And So We Come to the End

Yes, truly, this is the end of our Cold fairytale-in-progress. Although like many, if not all fairytales, the end can signify a new beginning. That beginning might be assured – with the time-immortal words “And they lived happily ever after,” or it might be more ambiguous. What, we might wonder, happened to Hansel and Gretel after they escaped from the witch, who had planned to eat eat Hansel and keep Gretel as her personal slave? We know they returned home, even though their stepmother had abandoned them in the woods, leaving them at the mercy of hunger, the elements, and nefarious strangers. A famine in their region had made food scarce, and the evil stepmother hoped to convince her husband that his kids had gotten lost, thus leaving more food for her. Now there’s an evil fairytale villain for you!

In the end, Hansel and Gretel awaken in their beds, the morning after returning home, to the sounds of their father and stepmother arguing (no wonder!). So, maybe that’s not so happily ever after. Gretel is also left with the memory of having pushed an old witch into an oven and burning her to death – even if it was for the sake of her brother.

As for Romakaji, you’ll have to decide for yourselves whether you think she and Lionel lived happily ever after or not. I certainly did end the fairytale just as you all (most of you, anyway) wanted me to.

But, this is the Cold, after all. We do like to leave room for interpretation…

“Romakaji” Part 9

By Yours Truly

On the night of the lunar eclipse, the sky was as clear and deep as a sapphire. Romakaji gathered a simple dinner together for herself, Lionel, and Sybil, who had insisted on joining them. It included fresh apples, a bottle of wine, and a tart made from the mushrooms her friend had been gathering in the woods around their village. This batch, which Sybil had brought over the day before, was particularly pungent, and the fungi were a bright yellow the color of carnival mustard.

The three of them spread a blanket at the foot of the bridge that arched over Romakaji’s old pond. Lionel opened the bottle of wine, while Sybil cut the tart in crescents, and placed the pieces on festive little plates patterned with tiny stars. The nature witch looked up at the full moon and bit down on her lip.

“In a few minutes,” she said. “That moon will be as red as blood.”

Lionel poured them each a glass of claret. He took a long sniff of the slice of still-warm tart that Sybil had passed to him. “You said the mushroom symbolizes friendship in your family?”

Sybil nodded.

“So, before we begin our meal, and enjoy the eclipse, let’s drink to that.”

They lifted their glasses and did just so. The wine was warm and dry, and Sybil hummed with pleasure. “As for wine, that symbolizes a journey.”

Lionel smiled at Sybil and kissed Romakaji on the brow. “Bon voyage,” he said.

The tart came next, and they each placed a forkful in their mouths, washing it down with more wine. The claret and the mushroom tart came together beautifully, perfectly, vehemently. And the three went silent as they ate, glancing up at the moon, which was just beginning to change.

A shadow appeared at the moon’s edge, and Romakaji thought of Cressida, and the night she and the nature witch had spent watching just such a celestial event. How young she had felt that night, how hopeful. Then she looked at Lionel and felt just such a hope surge in her heart. Hope for his happiness, hope for a long life with him, hope for hope’s sake, hope for a miracle.

Lionel thought of the choices Count Furfur had offered him in his dream: to do nothing and enjoy a single life of love and happiness, but condemn Romakaji to an eternity as keeper of lost souls and wife to an Earl of Hell; to kill Sybil with the dagger the earl had given him and drink her blood, harnessing her power for himself and taking Romakaji as his forever bride; or to kill himself, offering his soul up to be born again, and search for Romakaji in his next life. As the minutes ticked away, and the shadow over the moon spread, he pondered what each of these choices would bring to his life. How they might change him, the woman he loved, and the world.

Sybil did not think at all. She cleared her mind and began to chant. Her voice rose up over the pond, hovering like a honeybee over a cup of juice. A nature witch knew better than to miss an opportunity to embolden her powers. Her lunar song was the sticky, silken web which bound her enchantments.

As Romakaji took another bite of the tart, savoring the earthy richness of it, the soft, spongy texture of the small mushrooms baked in the custard, she looked up at the moon in transition. Sybil’s voice wrapped around her like a sheath of muslin, while Lionel’s heart beat steadily with her own.

