This is unspeakably awkward. Only my belief that Chrétien deserves to hear the truth from me keeps me going. “It was very selfish of me. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I wouldn’t forgive me, that’s for darned sure. I mean, unless being Catholic means you do have to forgive me. So, yeah. Whatever on that score. The important thing is it was my choice and it was very selfish and I’m really sorry.”
Chrétien is silent. I have no hint as to what he is feeling right now. His face gives nothing away. He stares at the sky. It is a warm evening, for February, and you can see clouds to the west that are lit up like they’re on fire. Really angry fire. Which, is just … appropriate. Chrétien’s extended silence can only mean he’s really, really angry.
We sit there without talking, and I’m just about to say goodbye, when Chrétien clears his throat like he has something to say after all.
“You have my forgiveness,” he says. Just like that. Like it’s no big deal. I guess we really are farther apart than I thought we were, if he doesn’t even want to talk to me about what I’ve done.
Or about anything.
Chrétien says nothing more. He just stares at the hot spring, at the eerie mist rising off of it.
I shift, ready to stand up and walk back to town.
But just before I rise, Chrétien says he has a story to tell me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
COMING VISIBLE
Once upon a time, a poor but lovely maiden bore unto the king a beautiful daughter. Though the king was fond of the maiden, and later of the child, he, being noble, could no more marry the maiden than he could marry a boar. For kings, you know, must concern themselves with those things which will benefit the nation and not please their own fancy.
The king, in his care of the maiden, gave her to be married to a young courtier, who, though he knew little of love and less of being father to a child, nonetheless made it his labor to love them both. And in time he grew to love them deeply.
When the child had nearly reached two years of age, pestilence ran through the court of the king, and the courtier’s lady and child both fell gravely ill. The pestilence passed by the courtier, as sometimes happens, and though he would have willingly yielded his life in exchange for theirs, such an opportunity was not given him.
The king’s mother contracted also the illness. But she took every day a decoction prepared by a famous doctor of physick, and she returned to full health, although the doctor warned her she must drink her remedy for a month and a day after health had returned.
Now the king’s mother was very fond of her bastard granddaughter. And when she learned that the child was grown ill with the pestilence, the queen visited the sick mother and child, bringing with her the physician and his remedy. The queen drank of the decoction and, despite its price being more than a wealthy man’s land might yield in ten years of plenty, she shared some of it with the child and both her parents, “lest the father should grow ill as well.”
The child’s father remained, as ever, in good health, but the queen’s remedy had come too late to return the mother and child to health. Their decline continued and in time, they left this world for the next, leaving the courtier behind. His grief was very great, and at times he thought it would be better to end his own life than to continue with his grief.
Now the courtier’s father was a wise baron who had, through an unusual gift, extended his own life to many times that which is usually given to men. And in all this time, the baron had loved and lost several who had been dear to him. He did not, now, wish to lose his only son as well as having lost his daughter-in-law and his adopted grandchild. So he explained to his son that time was a great healer of grief and proposed that his son sleep for a century in an enchanted slumber such as the sleeping beauty of the wood had done once upon a time.
The courtier, loving his father greatly, agreed to enter the enchanted slumber.
A century passed, and the baron returned asking, “My son, are you now healed enough to return to the land of the visible?”
But after the first and the second and the third century, the courtier’s answer was always the same. “Father, my grief is too great for me. I will remain apart from the visible world for yet a longer time in the hopes that one day I may rejoin you.”
One day, the baron learned that a descendant of his beloved sweetheart, long dead, lived under the threat of an evil lord. And the baron, who had to devote himself to battling the evil lord, was in great distress as to how he might on the one hand battle his enemy and on the other hand protect the descendant of his beloved. So, the baron asked of his son a great favor.
“My son, will you undertake to protect this young woman, who is sought at all times by the evil lord, for I live in great fear he will utterly destroy her and all her family.”
The son agreed, for he knew what it was to lose someone precious to death, and he wished to save his father from the like grief. The son feared that his days would be still heavy with sorrow, but he found, as he became accustomed once more to living in the land of the visible, that his heart was able to hold a measure of joy alongside his constant sorrow.
Of all the things he had abandoned during his enchanted slumber, laughter and a merry heart were what he had counted as his greatest losses. And the courtier, transported to a new land with neither a court nor a king, found much joy in passing his days in companionship with a raven-haired maiden whose heart was given at all times to merriment. And with each passing day, the heart of the former courtier grew by tiny increases toward wholeness.
One day, the same evil lord who had threatened the descendant of the baron’s sweetheart stole away the raven-haired maiden. The courtier was in great distress to save the maiden from the evil lord. But when the courtier went to challenge the evil lord, the courtier was struck down by a powerful weapon. Although he was not killed, the courtier’s wound was grave, and he was no longer in a fit state to rescue the raven-haired maiden.
His despair at this time was great, but friends of the courtier came to the castle and succeeded where he had failed, utterly defeating the evil lord and his henchmen.
At this time, the courtier’s heart warmed even more greatly toward the maiden who had supplied so much mirth. But the courtier feared that to give his heart a second time would be a kind of disloyalty to his first wife.
Shortly after the defeat of the evil lord, the courtier found himself one day perusing the diary kept by his wife, wherein she charged him, should she perish, to fear not to love again. “And see that you look with your heart,” she wrote, “for it sees what the eye sometimes cannot.”
Now, the courtier was very troubled at this, and uncertain whether his wife’s advice was good or ill-judged. For, though the courtier felt a new love warming his heart, he felt also the pull of the old love. Moreover, he feared to offer his love which came from a trammeled and not an undamaged heart.
