Still Life: Pomegranate (2019)
Seven years, seven shoes
True love waits, when you pay your dues.
BY KAYLA KURIN
IMAGE BY MEAHA CAUDLE-CHOI
Not every girl can say her father married her off to a hog. My story isn’t one that most princesses can relate to. One day you’re a girl running around in the fields. Then you turn sixteen and it’s all suitors this and dowries that.
My father wanted what was best for me, so naturally my maidenhood went to the wealthiest suitor. It just so happened that my intended had more in common with farm animals than with man.
As my fiancé and I walked around my father’s kingdom getting to know each other, the pig pointed to the faraway forest landscapes and shared news of the boorish kingdom to the north. The villagers stared at him when we passed but he only looked straight ahead, grunting quietly. I’ll admit, it could have been worse.
Thousands of people attended our wedding. Goat, parsnips, bread, and cheese lined long tables covered in silk cloth. Not an ounce of pork was served.
Just as I was wondering how our wedding night would proceed, my porcine husband transformed at the stroke of midnight. His hoggish snout inverted to a human nose, the hair on his chest faded to bronze skin, and his darting eyes grew warm and brown. I couldn’t believe it. Had I broken some curse? As we tumbled in the sheets together, he seemed to show the best talents of man and beast.
But, in the morning, he was a hog again.
At the breakfast table, I opened my mouth, wanting to ask about his condition. But instead, all he said was: “How did you sleep, my wife?” Not a hint at what had happened or how he had fallen under such a curse.
I wanted to be a good and dutiful wife. I was convinced that I could break the spell and make that handsome human of the night my permanent mate. So, I went to see a witch.
As I told the witch my tale, I gazed at the rosemary, sage, and thyme that hung from the rafters. She poured me a mug of steaming myrrh tea and promised she could help. I left with a bundle of herbs and a light heart.
As instructed, that night I secretly placed the bundle under his pillow, ready to wake next to my handsome prince.
The hog woke in a snorting rage.
“You foolish woman! What have you done?”
“The witch told me this would break the curse!”
The hog looked at me, with anger or with longing I couldn’t tell. He took a deep breath.
“I was cursed by a sorceress in my youth. To appear as a hog during the day and a man at night until I had been married to a princess for one year. But that princess needed to accept me as a pig. Now that you’ve meddled, I’m not sure if the spell will ever be broken.”
“I was only trying to help,” I whispered, guilt tearing through my body.
We consulted with the palace sorcerer.
“Only through true repentance, will the curse be broken,” he said.
“I wish you had told me,” I whispered to my husband that night.
By morning I had been banished from the kingdom.
Seven years of walking.
Wearing out seven pairs of wooden shoes.
What I wouldn’t give for some leather. I dip my feet in the river, the cool water numbing my blisters and loosening the splinters in my feet. My sixth pair of shoes, red wood cracked right down the middle, float down the river.
One more pair to go.
Now, I hear children playing in the village square, their parents buying vegetables and eggs, trading fabrics, and pounding bits of leather into shoes. If feet could salivate, mine would be drooling.
For six years I’ve walked, always on the outside looking in, never able to stay in any place long if I wanted to wear out the shoes.
I am a wanderer. Banished from my husband’s kingdom for my transgressions. For wanting to be married to a man instead of a pig.
Pulling my feet out of the water, I walk back to the road. The grass of the riverbank is heavenly, soft underfoot and smooth between my toes.
I tie the laces of my last pair of wooden shoes and hang them around my neck, letting my feet fondle every pebble and cobble.
Watching the happy families come together and meander back to their homes, I’m reminded of everything I could have had if I hadn’t meddled.
I’m still married. I still have a family, I remind myself, encasing my feet in the wooden shoes. I have no home. No safe place to live. But as long as I wear out this pair, I will have my happy ending.
In my years of wandering, I have seen parts of the world I never would have had I been a more obedient wife. I’ve travelled through cities and through the wilderness. I’ve seen mountains of ice and seas of fire. I met the moon. I got to know the stars.
I’ve lost the one thing that tied me to my husband, but he cared more for his own affairs than the bleeding between my legs. Still, what other choice do I have?
Coming to the edge of town, the cobbled stones turn into dirt roads. My bare toes are longing to touch the earth. I keep walking. Flat paths turn into rugged hills where I soak my feet in rivers that run through valleys. Hills turn to mountains and flatten back into forests.
