i.
I sleep with a salamander on my pillow, the Queen said as she stared out the window at nothing in particular. It licks up the tears that fall as I weep at night. One day it will die from all the bitter sorrow it has drunk, but until then it will continue to eat my tears, that I may not drown in them as I sleep. A tear rolled down her cheek. So quickly that I thought I might have been dreaming, a lizard ran up her shoulder and shot out its little pink tongue and touched it to the tear. The Queen smiled sadly and caressed the lizard. It is my dearest companion, but for my cause it dies a little more each day. Another tear fell, and another, and the salamander drank them all. Just as I die a little more each day, without my King beside me.
ii.
Her friends would later remark that when she heard the news, she had gone very white - which was to be expected - but then she repeated the names of those who were lost over and over again, as if to be sure she had gotten their names right. My brothers? she asked, her face bloodless. My sister? The professor…and Aunt Polly? These? And then she asked the strangest question of all, to nobody at all - but, she asked, what about me?
The next day she rushed back to the old professor’s house - only a cottage, now, after he had lost his fortune. She broke in through an unlatched window, found the wardrobe in the bedroom. She crawled in, leaving the door open just a crack; her chest began to heave in dry sobs as she remembered her sister’s voice, young and full of childish enthusiasm - “Don’t shut the door all the way, Susan, it’s silly to shut yourself in a wardrobe.” But the back of the wardrobe was a solid wall of wood, and no matter how she pounded the wall, and wept, and shouted, and begged, it remained nothing more than a panel of wood - unyielding, unmoving, unforgiving. And after that there was nothing for it but to take the train back for the funerals, although all the way back she wished hard through her endless tears that she, too, would be taken in a train crash.
But it did not happen.
iii.
The heady rush of the first flush of love is quickly forgotten as a couple settles into being with each other. They become familiar with each other - too familiar, perhaps, isn’t the saying that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? And the days pass quickly, and the number of them that stretch between now and then can only grow larger. Soon the fire and the passion of the first days is only a memory, and then only a memory of a memory, until one morning you wake up and look at your lover’s face, twisted in sleep. That’s when you wonder what you first loved about him, because you can’t even remember why.
iv.
Everyone remembers Cinders because she got the prince. Nobody remembers me. My chin is too strong for my face, perhaps, and freckles are dusted over my nose, but I was never called ugly until Cindy wrote the history books. Too uppity to do some chores, and then scolded for it and made to do her part, so she weaves some sob story about being the poor little abused child. Utter rubbish. What did she do to get her prince? Nothing she did herself. Fairy godmother waved her wand, handed everything to her on a silver platter. Blister on her toe from running home barefoot? Well, whoop-de-doo.
I cut off my heel for that prince.
And now my dancing days are over, and I hobble from door to door begging for my bread. Sometimes I see her pass by in that golden carriage, but she’s too grand to wave to us poor folk. Like she can’t remember where she came from! Shows what some people are like.
But I remember that prince, and that ball. I remember his smile. That smile.
Well - that’s all I want before I die, really. A chance to see him smile at me one more time. Just once.
v.
Then he wakes up and smiles and tugs you down to kiss you, his morning breath strong enough to wilt apples. And your heart fills with tired, reluctant love, and you think, this is why.
(But you hope, and you pray, that every morning you’ll be able to remember why you love him, because you’re stuck till death do you part, anyway.)