She felt a change within herself. No longer was she merely outside of her cottage with her lover and her friend, she was back in the early days of her life, feeling fragile and invincible all at once, as every child does. And, when Romakaji looked up at the moon, she found herself there, as well.

Standing on its surface, gazing out at the infinite, she caught a familiar movement at the edge of her sightline. There, on the horizon of her planet’s only satellite stood Count Furfur.

“Soon,” he said. “In a matter of minutes, in fact.”

Lionel saw the Earl of Hell, too. Only in Lionel’s vision, he was not on the moon. Lionel saw Count Furfur standing on the bridge that arched over the pond. His gold chain and charm, the same as Romakaji’s, dangled from his thin, stringy neck, and glowed brightly, like Venus in the night sky. Stealthily, Lionel removed the Count’s dagger from his pocket. It was so sharp that it sliced through the flesh at the tip of his finger, and he didn’t even feel it. He looked at Sybil, whose eyes were closed, and her mouth open in song. She seemed oblivious to them, lost in her witch’s rapture. How easily he could slit her throat, leaving her to slip painlessly into infinity.

Then, his eyes grazed over his lover. Her nimble body, with skin as soft as wind, as lace, as honey. Her gaze was fixed on the moon, which was now three quarters in eclipse, and her face was a mask of concentration. Beautiful, loving, perfect.

His love for Romakaji cast a cold eye over the choices he’d been offered by Count Furfur. He knew he could not allow his lover to become a wife to such a creature. To spend time without end at his behest, caring for the wretched whom he had tempted into everlasting torment. Nor could he kill Sybil and drink her blood, absorbing her powers and awarding himself a wife as if she were a prize. He was not a murderer, and he knew well that such a bargain would corrode the love he’d found.

Lionel looked up at the moon, now fully red. As red as a sunset, a chili pepper, a bleeding heart. He put that sharpest of daggers to his chest and glanced at Romakaji for one last memory of her. It was just then that she tore her eyes away from the moon and the Earl of Hell she saw there. She looked to Lionel for what she thought might be the last time, too.

“Romakaji,” he said, and she gasped, seeing the weapon he held in his hand and its placement over his most vital organ.

“Romakaji,” he said again, her name like a prayer on his tongue. “Will you take off the necklace? Not the one I gave you, but the other.”

“It’s too late,” she whispered.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a hateful thing.”

Romakaji’s hand grasped at the chains around her neck. In her fear of Lionel doing harm to himself, she was careless and her fingers tightened around both chains – Count Furfur’s and the one her love had given her. She yanked hard, and each clasp broke instantly. Her fingers let go of the chains and their charms, flinging them away from her.

“No,” she cried out, once she saw what she’d done. She watched both Lionel’s beautiful gift of love and Count Furfur’s hateful gift of deception drop into the pond she’d been cursed to for so long. Two hundred ninety-six years, twenty-one days, six hours and roughly twenty minutes to be more exact.

She turned back to her love of all loves, though in that moment found she could not recall his name. And Romakaji remembered everything. Clearly, distinclty, as if it had happened only moments before. That had been part of her curse.

“I’ll see you in a few years, I hope,” her nameless lover whispered. Holding the dagger up high, he thrust it deep into his chest.

“Sybil, help him!” She cried.

But the nature witch continued to chant, lost in her communion with the lunar eclipse.

Romakaji thought nothing of curses or consequences. Of bargains or trickery. She grasped the handle of the dagger and pulled it out of her lover’s heart in a single, violent motion. In another motion, equally as determined, she thrust the dagger into her own, long-beating heart. A heart that had survived water, loneliness, and a full one hundred-eight thousand sixty-one days longer than it should have. The many days and nights of Romakaji’s unusual life began to fade, seeming far away to her now, as if she were viewing them through an old telescope.

Sybil’s voice, loud and deep, as if coming up from a canyon, filled her ears. It seemed to pour into her, filling her veins as quickly as her blood left them. The pond, the bridge, the moon, the cottage, all whirred around Romakaji. Only Count Furfur and Sybil remained anchored, standing stock-still – one on the moon, and the other on the blanket, poised over her.

