Page 58 of How To Survive This Fairytale

He wonders where you are.If you are well.If you are happy.If you are hurt.If you have gone home, or if you have decided to start anew elsewhere.You asked him to visit you, just once, and he said changing his body would not change his heart.But his hearthaschanged.Even though it sits within his chest, his heart feels like it is in your hands, as if you carved it out of him and took it with you when you left.

The next morning, he swallows a fortnight’s worth of the potion, and takes to the sky.That word,belonging, comes to him again.

Yes, he will always be longing for you, until you are together again.

* * *

After the first snow, you open the front door, and there he is.

“Hi,” he says.

And you know how it goes from there: he curls his man’s body around you, kisses your mouth, wipes your tears.

“There’s no point to this life without you,” he says, kissing you harder.“Forgive me.I didn’t know how happy I was, being neither one thing nor the other.I didn’t know I could have both lives.”He takes your face in his hands and presses his forehead to yours.“I was happy to be a swan again.Deliriously happy.For a long time.And then the happiness waned, because what I wanted, more than the water, was you.The sky and the water, they can’t love me back.I was on the lake, alone, and it struck me… My love for them goes nowhere; my love for you taught me just how many shapes a man can be.I’m only sorry I didn’t see it sooner.Youare my True Love, Hans.Only you.”

And then he says the words you’ve said a thousand times:

“I don’t want our story to end this way.Will you let me try again?”

This is not a story in which you say no to him.

Fifty-One

Watchingyour husband preen his feathers.Watching your husband get dirty in his garden, your garden.Watching your husband move into your house, which he helped build, which makes it your house, together.Watching Red take down her first elk.Watching Granny slow down a little more, a little more, a little more.Watching Gertrude rule a kingdom with an even hand.Watching Gertrude do what she was always meant to do, with no curse or king to clip her wings.Watching generations of Petunias steal from your garden.Watching your husband take to the sky.Watching him emerge from the water, a man, coming toward you.Always coming toward you.

Fifty-Two

You don’t makethe journey as often as you’d thought you would.The first two potion bottles last a year and a half.The second pair of bottles lasts closer to two years.The third set lasts just about the same amount of time.

The journey back to the Fair Queen’s land is faster on the wing, but you always go with him.Always.Sometimes he leaves before you, and you meet somewhere halfway, so you aren’t away from home as long.Other times, you go the whole way together, every step of it.It reminds you of your honeymoon.Why wouldn’t you go?

Fifty-Three

One morning,a bear ambles out of the woods and into your garden.Before you can usher Cyrus inside, the bear becomes a man—not a man, but a prince, dressed in royal regalia.He offers you a folded piece of parchment bearing an unfamiliar seal of a stag.

“Queen Snow White has pardoned you,” he says.

You take the letter.Open it.Your throat bobs as you read it.

“The Fair Queen has died,” says the bear-turned-prince.“And with her, whatever foul magic compelled your hand.You are free now.”

But wait, you nearly say.Then you think of Gertrude’s husband, and his death from a broken heart.Sometimes the story that must be told and the story of what happened are not the same.You expect Snow White understands that by now.The story you were a part of was always hers.

The moment you take the pardon, it feels again like this story is finally over.

But there’s still a little bit more to do.

Fifty-Four

The next timeCyrus needs his potion, you venture not into the Fair Queen’s lands, but Snow White’s.The world does not seem to have noticed the change, but the people seem a little less burdened.You would like to see her.Perhaps, as a prince, you could arrange that.But in the end, you think it’s better if you don’t.

* * *

Before heading home, you spend a few days with him at the lake where you first met.At night, instead of sleeping in the hovel, you sleep under the stars, with his swan body balanced on your arm, his long neck curled against your chest.

* * *

When the potion wears off, you say, “I need you human for a few days.”