Page 47 of How To Survive This Fairytale
“We can’t go back,” she says.“Our beginning is already written in stone.Some of the stories we were thrown into—they’ve already ended.I broke a curse, you disobeyed a queen, you saved a girl from inside a wolf.They’re finished.Some endings exist before the story even starts.”
She tugs on you so you stop walking and face her.
“Other endings… I think other endings can change.I think other endings depend on us.Maybe thebestendings depend on usto inventthem.”
Thirty-Five
Red wants safety.
Granny wants comfort.
Gertrude has power.
You’re working on peace.
As for Cyrus—there’s only one thing he wants.Why can’t he have it?
Thirty-Six
“Petunia, Iswear!”
Cyrus huffs and tosses his wing out in surrender.Carrying a prized potato in her mouth, Petunia struts back toward her burrow.
“This ismy garden, madam,” Cyrus calls after her.“Or do I simply till the land for you like a serf?”
Sweat darkens the back of his shirt.The wind tousles his bird’s-nest-mess of hair.With a huff, he turns back to his plants, and your heart aches to touch him.All you want is to step up behind him, wrap your arms around him, and squeeze him tight, damn the sweat and the dirt.
What you want, of course, is not possible.
But you want to remember this.Him, like this.Working with the earth.Never harming even his most deserving adversary.Kneeling into a slant of light.The trees leaning toward sleep.This is the moment before it all changes.This is the moment before you know, for certain, that you will lose him.
“Hi,” you say.
He whips his head around, startled by the sound of your voice.
And though it comes slowly, itdoescome: that smile.
“Hello stranger,” he says.“Come to defend my honor from the local vermin?”
“A battle I’m afraid I can’t win.”You step carefully through his garden, as you’ve done so many times before.He rises to his feet to meet you.
“Come to help, then?”he asks.
You run your tongue along your lower lip.His smile falters at your silence.
“I need to talk to you,” you say.
“Words I love to hear.”He reaches for his wing for comfort, then catches himself, and puts his hand on his hip instead.“Not about something nice, I suppose.”
“Yes, actually,” you say.“Maybe.Ihopeit’s nice.Private, though.”
Confusion pulls at his mouth, buthopefully niceseems better than whatever he expected.A little stiff, a little formal, he leads you into the cottage.
Inside, you don’t know where to begin.
You could begin in so many places.
“When I was little, I met a witch,” you say.“She wanted to eat me.”