The Goose Girl (The Children of Lir Remix) by Doyle

Once upon a time...

(not in our time but a in a time long ago, unless it was in our time after all)

(this is how things always begin)

there was a beautiful princess

(she was still a princess then)

who lived with her mother and father and her sisters in their castle. Her Mummy had a voice like nightingales

(but not when she was screaming)

and her Daddy was a handsome, benevolent King

(yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him)

and her sisters danced with princes and dressed in elegant gowns

(the cloth of their dresses tore so easily, and they did too, they did too)

and they all lived

they all lived

(it will be all right, if only she can remember how it ends.)

**

Daddy’s new girl kicks and scratches as Drusilla pulls her along, dragging her with her hand tangled in her hair to the roots. Clatter and bump over the ground, the smooth wet places where the cobblestones aren’t. Her hair almost as dark as Drusilla’s own, not nearly long enough for princes to climb up and save her from her tower. Not a princess, no, a common little goose girl.

The cellar is exactly where she left it. This is one of Drusilla’s favourite special places. She goes down
down

down

all the way to the bottom.

“Shall I tell you a story?” she asks as she trusses the girl in chains. “Once upon a time, there was a little princess.”

“Sarah Crewe,” she whispers. “Sarah Crewe, me and you, this is true, three point one four one five nine two. Smells like molasses in here, do you like molasses? They’re very underrated. Is it my skirt? Because I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll never be indecent again, I swear.”

Dru can tell they’re going to have some lovely conversations.

“There was a little princess,” she goes on, “and the big bad wolf gobbled her all up. Listen.” She presses a finger to her lips. “You can hear her crying.”

The girl says, “I’ll do anything. I’ll give up tacos.”

**

Her family’s all gone away, scattered like seeds from a dandelion clock. She was so happy to have Grandmother back, till the night when she came home wet and angry and saying cross things about Angel, and Drusilla laid her ear against her stomach and listened to her little brother grow. Darla was furious, and beat her, and said she was insane (“well, yes,” she said, “I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed, really”) and that it was impossible, and that they’d never talk about it again. And they didn’t, not for weeks, and when Darla’s belly started to swell she went away by herself without a word and didn’t come back.

Drusilla thinks that babies in stories are nicer. The old couple wish terribly hard and the fairies leave them a baby curled inside the head of a flower, no bigger than a thumb.

“Did Daddy leave you all alone?” she asks Winifred, tilting her face upwards. She says her name is Fred, but that’s a name just for boys, and she’s not a boy. Drusilla checked until she was most definitely sure, not letting herself be distracted, even when she screamed.

“Saved me from the monsters,” she says. The s-sounds take her a long time to get out. Drusilla is patient. “He had to go away. I didn’t mind. I had my room and my pens. There was a girl who died.”

Angelus always liked dead girls. “Taste nicer when they’re warm,” she says, nipping at the curve of her throat - not to drink, just for teasing. Winifred cries, shaking. Perhaps she’s cold without her clothes.

Dru drops to the ground, knees to either side of Winifred’s thighs, and she presses tight against her, rocking them together quick as she can, but it only makes the shivering worse.

**

Head pooled in Drusilla’s lap, Winifred is singing to herself. It’s very peaceful, here in the dark and the heavy-sweet air. Drusilla listens to the gentle singing and the little girl crying, and can’t hardly tell them apart.

“You wanna know something real funny?” Winifred asks, her face lit up with happiness. “I don’t care. I was a cow and now you’re gonna kill me and I’ll never have the chance not to be a cow again and I don’t care.”

Drusilla pets her hair. She doesn’t think it’s funny, but she never understood Spike’s jokes, either. “Would you like a bedtime story?”

The girl in her lap nods, clapping her hands together. “Did you ever notice how the girls are always princesses? Even the commoners, the goose girls, they’re secret princesses, in disguise. Unless they’re witches or the wicked stepmothers, ‘cuz they have to be ugly and old.”

“Princesses have golden hair,” Drusilla says. “And the prettiest frocks. My Spike brought me dresses and jewels.”

“That’s nice. Most any guy ever bought me was a taco. But that’s okay, because tacos are my favourite food in the whole wide world and it was Terry who bought it and I liked him a whole lot.” She strokes Drusilla’s arm. “Tell me a story?”

And she does, beginning it how stories always begin.

**

Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in an ivory castle by a lake. She was very happy, because she loved her family very much. Her father was a wise and generous King who brought her treats and hurt her just the way she wanted. She had a playmate of her own and a whole kingdom to play in, and she was very happy.

There were gypsies in those lands.

They were travellers, and sorcerers, and they hated the King. So their witch –

“Not a princess so she has to be a witch,” Winifred whispers. “There should be an equation.”

Drusilla strokes her into silence.

- their witch said, I shall turn you to swans, and you will fly these waters for ten thousand years.

When the princess looked up the tower was tumbled down like London Bridge, and the skies were dark, and she was alone.

Over her head, the swans flew away.

“Did this happen?”

“Not all of it,” she says. “Not yet.”

But there was one way to break the enchantment. The princess walked and walked, almost all across the world, till she found a field full of nettles, stretching past the horizon. She pulled them from the ground, every one, and her hands were covered with stings, and this she did for seven years. And when she had all the nettles she made them into flax and spun them into

“gold,” Winifred says

shirts, three of them for the family she’d lost: one for the master and one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lived down the lane. She took the shirts and went back to the tumbled-down castle, and she waited for the swans to come across the lake. And when they landed on the shore she threw a shirt over each one, and there was her family, happy and whole, and the sorceress screamed and withered away to nothing. And they all lived happily ever after.

**

Winifred’s chest rises and falls. Drusilla keeps a hand over her heart, liking the timpani feel. She wanted to stay up past her bedtime, wanted another story, but Dru found a secret box of tricks in a hideyhole and she went fast, fast asleep.

She arranges her goose girl neatly on the floor, arms to her sides, head tilted upwards. Licks her sharp thumbnail, just once, and draws a line from her throat to the triangle of dark hair between her legs. She sits back to admire her handiwork and then she picks up the razor.

Appearances lie. Not Drusilla’s, mirrors haven’t shown her for years and years, but in other people, breathing people, one can’t trust to what one sees. Frogs are princes. Goose girls are princesses in disguise. People

are swans are people and

she will cut her open and

pull off her feathers

one by one by

one

.End