Ever Cursed

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “Whose were they?” I ask. I want him to recount sitting in a garden with some poor people of Ever, sharing pears and stories and worries and hopes. I want an image of the Good King, not one who takes what he wants simply because it is dangling in front of him.

  Dad shrugs.

  The shrug is wrong, but it’s also so small I can ignore it, it doesn’t have to mean anything; I decide it is just a shrug, just forgetting the rest of the story, not a sign of something else, not the slow unwinding of my father.

  “Mom loved pears,” Alice says. Alice does not usually speak at dinner. She is too worn out to do anything but take slow bites and sigh after the effort of every swallow. She isn’t really eating at all, in fact. She is frowning and playing with her napkin. She is glancing at the attendants and at the rest of us. She has also seen the shrug.

  I look at Grace and Eden and Nora. They have seen the shrug too. Maybe they are chronicling every time he has shrugged. Maybe we all are.

  “Good memory, Alice,” Dad says, and even this sounds a little mean, given how bad Grace’s memory is. It’s a tiny carelessness that wouldn’t have registered yesterday but today feels heavy and awkward in the room.

  Mom isn’t in the memory of his day in Ever eating pears, of course. She’s never set foot in Ever. Only kings can walk through and steal sun-soaked pears from the trees. My stomach asks for a pear right now, and I close my eyes to remind my body of its reality. It happens from time to time. My body rebels, forgetting it’s cursed, and I have to tell it to quiet down.

  “There weren’t any pears today,” Nora says, and I love her for it.

  “Well, no,” Dad says. “Those witches took them away.”

  “Why?” Grace asks.

  “The Spell of Famine,” Dad says.

  “But why?” Grace asks.

  “Bitter witches, making life hard for all of us. Taking advantage of our kindness. Being vengeful.” He shrugs. It’s not a real answer. It’s a list of things he says the witches are, but it doesn’t say why they might be that way, what happened that led to the spell.

  I wonder if my sisters hear the negative space in his sentences. Nora purses her lips in a manner that tells me she does.

  “Have you ever—” I start, wanting to ask about Reagan’s mother, so that my brain can put it aside and think of something, anything else. Maybe I want to hear him laugh it off or look confused at the idea of it, or tell me he would never do something like that. Mostly, I need him to say something that promises it isn’t true.

  But I can’t ask the question. My lips won’t let me. Neither will Eden, whose hand grabs my knee under the table and squeezes me into silence.

  Dad serves himself another heap of chicken. His calmness makes me less calm. Time is passing, the spell is turning Truer, my fingers and shoulder blades and the moat are shimmering, and he’s eating chicken and remembering the past like he has all the time in the world.

  I tell myself that it’s for us. He doesn’t want us to get frightened. His calmness is meant to give us strength. For five years he has tried to be both father and mother, both king and queen. He knows how to fight and how to recede. He knows how to rile us up and calm us down. He knows how to braid hair, how to make the perfect cup of tea, how to sit on the lawn and talk, how to leave us alone when we need our space.

  Still. I wish I saw a wavering of strength from him now. A little bit of worry. A wondering what will happen, if we can’t break the spell.

  Or an offer to help us.

  “We have a lot to decide,” he says, his voice still cheery. He tears into the chicken, the flesh surrendering to his large fingers, the juices going everywhere. A spot lands on my hand and I try to lick it off, but it vanishes before my tongue can touch it. I let my lips stay against my fingers and suck suck suck at nothing.

  I know from the way they all look at me that I’m getting worse, I’m getting more desperate.

  “Jane,” Dad says. “That’s enough. You’re still a princess. A lady. You’re still—you’re very—desired. All of you.”

  I don’t like the way he says “desired.” It frightens me.

  I look away from him in the hope that will stop my mind from doing this terrible new math, asking if a shrug and a glance and a tone of voice and a way of eating chicken can add up to something terrible.

