EXCERPTS FROM A FAIRY TALE BY KAREN HESSE

Nell

By Karen Hesse, 2011

Excerpts on Nell's current life

This time I am an only child, adored by my parents. Of all the parents I have known, these are the kindest. Over the years some could ill afford a sick child; others grew weary of caring for one. In public they feigned love but in private they lost patience. I regret that at times I, too, lost my temper with them.

This time is different. In the twelve months I have been here, these parents have never faltered in their devotion. Never have I longed to remain as I long to remain here. And it feels as if I could remain.

I am so much healthier than when I first woke in this body. And so beautifully cared for. I sleep on soft sheets in cloudlike comfort. My mother brings the scent of lilacs with her when she leans in to kiss me, which she does frequently. Her tenderness elicits such a response. It amazes me to feel myself rise to her love. And my father, he’s so kind. Every day he comes with a present in his pocket. They have spared no expense in finding a cure for me. They have thrown both their energies and their resources into meeting with anyone reputedly wise in the healing arts. Yet they’ve never subjected me to treatments that might cause undue pain.

I don’t know how they will bear this death.

I don’t know how I will bear it, either.

Shutting my door, I take from the shelf a book by the Danish storyteller. The fireplace in my bedroom radiates comfort. Embers make delicate sounds, like fine china splintering. This room, like a princess’s chamber, sparkles. The chandelier bends firelight and sends it dancing across the ceiling. There is a table set with buns and cocoa.

In my hands the book falls open to my favorite story. I make my way to the green silk couch with its soft pillows. Curling up, I pull the fur wrapper over my legs, and begin to read . . .

My parents host a small dinner party below. I have already put in my appearance. Tomorrow the guests will be shocked to learn of my death.

How many times have these parents taken me to the zoo? In the summer we would go with a picnic hamper. Mother would make certain my straw hat, with its blue velvet ribbons, kept the sun off my face. I remember insisting I could run down the hill and then, halfway down, collapsing. I had been carrying a chocolate bun that flew from my hands. Father gathered me in his arms. I nestled into him. He smelled of cologne and freshly pressed cotton. His beard tickled my cheek. He bought me a new bun and held me as I ate it.

I remember watching that day the caged lions pacing in their enclosures. They stopped and studied me, scenting the air. 

But not in this life. I have known no one like that in this life. These parents would not allow such a child near me.

Every kind of luxury could be found there.

Bright silken fabrics, a cobbler who made slippers of the softest leather, a cafe, a shop that sold fine silver.

On the second and third and fourth floors, above the shops, people moved in their lighted apartments.

The sound of music came softly through their windows, and laughter, and the heavenly aroma of roasted meat.

And there was the child. She stood in a beautiful bedroom in which a small table held court on its sturdy four legs, bearing on its white cloth back a perfectly polished silver tray of sweet buns and a sparkling pot of chocolate.

A delicate china bowl held an array of ripe fruit.

A crystal chandelier twinkled like a constellation of stars.

 a dizzying perfume.

Paintings adorned the walls.

“A shooting star. Someone’s fortune will change.” That’s what I had been told about shooting stars. That when a star left a track of shimmering dust across the sky, someone’s fortune would change.

 I must will myself to enter her dead body and let her take this living one. I will take her death. I will give her this life, for I am certain now this body will go on.

that beloved child from the room above, that angel of comfort.

She holds the hand of Nell’s mother and the hand of Nell’s father and they come close to the stiff, cold body, because the child says they must.

“We must see that her body has every comfort it lacked while she lived.”

And the parents, who do not know they lost their daughter, their Nell, once, a year before, and once more, last night, look adoringly at this child who is alive, who is theirs, and say, “Of course. Of course. Of course.”