Page 43 of How To Survive This Fairytale
“Let’s go.”
Thirty-Two
Afternoon sunlight scallops the water.All around the shore ancient trees and just-begun saplings gaze down at their reflections.At the opposite end of the lake, someone else’s boat sits on the muddy shore.A dragonfly whizzes by your nose, but once it disappears: silence.Stillness.
“When I was a swan,” says Cyrus, “and especially toward the end of those six years… Sometimes I just wanted tobite her.One sound and it would be over.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“For her sake,” he says.“For my brothers.You notice how gratefultheyare— didn’t even stick around for a week before they all ran off.Hardly even write.”
“Ididsay you were the only one with princely manners.”
He snorts.“And the only one who doesn’t want to be a prince.”
“Isthatwhy you live in a cottage in the woods instead of the palace?And here I thought you just liked the scenery.”
Cyrus takes his boots off.Socks, trousers, shirt.He lays his things on a nearby rock, then turns to you.He catches you looking at him and smiles.
“Are you coming in with me?”
“If you want me to.”
“I want you to.”
You let him go first.You watch him wade out until his thighs are steeped in sunlight, and for a moment, you can see him clearly as he was and wishes he could be again.Seeing how the light limns his feathers, you think:I’d give you back the sky if I could.
Of course, that means you’d lose him.Or at least, this version of him.
Luckily, that’s not in your power, which means he can’t leave you.He can never really be happy, but he can always be yours.
Stripping down, you join him in the cool water.Silt slips by under your feet.Little fish tickle your toes.
“I haven’t gone swimming since…” You want to saysince we were children, exceptyouwere a child, andhewas a swan.It feels wrong to highlight that difference now.Instead, you sink under the water and come back up shaking droplets out of your face.
“Watch out for snappers,” he warns.Then he takes off.With arm and wing, he has to figure out how to swim again.The arm is meant to cut through the water and pull him forward; the wing is meant to stay buoyant and keep him high on the surface.It’s not the same as it used to be.
But the choices are this:
It can be different than it used to be, or it can simply not happen at all.
Both choices hurt.It’s up to Cyrus to decide which hurt is more bearable.
You follow him through the lake, splashing and laughing and leaping on each other like the children you never got to be together.On your back, he wraps his legs around your waist, his arm around your clavicle, and as you carry him, he drags his wing across the lake’s surface.The water rushes right off of him, but he leaves a long, trailing ripple behind.Part of you wants to go diving for mussels.Part of you wants to be right where you are.
* * *
Climbing out of the water, Cyrus squeezes out his hair and sits down on a boulder to dry out in what remains of the late afternoon sun.
You follow him up the bank.“Are you glad you tried?”
That gives him pause.He sucks down a deep breath, and looks back toward the water, away from you, away from the rivulets dripping down your shoulders and disappearing in your chest hair.
“The questions are always simple,” he says, “but the answers are always hard.”
Moments pass.
Him, sitting on the rock.You, standing on the shore.