“Hey,” she says, after a moment. “Have you figured out if the Barn Pirate stole anything today?”
Speaking of blushing. I pull a little bit of braided straw out of my pocket and hand it to her. The golden stalks have been twisted into a curious shape, a little like a harp. It’s quite a lovely thing, really. “I found this on my desk,” I say. “A broken quill I’d set aside to mend was gone.”
Sasha shakes her head. “He has it so bad,” she says.
The idea is preposterous. “Balderdash,” I say, and turn away to straighten a book. “It’s some sort of pirate nonsense. He explained it to me.”
Behind me, I hear her chuckle.
Chapter 29
I decide to keep the shop closed the next day, and give Sasha the day off. I could use some time without anyone around asking me for things. Or commenting on my decisions, clothing, and personality. Bash has gotten in before when the door has been locked, but I hope against hope that he’ll sense my need for a little alone time today and leave me be. After all, the last time…I hadn’t really wanted to be alone, had I?
It’s a gloomy, rainy day anyway—perfect for lighting a few candles and curling up with a good book and a nice warm mug of…well, not turnip tea. But something warm and fragrant.
Dear Honey, I begin, in one of the letters I categorize as “profoundly personal and not to be read by anyone ever.”
You’re always telling me I’m too nice, and now everyone else is, too. By everyone, I mostly mean Sasha,but the pirate has also strongly implied that I’m too accommodating. I’m too nice to everyone, they say—meaning, I think, I just bend over backward to make everyone else comfortable. Make time for myself, figure out who I am—that’s the advice of a teenager and a professional thief cursed to be afraid of water.
Speaking of, it’s raining; he said it’s bodies of water that set him off, but I’m still curious about how it works. The book you sent was interesting, but not incredibly useful. I’m starting to suspect that therearen’tany truly useful books about curses. Perhaps I should make a study and write one myself.
To return to my original thought: The fact is, I don’t know who I am now. And I don’t feel as though I have any real right to try to figure it out since, once this curse is broken, I’ll be back on the road, or at the palace, doing what I’ve always done. Who am I? I’m a princess; it’s who and what I am, and always will be. I’ll never be queen, by the grace of the great dragon and thank all that’s holy in the world, but I’ll never not be a princess.
What no one understands, or fails to appreciate, is that this is a lovely holiday, but it can’t last; it won’t last. Not unless the curse is never lifted, and if that’s the case…
Sasha asked me the other day, Why don’t I just stay here and leave the curse unlifted? But in a way, that’s even worse to consider!…How terrible to think I’ll never unlock my heart’s desire! That I’ll live my entire life knowing that there’s something out there that I need or want and I’ve never discovered it. I’d live my whole life in this one little bookstore, with the sense that therewas something just within my grasp and I simply couldn’t—or wouldn’t—reach it, take hold of it. Oh, Honeyrose: Wouldn’t that be the darkest curse of all?
I sit back; my thoughts have taken a grim turn. I’ve fantasized about the curse never being lifted, of course; at night, as I fall asleep, I’ve let my mind drift down that path: no more ribbons to be cut, or dances where my feet are trod on; just a life of books and bluecaps and my strange cat friend (still unnamed).
But that’s all they are: fantasies. Curses aren’t laid in such a way that theycan’tbe broken; that’s one of the fundamental rules of magic. No magic may be done that can’t be undone. Curses are puzzles, not prison sentences.
The thing I’ve not allowed myself to think about, not even for a moment, is what this cursemeans. I’ve been cursed to stay here until I unlock my heart’s desire. And if I can’t, then I stay here forever. And that…that would be a life sentence. Not just literally; it would be a horrible kind of captivity, to know that there is some means of being let out, and that means is related to my own happiness, and if I can’t break the curse, then that happiness will be forever denied me.
And this is why you’ll never receive this letter, because I’ll never send it. I ought to burn it now, Honey, so there’s no risk ever of it falling into the wrong hands, being read by the wrong person. Being a princess: It’s what I do and who I am, and that includes what I write. I’m not an individual, not really; I’m part of an…
I pause.
An institution.
