* * *
The princess made a choking sound. She clawed at her arms and bit her tongue until it bled and then she fell to her knees before the thing that had been her lover. When she stood up again, her face was smooth, her jaw was firm, and her eyes were dry of tears.
Yes, she said. I’ve learned my lesson. Call the suitors and assemble them. I am ready to choose.
The suitors gathered together in the courtyard, and the princess walked among them and apologized for having made them wait so long. Then, without hesitation or the slightest sign of doubt, she picked a husband: a young duke who was handsome and chivalrous and intelligent and kind.
One week later, the princess and the duke married. The queen was pleased. The king was satisfied. The royal advisor kept his own counsel, but he couldn’t help looking a little bit smug. The mood of discontent that had been hovering over the kingdom lifted, and everyone agreed that things had worked out for the best.
* * *
The year after the princess was married, both her parents died, which meant she was no longer a princess, but a queen. Her husband, now king, treated his wife with every courtesy and grace. The two of them got along well, and the king ruled the kingdom successfully for many years.
However, nearly a decade into the marriage, after the queen had given birth to two of his children, the king discovered that he had fallen in love with his wife. This complicated their relationship, as it meant that he could no longer ignore the fact that she was very, very sad.
The king knew that there had been some mystery surrounding the way he had been chosen; he was not a fool, and he was well aware that he had not made any particular impression on the princess during their courtship. When he thought about it, which he mostly tried not to do, he guessed something not very far from the truth: that she had been in love with someone unsuitable, and when that man had been forbidden to her, she had chosen him instead. The king didn’t terribly mind being a second choice, but he hated seeing his wife pining away so miserably, and he couldn’t help wondering if their marriage was the cause of it all.
So, one night, the king asked the queen tentatively what was wrong, and if there was anything he could do to make it better. At first, the queen tried to deny that she was unhappy, but after so many years together, a certain degree of trust had grown between them, and at last, she told the king the whole strange story.
When she was finished, the king said: That is a very odd tale. And the oddest thing of all is this: I have lived with you for a long time, and I would say I know you very well, and I do not think you are selfish or arrogant or spoiled.
But I am, the queen said. I know I am.
How do you know?
Because, the queen whispered. I fell in love with that thing. I loved it as I have never loved anyone else: not you, not my parents, not even my own children. The only thing I have ever loved in this world is a grotesque contraption made of a cracked mirror, a dented bucket, and an old thigh bone. The night I spent with it in my bed was the only night I have ever been happy. And even knowing what it is, I ache for it, I yearn for it, I love it still. What can this mean but that I am spoiled, and selfish, and arrogant, and that I am capable of loving nothing but a distorted reflection of my own twisted heart?
With that, the queen burst into tears, and the king cradled her against his chest. I’m sorry, he said, because he could think of nothing else. What can I do?
There is nothing to be done, the queen said. I am your wife. I am the mother of my children. I am the queen of this kingdom. I am trying to be better than I am. All I ask is that you try and forgive me.
Of course I forgive you, the king said. There is nothing to forgive.
But the king went to sleep that night deeply troubled, and when he woke up in the morning, he could think of nothing but the possibility of easing the queen’s misery. He loved her so much that if making her happy meant giving her up, he might have done it—but what good would it do to set her free when the person she was in love with didn’t exist, except in her own mind?
The king brooded for days on this conundrum. At last, he went to visit the royal advisor, and together they came up with a plan. Even as they concocted it, the king knew it wasn’t a very good plan, but the queen was growing sadder and paler every day, and the king felt he had to do something, or risk losing her altogether.
* * *
That evening, after the queen had fallen asleep, the king tiptoed out into the hallway and draped himself in a long black cloak. He knocked on the door, and when the queen opened it, he held a cracked mirror up in front of his own face.
The mirror the royal advisor had given the king was nothing but a piece of junk. The vainest, poorest woman in the kingdom would have thrown it in the trash. The front of it rippled and blurred as though it were covered in a thin layer of grease, and a deep crack ran from top to bottom, as though a long hair had been placed across the glass. And yet, as soon as the queen looked into the mirror, a look of such tenderness came over her that the king’s heart nearly broke. The queen swayed, and closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to her reflection. Oh, she whispered. Oh, I missed you so much. Every day, I thought of you. Every night, I dreamed of you. I know it is impossible, and yet all I’ve ever wanted was for us to be together.
I missed you, too, the king whispered. But as soon as he spoke, the queen opened her eyes and jumped back.
No, she exclaimed. No! It’s all wrong. You’re not him. You don’t sound like him. This isn’t what I want! Please, you’re only making everything worse.
She flung herself across the bed, and when the king came and lay beside her, she refused to look at him.
* * *
The queen did not get up again for three days. When she rose at last, her children ran to her and crawled into her lap. The queen embraced them, but she did not smile when they kissed her, and when they chattered cheerfully on about the small details of their day, she took too long to answer, as though she were speaking to them from very far away.
At first, the king tried to respect the queen’s wishes and leave her to her sadness, but now, having once seen her happy, if only briefly, he found her misery even more difficult to witness than before. As the days wore on, and the queen remained sad and pale and quiet, the king convinced himself that if only he could manage to make the illusion a little more convincing, his disguise might bring the queen joy instead of sorrow.
