Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(58)

Once there was a little girl whose mother hated her. The mother was not a bad woman, but she had not wanted a child, and so she put her daughter into a secret prison and pretended she did not exist. The father was deceived, for he and the woman parted long before he would have learned she was to have a child. Soon after they separated, the mother’s love for him languished and died. As for her daughter, the mother felt nothing toward her but the deepest loathing.

The little girl, on the contrary, loved her mother very much, because she was born to love, and in her prison she knew no one else. Lupine, as she was called, had not even a kitten or a cricket to love, not even a doll to play with. The wind from the mountains blew seeds into her lonely tower, and she nourished these into plants: flowers and downy herbs.

When her mother brought food and water, Lupine always lavished kisses on her; however, these only strengthened the woman’s hatred of her beautiful child. “She is young and has her whole life ahead of her. My life is passing by, faster and faster, and soon I will be dead,”

the mother thought. To fill Lupine’s years with misery was the object of her private studies, and one day she found an answer that would serve.

She gave it to Lupine as medicine, but it was really a potion containing an evil spell. Lupine suspected nothing, but complained ? 185 ?

? Lupine ?

bitterly of its awful taste. Then she coughed, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell to the floor as if dead.

The mother laughed with delight and eagerly awaited Lupine’s return to wakefulness. When the daughter’s eyes opened she no longer wore her usual sweet smile; instead, her face was ugly with disdain. The purpose of the potion’s spell was to make her act hatefully toward those she loved and lovingly toward those she hated.

Lupine reached up to throttle her mother’s neck.

The woman easily eluded her and ran gleefully down the prison’s stairs and out of the waste with which it was surrounded. She led Lupine into the thick of civilization, where her daughter would suffer the most.

So this little girl with eyes like stars and hair like the night’s soft breezes grew up the plaything of bullies and the despised enemy of everyone she thought fine and fair. No one understood her inhuman passions, and she was most often left alone—except by her tormentors.

Soon after entering maidenhood, Lupine fell in love with a superior lad. Golden as the sun when it is closest to the earth, he had an unusual and endearing skill: finding things no one else knew they should look for. By now Lupine comprehended her enchantment, and so she fought every least stirring of feeling for him. But to no avail, for she found herself telling horrible lies about him, insulting his sister to her face, and spitting on his shoes whenever they met.

Kyrie, her love, being no ordinary boy, met all her stings with tenderness. This only made things worse.

One night she woke from sleepwalking under his open window, a long, sharp knife glittering in each hand. Overcome with horror, she fled back to the wilderness before her mother or anyone else could stop her.

She ran until she could only walk, and she walked until she could only stumble, and she stumbled until she could only crawl, and she crawled until she could go no farther. She had come to the top of a tall mountain. She lay so still that the vultures thought she was dead ? 186 ?

? Nisi Shawl ?

and came to feed on her, but a fierce little bird scared them away.

By and by, Lupine recovered from her exhaustion and opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a cunning cup fashioned of leaves and filled with clear water. She drank it all and sat up. The little bird had put away its fierceness and perched on her knees, chirruping at her. She was so forlorn, she decided to confide in the beast. “Oh, Piece-of-the-Sky, if only you could tell me how to end all my sorrows,” she said.

“With pleasure,” the little bird replied. “I will consider it payment for your naming of me.”

“You—you talk!” said Lupine, naturally amazed at this.

“Not exactly. But because of the water I gave you to drink you understand my singing. For only a short while, however, so let us waste no time.

“You need not tell me your troubles, for I have been watching you. The solution to them is simple. You must chain yourself to those rocks there—” the bird gestured with a wing “—the Rocks of Solitude, so you can do no harm to anyone. Throw the key down in the dust. I will retrieve it. Then you must wait till I return with your swain, whose kiss will release you from the spell of your mother’s potion.”