Ever Cursed

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “The spell needs to be Undone,” Mom says. “And if it isn’t, we have to let you go. Somewhere else. Another kingdom. Whatever kingdom you like. You can return to AndNot. You liked it there. With the ocean. But if the spell isn’t broken, you can’t stay here.”

  “I—” Nothing comes. “I—” Still nothing. No words.

  “We had decided to stay away,” my mother says. “We were waiting for time and distance to do their magic. We weren’t going to cast any more spells. We were maintaining the kingdom at rest. And then you—well. I think if the Spell of Without is Undone, we can find a way to make it all work again. But if not, and you stay here, keeping everyone on edge—we won’t survive that.” She pauses. She wants to be very clear. “I won’t survive that. The spell—it made it worse, Reagan. It made me remember even more what he did. I used to think about it only at night, after a nightmare, when I saw him. The last five years—I think about it every single moment of every single day. What he did to me. And what you did to them. And how unfair it all is, to have things taken without permission.”

  I crumble. I’ve stayed strong over five years, bearing the weight of my mother’s upset, lonely in my cottage in AndNot, missing Abbott and Willa and the rest of my family, trying to understand why things went the way they did. But I’m tired from all that strength. I’m tired from today, from the things that were taken from me, too, without my permission.

  “They all think he’s so gentle and kind and good. The Good King. I couldn’t stand it. Witches tell the truth. And that wasn’t the truth.” I’m begging for my life, but Mom isn’t looking at me. She’s looking at Grandmother.

  “I wanted to forget all about it,” Mom says. “Ten years ago we tried the Spell of Famine, and when that didn’t work—it was time to move on. We had taken enough from people who didn’t deserve it. It was my right to pretend it didn’t happen, to let go. To try to survive that way.”

  “You weren’t surviving! You were— He might have done it to someone else! I bet he has. You’re a witch! You’re a fucking witch who was raped by a king, and you want to just sit back and let him do it again and again and again. You want to sit back and let him be the perfect Good King forever?”

  Mom steps back. She steps back and back and back. She holds my grandmother’s hand.

  “There are a hundred ways to be strong,” Mom says. “There are a hundred ways to move on. A hundred ways to survive. I get to choose the way I want to survive.”

  I know from the way she says the word “survive” that I won’t be hearing another word from her. We stand in that certain silence. They have told me what has to be done.

  Undone. They have told me what has to be Undone.

  “This is my home,” I say. “I’m your daughter. Your granddaughter.”

  My grandmother nods her head. She looks sad but sure. “There used to be more magic, you know,” she says. “Much more. But they—people with power—they didn’t want anyone else to—they were scared. So now we are here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I say. I’m not supposed to speak that way to my grandmother, but she barely finished a sentence. Her words are a soup of half thoughts.

  “We are the witches of Ever. We are what’s left of magic. And it’s my job to protect us.” Grandmother’s voice is steadier now, the words still nonsensical and the ideas still flimsy and not mine to understand. But her voice, at least, is strong. “Ever is my home. It’s my job to protect Ever, too. Sometimes those things are in conflict. But we do our best. I protect the kingdom and the magic and it doesn’t always work, but it keeps things at rest.”

  She keeps looking at the Enchanted Candle, like it matters more than I do.

  “I thought you were meant to protect me,” I say. I am thinking of nights spent in Grandmother’s lap, counting out layers of skirts, cotton and denim and silk and tulle, each telling a tiny bit of a story I was dying to hear. She imprinted the stories onto me and made me promise to remember. She would fill cauldrons full of healing potions when I was sick or hurt, and she cast a strong Security Spell to keep out intruders after an incident with a brick being thrown at my bedroom window when I was seven.

  “We have to be at peace with them,” Grandmother says, not really responding to what I’ve said. “Your mother understands that. Even after what happened. She understands that all the world’s magic is at stake. We don’t go to battle. We watch the Enchanted Candle. We let it flicker gold. We hope they come around. We do our best. We stay up here. Away from them. To keep what magic we have left.”

