was impossible to feel happiness and each day was a toiling misery surrounded by magma, heat and little naked devils that prod you with long, barbed sticks. While Aunt Cicily’s hadn’t been quite so bad as volcanic hell, it hadn’t been enjoyable either.
Aunty Cicily had lost her husband to illness very recently, and with her four children and the fifth distorting her belly (being with child really appeared to be quite an awkward experience), she’d requested my help. My father, no doubt deciding I was spending too much time daydreaming about Simon, had decided to ship me off to his sister’s without even asking my feelings on the subject. Had he asked, I would have told him it was total and complete rot!
But, now that the agreed upon thirty days were over, Simon would soon be arriving in his shiny green carriage with the sumptuous purple velvet interior to return me to Goldenspur, my home. And I could hardly wait!
A whole month: thirty days of pure and total longing, missing, wanting, imagining, remembering (well, all except what his face looked like). It had been much too long for us to be apart. I’d done lots of daydreaming in that time, imagining where we might live when we eventually got married. Now that I was nineteen, the time had most certainly come to choose a husband and settle down, and there was no doubt in my mind that Simon was the one. After all, this was true love.
My fantasies hadn’t just included where we would live—hopefully outside Goldenspur, as I found the little town to be quite provincial—but I’d imagined what my dress would look like (certainly white lace covering the finest of silk), how Simon would react when he first saw me walking down the aisle… hmm, actually, the more I thought on it, the more I didn’t want to walk down an aisle. Instead, I wanted to walk through a meadow with little white flowers peeping up through the heather. And the meadow would be surrounded by tall pine trees that seemed to reach all the way to the heavens, with wispy, white clouds interrupting the cerulean blue of the sky. Where exactly that place existed, I wasn’t certain. For now, it just existed in my head, but that was good enough. For now.
Wherever this place was, there would also be blue jays and cardinals flying through the air, calling to one another, saying in their singsong bird voices: oh, what a joyous day! What a momentous occasion! The unity of true love!
I wasn’t quite sure what bird voices would sound like if birds could truly speak, but in my head, they were rather high-pitched, a bit scratchy and not altogether pleasant.
Regardless, though, what could be a happier occasion?
Simon and I had been together a while now: two months and twenty-five days to be exact, and our courtship was that of legend! Simon was just the most wonderful man—tallish for being quite short and lanky, with the exception of the slight protrusion of his gut which did remind me of Aunt Cicily and her distended stomach (something that quite horrified me, truth be told). Oh, and Simon was the best listener—sitting quite still and nodding on occasion (if his eyes were still open) as I bewitched him with stories of my imaginative wanderings—of all the ideas and thoughts that passed through my brain each and every day.
I was certainly the marrying type, a homebody who dreamed of settling down and at one point, I imagined I should have liked to have a brood of children. But, after visiting Aunt Cicily’s brood, I found myself disagreeing with my previous plans. No, instead, Simon and I should live with dogs, cats, horses, and possibly pigs and a cow…
I imagined most men would find my domesticated spirit quite boring, preferring a girl with a sense of adventure and a love for the finer things in life. I was happy where I was (except I quite disliked Goldenspur) and I wanted nothing more than to settle down and start my happily ever after. And, fortunately, Simon wanted the same simple yet calm and contented life I did.
Oh, I could not wait to see him.
***
At the sound of whinnying, I threw open the front door to Aunt Cicily’s humble cottage and this time, I didn’t even notice how the door opening sounded like an old witch cackling. Furthermore, I didn’t mind it when I nearly tripped over one of Cicily’s numerous children in my