Green Monkey Dreams

  I felt foolish at having gaped at him like a common girl when he first arrived, imagining him to be the prince, and so I treated him haughtily during the weeks he stayed with us in the tower to make up for it, and managed to avoid him by staying in the tower with my mother. To my surprise, she did not try to talk me out of going, but she told me one night in a soft voice that she had wanted to go with my father to the crusades, but that he had waited until she was carrying me to decide that he would travel.

  ‘First it is love of them that catches us, then love of a child that binds us forever. Do you understand what I am saying?’

  I nodded, but understood nothing.

  It seemed a long winter. But at last the snow began to melt, and we left. Maeve went and bade me be a good girl and to wear my long underwear in winter because palaces were even draughtier than towers. My mother would not come down, so I said goodbye to her in her tower room. I kissed the pale cheek she offered, and she told me to remember that the Worldroad led everywhere, even home if you walked it long enough. you walked it long enough.

  I shuddered inwardly at the thought of coming back.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I whispered, as the tower with my mother’s face at the window and Maeve’s plump figure by the door receded and was swallowed up by the whiteness.

  It was a long journey to the palace where my prince was waiting, and after trying to maintain a chilly silence for several days, I gave it up, and asked Peter why the prince had not come for me himself.

  ‘He was hunting and then there was a siege he had to attend,’ he explained.

  I frowned, for it seemed to me he was saying that these things were more important than me. But I consoled myself with the thought that he had not actually seen me yet, and so he could not strictly be in love.

  To begin with, I rode on the back of Peter’s grey horse, with my bag tied on the back of the saddle and Courage nestled in my bodice near my breast. Maeve had insisted I leave him, saying princesses do not carry fowl in their bosom.

  I had pretended to give in, but I would not have left him, even if he had let me. There was some slight trouble the first time we stayed at an inn and the matron there discovered the little bantam when he flew at her from under my pillow.

  Peter looked startled then amused when the wretched woman taxed him about me keeping dangerous animals in my bed chamber, but somehow he smoothed things over. He accomplished much with his soft voice and warm brown eyes and I found myself thinking of them a good deal too much. Petting a palfrey he had bought for me in one of the bigger towns, I imagined what it would be like to have him gentle me in that way. I blushed with shame at my thoughts and hid my confusion in admiration over the mare, which was sweet and white as the finest sugar, and that was what I called her.

  When we left the next day, he asked me how I came by the rooster. With as much dignity as I could muster, I explained. He did not laugh but seemed to find it remarkable that I had bothered saving its life.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ I asked him wonderingly.

  He looked suddenly sad. ‘When you get to the palace, you will not be able to keep Courage.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, shocked, because I had thought I would be free of rules when I left the tower.

  ‘Princesses do not keep such things as pets. It is not seemly. You must have a cat with green eyes and sable fur, or a golden nightingale to sing to you from its cage. Even Sugar will be exchanged for a finer horse, for she is just a travelling beast. The prince would be embarrassed if you had less than the best.’

  And so it went. Bit by bit, I learned that my prince was proud and demanding and had been much sought after as a husband for these qualities since the woman he chose must be, by definition, perfect. He had refused to wed until he could be sure his bride was the fairest in all the land. He rode the fastest, finest horse, and collected the most beautiful things to set about in his palace. His gardeners had instructions to bring him the finest blooms and fruits only. If an apple had a single mark, he would fling it from him.

  Why should he not have the most perfect woman for his bride?

  I said, hesitantly, that perhaps the prince would find a blemish on me, and turn me away.

  Peter had blushed and said in his soft voice that there was no blemish on me. His eyes stroked my cheeks and said that if I were his to love, he would find the most perfect pumpkin and make it into a golden coach for me, so that I might dream of travelling the road in it.

  But it would still be a pumpkin, my heart whispered. And you would leave me for the song of blood that only men hear. That night, I dreamed I was a nightingale, singing its heart out behind golden bars.

  Then there came a night which Peter said would be our last. The next day, we would reach the palace and I would be handed to my prince. It was nearing the end of spring again but the nights were still warm. On impulse, I asked Peter if we might not sleep outside by a campfire.

  He had agreed reluctantly.

  ‘But you must not think of such things after this night,’ he said in a troubled voice. ‘A princess cannot camp out like a gypsy, nor go about barefoot.’ He looked pointedly at my toes. ‘There will be fine dresses and glass slippers. The prince will not want anything that might hurt you or mar your perfection. He will want you safe. The windows will be curtained, so you do not freckle, and fires will burn in every room even in the summer so you will not catch a chill.’

  At length, he curled up in his blanket and slept, but I could not sleep.

  I stared up into a sky ablaze with stars – the diamonds of heaven – and wondered when I would see them again if the windows of the palace were curtained. The breeze fanned my cheeks, and I thought how hot rooms would be where no breeze was allowed to blow. The trees whispered their secrets in the air around me, and life rustled in the leaves and undergrowth. Courage had made himself a little depression in the ground, but he was not asleep either. The sounds of the night seemed to make him restless. His black eyes caught the fire and offered it to me, and I wondered what I would see the next day in the eyes of my prince.