He yearned to walk free in matters of love even as he walked free from his enchanted slumber. And he yearned for the raven-haired maiden whose heart was merry and true like that of the Cendrillon. But he was held as though with a magical bond by two items which tied him still to the past—a book and a slipper.
And then, as if in a fairytale, he found himself one day bereft of one of the first item that bound him, and though he expected this would cause him great pain, he found instead that the loss of the book provided him with a measure of freedom. And then, after the passage of several days, the second item that bound him was lost to him as well. Once again, where he expected great pain, he found instead a new measure of freedom.
Now, at this time, another battle with the son of the evil lord ensued, and the courtier’s thoughts were occupied once more with the arts of war and with the protection of the raven-haired maiden, whom he greatly feared to lose. And when finally the evil lord was thwarted, the courtier took a day to consider all that had befallen him.
He thought of his losses, and the centuries spent in enchanted slumber. He thought of
his return to the visible world, and the delight afforded him by the company of the raven-haired maiden. And he saw that by living so much in the past, he had allowed his grief to consume him.
With the magical bonds broken, the courtier discovered he was finally free. His wife and daughter would live on in his memory, but their memory would no longer consume him. And as he pondered deeply all that had befallen him, he was able to see that there was more to his transformation than the loss of the book and the shoe.
For Love had begun as well to work within him. And he saw that he desired nevermore to be parted from the raven-haired maiden, who, though she was sometimes wild and all times a source of confusion, was nonetheless all his heart’s joy and all its desire.
Chapter Thirty-Three
SO LIKE THE WINGS OF RAVENS
When I look up, I see tears tracing their way down Chrétien’s face.
It’s one of those moments where you can feel The Kiss coming. And believe me when I say I have some familiarity with The Moment before The Kiss. But I don’t want this to be just another one in my long string of Moments.
Fortunately, Chrétien doesn’t seem quite as clued in regarding Moments. He is making no move to bring our lips together. In fact, he’s preoccupied examining his hands right now.
“You came to me with an apology upon your lips,” he says. “I hope you can see that none was necessary.”
Oh, it was necessary, I’m about to say, but Chrétien keeps talking.
“I hope you will forgive me for speaking so boldly, howsoever I cloaked it in the guise of a story,” says Chrétien.
“But I love your stories,” I say.
After that, we sit quietly for a minute. Staring at the spring. Staring at the evening stars popping out. Staring at anything but one another.
“So,” I say, “can we maybe back it up to the part where you said you didn’t want to lose me?” My voice is soft and I can’t quite meet his eyes. “How much, exactly, do you, um, not want to lose me?”
“Mademoiselle,” he says in this quiet voice that makes actual shivers run down my arms. “I would never be parted from your hair so like the wings of ravens. I would be always within sight of these eyes, slanted to an angle the most perfect for ensnaring the hearts of men.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can say. All the other words I used to know, whether English or French or Chinese, have rippled clean out of my brain. “Oh.”
Chrétien sighs and looks at me like I’m the anti-serum that will save his bacon. This is an actual facial expression, and I am the one who discovers it.
And now, we sort of fall into one another, hands and arms and waists and lovely, oh-so-lovely mouths. And this is when I discover it is one thing to kiss a boy you like, but it is quite another thing to kiss a man you love.
As our lips brush and pull apart, I manage to ask a question. “The story you told me—did you get all the way to the end this time?”
Chrétien pulls back and looks at me with such piercing earnestness that I flush and drop my eyes. When he speaks, it is in a low voice, husky with emotion. “I am very much in hopes, Mademoiselle, that I have only reached the beginning of the story.”
THE END
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Acknowledgements
“Tell the story you want to read,” we are told again and again as writers. Well, as you might have guessed, the tale of Cinderella has always been one of my favorites. Re-imagining it as something Charles Perrault might have observed at the French court in his youth was enormously fun, and I hope diehard fans of his fairytale won’t be too put off by my version. In fact, I hope you are inspired to have your own Cinderella-palooza with the peeps you treasure. I recommend combining the event with chocolate over either popcorn or pâté, however.
For this tale, focused as it was on Gwyn Li, I owe special thanks to Isabel for the concept of “Gwynitude.” However, it is Katie who gets an even more basic thank you. Katie, I am so glad you kept asking me, “What is Gwyn’s last name?” until I finally, finally found the answer all those years ago. Getting to know Gwyn’s family story has been oh, so much fun, and I couldn’t have done that without your seemingly innocuous question.
To my dear readers and all those friends who encourage me to write harder, write more, and write better: my sincerest gratitude. You make it all worthwhile!
Table of Contents
GWYNITUDE
EVERYONE WEARS JEANS
RED SHOES
DUMBEST COMPLIMENT EVER
MISS CONGENIALITY
THE CASTLE IS MINE
I’M HEARING VOICES
BALLET IS FOR DUDES
A TYLENOL OF THE HEART
OVER MY COLD AND DECEASED FLESH
MOVIE POPCORN NIGHT
LA CENDRILLON
QUEEN OF GOOD CHEER
THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
THE POISONING PRINCESS
CIVIL RIGHTS
ENSORCELLING
HANSEL AND GRETEL COME TO CALL
MURDERER OF KITTENS
DON’T TELL ME EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE
THE BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR
THE WORLD IS SO LOVELY A PLACE
NOTHING SAYS BAKED GOODS LIKE A SHARP POKE IN THE ARM
INFECTED
THE WRONG JOURNAL
LIKED HIS SCHNAPPS
MONOLOGUE-ING
IT’S MY FAULT
YOU DON’T GO BACK TO THE BAT CAVE
LIKE AN ACCUSATION
UNSPEAKABLY AWKWARD
COMING VISIBLE
SO LIKE THE WINGS OF RAVENS
Visible (Ripple) Page 19
