Disclaimer: Not real, not mine, not making money from this. Title and lyrics from Libera's Lullabye.
Je ferai un domaine / Où l'amour sera roi / Où l'amour sera loi / Où tu seras reine
Propp's (1928) 'morphology' of the fairy tale is a blueprint with categories designed to capture all of the possible elements available to any fairy story. The result of the study is a finite list of thirty-one functions undertaken by seven basic types of character roles. This orientation therefore requires the rendering down of narratives into their raw, basic constituents. Many of the archetypical patterns that inform fairy stories are alive and well in certain genres of contemporary narrative. What is interesting is that even though their particular settings, 'dramatic personae' and historical periods may change, a great many films work to the same basic plot typology. The point of Propp's model is not to imply that all narratives realise all functions. Nor is it to suggest that all narratives, in their manifestation as discourse, follow a straightforwardly linear chronology. If anything, the import of Propp's model is not to suggest that all narratives are the same, but rather to explain in part why all narratives are different.
– compiled from Stylistics: A resource book for students by Simpson, P. (2004, p.70)
Goodnight my angel now it's time
To sleep, and still so many things I want
To say. Remember all the songs you sang for me,
When we went sailing on an emerald bay.
And like a boat out on the ocean,
I'm rocking you to sleep.
The water's dark and deep inside
This ancient heart you'll always be a
Part of me.
Night has claimed the sky. Kurt is tucked under two blankets and a comforter and Blaine is close beside him, the lengths of their thighs touching. Blaine pulls himself into semi-recumbent and brings his knees up, so that Kurt's head now tilts its way limply against the side of his stomach. He reaches for the book resting alone on the nightstand and flips on the lamp. Cradling the book between his knees, he begins to read.
"Once upon a time, there was a sleepy little town. The people in this town lived their own lives in a tranquil, almost lazy manner, secluded from the outside world. They were self-sufficient and happy. And like any other town, they had their fair share of myths and stories. Hmm…"
Blaine tries to flip the page. It's kind of stuck to the next and he doesn't know why but this minor glitch sparks a flash of anger across his face. Thankfully, it passes soon enough and he smiles.
"…myths and stories. Right. So one day, the children are running down the main street, laughing and screaming. That's a funny combination. Maybe it's some kind of game. Oh no, wait, they're laughing and screaming, screaming, 'The mad man is coming!' Ah. Turns out, the mad man is the legend of the town. He sleeps in the back of the alley by day together with the rats, who they say are his savage minions, and haunts the town after sundown."
Blaine turns to Kurt, "This is completely—" before he stops himself.
"Anyway, there's a mad man. And he haunts the town. No one knows for sure where he came from, or how he turned mad. Word of mouth goes that he first came to the town years ago, stumbling wildly in the quadrangle with blood on his hands. A sorceress had put a curse on him and only true love would break the curse of madness."
Under the amber light, Kurt's eyelids take on a translucent quality. Blaine stares at him, transfixed. (take these sunken eyes and learn to see) He looks very peaceful. Clearing his throat, he resumes.
"The man himself can remember nothing. He pushes his mind through the faded pages of his past and catches with slipping fingers golden flecks of light that flit and dance before his eyes, the tinkling of water by a stream, the feel of a hammer in his rough hands. Beyond that, his history is an unfortunate blank.
One afternoon, he woke up at the foot of a tree. Overcome by thirst, he stumbled his way through the forest, following the sound of water. He slaked his thirst by the stream. When he lifted his face from the surface, flecks of water caught in his hair fell about him. As a result, the first time he saw her she was dancing behind of a curtain of rain drops."
Beads of sweat appear on Kurt's forehead. Without thinking, Blaine smoothes them away with his fingertips. When he flips to the next page, the corner of the paper is damp and sticky.
"The maiden was dancing, weaving in and out of the trees. Sometimes she lifted her hands to the leaves overhead as she twirled. (now put your hands up/up in the club, just broke up/I'm doing my own little thing) There was not a sound to be heard save for the faint rustling of leaves when her dress trailed along the ground. When she stopped dancing, he quietly shadowed her to her little cottage at the heart of the forest. He tried very hard to keep the twigs from snapping beneath his feet, and was relieved when she seemed oblivious to his presence."
He follows the curvature of Kurt's knees with his toes. Rise and fall, rise and fall, almost like breathing.
"Little did he know, she had seen him and was leading him back the cottage on purpose. She slipped past the old wood door and left him spying by the window. Ha. Spying. Looks like you two have something in common here,"
He swallows and picks it up again. "And through the cracked glass plane he fell in love with what he saw, her arms whose elbows extended to two thin fluid wrists, with the silent way she moved about the house, with the lambent folds of her dress (it's a unitard; guys wear them to workout nowadays). There were also three children. The eldest looked no more than nine, the youngest five, the middle one always conveniently slotted in between. They crowded around the table quietly, and received from her, each to its own size and portion, a slice of freshly baked bread and a mug of tea. The children ate soundlessly and returned to the room.