  “So I’ll stay away,” I say.

  “Too late for that,” Grandmother says. “Five years too late for it. Fix it, Reagan. Or we’ll send you back to AndNot. There’s nothing more to say.”

  And like that, my grandmother isn’t my grandmother. She has my grandmother’s long fingers and blue eyes and waterfalls of white hair. She has the smell of her—woody and warm. But she is another being entirely, one who can banish me, without another thought about it.

  A long time ago she whispered in my ear that I was special. That I was her favorite. She told me not to tell, and I didn’t. I didn’t tell a soul. But I kept it locked inside, and it woke me up every morning and sent me to bed every night. The best kind of secret, that lit me up and calmed me down. The only secret I’ve known about at the Home on the Hill.

  But something in the way Grandmother speaks now—in riddles, then dismissing her favorite grandchild—tells me there are more secrets locked inside her.

  Ever more.

  15. JANE

  Our attendants change us from our brown dresses to our nightgowns. They are white and thick. The castle is cold, no matter what season it is.

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” Olive says. “You will break your spell.” The other attendants nod their heads. Sometimes I forget they’re with us; then Olive will say something, and I’ll remember. She was in the boat. She heard what Reagan said. She knows most things that I know.

  I almost tell her what the royals in the woods did. But I don’t. If I say it, it will be real. And I don’t want that.

  Nora’s attendant brings out soap for our faces and fingernails; Eden’s brings out brushes for our hair. Grace’s attendant is busy with Grace, who is more forgetful as the day goes on, just as I am weaker and Alice is more tired. Tomorrow is always a new day; on that, Olive is right.

  They wash our faces with damp cloths and brush our hair out. They make us cups of milk, steamed and sprinkled with cinnamon. Except for Olive, who sits by me as my sisters sip away. I remember the taste. Or at least I remember remembering it. It was sweet and thick. It was decadent and calm. It made me sleepy and satisfied.

  Maybe it’s meant to keep us calm.

  I’m not drinking steamed milk with cinnamon, and I am not calm.

  I am tired, though. My body is heavy with the wondering what’s true, the almost knowing what happened, the worried weight of accepting what Reagan said. My body, my heart, keeps rejecting it.

  I’ll inhale—maybe my father is that person—and then I’ll exhale much more loudly—no, he can’t be; he’s my father.

  As they all sip steamed milk, my inhales get longer and deeper, my exhales shorter and harder.

  Aside from my breathing, we are all quiet. My sisters don’t speak. I imagine all of our minds racing through the same questions: Can this be true? How will we know for sure? Could there be a mistake? Why does it feel so real? Does anyone else know? Do I know? Who is this man? Who are we? What is Ever?

  “There’s so much more than the spell,” I say to Olive. She bows her head. The other attendants do too.

  “You need to focus on the spell first,” Olive says. “Then, after—” The word settles in the room like too-bright light, like an ugly odor.

  After.

  My heart travels at lightning speed to my stomach, then farther down, to my toes, leaving the rest of me desperate and empty.

  After.

  I don’t know if there’
s an after.

  Yesterday I had a father who was a Good and Gentle King and a witch who was awful and a kingdom full of people who loved and respected me.

  Today I’m wondering if we have any of that. I look for a sign—any sign—that my father is who he used to be and that Reagan is a liar and that Ever is the kingdom it was in the books I read.

  But instead I can only replay the conversation in the moat and the one at the table and the long walk from Drum Drascall’s house to the shore, and even though none of those things make sense to me, they all feel more real than the old truths, the old stories, the old life I thought we were all living.

  My breathing quickens. “I don’t know anything about after,” I say. “I don’t know anything about anything. I never did.”

  I start to cry. The tears making their trails down my face shimmer like my fingers did earlier. It’s like a vibration, but it doesn’t shake. It’s a throbbing, but it doesn’t beat.

