Your mother was beautiful.” His voice was regretful. “I’m sorry she’s dead.
I refused to love it. He was going to sell it too.
That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me.
Sun, don’t rise!
Lantern-shine, dim but kind – No starkness in darkness – Even I please the eye. Outside, wind and rain, Weather’s fitful wax and wane. Tomorrow’s sun will reveal What night conceals. All we lack, regret, know, Forgotten in lamp-oil glow.
We promised to be kind to each other, to be patient, to forgive each other’s faults, to be steadfast and true, and to keep joy in our love.
I’d never before been infatuated with someone living, someone real.
Rapid movement was a relief in the midst of so much feeling.
Everyone dies. You needn’t go on about it so.
You’re free. The curse is over, love.” Mandy was at my side, hugging me. “You rescued yourself when you rescued the prince. I’m that proud and glad, sweet, I could shout.
Fairy blood does not make you clumsy. That’s human.
If it had writing, I read it: cereal boxes, ads on the subway, billboards, highway signs. I.
I gathered them on my stomach and waited for sleep. But sleep was busy elsewhere.
The air is fresher here. Rock walls rise on either side of me. They must be the bowl of the volcano.
What would I hold on to up there? His great ears? What if I fell and pulled an ear off with me, or grabbed his silver pendant and swung from his neck like a bell clapper? “No, thank you.
Admat, don’t kill me! Don’t be wrathful. Don’t exist!
I assure you, we do not enjoy having so much fun.
I never saw a lad, page or prince, so eager to learn to do a thing right.
I can never stop thanking you. If I never stop, I never need to say farewell. A river rushes between us. You follow it north, I pursue it south. When I weep because I miss you, my tears will seep through your cavern. Your face is kind as a shawl in winter, or a diamond for a song. My family keeps an inn. You have a chamber in my heart. No rent is due. Farewell. Farewell.
I’d anticipated insults before they came. I’d avoided looking in actual mirrors, but I’d gazed constantly in the mirror in my mind and always hated what I showed myself. I looked again in the real mirror in front of me. Dignified. Dignified and grand. I closed my eyes and saw myself again. Milk-white face, blood-red lips. Dignified and grand.