And suddenly that name will never be the same to me
My grandmother's name had been Maria. She used to wear black, the only colour being a yellow scarf tied around her neck, and a fragile pair of glasses. And she carried a cane, of which I was utterly terrified although she had never beat me with it. There was a quiet dignity about her, the same I saw in the statue of the Holy Virgin in the small church of Silverydew. The statue had been saved from Henry VIII's zeal of reformation, by a priest who wanted to preserve her sacred beauty so people could truly admire and adore the Mother of Christ. Therefore, following the Catholic tradition her name was engraved on the pedestal in Latin – MARIA.
But when I heard, or read, or even thought 'Maria' now, I didn't think of my grandmother or the Virgin, but of the Merryweather girl. There was nothing strict, or sacred, or dignified about her – or maybe there was but in another way. My grandmother had had the dignity of a soldier, straight and upright. The girl, the princess, had the elegant, hidden dignity of a wild cat. Perhaps this was what gave her the courage to jump off the castle wall in nothing but her underwear.
A wild cat. A Moon Princess. Another kind of Maria.