Yes, that’s right. The royalty is an institution, just as our excellent system of universities, of public libraries, and of local government are all institutions. But because I was born into my particular institution, I’m not justpartof it. Iamit.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, Honey—just that I’ve made myself quite melancholy now. I’m going to go upstairs and clean, and tonight I might try one of those bottles of mead I’ve been given. Why not? A princess in the ordinary course of things isn’t allowed to get drunk, but this is hardly the ordinary course of things, is it?
I sign off as I always do and then file the letter away with all the others, in the drawers beneath my bed, hidden under royal gowns I haven’t worn in months.
By four in the afternoon, the sky has darkened; the drizzle has become a downpour, and I’m tired and dusty and half drunk. I had broken out the first bottle of mead at lunch, a reward for finalizing the organization of the first floor, and now I’m halfway through it. I’ve never drunk much; my mother and father drilled into me, from my earliest years, how profoundly important it is never, ever to lose control of oneself. Wine flows freely at state dinners, but you’ll never see a de Courcy drink more than a sip at one time, and our waitstaff are trained to water our wine, and bring us drinks that have had the alcohol spelled out of them. Neither of my parents touches the stuff otherwise, preferringtea. My sister once got very drunk on cooking wine, which she liberated from the kitchens when she was sixteen and I was twelve; our mother caught her, of course, and gave her such a setting-down that I swore I’d never put myself in the same position.
But why not?I wonder now, as I lie on the rug in the center of the third floor and stare up at the ceiling beams. This feelsnice. I feel wobbly and heavy and silly, like my limbs are attached with loose strings, rather than bones and sinews. I can hear the rain pattering on the roof above—even though I know it’s raining hard, the sound is muted and very pleasant. I push myself off the floor and open the window; I’d like to stick my head out, but the best I can do is draw a deep breath of the wet air. It’s at that moment that I remember I can stand in the rain and pretend I’m properly outside if I go downstairs to my little apartment; I pull the window shut and make my way downstairs, my limbs rubbery, holding on to the wall for support. I add a log to the fire, taking care not to burn my fingers, and then light several candles with a single spell, making myself feel like a proper little witch. I throw open the back door and step out into my pretty garden.
I stand beneath the grape arbor, watching the rain strike the leaves. Rivulets of water are running down the walls and coursing past my feet; I have the sudden need tofeelthe rain on my skin, and I kick off my shoes, which land with a satisfying little splat in a puddle a few feet away. The rain’s cold but it feels good, sluicing through the stones beneath my bare toes. Delighted, I pull off my vest, so that I’m standing there in only my light blouse and skirt. My hair’s up in a sensible braid, and I pull it out and run my fingers through it till it flows down my back. The sensation of rain running through my unbound hair makes me feel quite…naked. The rain is cold on my scalp, but a lovely kind of cold. But of course I’m not actually naked.
But Icouldbe.
What a brilliant thought, my mead-soaked mind whispers to me. No one can see into my garden; I’ve checked, and Honey set up a protective privacy spell before she left anyway, because of course she did; she’d thought of everything. So…whynot? I pull my blouse over my head and unbutton my skirt with wet fingers; both join my shoes in the puddle.
I look up at the darkening gray sky, the rain coursing down my face, and hold my hands up, letting the water strike my palms. My mead-induced bonelessness hasn’t left me, and I wonder suddenly whether anyone in my family has ever taken off their clothes and stood under a grape arbor during a storm. Or even outside. Certainly not in the last two hundred years or so. I pull off the last of my underthings and kick them away, and close my eyes; the rain has made my hair heavy and my skin cold, but it feelsincredible, like the first time I ever successfully lit my own fire, but magnified a thousandfold. The world is silent but for the patter of the rain, the gentle rushing of the water as it tumbles down the walls of my garden. Everything smells fresh, muddy, and clean.
There, now I’m completely unencumbered. My hair’s down, my clothes are gone; it’s just me and the rain and nothing else. I take the key from round my neck and toss it back into my room, and smile.NowI’m unencumbered. Not a cursed princess, not a mediocre bookstore owner, not someone who can’t go anywhere or do anything without fifteen trunks and an itinerary and a secretary and a thousand expectations: Just a girl. Someone who can get drunk if she likes, and stand naked outside if she likes, without anyone to see or tell her it’s not right or not proper or not politically expedient or not socially appropriate or that she’s being foolish or naïve or, or…It’s just me. All alone, by myself, me.