  My gaze finds its way to Nora’s mouth. Usually the last place I want to look, a mouth eating, but right now it’s better than looking at my father. Nora’s mouth makes fast, definitive movements. It is Nora who can be brave and reckless and curious. It is Nora who can be calm when everything is in chaos. I’m jealous for a moment that she could be a good queen too. Because she’s eaten. Because she’s rested and fine. Because being loveless keeps her head clear.

  The envy is a new surge, and it’s ugly. I try to hold it back, but it’s hard to stop. Time is vanishing. Nora is going to be queen. I am going to die in three days. My father—

  Nothing is the way it was supposed to be.

  “I think we need to talk about it,” Dad says. “About all the possibilities.”

  “There’s only one possibility,” I say.

  “Breaking the spell,” Dad says. “I understand that’s what you want.”

  “Need.” My voice breaks on the word. I break on it. My mind keeps wandering into more and more places I don’t want it to go. What it would feel like to die. How long it would take after the spell turns True. If dying from starvation hurts. I am used to the empty stomach and the tired limbs. Would there be some other, new feeling? An unbearable one?

  “The spell isn’t broken yet. And I have been asked for each of your hands in marriage. Every single one of you. More than once. Princes. Princesses. Dukes. Soar. Nethering. Farr. Wherever you’d like to go.” Dad doesn’t look at me. He’d see my terror if he did. It’s probably why he’s staring out the window instead of at any of us.

  “Dad?” I say as gently as I can. “I don’t think we’re worried about that right now. Marrying. Princes. Duchesses. Whatever.”

  “People want to marry us?” Grace asks. Her voice is light and airy with hope and forgetting. I wish she could remember this afternoon. The things they said. The places they touched.

  The thing Reagan said.

  And then, just as quickly, I’m flushed with relief that she doesn’t, that she never will.

  “I’ll explain later,” I say. She nods as if she understands, but I can see the dreamy look on her face. She’s imagining a royal wedding, the Princess of Thorner dressed in white, her legs long, her lips soft.

  “You can say no to anyone you want to say no to,” Dad goes on. Even these words are strange after what Reagan has said. I watch Nora fidget in her chair. Alice shivers with something. “But we still have to talk about who we are now. It’s different. Things are— Eden’s Thirteenth Birthday proved that things are now—we are now—we’re powerful. After all these years, we finally matter to them. We are finally more than the place that lost a princess. And the kingdoms are ready to come together. Eighty years is a long time to wait and worry and wonder. A long time to try to rebuild trust and unity. And we are entering a new era now.”

  My father’s face does something I’ve never seen it do before. There’s a blush and a glow. He looks younger all of a sudden. But also like he’s not exactly ours anymore. I want to grab him by the shoulders and force him to look outside, to look at Mom. I want to make him face her frozen features, her vacant eyes, the way the glass obscures her aliveness.

  A terror snakes its way through my body. Maybe he doesn’t care. I shake my head, trying to get the thought out of there. But it sticks. It stays. I can’t shake it. He is talking about other kingdoms and power and respect and all these lofty ideas that are impossible to care about when you are watching your body wilt, your sisters suffer, your mother exist entirely outside of life.

  It should be impossible for him, too, to think about our place in the kingdoms, the legacy we might leave behind, the power we could amass.<
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  But it isn’t impossible for him. Not at all. Above us are paintings of royals who came before us. Some are our relatives; some are from other times in Ever’s history, when different families were in charge. Families with white skin and brown, families with two kings or two queens, families with big smiles and forced smiles and no smiles at all. The history of Ever is complicated and long and eclectic, but Dad wants it to end with us, for our family to rule forever.

  It sounded so important, years ago. Days ago, even. It makes less sense today. And looking at all the portraits of rulers, I’m wondering why our family has been in charge for so many years, almost one hundred already. It’s the kind of question I might have asked Mom five years ago or Dad five days ago.

  But today I can’t. I wouldn’t trust the answer.

  No one is eating anymore. Their plates are still full, but none of us can think about food.

