Page 18 of How To Survive This Fairytale
But the names of these maidens, fair of face and heart—their names matter.
Their names form an invisible chain you carry around your neck.
14.
FORGET EACH SCREAM, EACH DYING WORD.
“No!”
“Please, don’t?—”
“Who are you?”
“What have I done?”
“Help, someone, please?—”
“But I love the queen, I am loyal to the queen.”
“Let me go!”
“I am armed, I know how to?—”
“Help!”
“Help!”
“Mother!”
“Please, no?—”
“Fuck you, and fuck your queen.”
15.
REWARD FRIEND.
Friend,who follows you into the woods.To each village.To each quaint cottage, each little mill, each cobbler’s shop, each farmer’s field.Friend, who tracks each maiden’s scent.Who gives chase when the maiden runs.Who growls and barks her into a corner.
“Good dog,” you say, scratching between her ears while she pants in pleasure.“The best dog.”
16.
TELL HER STORIES.
“If I had my way, Friend,”you whisper, on your bedroom floor, wrapped up in quilts, “you’d be a proper lapdog.You’d have nothing to do but look out the window and huff at squirrels.You’d never work.And if you had to, your work wouldn’t be…”
To say it, even to your dog, is treason.
So she stops you from saying it with her sloppy tongue against your cheek.
(And how can you know—how can you possibly know—that in telling her stories, you are giving her ideas?)
17.
WASH YOUR HANDS.
Look,your hands are clean.They are clean.Keep telling yourself your hands are clean.You cannot hold the newborn princess with bloody hands, the newborn princess namedSnow White.You have seen what blood looks like on snow; you will not do this to her.Your hands must be clean.Your hands are clean.They are clean.When you hold the young princess Snow White for the first time, just days after her birth, your hands are raw from scrubbing (like a washerwoman’s hands), but you are certain you cannot dirty her.You are certain of this until you see her lips—her lips, as red as the blood you’ve spilled, as red as the blood pumped by the hearts her mother eats.You congratulate the queen.You hand the child back to her nursemaids.The ruined child.The child marked by blood, before she was even conceived, because ofyou.