by Amanda Zapp
Our names ceased to be of any use to us after our mother died. That was around six years ago. She never got to see any of us marry. She left twelve daughters, who stood in a line in twelve black veils at her funeral. Our youngest was still small; if I focus, I can remember her furrowed brow, her veil dragging and catching on the ground. Now she stands taller than the rest of us. Her name blurs in my mind.
But what need have we for names? We share one grief and huddle ourselves in that grief like a pile of wolf pups, to the point where you can’t tell where one of us ends and the other begins. Our father has no reason to speak to us individually. As for the suitors, they never feel the need to tell us apart by name. I imagine they experience us as a collective: a twelve-headed beast to be subdued and conquered.
After her funeral, father had taken to his room for a full month, and when he had emerged, he was a stranger to us. From that point on, our lives grew increasingly narrow. One day, when we were trooping out towards the stables for our ride, we found a guard there. The king had said that a princess had no business near the dumb, kicking beasts. Then we were barred from the birch wood. Then, from leaving the castle altogether. We couldn’t even go up to the parapets to watch the sunset; he was sure we would fall. Balls were out of the question. He kept us penned like livestock, smothered in velvet like Venetian glass. He rarely looked me in the eye, and when he did, it was as if he were looking through to the wall behind me.
I remember the night it started. It was a year, to the day, since mama had died. We had all laid down in our matching beds, a dozen gilded snuff boxes. My sisters and I were so alike, you see. Like a set of Russian nesting dolls; each a year younger than the next. As the eldest, I could feel all of my sisters within me, or rather, upon looking at each of my sisters, I could feel where they resided in my being, as if they were running through my veins. Twenty-two eyes fixed their weighty gaze on me, for guidance, for a nest. Much of the time, we didn’t need words, we could just look at each other and know exactly what the other meant. The boundaries between us slowly evaporated, and we began to feel our individual selves melting into each other like watercolor, until we were like one being in twelve parts. Like a school of fish. Like a knot of trees, connected deeply beneath the surface, our roots twining ever more tightly together.
That night, our collective grief pressed down upon us. We were hostages in our own home, losing our father through the loss of our mother, a double blow. How were we supposed to marry if we were not allowed out? What would become of us? Together, we felt the palace closing around us like a horrible chrysalis. Eleven hearts sank inside my own, and I prayed with all my might for something, some speck of freedom we could sweep up and place on the mantelpiece and claim as our own. Some bit of hope.
As I laid in my bed, I felt the pressure in the room increase. A humming filled my ears, drowning out the sound of the nightingale outside our barred windows. I felt our twelve hearts beat as one, and our twelve despairs stack into each other until they made one great, reverberating despair, and then. . . a release. The soft sound of a bell, a bell from far away. Not the church bell of the nearby town. A cold, mournful bell with a silver tone. The floorboards creaked beneath my bed. A draft rose, scented of narcissus and earth. My eyes shut tight, I could feel my sisters hear the bell, too: the invisible web holding us together tightened. I have heard it said that if enough people wish hard enough for something, with clear enough vision, that it will come to be. I didn’t want to believe it, but the silent wish of each sister’s heart within the crucible of my own had made something happen. It had given us an escape. I took a deep breath and sat up.
My sisters gathered in close, their voices a flock of soft doves around me, their long braids falling over my shoulders, blocking my vision. We moved my bed towards the window, and there it was. A door. A door leading to a marble stairway. It had not been there before.
We tumbled down the stairs in our robes and slippers and candles, following the sound of water. Twelve boats awaited, and an island shone with silver light in the distance. An island with twelve princes, each our opposite, our complement. The princes didn’t seem to mind our messy braids and the childish caps on our heads. We danced. Once they lifted us from our little boats, the darkness of sky and water closed behind us like a fan, and we stepped into a ring of light. Candles, mirrors, tables covered with feathered swans and bowers of cake encircled a dance floor. A song would strike up; pipes, bells, drums, and viols swirling us into a carousel of movement and color. Our white nightgowns belled out as we spun. A strange scent like tuberose hung thick and narcotic in the air. Heady sweetness like too much honey and tinged with rot.
The next day we were in a daze, convinced it had been a dream. Until, looking under our beds, we found our slippers, danced to pieces! So, it was real. That night again, the pressure shifted in the room, the bell tolled, the floor creaked. This time, we wore gowns.
Soon we were there every night. We weren’t even tired during the days, those first several weeks. We didn’t need sleep. We filled our rooms with night-blooming flowers, rejoiced in the song of the nightingale, and lived off the nectar of our shared secret.