  “What would Mom think of this new era you’re ushering in?” I ask, hoping that’s enough to remind him of everything he’s talking about, everything he’s willing to sacrifice for his kingdom. He shakes his head, like I’ve misunderstood some vital part of what he’s saying.

  “Your mother loves Ever as much as I do. More.”

  “How can we know?” I say. “We can’t exactly ask her. And you’re saying—she’d be in there forever. She’d be a statue. Gone.”

  “I miss her as much as you all do. So do her subjects. What the witch did—it’s terrible. But other kingdoms—we have spent years lighting candles the witches say are enchanted and hoping for things to be okay. And now, finally, because of you, because of your beautiful mother, things have changed.” I am looking at his face, trying to see my father. I see a king who is worried about his kingdom. I do not see my father who lets me sit in the throne when I need to feel something other than hungry, when he can tell that I am losing my will to be queen. I do not see the father who cried when my mother froze, who sat next to her in the evenings right after the spell was cast, to tell her about our days.

  It’s been a while since I’ve seen him huddled next to the glass. It’s been a long while. He hasn’t answered my questions, hasn’t even acknowledged that what he’s suggesting destroys everyone he’s supposed to love. He uses words that sound big and profound but have no meaning. He sounds like the narrator of a fairy tale about our lives, like we are already a story they will tell later, a legend about enchanted princesses who died, in pain, one by one, and their mother who still lives on the castle’s lawn, a reminder of what Ever came from, like the portraits on the walls of other ruling families, other ways of being. Dad is talking about us like we are people they will light candles for, people they will paint pictures of to hang in the dining room, like we are already gone.

  “Our lives have changed,” he says with a final nod that means he thinks we’re done discussing this.

  “They’ve been ruined,” I say. “You mean to say our lives changed when the witch ruined everything.”

  “We never had a Birthday like that before,” Dad says. “We’ve never— I find you girls absolutely beautiful. Breathtaking. Since the moment you were born. Each of you.”

  He pauses. There’s a “but.” There shouldn’t be one, but there is. “The world doesn’t always see our children the way we do,” he goes on. He is careful with his words, like this conversation is a recipe, and too much salt or cilantro or lemon peel could derail the whole thing. He is often careful, I think for the first time ever. I’ve never noticed the way he watches his words as they come out, how deliberate he is with his movements. “And now the world sees you the way I see you. As special. As the most deserving and desirable and important princesses the kingdoms have ever seen. That’s a direct quote from the papers in Nethering, if you can believe it.”

  “I can believe it,” Nora says. Her voice growls. She is looking for him too. Our father, the Good and Gentle King. I’d settle for even a glimpse right now. Instead, all I can see is Reagan, waist-deep in water, looking anything but deliberate or careful or calculating.

  “And what did the papers in Nethering say back when a princess of Ever was kidnapped?” I ask. “Was she beautiful too? So beautiful they couldn’t help taking her?”

  “Jane. You’re tired. I can see that. But you need to calm yourself. You’re upsetting the attendants.” I look to the walls where they are leaning their bodies. They are crowded together as always, their shoulders touching. He’s not wrong. They do look nervous. But maybe they always look nervous. Have I ever noticed? Have I ever thought to look at them for longer than the length of time it takes to give an order?

  “Can’t you see what this all means for our kingdom?” Dad asks. He finally, finally looks at me. “Jane. You love Ever. You want to be its queen. You must see what I see. Look what you’ve inspired. Look how adored you’ve become. That must feel good. Before you weren’t—well, and now you’re—there are other princesses, in other kingdoms, that are beautiful. But beautiful isn’t as good as enchanted. We see that now.”

  There are a dozen things in what my father said that cut me. But the awful, vain part of me only hears that he doesn’t think we’re beautiful. I will die if we don’t break our spell, my mother is trapped in glass, and I still fight the desperate feeling of wanting to be pretty. Wanting him to think I’m pretty. He said it like it’s something we knew already, and I don’t think I did. Not really. I knew I wasn’t as beautiful as the princess from Thorner or the twins from Farr. But I thought my father loved my eyes and that I had my mother’s cheekbones and that maybe I was a special kind of lovely that was even bigger and brighter than the royalty from Thorner and Farr.

