A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham

forge on.
    â€œLet me raise your first child,” you say. “I’ll be a good father, I’ll teach the child magic, I’ll teach the child generosity and forgiveness. The king isn’t going to be much along those lines, don’t you think?”
    â€œIf I refuse,” she says, “will you expose me?”
    Oh.
    You don’t want to descend to blackmail. You wish she hadn’t posed the question, and you have no idea about how to answer. You’d never expose her. But you’re so sure about your ability to rescue the still-unconceived child, who will, without your help, be abused by the father (don’t men who’ve been abused always do the same to their children?), who’ll become another punishing and capricious king in his own time, who’ll demand meaningless parades and still-gaudier towers and who knows what else.
    She interprets your silence as a yes. Yes, you’ll turn her in if she doesn’t promise the child to you.
    She says, “All right, then. I promise to give you my firstborn child.”
    You could take it back. You could tell her you were kidding, you’d never take a woman’s child.
    But you find—surprise—that you like this capitulation from her, this helpless acceding, from the most recent embodiment of all the girls over all the years who’ve given you nothing, not even a curious glance.
    Welcome to the darker side of love.
    You leave again without speaking. This time, though, it’s not from fear of embarrassment. This time it’s because you’re greedy and ashamed, it’s because you want the child, you need the child, and yet you can’t bear to be yourself at this moment; you can’t stand there any longer, enjoying your mastery over her.
    *   *   *
    The royal wedding takes place. Suddenly this common girl, this miller’s daughter, is a celebrity; suddenly her face emblazons everything from banners to souvenir coffee mugs.
    And she looks like a queen. Her glowy pallor, her dark intelligent eyes, are every bit as royal-looking as they need to be.
    A year later, when the little boy is born, you go to the palace.
    You’ve thought of letting it pass—of course you have—but after those nights of sleepless wondering over the life ahead, the return to the amplified solitude and hopelessness in which you’ve lived for the past year (people have tried to sell you key chains and medallions with the girl’s face on them, assuming, as well they might, that you’re just another customer; you, who wear the string of garnets under your shirts, who wear the silver ring on your finger) …
    You can’t let it pass after the bouts of self-torture about the confines of your face and body. Until those nights of spinning, no girl has ever let you get close enough for you to realize that you’re possessed of wit and allure and compassion, that you’d be coveted, you’d be sought-after, if you were just …
    Neither Aunt Farfalee nor the oldest and most revered of the texts has anything to say about transforming gnomes into straight-spined, striking men. Aunt Farfalee told you, in the low, rattling sigh that was once her voice, that magic has its limits; that the flesh has proven consistently, over centuries, vulnerable to afflictions but never, not even for the most potent of wizards, subject to improvement.
    You go to the palace.
    It’s not hard to get an audience with the king and queen. One of the traditions, a custom so old and entrenched that even this king dare not abolish it, is the weekly Wednesday audience, at which any citizen who wishes to can appear in the throne room and register a complaint, after the king has taken a wife.
    You are not the first in line. You wait as a corpulent young woman reports that a coven of witches in her district is causing the goats to walk on their hind legs, and saunter inside as if they owned the place. You