Chapter 4
Four
Five months into your journey, you come upon a crumbling castle.
The castle is a monument to a kingdom that no longer exists.
From the rolling hills beyond, you survey its parapets, its turrets, its towers, and ramparts.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, it might have been beautiful: now it has been abandoned to the woods to become a part of the woods.
Birds’ nests sprawl across every edge, soiling the white stone below; the stained glass windows, now shattered, welcome bats to roost.
Friend yawns and pillows her head upon her paws. Dinner cooks over the campfire you build. As the sun sets—as the light turns to liquid gold, then to wisps, then nothing—the fire grows brighter, and the night huddles closer.
In the decrepit palace, a singular window flickers with light. You feed Friend scraps of meat from your palm, watching that window, at the orange beacon that wards off the darkness. An old memory surges to the forefront of your mind.
“There’s a princess in there,” you tell Friend. “Sleeping, for one hundred years. No, don’t look at me like that—there’s nothing we can do to help her. Only True Love’s Kiss will wake her. We both know that can’t be me. And if it was—” you scoff— “she’d deserve far better.”
You think of Favorite, of the singular kiss you pressed to his beak.
How young you were. How naive and innocent still.
How presumptuous, too, to think you knew some secret loophole when Gertrude already knew the solution.
Love wasn’t the cure to his curse: it was pain, silent suffering, and a lonely, lonely task.
You wonder if Gertrude ever succeeded. You wonder if Favorite is a man again.
You doubt you’ll ever find out.
Maybe it’s better if you don’t.
Because if he’s human, if Gertrude is free—you won’t be able to resist knowing them again. You know they deserve better, and even still, you’d want them.
Better not to know. Better not to want. Better not to make them turn you away.