It wasn’t until we ran out of shoes and began asking for more that our father noticed anything suspicious. Lifting our skirts with his walking stick, his brow furrowed at the unravelling ribbons and tattered soles. It was the first time he’d really looked at us in years. Locking us up kept us safe, and also relieved him of having to pay us any attention. He passed on his fatherly duties to the walls and the guards. We told him nothing. He was furious. The pile of ruined slippers stood up to his knees, their frayed silks and broken heels a patchwork of pastel.
We stood in a row staring back at him, enveloped in our shared apprehension, afraid of losing our new world. And also, slightly hopeful that maybe this would call our father back to us. But he was too far gone. After conducting several inspections of the castle and finding no mouse holes a daughter could slip through, he came up with a plan. True to form, it involved delegating the problem to someone else, while treating us like property at the same time. He put out the call for suitors. A challenge. Whatever man could hunt down our secret in one day and one night would get his pick of the litter for his bride. And someday, the throne itself. If he failed, it was off to the gallows with him. This, he believed, would discourage lesser men from trying their luck.
The ritual went like this: a man would arrive at daybreak and make it known that he intended to stay the night with the princesses and figure out how we were going through so many shoes. He would dine with us. Father would make us show him around the palace. He’d retire to an antechamber separated from our room only by a curtain. I suppose father was more concerned with the danger of secrets and ruined shoes than the danger of strange men spending the night with his daughters. Anyways, I’d give him a sleeping draught, he would go to sleep, we would go dancing, and in the morning, he would go to his death. We got into a rhythm with it, each with our part to play. A grim bit of chamber music.
* * *
I am feeling especially ill this morning. The wine affects me more than it used to. I try to focus on one of the embroidered cornflowers on my canopy, when my bed curtains are yanked back and the deathly pall of dawn floods my eyes. My sister. The youngest. “We have a visitor,” she whispers, pulling on a battered old shoe. I roll onto my side and look down the row of eleven identical beds draped in eleven identical silks. The beds seem to duplicate across the room, kaleidoscopic and strange. My head spins and my stomach turns.
There’s a tinge of excitement among us, because we had thought we had seen the last of them. It had been well over a month since the last visitor, and even before him, they were becoming more and more rare. This made sense, after all. No one had made it out of here alive in the four or so years we’ve been playing this game. We thought they had given up. That it was over, and we would be able to succumb to our fates in peace.
At the breakfast table, the visitor and our father sit opposite each other at the head of the table. The man is in my mother’s old seat. He’s plain: a common soldier with an injured shoulder that prevents him from fighting. And older: his sand-colored hair flecked with gray, and according to his testimony, he’d already lost one wife to a fever. And here he is, hunting for another! His name is Joseph. Whereas every other man either fawned over our father, or froze out of fear, Joseph seems to be genuinely curious about this bizarre place he’s found himself in. His blue eyes move from sister to sister, his expression passive and genial. Following his gaze, I notice how gaunt we look. None of us touch our meal: roast with a bland but pricey mousse made of the livers of white geese, wings clipped to keep them fat, a sickening gel of bland fat on your tongue. We push it around on our plates. I see the emptiness of our father’s eyes in each of ours.
Joseph’s eyes are blue, and his face is weathered and tan, like he spends his days outside. His eyes meet mine and I freeze, then causally unfocus my gaze, letting it drift across the wall behind his head. Now he’s going to think I was staring at him. I poke at my food with my fork, and glance back at him from the corner of my eye, without turning my head. He is still looking at me. He looks at me with neither the appetite of the other visitors, nor with the sweet venom of my prince, nor with the indifferent blankness of my father. He looks at me with concern. I don’t like it.
* * *
My prince reminded me of a crow. His sleek black hair made mine look even mousier than it really was, by comparison. A perpetually cruel smile in his eyes, each night he would lay out all my dreams before me. It was a relief to not have to dream everything myself, for once. We talked until dawn, finishing each other’s sentences and cackling amongst the glittering trees and fountains. He’d hold me in his gaze, and it was as if I was floating to the treetops. And yet, there was always the feeling that he was flying just out of my reach. When I asked him how he always managed to speak my own mind better than I could myself, he gave me a narrow smile and swept me onto the dance floor. He never gave a straight answer to anything, but I didn’t mind. When I looked at him, spring unfurled around me. I was ten years old again, running in the woods, blackberry stained and wild.
