The Goose Girl
She feels.
Not the elementary feelings of a child, denied a toy. Nor the false feelings of a courtier. Nor the incorrect feelings that come with misunderstanding. Her feelings are true – belonging and pure.
Her frayed shoes tap the cobblestones.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
She looks up, her eyes laden with that pure feeling – that unadulterated sorrow. She opens her lips just wide enough to speak a phrase. A pretty phrase, a feeling phrase, it lacks all regret, for regret belongs only to those who have done wrong, and she has not.
"Alas, Falada, hanging there!"
It echoes, and in her mind, the echoes are not softening the original outcry, but emboldening it, making it stronger, louder, until she herself cannot hear the words she had originally uttered, but only the echo, which takes on a new voice, a new chant…
"Alas, Falada, hanging there…"
"Alas, young Queen, how ill you fare! If this your tender mother knew, her heart would surely break in two!"
And there, the head hangs – Falada's head. It is a warning to passersby. She understands this. She understands it, but at the same time, she despises it. She feels anger at the abuse of a friend, she feels sadness at the death of a friend, she feels different. She is different. She can't see it. She can't sense it. But things change. She changes.
Tears.
She cries.
She grows.
Drying her tears on the hem of her shirt, she moves on, plods on; quietly, she passes beneath the arch, face cast down as if in prayer, Falada her sovereign god. Falada, whose glassy eyes watch in deathly stillness.
Her horse.
Her friend.
As she grows, her identity changes. The goose girl is no longer a princess in disguise. She has become the goose girl – she has grown to fit the shoes of one she might have scoffed at – certainly would have scoffed at – before. She has to grow to get there. She can't see it. All she sees is herself. A princess in disguise. Something that exists no longer. Something wizened by experience and quotidian life into a greater force.
Princesses never were meant to rule.
And she sees none of this.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
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TBC