For days he watched them and for days she remained unmindful of his attentions. The day came when for the first time he noticed that the house was in disrepair and produced from the nearby shack some tools and began mending the places in the roof where it leaked water. When it rained, the children would scamper about placing basins at designated spots in the house to catch the water. Now they watched him from a careful distance, curious but wary. Often, they looked to the lady in consternation but she would give no reply. The only sound that echoed through the house was the steady thud of his hammer and the creak of each step of the ladder as he climbed up and down. She would set an extra plate on the table for him when the day wound down. Under her deft hands, the crockery made no noise when they were laid out or collected. Weeks passed and his presence in the house became a coarse, corrugated constant. She went about the house, running her long fingers against the smooth panels of wood, smiling."
Blaine is sure that if he reaches under the covers he will meet Kurt's fingers, cold ivory keys to a wealth of secrets he can never know (and please say to me, you'll let me hold your hand). His hand goes as far to a crease in the blanket, after which he draws it back as though scalded and goes back to the book, acting like nothing's happened.
"Every night she would lead the children into the one room of the cottage he was not allowed to enter. He would follow them and she would bar the door with one arm and place a warning hand on his chest. Sometimes he would stumble past the threshold, pretending that he had forgotten it was out of bounds. That was the furthest he ever got. She had laughed without sound at his clumsiness and snatched her hand away when he tried to kiss it. He called her cruel. How could she be when she was sparing him everything he was better off not knowing? (wow, I really am clueless.) He could not see what was going to happen, but she could. And even then she could not help but accede to the day when she was no longer cruel.
With his hands on her slim pretty waist he asked her once more (may I have this dance?), but she merely shook her head. The more she resisted and shrouded the forbidden room in its mystery, the more he was determined to know what it harboured. He was sure it had something to do with the silence of the children, a characteristic he had appreciated at first but increasingly found eerie and unnatural (Pavarotti's voice was silenced by death, and I don't want to silence anyone else's voices–).
On a cool autumn day, their child was born. The cottage was filled with an explosion of sound, cries and whimpers and loud, gurgling noises which drove the other children into a sort of fevered frenzy, from which the lady coaxed them the way one might smooth out lines in a creased collar lapel (don't forget your jacket, new kid). It was not long before everything fell back into daily routine. Nonetheless the man had an incessant nagging feeling that something was wrong (you'll fit right in.)
One night, he waited outside the forbidden room. With one eye staring through a crack in the door, he watched the silent children drowse one by one in a circle around a golden box. She picked them up and placed them side by side on fleeced bedding. The baby cried out twice before she laid it in its wicket bassinet. When she came out the door she caught him watching and was not surprised. With a motion of her hand, she invited him outside. They stood beneath the trees under a pale yellow sickle. (your sweet moonbeam/the smell of you in every single dream I dream) High above there were–"
Blaine snaps the book shut and closes his eyes, the words a dull opiate cloying his veins. There must be more than this to life, more than this conglomerate of songs and futile stories, something more visceral like the way Kurt can make his heart lurch with nary a word and half a glance, or less. He looks up. The world looms dark and unfathomable outside the window. Blaine turns away from it back to the safe predictability of the book, unaware that he has skipped several pages. He no longer reads aloud but lets his eyes parse the sentences from left to right, the words washing right over him like a ten-storey wave.
"—that was his curse. He would fall to madness each time he opened the golden box. He would flee, only to be drawn right back to the lady again and again. His mind would reel from her each time only to be spun around her little finger like thread circling a spool (I knew I wouldn't forget you/and so I went and let you—
Blaine throws the book across the room. It lands open face up. Its spine may be broken, for all he cares. He can't go on. He can't go on reading stupid, trite stories about love and curses and cheap magic tricks when Kurt is, Kurt is—
Blaine begins to weep, his face in his hands. He falls back to the bed and buries his head into the pillow, crying blindly. Bashfulness is a thing of the past now; growing up has made embarrassment exclusively for children. Yet if he could still hold on to hope, the next anticipated element should be an awakening from fairytale slumber, the promise of an enticing future encapsulated in three little words. He wants very badly to think it true.
The open window invites a cold draft into the room that flips the book to its final page:
"She kissed him for the last time and her eyes told him to be brave. For this is what courage means: to love knowingly and willingly, within the constraints of the hourglass and the cyclical threat of madness after every bout of lucidity, and even then to say yes if he was given a chance to choose, he would yearn with all his being for the next sighting of her, where he would be resurrected to life once more." (you were only waiting for this moment to arise; you were only waiting for this moment to arise)
But Kurt is still sound asleep.
Someday we'll all be gone but lullabyes go on and on,
They never die; that's how you and I
Will be.