Arriving on the island was like this. From our boat, we would see the water reflecting back the metallic sheen of the first wood. Silver willows grew along the banks, their weeping fronds chiming in the wind. And then: great golden oak trees, cold to the touch. Finally, the last wood would be what looked like an orchard of cherry trees, diamonds hanging in drops from the glassy branches. Beautiful people in silks and velvets cavorted through the wood, their laughter ringing in the leaves. As the trees thinned, two marble fountains set with cherubim poured water from urns, and those who had tired of the dance cooled themselves, tipping their glasses and gazing at the jeweled branches against the stars. Time behaved strangely here: faster and slower at once. You could watch a drop of wine fall down the side of a glass for what felt like hours. Or, the night could rush by in a riot of color and sound, and the next thing you knew you were back in your bed. Unfathomably placed.
At the center of the island, the center of these three woods like three rings of Hell, burned the ballroom. The absurd number of candles reflected in mirrors, crystal, and the jewels of the enameled trees filled the scene with such a dazzling light that seemed to absorb us. A marble colonnade girdled the dance floor, set in a Persian fantasia of black and white tiles. The table spilled over with roasted peacocks put back into their feathered hides, pies that erupted into a murmuration of starlings in flight when cut, silver candelabras, heaps of strange fruit and flowers, miniature castles and landscapes made of cake and fruit and jelly. There were always blackberries. Perfumed doves grazed our shoulders with their clipped wings as our princes pulled us onto the dance floor. Our skirts, crimson, mauve, peach, chartreuse, would bloom with each spin beneath the gilded branches.
It was a little over the top. I knew this. But even as I laughed at its excess, even as I choked on the perfume in the air, I noticed that I felt awake for the first time in years. The ballroom and its rings of enchanted trees held you in richness and light like a nest, like a cocoon. My prince, crow that he was, had collected everything bright and beautiful for our amusement in this dark Eden. I lost myself in the mirrors of his eyes.
* * *
Drugging the men who came to root out our mystery was a bit of a thrill, at first… I’m ashamed of it, but it’s true. I guess we had caught some of the cruelty from our princes. Our bond as sisters strengthened; together we made a formidable Atalante, destroying any suitor who dared come near us. We would play with them like cats with mice. Flirting, crying, alluding to some dark, unspeakable secret. Get their hopes up, get their guards down. It was easy from there.
We walk through the halls, pointing out portraits of our ancestors, taking Joseph on the standard tour of the palace. We start with the sculpture gallery: a fantasia of white limbs in poses of varying languor. Daphne, her fingertips sprouting branches, freezes in her transformation to a laurel tree to escape from Apollo. Psyche with her little butterfly wings awakens in Cupid’s embrace. A collection of half a dozen Venuses. Diana with her hound. My sister runs her hand lovingly down the marble hound’s back.
“This is my favorite room in the whole palace,” she says. “There is something so pure about marble. Don’t you think so?” She fixes Joseph with her dreamy gaze.
“I heard,” he says, “that in ancient times, statues like these were actually painted very brightly. A friend of mine once told me of finding a Minerva hidden in a little grotto in the south, with armor like a butterfly wing. It’s only that they faded back to white marble over time. But they were never meant to be this blank.”
“How vulgar!” says my sister. “I can’t imagine a Minerva painted up like a common harlot. No, I think your friend must have been mistaken. Sculpture is meant to be unchanging, eternal. It is meant to show the universal form of things. And color is cheap!! The most colorful flowers fade the fastest.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” he shrugs. “But I have to admit that I find all this uniformity unsettling, a bit. See, look here,” he gestures to the row of Venuses. “No doubt they are all stunning, but the overall effect of seeing them next to one another, and all drained of their color, it gives me a chill that I can’t quite place.” He looks thoughtfully from one statue to the next, and then to me. “Where to next?” he asks. My sister gives me a quizzical look behind his back. I haven’t seen her make that face in a while. An image of her rises in my mind: bent over an easel, hands stained with charcoal, and that look on her face. Then, it evaporates.
* * *
Once, I’d taken a small spray of leaves from the golden oak, one with a fat bundle of acorns attached, and set it into my hair. When I looked at it the next morning, the gold had rubbed off, the acorns were all shrunken and rotted, and the leaves were dust.
After the first year of our nightly visits to the island, I caught my image in the mirror and barely recognized myself. My skin had lost its luster, and my eyes were hooded and sad. I felt old. Daily life was as beige and barren as ever, but even the island in the lake had begun to feel somehow hollow. The feasts were delicious, but never filled our bellies, leaving us more empty and craven each morning. Even as we danced, we withered like bouquets in our princes’ cold hands.
