Matters of Death, Life, and Kisses

We're on a roll with curses this month. Since it's creepy pumpkin month, it works, right? Here's a story about wishes that make you do bad things, and all the while, you hope someone might come along and save you from yourself. Warning: contains some graphic elements. --Elm

Mom called me Viva because she said no amount of life would slip me by, since my personality was forceful enough to get everything I wanted.

You can hear my eyes rolling--I wasn't that loud a baby, but what do you do when you have six older sisters who organize your most precious possessions and chatter nonstop?

Then an evil magician came and cursed me into the depths of slumber for a hundred years. (He stole it right out of the fairy tale.) I didn’t deserve it, and occasionally I wonder if my family put him up to it. It occurs to me, though, that maybe Mom’s naming worked—he couldn’t actually curse me to death.

While I slept, I dreamed of this totally hot guy in a black suit and cloak who loved me passionately. So when I was kissed awake by this totally hot guy in a black suit and cloak, I fell for him big-time.

It was not lost on me that this was the same magician who cursed me, so much as my heart called to him, I wasn't surprised when he ditched me for another woman at my ball. Evil, yah? I cried my eyes out.

Of course, that’s when I realized he was under a curse, himself.

I drew on my shiniest, blackest gloves, and set out to find him.

It wasn’t hard for a person like me to trace the carnage. The woman he ditched me for? I found her choked by a vine in a pumpkin patch. The lady he left her for? Poisoned in the middle of a forest. The sweetheart she was poisoned for? I found her eaten by wolves.

You see the pattern. Now you’re asking, what about the basket of food for Granny?

There wasn’t a basket, but there was a tower, with a woman choked by her own—very long—hair.

One bad dude, I tell you.

But I was badder. See, there’s another reason my mom named me Viva. I raised the first girl and made her croak out the man’s name. Ivan. Such a romantic name.

I stole the second chick from the dwarves and compelled her to spill the memories he’d confided. I bribed the third with an axe and a new red cloak to show me the path through the woods to her competitor’s house. And the fourth…

… I pulled the fourth out of the window and set the tower on fire. I understood what it was like to be locked up with no way out but your dreams.

I laid them all to rest in that thorny valley. I didn’t want them haunting my man when he couldn’t help himself in the first place.

I guess I’m not sure if I believe that. Everyone makes their choices, like I had with my spinning wheel. Somewhere in his past, he’d made one that led him to this.

But I forged ahead with my plan, if only to save a few more ladies. Since life has a way of taking you back to the beginning, I ditched Ivan’s trail for a short cut to the earliest memory he’d given girl number two. An island in the middle of a lake, with an old well set at the top.

I never understand why wells get built on islands when there’s all that water already around you. Maybe it’s purer. Or symbolic. But I didn’t find any inscriptions on the stones or on the bucket to give me a clue. Finally, I lowered the vessel for a drink of water and cranked the handle until it came back up. A coppery gleam at the bottom caught my eye.

I scooped out the penny and the world went hazy. Then clear. Like a dream.

A boy’s face glimmered in the well water, framed by moonlight.

“What is your wish?” a voice rippled up the stone walls.

The boy’s face half-disappeared, then drew forward again. His quivering lip hardened. “I’m tired of my brothers getting more attention than me,” he said. “Nothing I say or do matters.”

“You wish to matter?” the voice asked.

The boy gave one sharp nod and dropped his penny into the well.

I stared at it in my hand.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” A deep, familiar voice asked. I stared up at the man of my dreams. He seemed wary, and worn at the edges. Tired. No wonder he was recycling curses, truly evil deeds took a lot of time and energy to think up.

I held up the penny. “I think you dropped this, Ivan, a long time ago.”

He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. His eyes just watched me, and I felt a heat rise through me. “No one ever listened to me, either,” I said.

Finally, he nodded. “You realize I’m going to have to kill you, Viva.”

I laughed. “I don’t die very easily. And I understand a thing or two about curses. For instance, I know that they’re broken by true love’s kiss.”

Ivan walked forward, his hand on the knife at his belt. “I have no true love,” he said. “None of them were the one. Not for over a hundred years.”

“I didn’t say it was your kiss that mattered, Mr. Ego. Try, the kiss of the one who loves you.”

His eyes widened, and I saw the moon glint on his Adam’s apple. “No one in their right mind would love me.” His voice sounded rough.

“If you had actually waited at the ball…” I looked back down at the penny, and swallowed my sudden nerves.

You’re wondering how a girl who raises dead people could be nervous of a boy. But, you know, he was a guy. A hot guy in a black suit and cloak… with a knife.

“So, one bad girl speaking to one bad guy… maybe we could just try it.”

“You would do that?” he asked softly. He was now very near. So near, I could see his knuckles tighten on the knife’s pommel.

I’d had a hundred years to think about it. Before I could lose those last threads of nerve, I raised up on my toes and kissed him.

It was sweet. Our first real kiss, since I was sleeping the first time around and he was only thinking about himself.

“My Viva,” he breathed.

Curses might be broken by true love, but true love itself isn’t magic. It’s clear eyes, determination, and a lot of forgiveness.

And when I looked into his eyes, I saw gratitude.

Evil men don’t feel gratitude.

I decided he was worth a second kiss.