. “Ever is broken. Ever has to heal, for me to heal. That’s what I wanted you to—that’s what I tried to explain—there’s so much more than one witch and one king.”

  I want to tell her that may well be, but I only care about her and him and the terrible things that happened in his castle.

  But before I can, there’s a clatter in the kitchen, and more aunts and cousins wander to the front door to say hello to me. If everything were different, I’d be hugging and gossiping and taking in how tall this one has grown, how many skirts that one is now wearing.

  Instead I can only see my mother and the way she still winces at loud noises and unexpected movements.

  The day I cast the spell, she and I were startled by Willa dropping a heavy cast-iron pot from the counter onto the floor. My hands squeezed at the fleshy part above my mother’s elbow. I always reach for her when I’m scared.

  But the place I touched was the wrong place to touch. The sound of the pot, too, was the wrong kind of sound. And my mother lost her breath. She curled into a ball. I ran for someone, anyone, to help us.

  My grandmother couldn’t move from her chair, of course, so it was my aunt Idle who heard my screams. She whispered Breathe breathe breathe into my mother’s ear and told me to list everything I saw in the room. I couldn’t imagine why, but Aunt Idle sounded confident, as if she’d done this before, so I followed her instructions.

  “There’s a blue carpet,” I said. “There’s a wooden chair. There are five cast-iron pots. One of them is on the floor; the others are lined up for Willa and me to practice our spells. Willa is hiding behind a thick gray curtain. The Enchanted Candle is on the long wooden table, just like always. It’s gold. All is well in the kingdom of Ever.”

  “Don’t say ‘king,’ ” Aunt Idle whisper-yelled. But it was too late. M
y mother, who had been breathing in time with my list, snapped back into panic. She bellowed. She brought her head to the floor. I listed more things in the room: Grandmother’s book of spells, the vegetables hanging from the ceiling like an upside-down garden, my discarded shoes, Willa’s cape. But it didn’t help. Aunt Idle asked me to leave, and I did, huddling myself with my little cousin right outside the kitchen door.

  The house shook with magic.

  I don’t know what spell Aunt Idle cast to bring my mother back to herself, but whatever it was draped them both in the thickest, itchiest wool skirts, now permanently wrapped around their waists. Some spells aren’t meant to be cast. Those spells are the heaviest, the most cumbersome. The price for casting them is eternal.

  Witches carry their spells forever. And Aunt Idle hadn’t wanted the burden of this one.

  When Willa and I reentered the kitchen, Aunt Idle told us why my mother had crumbled like that. My grab of her elbow, perfectly timed with Willa’s dropping of the pot. The touch, the crash, it brought her back to the worst moment in her life.

  And upon hearing the story of the worst moment of her life, without thinking a single thought, my fury drove me out of the Home on the Hill and to the castle moat, where I cast the biggest spell I could muster.

  Mom is remembering it now too. Her hand grips a handful of my burlap skirt. The heaviest kind of spell.

  We both take a deep breath, and the smell of roasting pig fills the air. The witches roast a pig whenever a witch is invited to the castle. They are expecting me to be invited tonight, but no one has handed me a thick silver invitation, engraved with my name. I suppose the roasting pig is like the lit candles out in Ever. A way to mark the waiting. A way to hang on to hope.

  “You’re back just in time,” Mom says. Her voice is a sigh. I want her to sound different than she does.

  “She certainly is,” my aunt Idle says, coming in from outside, carrying the smell of the pig, the fire, the salt, the woods with her. She doesn’t smile. “You look older,” she says.