Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

Life out of death. That long night, after we had made love as we

used to, I slept with the peace I once knew in life. The shades of gray that had colored me for months began to fade, and in the morning when I awoke, it was as if from a nightmare that I returned to the world, where color and scent and the feeling of Lizzie’s skin as I stroked her bare, cream-colored shoulder had returned as well.

When Lizzie rose from sleep as my touch lingered, she yawned,

then smiled, and quickly slipped out of bed to dress herself. “Honey, then butter, then the chickens, then the house,” she murmured, grinning to herself as she sat in a chair and laced her bodice.

“And after the house,” I said, sitting up on one elbow, “the brook.

And after the brook, here again, beneath these curtains, where I wish we could stay forever.”

Lizzie’s grin turned sour the moment I said those words, though.

She lifted her face to me and said, “Laura, it was for you that I did that. It was to save you. But it cannot be more. It cannot be what you are thinking. It cannot go on like that between us forever. I will be married one day. I will have children. So, too, will you, if you know what’s best for you. But clearly you do not, or we would never have found ourselves in this predicament to begin with.”

And at that she rose from her chair and left me there, alone.

v

? 316 ?

? Christopher Barzak ?

It was like a curse she threw upon me with those last statements, for as the days and months began to grind beneath my feet, it all came to be true. Lizzie married a young man from a farm just down the

way, past the glen; and some time later, after I fully realized we would not be together as I wished, I married too. He was a sweet man, a blacksmith with a sharp black beard and kind blue eyes, and with

him I had two children, a boy and a girl to match Lizzie’s pair. He was not long for this world, though. A spark flew up one day and blinded him in one eye, and soon the skin there turned an awful red, and then began to fester. The doctor said there was nothing to be done but to help ease him out of this world with the least amount of pain possible, which we did.

Lizzie helped me during that trying time. She came daily with

bread and milk and honey, and cleaned my house for me, to save me

the work while I tended to my husband. His passing was slow at first, and then he ran toward his end very quickly.

The house and his hearth were sold afterward. I went to live again in the house where Lizzie’s parents had once raised us. They were

gone by then, too, and Lizzie said it would be better if my children and I were closer, so she could look in on me more often.

She’d bring her own children with her, to play with my Tom and

Lily, and we would sew together and try not to speak of the past.

Only the present, only daily items and routines would be topics. Any hint of love long past, of passion hidden for the sake of others, and Lizzie would gather up her things and leave.

Sometimes she’d bring her children over and ask me to look after

them when she needed to go into town for something. It was during

those times that I would tell them the story of the goblin glen, about how my sister had stood in deadly peril to do me good, to save me from an awful fate. The children would listen, rapt and eager to hear the parts about the goblins, and about the fruits, and the music, and the dancing. And afterward they’d run off to play under the shadows of the weeping willow at the bottom of the garden, where once I tried to plant a peach stone out of desperation.

? 317 ?

? Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me ?

After they were off on their own, I would weep, silently, for having lied to them. The entire tale I told was true, yet none of it was honest.

But the stories one tells children always mean: Life will be happy, my dear ones, even though you will struggle within the world’s fierce embrace.