The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

by Roshani Chokshi

Later, I would understand that the entrance to another world craves that which cannot be traced. It wants the mouthy weight of a nickname no longer uttered, the soft-furred throat of the dreams that pad quietly after you from one year to the next. To belong to the Otherworld, you must not belong to yourself.

That week, Indigo and I had finished rereading the Chronicles of Narnia and were once again obsessed with Susan Pevensie. A queen locked out of the realm she’d once ruled, exiled for the crime of growing up.

Susan Pevensie was our nightmare.

Only a shattered promise yields a rich, glittering yolk of a tale.

Even now, I preferred the idea that the universe preferred to speak through lightning and shadows.

You must learn how to close your eyes and still look.

These stories run on faith’s inexhaustible fumes, and what is faith but an unknowable tangle?

Indigo’s face was soft, unlined, but when she lifted her gaze, her eyes seemed ancient. This was how I knew that grief had marked her. Only grief can make time change its tempo like that, expand seconds to centuries, with only our eyes marking the distance crossed.

As the revels stripped off veils and sharpened the light, I finally understood why magic loved us so well. We had it all wrong. It was never about who we were, but what we were— Young. Downy-feathered, soft-skinned, milk-teethed young. Unmarked and limpid, so clear-eyed that where adults saw bitterness and shadows, we saw a language that might still be translated into light. We were so young that even our bones still grew, still dreamt, still performed miracles in the daylight. We could fall and not break. We could alchemize music, make it physical, let it touch our unsettled souls. Our youth was so powerful it could not possibly last, or it would consume us whole. That’s why magic kissed our bruises, coddled our hearts, and then sent us on our way. Magic hoped we would carry its echo out into the world, for we were never meant to stay here.

In the end, a fairy tale is nothing more than a sense of hope. Hope lures and tricks. It tempts with shining thrones, exquisite nectars, and loving arms. It whispers to us that we are extraordinary. Exempt. Thus lured, we follow its path. Sometimes we are led to riches. Other times, we are led astray. But this hope never hides its shape, and for its honesty we reach for it and pull its sweet and stinking furs up to our chins, for to live without it means living without magic.