One day, I come across a woman sitting on a log between the trees. My eyes travel to the first thing I notice about a person: their shoes. She isn’t wearing any. Dirt cakes her toes, callouses coat the bottoms of her feet.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I am Rhazes,” she responds. Her long, dark hair hangs loose and frizzles down her back. Her red lips are weather-cracked.
We walk along the padded forest floor, occasionally stopping to pick a plant or trim a flower. Rhazes moves without a sound. It’s hard for me to do that with the clunky shoes on my feet. Perhaps I can take them off, just for a little while…
I carry the shoes around my neck. The fallen pine leaves are soft beneath my feet. Rhazes doesn’t mention a husband, but if she has one, I suppose he’s not put off by her unruly toes. But I cannot grow callouses or harden my feet. I’m a princess with a kingdom and a husband to return to.
Rhazes invites me into her home. “Stay with me for a while,” she says with a shrug. It’s the first time I’ve been invited into a home in nearly seven years. The kindness of it fills my eyes with tears.
In the log cabin at night, we talk by the fire, eating stews and game and telling stories of our lives. By day we wander the forest, looking for sage, rosemary, and wild thyme. Rhazes lives alone. Has always lived alone. Has never married a man or a hog.
“Why do you carry those shoes around your neck, Babochka?” she asks me one day.
As I tell her the story, looking down at my toes, I notice the blisters have healed and the splinters have fallen out. Thin callouses are forming on the bottoms of my feet.
“I better put them on,” I say to Rhazes, “so I can return to my husband when the year is up.”
But the need to remove the shoes from my neck evades me.
“You could stay here with me,” Rhazes says.
“I can’t. I’m married. And if my husband doesn’t take me back, my father will have to find a new suitor for me, which will be difficult under the circumstances.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to be.”
“Don’t have to be what?” I ask.
“Married.”
The next day I leave Rhazes’ home, determined to finish my mission. We hug goodbye and as I walk under the canopy of trees, the shoes clink, rustling together over my collarbone.
To be an unwed princess would be a difficult life. But there are many other lives I could lead.
I no longer know where I am or where I’m going, but I can’t shake the feeling of joy each time my bare feet make contact with the ground. I walk on as the shoes clank together around my neck.
Soon, I find myself standing outside of my husband’s kingdom. It has been a year since I tossed my last pair of shoes into the river. After seven years will he have forgiven me?
I walk through the city, dirt-covered and barefoot, blending in with the peasants who sell wares in the street and farm their land.
When I reach the castle, I pass through the gate where guards no longer recognize me. I demand to see my husband.
I yell until finally I am led to his chamber. His eyes widen.
“What has happened to you? Why did you not put on the last pair of shoes?” He snorts.
“I’ve had a change of heart,” I say. “I’d like a divorce.”
“A divorce? Impossible! If anyone has grounds for divorce, it’s me! Now put on those shoes at once and walk until they break, for then I’ll be freed from this curse.”
“Well, you see, I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided this is not my curse to break. For isn’t that how we got into this mess in the first place? Perhaps you shouldn’t rely on your wife to solve your problems for you.” I take the shoes from my neck and place them on the floor in front of him, turning to leave.
“You have ruined me!” he calls after me, signalling his guards to block the door.
I look down at my dirt-caked and hardened feet. I turn my hands over to see they are calloused too.
“You’ll be nothing without me! A vagrant! A…a woman alone.”
“I am Aurelia. I have met the moon. I have gotten to know the stars,” I say, pushing my way past the guards. “I am already something,”
I run through the palace doors, past the startled and shouting guards, through the crowded markets and merchant’s homes, and out the city gates.
I stop for a moment to take in the sight before me. Standing in front of a mountainous backdrop is Rhazes. Black hair blazing in the wind, red-lipped, rosy-cheeked, and barefoot.
I run to her, taking her hands in mine. She holds a gift for me. A pair of black leather shoes.
Kayla Kurin is a writer and essayist from Toronto, though you’ll often find her adventuring in warmer climates. She is currently a student of Creative Writing, Fiction at Humber College. Kayla has banished social media from her writing practice, but you can follow her work at kaylakurin.com.
Image: Meaha Caudle-Choi, Still Life: Pomegranate, acrylic paint on canvas, 2019.
Edited for publication by Megan Gallant, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications Program.
The HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Applied Research & Innovation.