King Peridor stepped out of the dream and closed the door behind him.
A thief he was, stealing from his own daughter’s mind. He ought to feel ashamed, but he didn’t. His parents, after all, had done the same to him.
He left her room and walked out into the garden. Everything stood silent, awaiting sunrise. This seemed like a good spot. He unbuttoned his coat pocket and removed his prize, a winged tiger six inches from snout to tail tip. “Fly!” he said, tossing the figurine into the air.
Someday she’ll understand, he thought as he watched the beast expand, snarl, then turn and flap away beyond the walls, never to return.
Lizette woke feeling as if she had somehow misplaced something of great value. At breakfast she popped grapes between her teeth and got scolded, just like usual. She ate too much bread and jam and not enough eggs and got scolded for that as well. But strangely these transgressions failed to fill her with the usual glee.
Her mother started to ask her what she’d dreamed, but her father interrupted. A look passed between them. Lizette sensed that a story was being told, but not to her. It started, like all stories, with ‘once upon a time.’ But Lizette suspected there would never be a ‘happily ever after.’
“You could have taken anything!” the queen hissed when they were alone. “The mermaid, the teapot, the raven knight.”
“No,” he said, “I couldn’t. The contract is clear. I had to honor it.”
He had told her the story long ago. She had listened, looking into his eyes. And yet she had still agreed to marry him. Did that make her a monster?
Every morning Lizette shared her dreams over the breakfast table, and the queen understood that one of them would be taken from her. But had she known it would be the one her daughter loved best?
Yes, if the truth were told, she had. It was in the contract.
Lizette found her mother in the sewing room. Questions roiled inside her. Why had her nights turned empty? Was it something she had done? Would her dreams ever come back?
“Mother?” she began.
“Yes, dear?”
But she couldn’t ask. An invisible line stood between them, an unraveled thread, never to be stitched together again. So another question came out instead.
“Can I have a new dress for the winter ball? My old ones are all so shabby.”
These are the kinds of conversations that passed between them, not a word about dreams, not that day or the next, nor that year, nor the year after.
“So,” said a voice, “you are to be married.”
“Am I?” said the woman. She looked around to see who had spoken and spotted through the trees a knight in armor, half hidden in shadow.
“That’s the rumor,” he said, his voice rough but not unkind.
Was she in fact getting married? She thought it over. It sounded right and yet she couldn’t picture the groom.
The figure stepped closer. He had the head of a bird with dark feathers and dark beak, and she recognized him at once, though she hadn’t seen him in many years. “Knight of Ravens!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding all this time?”
He ignored her question, his dark eyes searching hers. “I always thought,” he said, “that you might marry me.”
His name was Harmen. Standing there, holding his hand as they said their vows, Lizette felt warm and happy all over. But as they kissed, she found her mind wandering. A tide seemed to pull her in a different direction.
That night, hungrily, he undressed her. But she pushed him away.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m just tired,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
Anger flashed across his face, but he let it go.
And truly she was tired. More tired than she could ever remember. She turned from him and closed her eyes. Almost at once, she heard the lap of waves.
The woman walked along the path until she came to the lagoon. Waves washed the rocks. Washing, always washing. Weren’t they clean by now?
A head appeared above the water, hair as dark as the depths, eyes bright. The woman waded in up to her knees. “Didn’t we used to play together?” she asked.
The mermaid slipped closer and took her hands, drawing her in. “Yes, we did. But we were younger then.”
They swam out to where the water was calm. “There’s something I need to tell you,” said the mermaid, but the woman knew what it was without needing to hear the words. She ran a hand through that dark hair, then kissed the mermaid like she’d never kissed anyone before or ever would again, the salt of her lips tasting as sweet to her as raw honey.
After her son’s sixth birthday, her father, King Peridor, summoned Lizette to his library. They sat in armchairs, surrounded by ancient tomes. Around his neck he wore a key on a silver chain.
“I should have told you sooner,” he said.
“What?”
“The Sultana of Dreams has many children,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Some are kind, but some are gruesome nightmares. An ancestor of ours slew one of these.”
Lizette clutched the armrests of her chair. This was the tale she had needed to hear.
Slowly, the king removed the chain and placed it in her hands. “For that crime we must pay a high price, every generation.”
“I sat by my boy’s bedside, key in hand,” she said, “but I couldn’t open that door.”
“The sultana will not easily forgive such a transgression,” said the Knight of Ravens.
“I know,” answered the woman, “and that’s why I have to travel to the alcázar and renegotiate our contract.”
“It is a long way.”
“Yes,” she said, “but I have to go.”
The knight gazed at her with his dark raven eyes. “Fortunately,” he said, “you need not go alone.”
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