  Love and watered silk?

  I only knew that I would never be the same again. Love binds beauty, my mother had said. I would never be free to camp outside, or dance in the forest in my bare feet, or swim naked in a cold stream. Sugar and Courage would be lost to me forever, and I would never ride the Worldroad again. again.

  Just as my father had done, my prince would possess me and snare me with his love, and leave me with his seed growing, to ride away to blood and glory. And like my mother, the maggot of love and loneliness would gnaw into my heart and soul. I would love and I would hate, but I would never be able to leave because love was the one snare that could bind the wild beauty of a woman.

  It occurred to me that none of Maeve’s stories had explained what happened after the princess was taken to the palace by her prince, and I thought again of Cinderine trapped in her diamond, imprisoned by love. Now at last, the Veiled Empress had revealed her secret.

  I got up very quietly, scooped Courage into my arms, crept to the tree where Sugar was tied, and slipped away.

  That was the first night I rode the Worldroad alone, and the beginning of my true journeying.

  Sometimes, I hear my prince searches still for his vanished princess, but I know it is the dream of beauty he seeks, and not a real woman. And me? I do not regret the loss of love or watered silk and summer wine. Each day I ride feeling the sun on my face, or the rain, and am content. The Worldroad is long, and each bend brings some new thing to me. My mind is now filled with the wonders I have seen, all stored as stories. I keep them safe, because the Worldroad comes to all things eventually, and so I know that one day it will bring me to the Tower where my mother sits.

  I will put my arms around her and kiss her, and tell her I love her. I will show her all that I have seen, and I will tell her that I have learned one need not be ugly or beautiful, princess or commoner. One can be something else, if one has courage enough to ride alone.


  THE RED SHOES

  Amerie was reading a book her mother had left her. On the flyleaf was written: To my darling daughter, Amerie, on her birthday. Amerie had found the book in the back of the bookshelf still wrapped and she was trying to understand what it could mean.

  Andersen’s Fairy Tales Revisited by Ander Pellori was inscribed across the front page in swirling importantlooking golden letters. And all around the golden letters, goblins and fairies and sprites cavorted and danced in a frenzied celebration.

  Amerie could remember little of her mother whom her father said had left them both.

  ‘She left us just before Amerie was five, and she broke our hearts,’ her father said whenever anyone asked. And that was all he would say.

  The first time she overheard her father say that, Amerie worried that she had not been treated for the heart that was broken when her mother left. She did not mention it to her father because his heart was wounded too. She felt a kind of deep ache whenever she thought of her mother, and imagined that there was a dribble of blood still leaking out of her heart. It seemed to her that talking and thinking of her mother reopened the wound, and so she did not speak for her father’s sake. For he brooded darkly and rarely smiled.

  Once she had heard him tell her teacher that she was too young to remember her mother, but that was not so. It was true that she did not remember her doing the sorts of things other girls’ mothers did. She had no memory of her mother ironing or pushing a trolley in a supermarket or going to have her hair done. She had no memory of her mother stirring a pot, nor even of her dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase the way Raelene’s mother did.

  Amerie’s memories were anything but ordinary.

  The reason her father thought that she did not remember her mother was because she never spoke of her. That was partly to save him pain, but mostly because the memories were so strange she had kept them secret and silent inside her.

  One of the memories was of both her parents arguing.

  ‘I’m sick of this . . .’ her father had growled through his black beard.

  Her mother had said in her soft cooing voice, ‘Shh, Jon. You’ll wake the baby.’

  ‘If you were not so flighty . . .’

  ‘I do what I must do,’ her mother had said in a pleading voice. ‘You know that. When we married I warned you how it was with me and you said you understood.’

  ‘I did not know it would take you away from me so often, or that you would consort with those creatures . . .’

  ‘You are jealous, and there is no need. I do not love my companions as men. They are like me and they understand how it is to be possessed by . . .’

  ‘Nothing and no one will possess you but me,’ her father had said in his heavy voice. ‘You belong to me.’

  ‘I will not let you cage me . . .’

  There the memory broke off suddenly. The talk of flight and birds and cages had shivered Amerie’s soul because of another memory. The most secret memory of all.

  Her mother came to her wrapped in the shadows of the night, and stroked her face and kissed her as she lay drowsily in her bed.

  ‘I will come back to you soon . . .’

  But her mother had not been entirely human in that memory. Woven through her dark lustrous hair were sleek black feathers, and Amerie’s hand felt them on her breast and shoulder as well. As if she had not quite changed all the way into a bird yet.

  There was only one other memory. Amerie’s favourite. Her mother’s hair was out of its usual bun and flowing all around her shoulders and Amerie was permitted to brush it. A black feather fluttered out onto the floor. The wind caught it up and tried to whisk it out of sight, but Amerie jumped down and ran lightly across the floor to catch it in her hand. Her mother laughed softly when she brought back her treasure. Looking around to be sure they were alone, she closed Amerie’s fingers around the feather and said, ‘You are half me, little one, and one day you will fly. I see it in your movements. You are light as a feather.’ Then for a moment she looked sad and proud all at once. ‘You will long for the red shoes as I do and no price will be too high. You will fly because it is in your blood . . .’

