A Wild Swan: And Other Tales by Michael Cunningham

Author:Michael Cunningham [Cunningham, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780374712600
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-11-09T21:00:00+00:00

You’ll never know what went on between queen and king once they were alone together. You hope she confessed everything, and insisted that a vow, once made, can’t be broken. You even go so far as to imagine she might defend you for your offer of a possible reprieve.

You suspect, though, that she still feels endangered; that she can’t be sure her husband will forgive her for allowing him to believe she herself had spun the straw into gold. Having produced a male heir she has now, after all, rendered herself dispensable. And so, when confronted, she probably came up with … some tale of spells and curses, some fabrication in which you, a hobgoblin, are entirely to blame.

You wish you could feel more purely angry about that possibility. You wish you didn’t sympathize, not even a little, with her, in the predicament she’s created for herself.

This, then, is love. This is the experience from which you’ve felt exiled for so long. This rage mixed up with empathy; this simultaneous desire for admiration and victory.

You wish you found it more unpleasant. Or, at any rate, you wish you found it as unpleasant as it actually is.

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