Cursed Bunny(57)

The princess nodded. “I know. But I will live life fully until my very moment of death.”

The man of the golden ship said, “I cannot give the princess the life of mortals, but I can still promise you a peace and eternity that they do not know.”

The princess smiled. She nodded.

The man’s empty left sleeve began to move. The princess felt a cool and soft breeze brush against her right cheek.

The gears of the golden ship began to creak and turn. As the ship changed course, the teeth of its gears shattered the sunlight into shimmering sparks. With the sun behind it, the golden ship began to slowly cross the desert sky toward the princess’s home, the land of the grassy plains.





Reunion


This love story is for you.

No one asked us, when we weren’t famous

Whether we wanted to live or not

I expected so many things

But didn’t know what I wanted …

I was sitting on the southern side of the plaza. Nursing a mug of cheap mulled wine, the kind they sell everywhere on the streets in the winter. Mulled wine is a European winter drink made of red wine that’s simmered for a long time with spices like cinnamon and cloves. The alcohol evaporates somewhat in the heat, but it’s not entirely boiled away so there’s just enough left over to get drunk on. Which was why sipping this hot beverage in freezing cold weather was making my head spin a little.

“Czy kogo? szukasz?” Are you looking for someone?

I turned my head. He smiled at me.

He opened his arms. I stood up. We embraced. He further greeted me with a kiss on each cheek. Awkwardly, I reciprocated. No matter how glad I was to see someone, greeting with kisses still felt strange to me.

“Mog??” May I? He indicated the seat next to me.

I smiled and nodded.

“Wiedzia?em, ?e b?dziesz,” he said. “Czeka?em na Ciebie.” I knew you would come. I’ve been waiting for you.

*

A long time ago, I met him in the plaza for the first time. Poland’s summers are hot and dry—I was holding a cold drink in one hand and sitting in the shade. My life was making me anxious. I wanted to escape from it, for just a little while at least.

The plaza was full of people but the voices that drifted toward me were mostly speaking English or German rather than Polish. The city was a tourist town. Nine out of ten people sitting under the statue in the center of the city plaza were from abroad. I was one of these foreigners, and like other foreigners, I was sitting by the plaza’s statue at an outdoor café, staring at the sunlight heating up the paving stones.

Then I saw the old man.

I didn’t spot anything different about him at first. Again, there were many people in the plaza, and the countless foreigners were taking pictures, drinking beer, talking on phones, talking to each other. Living in the moment, so to speak. There were people moving slowly, people just standing around, and people moving about in a hurry. There were people with dogs and people with children. It wouldn’t have been easy spotting someone doing something strange in that crowd.

But the main reason I was paying attention to the old man was because for one thing, he was walking with a very pronounced limp. Another reason was that despite his limp, he moved with surprising agility.

The third reason I kept watching the old man was because he was only walking on one side. I need to explain this a little more.

The plaza was roughly the shape of a square, with a statue of a nineteenth-century Romantic poet who was considered a treasure of the nation placed in the middle. The reason it was “roughly” a square shape was because while the plaza had roads on all sides, there were also little alleys radiating from the center. A typical European city plaza, with the northern side—the side the poet’s statue faced—lined with souvenir shops, and to the west, a little away from the poet statue, a clock tower, and to the east and south of the plaza, outdoor cafés, pubs, and restaurants. I was sitting with my back to the poet statue, looking south.

The old man appeared on my left and walked toward my right. Limping at a surprisingly rapid speed, he crossed the main road and disappeared into an alley. Then just five minutes later, he reappeared to my left at exactly where he had first come from and walked to the right. Swiftly limping all the way, he moved in a straight line to cross the main street on the right and disappeared once more into an alley. And again, he reappeared to my left not five minutes after. With his mouth firmly shut, slightly biting down on his bottom lip, and his eyes opened wide, his face frozen into a desperate expression, he diligently moved his uncomfortable leg to walk, right before my eyes, from the plaza’s east to west in a straight line.

The plaza was wide. It took about fifteen to twenty minutes for the old man to traverse the southern side of the plaza on his bad leg with his wobbling walk. Even if he had taken a shortcut that I didn’t know about, it should’ve taken him at least twenty minutes to circle back to the square if it had taken him twenty minutes to get to the alley. But the old man would disappear and reappear barely five minutes later in the exact same spot. And limp the same distance at a fearsome speed. In a single direction, over and over again.

“Czy Ty te? go widzisz?” You can see him, too?

Startled, I turned my head. The man, who stood with the sun to his back, looked like a giant from where I sat.

“Mog??” May I?