Page 52 of Kiss and Spell
“You get—to quote Whitney—diamonds in your eyes. It’s clear that you love them, even if you don’t like them right now.”
He knows what makes you happy. Your former fiancé didn’t even know that.
“Yes,” Ursula said in a high-pitched voice. “Who wouldn’t want to live in a castle?”
Eddie paused her song. “I’ve heard that they’re really drafty.”
Ursula gave her a polite smile. Eddie finished ringing up Ursula’s purchases and handed her a book-filled tote bag. “Happy reading.”
Ursula thanked her and took her items. Xavier paid for his three books and then they left the bookstore. They sat down on a bench on the sidewalk outside the store, examining their purchases.
Xavier handed her one of his books. “Consider it an early Beltane gift.”
It was her lost book. She held up a hand. “I can’t accept it.”
He extended it out to her. “It’s yours.”
Ursula took it and unwrapped the book feverishly, like a child receiving an extra-large candy bar. She reached out and ran a finger over the illustrated cover of an Afro-haired princess leaning over to bestow a kiss on a crowned frog with a hopeful look.
Xavier studied the cover and frowned. “Until the Morning Breaks.”
She nodded. “It’s a retelling of the Frog Prince. It’s my second favorite fairy tale after ‘Cinderella.’”
“It should be called The Frog Prince: A Horror Story,” he quipped.
She scrunched her face in thought. “What’s wrong with the ‘Frog Prince’? It’s innocent. A frog finds a princess willing to give him a kiss and transform him back into his true form. You should be inspired by it. You’re much cuter and you don’t eat flies.”
She noticed his ears blushed a bit. He rubbed his forehead as if trying to remove the image from his mind. “Yes, but how long was he a frog? Two days? Two months? Two years?”
“It takes as long as it takes.” Her tone was apologetic but firm. “You can’t hurry love; you can only create the conditions for love to flourish.”
He let out a childish grunt. Ursula laughed.
“Princes don’t date where I’m from. We court and figure out the rest later. First comes courtship and marriage, then comes love. What about your family?”
Ursula twisted her mouth to the side. “My parents fell in love after two weeks. It was a whirlwind romance. They got married after six weeks.”
“Wow,” Xavier said. “Are they still together?”
She wished the story ended with her parents riding off into the sunset, but it didn’t.
“They had me a year later and were happy for a while, but Dad’s family kept telling Mama that she needed to give up her magic. They said she wasn’t committing to her family the way she should.”
Xavier blinked in annoyance. “How can you give up magic if you are magic?”
Ursula shook her head sadly. “Well, the Ellis family expected her to give it up. Mama tried but couldn’t do it. They got divorced when I was in fourth grade. Mama and I moved to the Grove. Dad got remarried and moved to Meadowdale with his new family.”
Ursula knew happy endings existed. Even though her parents didn’t have theirs, she held on to the hope that she’d find hers if she worked and wished for it enough. However, she didn’t know how to have a happily-ever-after without changing some part of herself to be accepted and loved. All the fairy tales required some type of transformation. Servants became princesses. Frogs and beasts turned into princes. She faced Xavier, wanting to hear a happy story.
“Was it love at first sight for the King and Queen?” she said in a small voice.
“It was something like that,” he said quietly. She figured he didn’t want to talk about the family he missed. There was no need to push Xavier. Ursula held up her gift, so Xavier could see the cover better.
“I bought this book the summer Dad got remarried,” she said. “I wore out my old copy.”
“What is it about?”
Ursula thumbed through the pages. “A young woman who gets tired of her ordinary life wishes to live in a fairy tale. One day she wakes up and she’s a princess who fights dragons, kisses frogs, and insults knights. She has a horrible time and decides her old life was better. By the end of the story, she wakes up and the entire adventure was a bad dream.”