* * *
According to custom, we pair up and disperse across the library, the irregular click of our worn-out heels echoing through the hall. On the painted ceiling, old gods in their billowing robes tumble about in gold and periwinkle skies, looking down upon the marvel of books lining the three floors beneath them. We take our stations, open books and talk quietly about nothing, listening to the game go on beneath us. My sister, the oldest one after me, stands in her place by the window, next to Joseph, who is inspecting a map of the seas. It goes quiet for a good long while.
From the railing above, I look out of the corner of my eye and see him go to her. They begin to talk, she sobs quietly into her handkerchief, arm against the windowpane, takes a labored sigh, and looks to him with all the pathos she can muster. We all wait for the feeling. The rush of ruthless glee; the furtive satisfaction that spreads like a rich black oil from her heart to each of ours. The moment she knows she’s fooled him, that feeling would spread and our stifled laughter would fill our lungs with light, we would feel as if we could float to the ceiling with the power of it.
But the feeling doesn’t come. Something is wrong, and as I look down I see her, dumbfounded as he says something I can’t hear, picks a book off the shelf by her shoulder, and walks away, reading.
Alarm rings through us as we rush together.
“He told me that it was a shame I was born into royalty, that I could have had a career in pantomime, “she whispers angrily as we rustle out into the gardens. She storms off in a cloud of peach taffeta, and I notice I’m laughing. He isn’t wrong. She’s always had a flair for the dramatic.
* * *
One night I had discovered that the light in that circle in the waters was coming from us. The youngest brother had brought us a rare and ridiculous flower; an iris the size of melon and with all the colors of the rainbow, with twice the petals an iris should have. Each palm-sized petal arched away from the center and blended too many colors for the eye to take in: a baroque and unnatural thing. I looked away from the flower to search for my prince. The far edges of the dance hall had faded to a deep gray, misting in and out of view. When my sisters dispersed, I saw the color and light follow them to the banquet table. The pyramid of apples flushed back to red, the purple and emerald spread up the peacock’s feathers from base to tip. I kept this to myself.
The illusions my prince wrought had opened my heart fully and foolishly, like a false spring causing an orchard to blossom out of season. But those flowers never turn to fruit; the freeze always returns and carries them off. This is what he feeds off of. What all the princes, what this whole place feeds off of. The power of bringing about an unnatural blossoming, and then watching it wilt before its time. They may as well have been drinking our blood. I can see it in that glint in his eyes. It was all a danse macabre.
Don’t think I was so naive as to be taken by surprise by all this. I watched my sisters. They were fading, too. I almost hadn’t noticed it, so gradual was the change, but the shared miasma of our feelings had turned dark and numb. Even on the island, amidst every beauty and pleasure we could dream of, their eyes remained blank. The light in the ballroom became uncanny and strange. But a strange light is better than no light at all. If we stopped going, we would pine and die. If we’d never gone, we would have pined and died. So what’s the use in taking away the one point of light we have left? It seemed there was nothing else to do but offer our throats like geese.
* * *
One of our favorite things about having a visitor was that father would relax his grip on us a bit and allow us to include the woods as a part of our little tour. It was our favorite part of the day, even more so now, since we haven’t been outdoors in a few months.
We step out and realize that spring has begun. The birch boughs gleam with fresh leaves, the midday sun warms the grove with the scent of rich soil. Though I’m sure it’s too early, I want to see if the blackberries are out yet. The rest of my sisters, spooked by the incident in the library, hang together. “I’d walk along with you, if you’d like the company,” Joseph says. I feel my sisters’ unease spread through my veins. But I want to go. Their eyes burn holes in my back as I lead him further into the woods.
He walks alongside me with his hands clasped behind his back, his wounded shoulder hanging a bit lower than the other. We come upon a dense copse of birches. They look like someone has taken the columns of a roman forum and forced them together in a jumble. In the middle of them stands a ragged sapling grown up to my shoulder. I walk over to examine it.
“It’s an oak,” says Joseph.
“I know it’s an oak,” I say without looking at him. I press its scalloped leaves in my hands. They’re soft, and the brightest green I’ve ever seen.
“Well,” he says. “I certainly hope it makes it, what with all these birches crowded in on it, hoarding all the light for themselves. See how it’s bent, trying to reach that bit of sun there?” I look, and nod.
