Page 52 of How To Survive This Fairytale

“I don’t know,” he says.“Just feels wrong to do nothing.”

* * *

That night, the little pot gives you an apple, with bright red skin that crunches perfectly under your teeth and juice so deliciously tart it squeezes your eyes shut.You hadn’t thought you wanted an apple, and yet an apple you were given, and an apple was just the thing.

“Do you know, when we first met,” says Cyrus, “or rather—when we met thesecondtime, when you came to the cottage… You looked hollow, Hans.Like someone had opened you up and taken everything out.”

It doesn’t surprise you to hear that.It doesn’t surprise you that he noticed, either.

“I like seeing you… like this.I don’t know how to say it.Little by little, you filled yourself back up.You’ve changed.For the better, I think.”

Six seeds lay waiting in the core of the apple.Five of them you plant while Cyrus sleeps, but the sixth seed—the sixth seed you wrap in a scrap of cloth and tuck deep into the saddlebag.The sixth seed, like the sixth swan, is yours.The sixth seed, unlike the sixth swan, is something you can keep.

* * *

The snow comes early and the snow slows you down.

* * *

You hold him in the night while he shivers.A fire and all of the blankets are barely enough.He asks for the wolf pelt even though he hates it.Its added warmth sears into both your bones as you drape it across your bodies.

“We’ll stay a while in the next village,” you promise.The wind screeches beyond the tent.“I’m sorry.We should have stopped in the last one.”

“My fault,” he says, teeth knocking.“I’m the one who wanted to press on.”

You bury your face against his neck.“Hot tea?”

The little pot cooks hot meals, as many as you ask for.If you can just get through tonight.If you can just make it through this squall.If you can just make it to the next village, and rest until merciful winter relents.If, if, if.

“Cook, little pot,” he says, “cook.”

* * *

“Going to freeze my feathers off,” says Cyrus, dismounting his horse.You dismount as well and pay the inn’s stablehand to see them cared for overnight.The snow is waist-high, thick and heavy, walling in the path to the inn’s door.Inside, heat welcomes you, and next, a bed welcomes you, and next, Cyrus’s body welcomes you, arm around your shoulders, legs around your waist, both of you moving with the rhythmic ease of straw spinning into gold.

“Still frozen?”you ask, snatching his ear between your teeth and sighing.

“A bit,” he says.“Got an idea, though.”

He rolls you over onto your back, his hand on your broad chest, his hips rolling down against your body.With one hand, you encircle his delicate wrist.

With the other, you sink your fingers into his feathers, deepening your touch until you find skin to rub against.You’d be a sky for him if you could.You’d be a lake.If you could clap your hands and turn your fingers into minnows, your palms into mussels, every strand of hair into eelgrass, you would.You’d make your body into a broad expanse for him to swim across.You’d be his home, if he let you.You’d be his True Love if only things weren’t what they are.

* * *

A few weeks later, in another village, he lobs a snowball at the back of your head.It explodes into powder down the back of your shirt.Seeing the look on your face, he takes off running, nearly trips on a patch of ice—but you catch him, lift him up, spin him around, and heave him over your shoulder.He cackles, even as you toss him into a snow bank, where the imprint of his wing would make anyone believe in angels.

* * *

Come spring, you and Cyrus find yourselves once again in the woods, riding down a muddy, well-trod path.Puddles form in the tracks of previous travelers and their horses.Rain drips from the leaves and rolls right off Cyrus’s wing.

Beneath the cover of a copse of birches lay a donkey.No, not a donkey—a girl, sleeping in the midafternoon shade, wrapped up in a donkey’s skin the way you and Cyrus bundle yourselves in the wolf pelt.Cyrus looks at you and you look back at Cyrus.

“Not our story,” you say.“We ought to keep going.”

“A child?In the woods?She’ll freeze.”

“Looks warm enough to me.”