  Dad’s words tell me that isn’t true, though. What’s beautiful about me is what I lack. It’s a spell someone else placed on me. It’s the thing I hate most about myself.

  And here I am, so thin my bones show, and all I want is for my father to think I’m beautiful.

  And finally, three days from the maybe end of everything, he does.

  And they did too. The men in the woods. The women laughing alongside them. The people who wondered what my body felt like, who laughed at my fear.

  “What are you saying?” Nora asks, except I think she knows. I think we all know. Even un-remembering Grace hears something wrong in the words our father is laying out.

  “Sometimes it’s our job, as royalty, to embrace the hardships placed upon our kingdom. To set an example. To confront something difficult with dignity. That’s the lesson we learned from the War We Won. We fought back, and all it did was cause pain. We attacked other kingdoms, and they fought back. And after all of that, our princess never returned. We never found out what happened to her. Probably just some disgruntled person acting out. We were only safe when we let go, invited the witches to live in our kingdom, stopped worrying about our personal needs, and put Ever first.”

  “But the Famine—” I say. “And the Spell of Without. And the kidnapped princess who might still be in pain—” I keep cutting myself off, because the wrongness in his words is so wide. We haven’t been safe. We aren’t safe right now.

  Except for him. He’s safe, I suppose. He has always been safe. And fed. And happy. And beloved.

  Dad puts a hand over his heart and gazes at the candle on the table. It does not so much as flicker. “We’ll never stop waiting for that princess. For the spells to be broken,” he goes on, “but Ever deserves a new story.”

  “What do we have to do?” Grace asks, her eyes, impossibly, squinting more.

  “He wants us to accept our lives with humility and elegance.” Nora says the words like they are jokes. “He wants us to be okay where we are. To surrender to the spell. To stop asking questions, like they stopped asking questions about the kidnapped princess. And, probably, to marry whatever fancy royal person comes along.”

  We wait for Dad to contradict her, to correct her. He pauses and plays with his hands, making his fingers into a steeple, then making his fists into balls, then settling on making a tri
angle with his fingers and thumbs, an empty triangle that floats in front of him.

  “You can marry who you like,” he says at last, careful again. A teaspoon of coriander. A quarter cup of dill. A half tablespoon of compromise. “That’s always been the case. It always will be. But your role in the kingdoms—it’s different now. We have a road to safety. You are that road. Because of what you sacrificed.”

  “What was stolen from us,” I correct.

  “There is nothing more queenly than doing what is best for the kingdom,” Dad says, directly to me. He keeps skirting around the issue of my death, as if it’s an uncomfortable detail and not the main event.

  “I’m not getting married,” Nora says.

  “We’re breaking the spell,” I say, louder and stronger than even Nora.

  Dad takes three long strides across the room, to the window. I imagine our subjects are out there, watching our mother in her box, taking in the expanse of her without anyone to tell them to avert their eyes, without any threat of rudely lingering too long on a breast or a thigh.

  “Ever is complicated,” Dad goes on. “But it’s still—people love you girls. They love everything you are.”

  “They love what we aren’t,” I say. My stomach rumbles. It’s an earthquake of desire in there, and I know that’s what they love—the emptiness. The desperation of wanting something you can’t have that everyone else needs. The allure of all the things we can’t do, all the things our bodies refuse, all the ways that we’ve been made weaker and smaller and worse.

  It just hadn’t occurred to me that my dad liked that about us too.

  “Why did the witch cast the spell, Dad?” I ask. I say the words clearly, crisply, so that there’s no mistaking them. “Why would a witch cast this spell on us? There must be a reason.”

  “Witches are very unpredictable—” he starts.

  “No,” Eden says.

  “Excuse me?” Dad turns his whole body toward Eden. As if she were the witch.