“Not to mention what’s going on underground,” he continues. “You dig this whole thing up, and you’d see that all these birches all share the same roots; they choke out anything else that wants to grow around them.” He reaches out to the oak’s slender trunk and it bends under his rough and sun-worn hand, then springs back up, leaves trembling.
We continue through the woods, nearly to the blackberry grove, and I become aware that he is watching me. I meet his eyes.
“Forgive me,” he says. “May I ask when you lost your mother?”
My throat tightens and I cough. “six years ago,” I say. “In the winter.”
“Is that when your father started locking you girls up?” he waits for my answer. I don’t give him one.
“Loss makes people do strange things.” he says. “When I lost my wife, I thought I would never get out of bed again. Nothing made sense. She was only in my life for a brief time, only a couple years. And then she was gone. For a long time, I didn’t know what to do with myself.” He pauses for a moment. “It’s good that you have your sisters with you.”
My eyes burn. I clench my jaw and avoid his eye.
“Do you often go walking alone without them?” he asks, a bemused smile in his eyes.
“No, I never do anything without my sisters,” I say. “Besides, father never allows us out here unless one of you comes calling.”
“One of me?” he laughs. “How many of us have there been, would you say? You girls are infamous, you know. And not without good reason, I find. That was quite a performance your sister put on in the library earlier.”
Before I can stop myself, I let out a laugh. A startlingly loud, unladylike laugh. I clear my throat.
“Lost count a long time ago. I’m glad you’re here, though,” I said, and he raised his eyebrows at me. “We haven’t been let loose all spring, you see.”
The blackberry bramble, to my surprise, is already spangled with fruit. Many of them are still green in their little nests, but most of them have already ripened to coral.
“I didn’t think it was warm enough yet,” I say. He kneels down, examining the branches, and when he leans back, one perfectly ripe blackberry glistens in his wide, square palm. He offers it to me. It tastes like my childhood.
“We used to come out here all the time, before mother died.” These words come out of my mouth of their own accord, and once they start, I cannot stop them. I tell him about our summers spent hunting blackberries and running through the woods. About the birdbaths father would fill with grain for the deer, about them eating out of our hands. About my mother teaching me to gather herbs. About my sisters and I, laying on our backs and finding images in the swaying boughs of the trees. About the time, when I was ten, that a fox had emerged from the brush and held my gaze for ages, before winking his eye and running off, tail waving like a flag.
As I speak, it is like a cool, fresh breeze runs through my mind. He listens to me, watches my face. His eyes are soft. I notice he smells like cedar. Color rises in my cheeks. My words trail off and we look at each other in silence.
“It’s getting late,” I say. “We’d better head back.” I turn to go.
“Wait,” he says. I wait. He has grown suddenly serious. He steps towards me.
“I know very little of your life,” he says. “But it’s clear as day that you girls are trying to escape from something. I can see it in your sisters’ eyes, in your eyes too. Like they’re staring right through you, to another place. They have the same look as some of the men I knew, the way they looked after the war. Some of these men get to be like ghosts, sleepwalking through life with one foot in this world and one in the next.”
I stared at him blankly. I remembered my sisters’ faces around the breakfast table this morning, vacant and wan. I remembered the color following them across the dance hall. I remembered the glint in my prince’s eye. Joseph looks straight into my eyes and I shiver.
“Look, I could give a damn about a pile of busted slippers.” he said. “Dance out all the slippers you want. But. . . I’ve never been in a place with so much death in the air, and you and your sisters are drowning in it. If there’s anything I can do. . .”
“So this is your plan, is it? Get me alone, ply me with my own blackberries, get into my good graces? Which one of us do you have your sights set on? Tell me that.”
“I don’t have my sights set on anyone,” he said. “I came here because I had nothing left to lose. I can’t fight anymore. I have no other skills to speak of. This seemed like a better way to go than starving slowly on the street,” he said. I looked away.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” he continued. “I know you love your sisters, that you want to protect them. But the love binding you together is also binding you to your silence, I think. And perhaps to something more dangerous than silence. A person can’t live their life cooped up in one place, no matter how beautiful it may be. As the oldest, your sisters follow your lead, that’s plain enough from the way they flock around you. I have no desire to be a king. But I would like to help you, if I can.”
At this, I let out a mirthless laugh.
“You? A half-crippled, old soldier?” I straightened my spine. “We don’t need your help. Or anyone’s.” Turning on my heel, I started back home.
