Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(70)

We have an audience up there. Blackbirds, starlings, jays, sparrows, falcons, and a variety of owls jostle together for space, having set aside their differences.

“Who are you?”

“That’s a rude greeting for a guest.” The hag’s voice has a peculiar melody, rising and falling in the wrong places.

“Guest implies an invitation.”

“I’m here at your request. I’m sick of you asking.”

“Request? I’ve never seen you before. I’ll have you thrown off for trespassing.”

“You’ve been hard to ignore. You’re crying out with want.”

“I want for nothing.”

“Liar. The ache’s consuming you.”

“There’s nothing you can give me.”

“Not even motherhood?”

“You can’t give me that.”

“Can’t I?” Then a sly smile crosses her face. “You’ve tried the usual way?”

“It didn’t work.”

“Perhaps you didn’t try hard enough.”

I have, not lacking in partners and willing potential fathers.

“I have fibroids and severe endometriosis.” I sound bitter. My pelvis contains a tangled mess of lumps and adherences that renders ? 220 ?

? Priya Sharma ?

my reproductive tract defunct. I’m still outraged by my body’s betrayal. It’s failed in the most basic of female functions.

“Can’t the quacks help?”

“What do you think?”

My specialist had stressed that my conditions were benign but I couldn’t see the benevolence in what’s caused me so much pain and robbed me of a child. My own salvaged eggs, fertilized and implanted, failed to take as if they’d fallen on stony ground.

“Adoption?”

I shake my head.

The hag must be able to see with those white eyes. She counts something on her fingers and calculation done says, “I’ll help you, but there’ll be pain.”

“Childbirth?” I ask hopefully.

“Much worse. Children drag you down and break your heart.”

“No,” I refute her jaundiced view of parenthood, “they lift you up and give you love.”

“A survival trick of the young and vulnerable,” the hag talks over me.

“You’ll love them and it’ll kill you when they don’t need you anymore.”

“I’m strong. I’ll take that pain.”

“There’ll be sacrifice. Your dreams will be subject to their needs.”

“I’ve already achieved all I wanted to and more.” Except this.

“Such success for one so young, but everyone looks at you as if you are unnatural. Not having children is the price you’ve paid for having a man’s ambition.”

This rankles.

“I’m every inch a woman.”

“Of course you are,” she tries to soothe me. “I just want you to think this through. Children demand everything, even your name.

You’ll be mother first and last.”

“And I’ll be glad of it. I’ll pay whatever it takes. I have the means.”

“You will, never fear. There’s also the thorny issue of expectation.

You must love her for who she is, not who you want her to be.”

“She?” I’m already enamored of the notion.

? 221 ?

? Egg ?

“A daughter.”

“What will she cost me?”

“We’ll negotiate later.”

“I don’t do business that way.”

“I won’t ask for anything you can’t give.”

A reckless trade. I consider the depth of my desire.

“How?”

The hag shifts on her nest, reaches under her and pulls something out. She offers it to me in her scrawny, reptilian hand. I take the egg.

It’s warm.

She leans over me.

“May I be godmother?”

“Is that part of the payment?”

“No,” she sniffs, sounding hurt, “I just thought it would be nice.”

“No child of mine will be baptized.” I want to laugh. I’m clutching an oversized egg, having accepted help from a mad squatter, and am rejecting religion as a fiction.

“That’s probably wise, all things considered. Now, this is what you must do.”