Sybil bent over and extracted the dagger from Romakaji’s body. In an instant, Romakaji’s eyes began to flutter. She licked her lips, took a deep breath.

Lionel’s eyes fluttered, too, and he swallowed hard. He looked at his blood-soaked chest and raised an eyebrow.

Romakaji cast her gaze at the red moon, but the count was no longer there. He appeared on the bridge, and smiled at her – that strange, child-like smile of his.

“Come,” he said.

He held out his absurdly dainty hand, waiting for her to take it. Romakaji felt drawn to do so, even if she did not want to.

“What do I do?”

Sybil opened her eyes and stopped her chanting. “Only you can make that decision,” she told her.

Romakaji stood up a bit unsteadily. She went to take a step towards the Earl of Hell, lifting up her foot and preparing to set it down onto the first step leading up to the bridge. His thin lips parted in anticipation, and she could see his tiny, pearly teeth.

“I’m not going,” she said.

The count narrowed his little eyes.

“But you must,” he commanded.

“I’m staying here.”

“You made a bargain.”

“I remember no bargain,” she told him. “And I think you’re a liar. So, I won’t go.”

Count Furfur’s lips curled. His childlike face became a mask of hatred. “You come right now, or I will tear your friend and your lover to pieces, and you will spend eternity reliving that memory, hearing their screams.”

Romakaji fisted her hands. “I think if you could kill them they’d already be dead.”

“Don’t trifle with me!” He bellowed.

“The only power you have is the power I give you,” she shouted. Romakaji remembered her mother had once told her this was true of all nightmares.

The count’s face changed once again. His mask of hatred fell and his skin became smooth like an egg shell. His lips a thin, red line. Romakaji watched him remove the necklace, the one just like hers, from his neck and drop it into the water.

“Mortal,” he said. “Without me you’ll be weak, with only one life to live. It’ll be over in the blink of an eye. You’ll become old and decrepit, and I’ll watch you die from my throne.”

Then he disappeared.

Romakaji’s heart filled with joy and relief, but she couldn’t remember why. She looked about her – at the blood red moon, the lovely, old cottage with a sweet little pond in back, and at her friend, Sybil.

“Hello.” A dark and handsome young man put out his hand. It was strong, with soft skin and a map of deep lines on his palm. She reached out and shook it.

“This is Lionel,” Sybil said. “He lives in the cottage.”

“Oh.” Romakaji peered at the cottage and imagined how nice it would be to live there. The old stones it was made of, the yellow lights glowing from its windows. Sybil’s place was nice, too, but this cottage seemed more like home somehow. It was almost like she’d lived in it before.

“Lionel’s new to the village.” Sybil said. “He’s only been here for a few months, and is doing genealogy research on the area. Wasn’t it kind of him to invite us to drink some wine and watch the eclipse at his place?”

“Yes, of course,” Romakaji said. Now she was beginning to remember – maybe.

“Sybil tells me you and she grew up here, and you both live in the village together. In one of those old, white-washed stone houses passed down from generation to generation.”

Flashes of memory came to Romakaji like pictures in a book. Playing around this very pond as a girl, watching an eclipse much like this one with a woman named Cressida – Sybil’s cousin, perhaps, mourning the death of her parents – was it only last year? It seemed like much longer than that. She looked to Sybil, who assured her with a firm nod.

“Yes, I suppose we did. We do.”

“You’re lucky,” he said. “I love this area and could imagine staying.”

Lionel glanced down at his shirt. There was a faint, brown stain on it, right over his heart, and he wondered, briefly, what he’d spilled on himself. “Won’t you come in?” He asked them. “I think I have some cheese and fresh bread.”

Romakaji smiled and took his arm, as Sybil stepped back, letting them pass.

“Won’t you be joining us?” Lionel asked her. His eyes remained fixed on Romakaji’s.

“Not tonight,” Sybil said. “I’m awfully tired.”

“Another time, then.”

“Yes,” she said. “The first of many, I’m sure.”