I burn through the clearing like wildfire, my blood drumming in my ears. No, no, no. I feel like someone has flayed me of all my skin, the orange and lavender of the sunset blaze against the green of the trees, and the world is too much. He has to go. He has to go, and then we will all be safe again. Then we’ll be free to finally wilt into our dreams, away from this pain. There is no other way.
I want to melt into my sisters. The fading light of the day stings my eyes. I need them around me, their hearts beating along with mine, to drown out his voice. I catch sight of the muted rainbow of their dresses, and I plunge back into their presence like a warm bath. They huddle in a circle in front of the window of the great hall, looking at something on the ground.
A nightingale has flown into a window, mistaking its reflection for open air. It isn’t dead yet. It lays on the ground, opening and closing its beak, blood where its song could be. My sisters, their faces like eleven moons, gaze down at him. I feel them move as one and go inside. I am alone.
I feel a dam break in my chest, a fire in my throat; I collapse to the ground and I sob. The sorrow of all of these years comes upon me, my mother, my father, my sisters. Unstoppable, it is more than my body can hold. I place my hands in the dirt, gasping for air. It feels as if my rib cage will crack open with the violence of my despair. And at the same time, a great wave rushes through me. I release myself to it.
After a time, I become still and sense a strange clarity in the air. Joseph has been kneeling close to me since I fell. When I meet his eyes, he looks at me with gentleness, and no pity. There is no glint of humor or superiority in his eyes. I try to look away, but he takes my hand in his, holding me in his gaze. Something within me breaks into blossom.
* * *
At dinner, the clink of the silverware and the glint of the candlelight on our glasses pull my attention. They sing out with an unusual brightness. Joseph requested a simple chicken soup for his potential last meal. I sip the broth, and I can taste the whole garden that went into it: rosemary, thyme, onion, bay. My sisters are eating, too. I look at them, eleven pallid faces, eyes ringed in shadow. Memories float up, lucid and clear. Cora’s mauve gown used to match her lips, and now they are pale and faded as dead rose petals. Isabelle’s violet ribbons used to set off the light in her hazel eyes, but now they are dull as tree bark. I feel the blackness of their lethal apathy around me like a dark, warm cave. Joseph catches my eye across the table.
Somewhere within me, a lamp lights. It is as if I’ve had dark wings pressed to my eyes all this time, and they have finally flow free. I look at my sisters, and for the first time in years, I see them.
* * *
I stand at the apothecary cabinet and watch my sisters shuffle about in our room in their little white caps, pretending to get ready for bed. Joseph leans in the doorway of the antechamber surveying the scene, a wry softness in his eyes. He looks at me, then draws the curtain between the rooms and is out of my sight. I’ve already prepared the sleeping draught; I did it this morning. Dark wine spiked with belladonna and valerian. It sits there before me, waiting.
Marie braids Violet’s hair. Jane and Isabelle argue silently over a pair of seafoam slippers with frayed ribbons. Their names all come back to me, glowing with familiarity. Would they recognize themselves, if I called them out? The muddy dread and hopelessness we have lived and breathed for so long, I feel it start to separate into distinct sensations, distinct sources. I can feel Violet’s dreaminess, Jane’s pride. Isabelle’s deep, deep sadness, Marie’s passion. A rainbow of unique feelings, muted, but there. I want to see those colors bloom on their own.
I feel their attention on me. I feel the dull pull towards the underground, towards the gilded woods, towards our princes. They had known our dreams and had given them to us. They had absorbed our light and reflected it back at us. But a dream is only a shadow of what can be. It was time.
I slowly pour the wine, take the glass in my hand and cross the room. I feel my sisters’ attention around me like a garment. I draw the curtain and Joseph is there, seated by the window and the vase of narcissus. We do not speak. The glass trembles in my hand. Behind the curtain, my sisters murmur and I feel them waiting for the rush of conquest. He crosses his arms and tilts his head to the side, and I laugh. He said he could help us. How exactly is he going to do that? I look into his eyes, feel my feet firm on the ground, and I feel a thousand times more alive, more myself, than I ever have in the mirror of my prince’s eyes. What color were his eyes again? I realize that I don’t care. And I don’t care how Joseph plans to help us. I just know that he will. I lean forward and kiss him, and the room feels as if it’s been lit with a thousand candles. He raises his eyebrows at me and looks at the drink in my hand, then back at me. Holding his gaze, I tip the glass over the vase of narcissus. The wine pours red over its snowy petals, and everything begins.
– –
Amanda Zapp is an Austin-born writer, artist, and educator.