Page 53 of Fierce

She looked at me for another long moment, seemed to make up her mind, and finally began to speak. Haltingly at first, as if she expected me to break in and tell her it was enough, to get to the point. But as she went on, staring into the crackling flames of the fireplace, her voice took on a dreamy quality, a faint singsong that settled into place somewhere deep within me. Familiar, and new. The sound of the voice I wanted to hear most, reciting a favorite legend.

“Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a king who had twelve children. Eleven sons and one daughter, his youngest child. His wife died—probably from having twelve children—and he married again. The new stepmother was a witch, because they always are, and she was jealous of the children, and of the king’s love for them, especially his love for his daughter. So she enchanted them. The sons, she turned to birds. At the setting of the sun, they were men. But when the first rays of day broke over the horizon, they became wild swans. And as for the daughter? The queen tried to kill her, but Elisa—the princess—was so good that the enchantment didn’t work. See, goodness again. But this time, it works for me. You’ll see why.”

“So she couldn’t kill her,” I prompted.

“No. Instead, she banished her, and Elisa wandered in the forest until her brothers, who’d been searching everywhere, finally found her. They spent all night in their man-form weaving a net for her, and when day broke, they flew with her across the sea to safety, each holding an edge of the net in his beak, barely managing to land on an island at sunset before they turned to men again. Then flying and flying again, even when they were so tired, even when they wanted to quit, in order to rescue their little sister. And when they reached a new kingdom where she’d be safe at last, they set her down. That’s where that new kingdom’s king found her.”

“So that’s the story,” I said. “Not bad.”

“No.” She took another sip of the fragrant Sauvignon Blanc, the best the Marlborough Sounds had to offer. “That’s the beginning. The king took her to live at his castle, but she couldn’t forget her brothers, or stop wanting to help them. And when an old woman told her she could turn her brothers into men again if she gathered stinging nettles from the churchyard at midnight, beat them into fiber, and knit shirts of them, she knew what she had to do. But there was a catch, of course. If she spoke a single word before the shirts were done, the magic would fail, and her brothers would be swans forever.”

“But she did it anyway, I’m guessing.”

“Of course she did. Even when the nettles stung and burned her hands, even when she longed to speak, to explain, and couldn’t. Even when she knew her life might be forfeit, she held fast. Because the king was worried by her silence and her nighttime wanderings, and when his archbishop told him that she was a sorceress, and she refused to say a word to defend herself…the king didn’t defend her.”

She took another sip of wine, a final bite of fish, but she was frowning now, lost in her tale. “So she ended up arrested, put on trial for witchcraft, held in a dungeon, and sentenced to death. And all that time, she kept working, kept making her brothers’ shirts, refusing to give up on the idea of saving them. She was still knitting the final shirt, in fact, when she was carried into the courtyard to be burned as a witch. She was put on the pyre, still without saying a word, still holding to her dream, and that’s when the eleven swans swooped down around her. Her brothers, coming to rescue her once again. The people watching cried out that she must be innocent, because swans were a good omen, but the executioner held out the torch to light the fire. And she barely noticed. She only saw her brothers. With the last of her strength, she threw the shirts over the eleven of them, and they became men again.”

I’d lost my breath, carried away by Hope’s intensity, and she looked up at me, the blue-green eyes burning. “As her last act, she saved her brothers. And when she fainted from fear and exhaustion, her brothers had to tell the king her story. And as they spoke, the branches of the pyre turned to flowers. The king plucked a flower and handed it to Elisa, and the two of them were married. And this is the part that kills me. Her youngest brother—she hadn’t had time to finish the final sleeve of his shirt, and he was left with a single wing in place of an arm. A wing that would always remind them of her sacrifice and her love.”

“I can see why you like that one,” I said after a moment. “That’s worthy of being a Maori story, or of being your story. All about sacrifice and family and courage. About holding fast.”

“But do you see what’s wrong with it?” she asked.

“What? That he had a wing? No, I think that’s a good thing. There’s always a price to be paid.”

“No.” She was still looking at me, her gaze so steady. “No. That after she proved herself, after she saved her brothers and they saved her, the king married her. But before that? Where was his faith in her? Why would a woman marry a man who’d been willing to let her die? The thing between her and her brothers—that kind of love, I can believe in. That’s true love. Love that endures anything, will sacrifice anything to save the beloved person. Love that’s stronger even than self-preservation. But the other kind, the love at first sight thing, the enchantment thing? Not so much. It seems to me it can end as quickly as it begins, because there’s not enough there to build a life on, or to put your faith in. So I love the story, but I hate the ending. Except the wing. I love the wing.”

I was as knackered, suddenly, as if I’d had a session with Eugene on the heavy bag. “Yeh,” I said. “You’re right. He should’ve believed her.”

She smiled, and the mood shifted again. “But then there would have been no story, and no sacrifice, would there? Without the bitterness, without the pain, where would the sweetness and the pleasure come from?”

“It’s tied up together, eh.”

“Yes. It is. Just like I can love this day, because you wanted to do all this with me after it didn’t work between us before. Because you’ve been willing to try again.”

I wanted to tell her it was dangerous to open her heart like that to somebody like me, to lay herself so bare. But I didn’t, because I wanted to hear it, and to see it. I wanted to know that I was holding the living, beating heart of this girl. A girl who, I knew, would’ve kept silent, would’ve stung her hands, would’ve knitted those shirts no matter what it cost her.

“And there’s something I need to tell you,” she said slowly. “That I need to have the courage to say.”

“What?” I put out a hand and covered hers, because I couldn’t help it. We were both right. Fairy tales weren’t real, love wasn’t true, and it wasn’t forever. And still, I covered her hand with mine.

“That I don’t know what you want,” she said. “That I’m excited, but I’m scared, too. You keep…hinting. And there’s this thing that keeps coming up in my mind.”

“I’m listening,” I prompted when she didn’t continue.

“It’s that…” She was looking straight at me now. “I don’t want to be hurt. Not…sexually. I don’t think there’s anything sexy about pain, and it’s never been in my…my fantasies, the way some other things may have been. So if that’s what this is, if that’s what you want, then my answer is…” She took a deep breath and said it. “No.”

“Hope.” I traced the sweet curve of her jaw all the way down to her mouth. “It’s what I said. There’s nothing we’ll do that you don’t want. I won’t give you pain, because that’s not what you want.”

“But you want to be the…spider.” It was a whisper. A breath.

“Yeh.” The heat was there, just like that, the fire leaping high along with the lingering warmth. “I want to be the spider. I want to control you, but only because you enjoy being controlled. I want you to surrender, but only because it feels so good to let go. And because you trust me. It’s not about pain. It’s about control. And, yeh. It’s about discipline, too. The kind that feels good. The kind that gives us both pleasure.”

“I’m—” she began, and couldn’t go on. She was trembling, and I wanted everything from her, and I was through with waiting. But I had something I needed to say first, too. Something I should have said before, because she wasn’t going to like it. But maybe now, when she was softened, when we both wanted it so much, was the right time.

I reached into the breast pocket of my jacket and pulled out the piece of paper and a pen, and she dropped her eyes from mine and watched as I unfolded it.

“Um…” she said. “What…”

---