  Amerie did not remember her mother going away. Nor even which order the memories had happened in. She had not understood all of the memories, but she had known from them that her mother was not entirely human. She was a thing of lightness and dark feathers, and music could move her to dance as the wind moves a feather. Part of her yearned to fly even when she was in human form. Amerie had often seen her dance and sway on her toes, flinging her arms out like wings. She did not look entirely human either. She was not round and soft and comfortable like the mothers of other girls. She was very thin and her legs and arms were bony and hard with muscles. From flying, Amerie knew now.

  And Amerie was like her mother. Much as she ate, she was not heavy and solid like her father. She was slender and light-boned and her feet were narrow like her mother’s though they lacked the queer calluses that must come to her in her bird form.

  Once she had heard a neighbour tell her father after a visit that she ate like a bird.

  But more than her body, she knew what she was because sometimes she would feel a strange yearning for something more than life could give. Something nameless and demanding and wonderful would dance through her blood, heady and intoxicating. Her fingers and feet would tingle and she would realise that she was on the verge of shapechanging, as her mother had done. But she was half her father as well, and she realised that the fleshiness of him weighed her down and caged her bird self, just as he had wanted to cage her mother.

  Amerie had never been able to bear to see birds caged after she realised the truth. Outside pet shops, she would watch them, and they would look into her eyes and know she was part bird and understand her longing to free them. If no one was watching, she would slip open the catch and the birds would fly away.

  Some did. Others just crouched against the bars in fear because they had been caged too long. Even shaking the cage would not make them fly because they had forgotten how.

  That frightened Amerie because in those terrified birds she saw herself trapped forever. Too frightened to fly. She understood from this that if she did not learn to fly, there would be a day when the urge would leave her and she would come to accept the cage.

  After this for a time she sought out and opened every cage she could find, hoping that if she could free enough birds, she would free her own birdself. Because she felt sure her mother had not left her willingly, but only for fear of her father’s cage. She must pray for me to fly to her, Amerie knew, pray that her daughter would come to her birdself in time.

  Oh, how she longed to fly away from her father’s thick angry silences and his black thorny beard. His hand was hard and sometimes when he hugged her, she felt he was trying to make a cage of his body and put her inside it so that she would be trapped there forever beside his great red beating heart, fluttering and fluttering in despair.

  In the end a pet-shop owner caught and shook her, asking if she did not understand that the birds were safe when they were caged; that other bigger birds and cats and all manner of predators would eat them now she had let them go, because the poor birds did not understand the danger of freedom.

  ‘They are tame birds and tame birds must be caged!’ the pet-shop man had said, giving her a final shake and warning her that if he saw her near his shop again he would call the police.

  Walking away, shaken to her core, she understood that to accept the cage and to forget to fly was to be tamed. While to fly was dangerous freedom. Her mother had chosen to fly away because her father had wanted to tame her. He had wanted her to forget to fly and swoop and sing. He had wanted her safe in a cage, just as he wanted Amerie safe. He held her hand when they walked in the street in his big tight grip to keep her safe.

  But to be safe, one had to be tamed, and being tamed meant you would never fly again.

  And the predators? Amerie thought of t
hem seriously, cats with flashing wicked eyes and who knew what other sinister beasts waiting to eat up freedom. But then another awareness came to her so powerfully that she stopped in the street and stared in front of her with fear and wonder, because she understood at last how her mother’s sadness could have joy in it.

  If it was in her to fly, she must fly! She could not choose to be tamed and safe in a cage because freedom was in her blood and would never permit it. Though she might die by the teeth or under the wheels of a car, she must fly. The urge was so strong that it was like a beast inside her, roaring to be free. She must fly, else that inner beast would tear her to pieces with its own teeth. She would be alive, but she would be dead inside.

  She tried not to open any more cages after that. Her father frightened her when he was angry and he would be very angry if he knew what she had done. All the more because he would know at once why she was releasing birds from their cages. If she gave the slightest hint that freedom raged through her veins, he would find some way to cage her. He must never know, and so she was careful to pretend she was tame.

  Instead of dancing around the room or singing, which brought his heavy glowering gaze to press her down to the earth, she would sit quietly and read.

  That seemed to please him and he would lay his great hand on her head and say that she was a good girl. He did not understand that while her body was still when she read, her mind flew far and wide. She would only dance and swirl and let her bird spirit move her body to music when her father went out to church on Sunday evenings. That was the only time he left her alone. Only then, as she dipped and leapt, did she dare to pray to her mother to help her learn to fly before it was too late.

  And now, the book. Her mother must have flown back in secret to hide it, knowing that searching for books on her own shelf in her father’s library, she would find it. Her eighth birthday was only a few days away. Amerie held the book tightly against her chest, understanding that she had been given a warning. If she did not fly before her eighth birthday, she would be too heavy and the urge to freedom would be tamed.