Chapter 38 #2
Beneath the cover of a copse of birches lay a donkey. No, not a donkey—a girl, sleeping in the midafternoon shade, wrapped up in a donkey’s skin the way you and Cyrus bundle yourselves in the wolf pelt. Cyrus looks at you and you look back at Cyrus.
“Not our story,” you say. “We ought to keep going.”
“A child? In the woods? She’ll freeze.”
“Looks warm enough to me.”
“Hans, we can’t do nothing.”
“You wake her, then.”
With a stubborn set in his jaw, he dismounts his horse and wakes the girl.
She screams.
She screams and leaps to her feet. The donkey’s skin fits over her like a burlap sack, loose and unstructured, tied at the waist with its own forelegs, with the donkey’s head beside her own.
With her eyes open, she looks closer to Red’s age than you originally thought, not quite a girl but not nearly a woman yet.
“Don’t fuck with me,” she shouts, brandishing a rock, “I’ll bash your fucking head in! And you won’t be the first!”
Cyrus stumbles back, lifting his hand in surrender.
“We only wanted to make sure you were all right,” he says.
“Trying to rob me?” She spits at Cyrus’s feet. “Well, I don’t have anything! So go!”
“We’re ambassadors of Queen Gertrude the Silent,” you say. “We’ll be on our way if you’re not in need, Miss.”
Her gaze flicks to you with untamed, animal precision. Before she sees you, she looks ready to throw the rock.
Then she sees you.
“You,” she says. “You’re Palestrina Scarlet’s friend.”
You raise your brows.
“I remember you,” she says. “From the performance. From the inn.”
She lowers the rock.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Where’s the rest of the band?”
“It was time for me to move on. Start a solo act.”
You don’t believe that for a second, but it’s not your story. It’s hers. And it’s up to her whether she tells the truth or not.
“Pal’s good, though,” she says. “Happy. She always spoke highly of you.”
“I’m glad,” you say. Your heart twinges, happy and sad all at once. To keep yourself from lingering in that feeling, you say, “I had no idea you were a person.”
“I like it that way.”
“You put the skin on, and it makes you a donkey?”
Her eyes narrow. “Why do you care how it works?”
Reaching into your saddlebag, you lift out the wolf pelt.
“Because I can give you this,” you offer. “I suspect people are less likely to fuck with a wolf.”
Her eyes light with possibility. Then harden with suspicion. “What do you want in return?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fine. How close are we to the Fair Queen’s lands?”
“About a week.”
“Thank you for the information. Cyrus, pay her.”
Cyrus hands her the pelt. “I’d recommend keeping both,” he says. “Easier to be a donkey in town, easier to be a wolf in the woods.”
“Anything’s easier than being…” She cuts herself off before she can finish that sentence and clears her throat. “Thanks. If I ever see Pal again, I’ll tell her you said hi.”
You suspect she’ll never see Friend again, but you thank her anyway. Cyrus mounts his horse, and once the two of you are out of earshot, he says, “I still don’t know about leaving her.”
“She wasn’t going to let us help her more than that,” you say.
He sighs. By the resignation in his eyes, you can tell he agrees with you without wanting to admit it.
“I hope we changed her story, at least,” he says.
You chuckle. “We helped a girl become a wolf,” you remind him. “I think we might have done more than merely change it.”
* * *
That night, you plop a radish seed into the earth.
The only remaining seeds in the pouch are a handful of alfalfa. You’ve saved them specifically for… You don’t know what yet. Something special. Somewhere special.
Maybe outside the last inn where you sleep together, or maybe by the apothecary’s front door. Or maybe even—oh, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it?
“You look like you’re thinking hard about something,” says Cyrus.
You cup his cheek in your hand and gaze into his eyes. Your husband’s eyes. Your prince turned swan turned man again. Your childhood attempt at a True Love’s kiss.
Your white-feathered, caught-between, dirt-smudged, Petunia-loving Cyrus. In other words: your Everything.
“I know you’ll want to drink the potion as soon as you have it, and that’s fine,” you say, “but can we go back to the lake?”
His throat bobs as he swallows. He leans his forehead against yours.
“Seems right to end this journey where it began,” he says, and kisses you, chaste and soft, a kiss that tastes like both a first sentence and a last sentence.
* * *
A seed depends upon so much to become more than a seed.
The right kind of soil, the right amount of sun, the right amount of shade.
Think of all the birds and squirrels and rabbits that need to pass it by.
And then, if it grows—think of all the boots that need to avoid trampling it, all the animals that still need to avoid that green temptation.
Sometimes a seed needs nurturing, but sometimes it can make it on its own. But you’ve done the best you can to make this true:
Everywhere you’ve loved him, something will grow.