The Pleasing Hour by Lily King

Author:Lily King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 1990-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

It must have been part of a fairy tale she heard when she was very young, though she was never able to find it in any storybook.

A boy is walking and walking, sometimes through the woods, sometimes in the desert, always with a huge heavy stone tied with strong twine to his ankle. He is looking for something: his home, his family, his town; Nicole is never sure. Parallel to his trail is a dark pit that weaves its way alongside him, the side on which the stone is tied. Sometimes his path narrows and the pit sidles up so close he must be very careful not to step in such a way that the stone slips over the edge, for he knows if the stone goes he will follow. Sometimes Nicole is the boy; sometimes she is just watching. Sometimes, lately, the boy is Frederí Lafond. The dreams in which the stone never falls have become just as terrifying to her as the ones when the boy is flung over the side and she wakes up.

She no longer went to her mother’s small bed when she had the nightmares.

“Did you hear me last night, Maman?” she would ask the following morning. “I had one of those dreams. I called for you.”

“Did you? I’m sorry,” her mother would answer, smoothing Nicole’s hair out of her eyes, sometimes even giving her a brief hug. Marcelle had become more and more affectionate since their talk in the wide room, but behind each touch was the sense that she was still waiting for an answer, and a tension had grown that could only be broken by Nicole’s acquiescence. It became more comfortable to spend time with her father, whose eyes asked so much less of her.

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