And so, not long afterward, the king stood before the queen’s bedroom door, holding a cracked mirror in one hand and a dented tin bucket in the other. The bucket was in an even worse state than the mirror—it was rusted and grimy and sour-smelling, and a patch of pale lichen had spread like spilled milk across the bottom.
The king knocked on the door, and the queen answered it, and once again, she looked in the mirror, and once again, her face softened, and the king’s heart nearly broke, and she kissed the glass and whispered sweet words to her imaginary lover. But this time, the king stayed quiet, and the only sound in the room was the queen’s own voice, echoing. Sobbing with joy, the queen fell against the king’s broad chest—but as soon as his arms closed around her, she opened her eyes and pulled away from him.
No, she said. You can’t deceive me like this. Your touch is nothing like his. Why do you insist on making me suffer?
Deaf to the king’s apologies, the queen returned to her bed and she did not get out of it again—not when the king begged her, not when her daughter came and pleaded for her mother, not when the royal advisor came and demanded that she stop acting so foolishly and for once think of someone other than herself. She lay unmoving, refusing to eat or to drink, until at last the king decided that he had to take action or she would surely die.
* * *
This time, the king abandoned all hope of deception. He carried the old thigh bone into the queen’s room in the middle of the day. The thigh bone was long and yellow, with bits of tendon still clinging to it, and small pocked holes along its sides where dogs h
ad gnawed at it. The bone smelled like rotted meat and trash and bile, and the king could barely touch it without gagging. Nonetheless, he tied the mirror and the bucket to the bone with bits of string, and he draped the black cloak over it and propped it in the corner. As he finished, the queen opened her eyes and moaned.
Why, she begged. Why are you doing this to me, when I am trying so hard to be good?
You love what you love, the king said. If that means you are selfish, or arrogant, or spoiled, then so be it. I love you, and your children love you, and the people of the kingdom love you, and we don’t want to see you suffer any longer.
The queen rose from her bed on unsteady legs. As the king watched, she peered into the mirror, whispered into the bucket, wrapped her arms around the old thigh bone, and smiled.
* * *
Over the next several days, the servants brought food for the queen to pick at and wine for her to sip, and soon the darkest of the shadows had vanished from around her eyes, and the hollows under her cheekbones were not quite so deep. Although he was glad she had emerged from the depths of her despair, the king found the sight of the queen cooing blissfully over her collection of trash unbearable to watch, so he left her to it, and when he returned the next day, he discovered that she had brought the filthy thing into their bed. He tried to object, but as soon as he approached, the queen hissed at him with such fury that he stumbled backward out of the room.
After a week had passed, the queen’s children began asking again for their mother. The king returned to the queen’s bedroom, where she lay naked among the bedclothes, nuzzling the mirror, murmuring into the bucket, and cradling the old thigh bone in her arms.
What do you want? she asked as he approached, without taking her eyes off the mirror.
Your children miss you, the king said. Could you not come out and play with them for a while?
Send them to me, the queen said. They can play in here.
Absolutely not, the king replied in disgust. Go and take care of your family. This . . . thing will be waiting for you when you get back.
The queen whispered something under her breath, and then she cocked her head, listening to her own echo. A terrible, sly expression came over her face.
Oh, she said craftily. I see.
See, whispered the bucket.
Yes, she answered it. I see.
What are you talking about? the king asked.
You want to lure me out of here, the queen said. You’re jealous. As soon as I leave the room, you will sneak in here and steal my mirror, my bucket, and my old thigh bone, and I’ll be all alone again.
Alone, whispered the bucket.
Yes, the queen said darkly. Alone.
Please— the king begged her. Listen to me. That’s not what I—
Get out of here! the queen shouted, and then she began to scream, the words echoing from the dented tin bucket until the room resounded with a cacophony of shrieking:
Leave us alone! Leave us alone! Leave us alone!
* * *
After that, the king went mad himself. He ordered the servants’ tongues cut out, so that they could tell no one of the queen’s condition, and he dismissed the royal advisor, then hired an assassin to ensure he kept the secret. He lied to his children and told them their mother was an invalid, and he passed a law forbidding anyone to speak of what had befallen her. Yet despite all his efforts, the whispers spread. Rumor had it that late at night, the queen would emerge from the bedroom and stroll across the parapets, dragging her monstrous lover clacking and clanking beside her.
The king ruled the kingdom as best he could, and tried to think himself a widower. He no longer visited the queen, though on some nights, he would wander in his sleep and wake to find himself in the hallway outside her room, his knuckles poised before her door.
* * *
A year went by, then five, then ten, until at last, unable to carry the weight of his grief any longer, the king returned to his wife’s bedroom, resolving to speak with her one last time and then end his own life.
The queen’s bedroom was lit by a single candle that guttered in the corner. Blinded by shadows, at first the king thought the room was empty, but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out a pale shape, writhing in the dark. From the direction of the bed came a flurry of chittering whispers, like the sound grubs make when exposed by an overturned rock. The sound was so unnerving that the king was about to flee, but then a shaft of silvery moonlight pierced the window and illuminated what lay tangled in the sheets.
