Lowry the ogress zipped her meat sack up. Such business is now complete, she muttered to her helpmeet, who whisked her master’s wilderness away. Each dawn the ogress wore her zipper in the front so it proceeded her, gleaming bronze tangs in sun or snow like a velvet courier’s coronet. It was her greatest vanity, having chosen a common archetype for herself: aunt who feeds her niece to dogs; powdered duchess yawning at hangings through lorgnettes; front receptionist to hell. When the ogress spoke, she zipped it down just far enough to let the gurgles out, which stressed how blessed we were she didn’t eat us, and blessed so too our chains. Each dusk we watched again as she stomped our crops to mush, then lurched, exhausted, back up her hill. Each dusk her helpmeet’s arms returned those hilltop rags. They wanted us to see behind those teeth. And we beheld: behind those teeth, more teeth.

The baroness in darkness sent her butler out to prowl the cemetery for buttercups. It was no secret, the way his lank eyelash of a body sulked those craggy headstones, half-carpeted with moss, all our common blood, slow as a slug. Visitors who woke at dawn to spot him were too late to see him hunting blue graves in fog, his only light the pumpkin from his pipe. They were too late to see his mounting plucks, inside a bushel basket large enough to nurse a shot fox back from limping. We wished them gold a time inside her cellar, a galaxy stillborn in its own glow, or caged behind a crystal curio, against her bedroom wall, so she could dream she wed the sun. It took all three chimneys for the baroness to burn them, once a year on Saint Lucy’s Day, and send them up, blue on blue, like fleeting after-shapes of fireworks. Once a year we wore our heavy coats to gather at her gate and watch her kill them twice, curtains wide upon her madness, so we could forgive her at our tables, before our children, for such confused beseeching to her god, which was her checkbook.

How do you know you aren’t just carting around her cat, my daughter asks, too smart to care I never answer, or care that girls who nag don’t nag for long. Of course the princess is a cloak that floats, ringed by guards. Too gray for more campaigns, I’m thankful for such pay—you can’t call it work, the way all robes freeze, fresh air and exercise on city rounds, tidy ceremonies for festivals or guests of state. We trade when we hear another corner groan. It’s a good soreness at night, taut from sun—a grateful wife, our daughter’s arms outstretched, my nose still drunk from hours passing phalanxes of burnished fruit in stalls, where merchant tongues together barked their daylong feast-song for empire. Sore arms buy tutors, fresh fish and wine, a house that sleeps at peace. I bear my rod beyond those drawn and perfumed tapestries, free of wonder. We stride each round as if we hold the timid heiress of our people. Perhaps we do. Perhaps we always do. Perhaps we always brace a hid divan, sprawled with cushions, one small and empty cloak.