Chapter 19
Nineteen
Gertrude welcomes you with an embrace so delicate you might as well be made of glass.
She doesn’t hold fast, like Cyrus, or draw you tight against her.
She wraps her arms around you, presses her gloved hands to your scapulae, but keeps her body distant, her commitment to this act of affection loose.
“I mourned you,” she says.
When she draws back, the only hint that she feels anything at all is the slight shimmer of wetness in her eyes.
“My seventh brother.” She smoothes her hands over your shoulders. Her white gloves will get dirty, and you suspect she knows this but doesn’t care. “How tall you are. How broad and strong. Not at all the way I remember.”
“I grew up, I’m afraid.”
“Or else you’re not him.”
She folds her hands in front of her navel.
“Gertie, don’t be ridiculous,” says Cyrus.
“I think he ought to prove it,” she says. “The Fair Queen told me he was dead. Why would she lie to me?”
“You know why,” Cyrus mutters. He gives her a look, but she doesn’t react.
If the years have made you strong and tall, the years have turned her into a watchful tree.
You think of how expressive she used to be—how she communicated so much with her face and hands.
You cannot imagine this stoic, dignified woman doing the same.
“When we met, you wanted to tell me your name, but I couldn’t read,” you say. “I told you to act it out.”
“How intriguing, how might anyone act out the name Gertrude?”
How did she do it? Curling and splaying your fingers, you hold up your hands like paws and bare your teeth, but you don’t make a sound. No, you have to mime the growl.
“And what eggs did we eat together?”
“Turtle.”
“Turtle eggs? You’re certain?”
“I’m the one who found them.”
“One last question, then.” She cocks her head to the side. “How many shirts had I finished sewing when we knew each other?”
You shake your head. “You hadn’t finished any, yet,” you say. “The curse was too new. By the time I was taken, you hadn’t even been at your work for half a year.”
The corner of her mouth quirks up.
“I’m satisfied,” she says. She cups your jaw with both hands. “Hansel, home at last.”