By Mari Ness
ach morning, they dipped me in a well, to hold off the curse. If I missed a day, a single day, I would, they warned, be turned into a fish, a fish far out of water, who would gasp and flop for a few moments before dying.
It was not too bad, the drowning. It smelled of orange blossoms and other perfumes, and was pleasantly cool in the summer, if unpleasantly so in the winter. In any season, I shivered unstoppably until they dried me with rough cloths that chafed my skin. I had learned to shut my eyes and mouth and nose against the water, and huddle in the dark depths for the seconds – minutes – it took before they pulled me up. It was supposed to be mere seconds, but sometimes, when they were displeased with me, it seemed longer.
I never said a word.
They tied me tightly, oh so tightly, so I could not escape: the well had no bottom, they claimed, and if I fell into its depths, no one could save me, and if I struggled, in the water, I might well breathe in water, and drown before they could pull me up. They tied the ropes to save me, nothing more. They tied me carefully, oh so carefully, to keep any bruises from appearing on my fair skin, though for all their care, red welts would appear each day, and my skin was often scraped and raw. They had an ointment, made by the fairies, they said, to cure me. It stung each time it was applied, but this, too, would help stave off the curse, they said. A curse that could be broken only when a prince arrived to skin me.
"He will know you then, the curse says," they explained. "Know you to your bloody depths."
And with that, they drowned me again.
I had no wish to be skinned, though the ropes sometimes left openings for a prince's dagger. And so, each morning, I let them drown me, until the day the prince arrived.