The creature that lifted its face to him was a ghastly, skeletal thing, with matted hair and corpse-white skin and huge, unseeing eyes that had long ago grown used to the dark. It bared its teeth and snarled wordlessly, its naked shoulder blades flexing beneath its skin like stubby, unformed wings. In the slow motion of a dream, the monster that had once been the queen slid off the bed and began crawling toward the king, dragging the mirror, the bucket, and the old thigh bone behind her.
The king screamed and ran for the door, but just as he reached it, he was overcome by a vision of his wife as she’d been when he’d first laid eyes on her—a smiling girl with a gentle face—and his pity drowned out his fear.
Gathering his courage, he returned to the room, and kneeled down beside the woman he loved. I’m so sorry, he whispered, and in the silence, the tin bucket echoed his own words back to him.
I’m sorry.
Gently, ever so gently, the king began to pry the thigh bone from the queen’s clenched hands. Shaking, she held on as tightly as she could, but her strength was no match for his. Without warning, she let go. The king’s hand slipped. The thigh bone fell, the dented bucket landed on stone with a noise like crashing bells, and the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces.
The queen furrowed her brow in confusion, and for one brief moment she seemed herself again. Then she collapsed as though her tendons had been severed, and when the king tried to take her arm to lift her, she whipped her hand around and dragged a shard of broken mirror across his neck.
* * *
The next morning, the queen emerged from her room. She was still corpse-white and bone-thin, but when she spoke, her words were soft and clear. She told the people of the tragedy that had taken place the night before; of how the king, driven out of his mind by years of grief, had come to her bedchamber and cut his own throat. She said she had been ill for a long time, but that she was now better, and that now she was prepared to rule in her husband’s stead. The story beggared belief, and the queen’s eyes glittered madly as she told it, but she was still the queen, and no one, not even her own children, dared to speak against her.
The queen ascended the throne, and shortly thereafter, a figure dressed in an old black cloak appeared beside her. Although no one was permitted to come close enough to see it clearly, an unpleasant stench wafted from it, and sometimes, when the queen leaned in and listened to its counsel, those who kneeled before her thought they could see, through the folds of the hood, an image of the queen’s own face, broken into a thousand jagged pieces. Thus the queen lived out the rest of her days, and when she died, she was buried according to her wishes, with the black-cloaked figure interred in the coffin beside her.
The queen’s children grew up, and grew old, and died in their turn, and before long, the kingdom collapsed and was overrun by strangers. Deep beneath the earth, the tin bucket echoed with the sound of gnawing maggots, and the mirror reflected a dance of grim decay. Soon, the queen’s sad story was entirely forgotten. Her gravestone toppled, the passing weather wore away her name, and by the time a century had passed, the old thigh bone was just one of many in a pile, the dented tin bucket had long gone silent, and the shattered mirror reflected nothing but a clean white skull.
Cat Person
Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theater downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red
Vines.
“That’s an . . . unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.”
Flirting with her customers was a habit she’d picked up back when she worked as a barista, and it helped with tips. She didn’t earn tips at the movie theater, but the job was boring otherwise, and she did think that Robert was cute. Not so cute that she would have, say, gone up to him at a party, but cute enough that she could have drummed up an imaginary crush on him if he’d sat across from her during a dull class—though she was pretty sure that he was out of college, in his mid-twenties at least. He was tall, which she liked, and she could see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt. But he was on the heavy side, his beard was a little too long, and his shoulders slumped forward slightly, as though he were protecting something.
Robert did not pick up on her flirtation. Or, if he did, he showed it only by stepping back, as though to make her lean toward him, to try a little harder.
“Well,” he said. “Okay, then.” He pocketed his change.
But the next week he came into the movie theater again, and bought another box of Red Vines.
“You’re getting better at your job,” he told her. “You managed not to insult me this time.”
She shrugged.
“I’m up for a promotion, so,” she said.
After the movie, he came back to her.
“Concession-stand girl, give me your phone number,” he said, and, surprising herself, she did.
* * *
From that small exchange about Red Vines, over the next several weeks they built up an elaborate scaffolding of jokes via text, riffs that unfolded and shifted so quickly that she sometimes had a hard time keeping up. He was very clever, and she found that she had to work to impress him. Soon she noticed that when she texted him he usually texted her back right away, but if she took more than a few hours to respond his next message would always be short and wouldn’t include a question, so it was up to her to reinitiate the conversation, which she always did. A few times, she got distracted for a day or so and wondered if the exchange would die out altogether, but then she’d think of something funny to tell him or she’d see a picture on the internet that was relevant to their conversation, and they’d start up again. She still didn’t know much about him, because they never talked about anything personal, but when they landed two or three good jokes in a row there was a kind of exhilaration to it, as if they were dancing. Then, one night during reading period, she was complaining about how all the dining halls were closed and there was no food in her room because her roommate had raided her care package, and he offered to buy her some Red Vines to sustain her. At first, she deflected this with another joke, because she really did have to study, but he said, No I’m serious, stop fooling around and come now, so she put a jacket over her pajamas and met him at the 7-Eleven.
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