God, that’s bleak. She deserves so much more than the gallows, more than this tight-laced world of towers and thorns and lesser evils. I remind myself how much I dislike being cried over and try very hard not to cry over Primrose.
“Perhaps your curse will prove more negotiable than mine. Perhaps—”
“It’s not…” I didn’t really plan on explaining teratogenic damage to a medieval princess whose medical knowledge probably involves bloodletting and wandering uteri, but it’s still half a day’s ride to the castle and I can’t stand the note of stubborn hope in her voice. “It’s not a curse, exactly, and there’s no wicked fairy.”
We ride, and I talk. I talk about natural gas extraction and MAL-09, the chemical compound that contaminated the tap water in Roseville in the late ’90s, which had been tested and approved on adult men—but not pregnant women. I talk about placental barriers and genetic damage and the forty-six infants who were born with fucked-up ribosomes in the greater Roseville area. I talk about the years and years of legal battles, the fines that didn’t matter and the settlement that put me through college. I’m sure at least three-quarters of it is soaring straight over Primrose’s head, but she listens with an intensity that I find weirdly flattering. In my world, everybody already knows about Generalized Roseville Malady. They’ve seen the five-episode documentary on Netflix and argued with conspiracy theorists on Facebook and to them I’m just another headline, not a story in my own right.
“Some of the other GRM kids formed a group—Roseville’s Children—that’s done a lot of activism stuff. They marched on the state capitol, did some sit-ins in Washington. They always get a lot of press, but nothing ever seems to change. Mom and Dad took me to the monthly meetings when I was a kid, but…” I trail away. I stopped going to the Roseville’s Children meetings at sixteen, when I decided I didn’t want to spend my remaining years chanting slogans and wearing cheesy T-shirts. Now I feel another squirm of guilt, thinking of all the sleeping beauties I hadn’t even tried to save. There are fewer of us than there used to be.
“Anyway. I’m on a ton of steroids and meds to try to delay the protein buildup, but my last X-rays weren’t great. The phrase ‘weeks, not months’ was used.” I aim for a casual tone, but I hear Primrose’s gasp of horror.
“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, and there isn’t really anything else to say.
We ride on—we dying girls, we sorry girls, gallows-bound—until the fairy tale spires of Perceforest Castle rise through the trees, gilded by the setting sun.
* * *
THE GROOM NEARLY faints when we turn up in the stables, smelly and tired and road-grimed. There follows a long period of shouting and running about, while the groom fetches a better-dressed groom who fetches an even better-dressed fellow, who sweeps the pair of us into the castle and up to the King’s council room.
The atmosphere reminds me of a hospital waiting room, cold and airless, thick with worry. The King and Queen are seated across from Prince Harold, muttering over a map of the kingdom. They fall silent at the sight of the princess.
There follows a medieval version of the classic “young lady, where have you been, we were worried sick” speech. There are a few more “whences” and “wherefores,” but it covers the same territory. I do my best to melt into a tapestry while the King thunders and the Prince tries not to look disappointed that he doesn’t get to ride out in daring rescue of anyone and the Queen stares wearily at the table.
No one seems particularly interested in Primrose’s explanation—although to be fair, “I went for a morning picnic and got lost in the woods” is pretty weak sauce. It seems more important for them to stress how terrified they were and how precious and fragile she is. “For one-and-twenty years I have sought only to protect you,” the King says mournfully. “How could you risk yourself in this manner? Did you think nothing of our love for you?”
In that moment he reminds me of Charm’s parents, or maybe my own: a person whose love is a burdensome thing, a weight dragging always at your ankles.
Primrose listens with a glassy, passive expression that tells me she’s heard it many times before, has grown so used to the shackles around her legs that she barely feels them.
I make a small, involuntary sound somewhere between disgust and empathy. Prince Harold looks up. “And who is this?” His voice cuts through the King’s speech. “She is not one of your ladies, I would swear it, and she is dressed most curiously.”