  “Jane,” Olive says. “Your tears. They’re—”

  “They’re pretty,” Grace says. She walks across the room and wipes them from my face.

  They glint and glimmer on her fingertips, the way light did on the moat earlier today. An impossible shimmer.

  Magic, my brain says, but it can’t be.

  “It’s because of him, so he’s going to help us fix it,” I say. I don’t believe it to be true, but we have more time to break the spell, and Olive is right. First we break the spell. Then we fix the rest of it. “I’m going to talk to him. Without pretending. Without all the lies. I’m going to tell him what I think is true and what he has to do.”

  “Jane.” Olive tries a single syllable. She might know what I know, but she isn’t going to die if the spell isn’t broken. Everyone but Alice and me can be slow and methodical and careful and a hundred other things that I cannot be, because I cannot die and leave behind a king who does what this king might have done, a father who cannot possibly be the same father who taught me how to waltz and who read me stories about unicorns and let me play bare legged in the moat even when Mom said no.

  “Now,” I say, because there isn’t time; there isn’t any time, and the shimmer on Grace’s fingers, the strange feeling on my face, on my arm embolden me. Make me feel less like a princess and more like… something else. “Now,” I say again, louder.

  “Okay,” Olive says. “All right. Let me—I’ll check on him first.”

  One of the other attendants—I think her name is Sara, but it could be almost anything—peers over Eden’s head. “Are you sure?” she asks. It’s a question I’ve heard a hundred times but never heard at all. Today it stops me.

  The other attendants look up from their braiding and brushing and tidying too. Each of them with the same concerned face. One who I think is called Devon straightens themself up. “I can do it,” they say.

  “No,” Olive says. “I’m fine. I’ll go.”

  I hear the words in other moments when they washed over me. Strange half arguments about who would get the king his slippers, who would fetch him when a princess felt sick, who would accompany him to town when his attendant was on a visit home.

  Are you sure?

  I’ll go.

  You went last time; I can do it.

  Are you okay?

  Will you be okay?

  It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.

  I look at my sisters to see if they hear it: the attendants are scared of our father.

  Still, I let Olive leave the room to tell my father I need to speak with him, ignoring the pound of my heart, the slip-slide of my sweating palms. A minute passes. Three. Eight. Twelve. Olive doesn’t return to tell me he’s ready for me. Alice’s attendant prepares her stone-carving tools for her, and they head outside to begin tonight’s sculpture. It must feel good, tonight, to bang on rocks, to break down something that seems powerful and unbreakable.

  Alice has always known that even the biggest, hardest surfaces can be chipped away at, can change into something else entirely. I am learning, we are learning, that the world is changing in the way it only can when you leave your home and cross a moat and see the world for what it is.

  What you should have known it could be.

  Nora wanders off to bed, not saying good night. Eden and Grace stay in the dressing room, talking about nothing the way they’ve done since they were old enough for words.

  My heart pounds, waiting for Olive, waiting for what’s next.

  My body strains to see everything the way it really is, to chip away at the hard surface of stone, to see the truth underneath.

  Sixteen minutes pass. Nineteen. Twenty-two and I fly out of the room.

  “Where are you going?” Grace asks. “Are you going to bed?”

  Eden doesn’t ask—she just follows me, and Grace follows her, so when I throw the door of my father’s study open, they are at my shoulders. When I see, they are clinging to my hips, breathing into my ears.

  Probably I have seen it before, without seeing it. I’m sure I’ve felt it in the way the attendants hang their heads and lower their voices and skitter this way and that when he approaches.

  Probably it has always been this way. I have never had the life I thought I did.

  And I have known without knowing.

  They are in the far corner of the room. My father and Olive. She is biting her lip like that will make it pass faster. He has one hand on his desk, steadying himself.

  But the other. The other is reaching up Olive’s skirts.

  It happens so fast it’s hardly a decision I make, but rather a thing my body does because it thinks it has to, to survive.

  I look away.

  And by the time I look back, both his hands are on the desk and Olive is a few extra inches away from him, and the moment might never have happened.

  Except, of course it fucking did.

  I miss the doubts I had the second they are gone. I miss the voice that said not my father, not the Good King, just because something is starting to seem true doesn’t mean it is.

  “My girls! It’s past your bedtime. You need your rest,” Dad says, like that flash of his hand under Olive’s dress didn’t happen.

  “Ah, the princesses!” another voice says. “It’s about time I formally met these enchanted, enchanting young women.” I turn to the voice, and it belongs to the King of Soar, who I hadn’t seen in the rush of terror when I first opened the door. I look away again and hate myself for it again. Was there a flash of naked skin where the King of Soar’s pants stitch together? Did I see a look pass between the two men? Did Olive try to mouth something to me? I don’t know. I look away and away and away.

  “Excuse me,” Olive says. “I need to turn down your bed, Jane.” She lifts her head at last, and her face is arranged into a normal expression, but even so, I look away.

  It’s all I know how to do. It’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve seen flashes of things. I’ve seen the edges of something awful my whole life, and I’ve looked away and locked it up. Over and over and over again. I am letting these things happen. The truth of it takes my breath away, makes me want to escape my own skin.

  Olive sweeps by me, and I try to hear something in her footsteps or her breath that tells me what to do, but there’s nothing. I feel a rush of wanting my mother. I need there to be someone else in charge, someone I can tell everything to.

  I knew at dinner that what Reagan had said was true. Still, seeing it is awful. Nightmarish. I pull at my skin, wanting to escape it.

  I feel Eden’s body tremble. Grace’s is its usual sturdy self. She didn’t see it. Or she’s already forgotten it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty,” she says, curtsying in the direction of the King of Soar. I don’t want him to get one step closer to my sister, but he does, taking her hand and kissing it.

  He kisses Eden’s hand next, not registering or not caring about the scowl on her face, the way she has turned from tiny trembles to angry shakes. Then he reaches for mine.

  No! my body
calls to me.

  But my hand lets itself be cradled and kissed. The insides of my mouth sour, and the emptiness of my stomach deepens. I don’t speak but I don’t leave, either, and they do not tell you in princess school what to do in this moment.

  I don’t even tell my sisters to leave. I don’t even protect them. I am weak and scared and officially every bit as terrible as my father, the king.

  “You have to help us,” I say at last. My voice is louder than I intended. For years, all I’ve practiced is being heard without speaking. That’s what my mother called it. Queens don’t speak to their subjects, she used to say. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be heard.

  My whole life I’ve worked on glances and smiles and shoulder hunches and nods. But I’m tired of positioning my body this way and that, as if there’s nothing in my throat wanting to be said. I told Reagan I didn’t believe her and I looked away from Olive and I can’t find the words to tell my father that I saw him, I saw him, but I won’t leave this room and slink away without asking for what we need.

  Dad looks genuinely surprised at my voice; the goblet of wine he’s holding is stuck between his chest and his mouth; his eyes dart around the room. Mine start to focus on the King of Soar. He’s wearing a heavy leather robe, and he has a long beard. He’s older than my father, more hunched, and he smells of something strong and metallic.

  I could vomit. I yell instead. “We have to talk.” Grace jerks back from Dad, and Eden holds me more tightly.

  “Well, we certainly don’t have to talk right now,” Dad says. He gives a little shake of his head paired with a smile and an eye roll. As if I am just another daughter and not a girl on a quest to save herself and her sisters. I can’t tell if he knows I saw him and is pretending I didn’t, or if he truly thinks he got away with it.

  Because maybe he will always get away with it. With anything. If the people didn’t rebel during the Famine and during the Spell of Without and now during Always Day, maybe they wouldn’t do anything this time either.