Once upon a time, there lived a clever wife and a beautiful husband. They lived in a room the beautiful husband's father built off his cottage, and they were happy there, because they were together.
Then one day, while they were walking through the woods together and laughing at jokes only they understood, they caught the attention of an imp. This imp's mission in life was to make everyone as miserable as it was. It followed them home, watching for seeds of discord it could cultivate.
The imp realized it had found a rare thing: two people who filled one another's gaps so seamlessly, they were one. The imp retreated and plotted and planned.
A year passed, and it came time for the beautiful husband and clever wife to leave his father's cottage for a home their own. The imp followed, still plotting and planning and looking for a crack to insinuate itself into. The clever wife and the beautiful husband bickered over arrangements and whose job it was to take care of which of the many tasks before them. But always at the end of the day, the beautiful husband and clever wife hugged and kissed, and went to sleep more in love than ever.
The imp was starting to feel sick.
Finally, the imp's observations paid off. He saw that, though the clever wife trusted her beautiful husband, she did not trust the women who fluttered their eyelashes at him in the marketplace. The imp couldn't sway those who were already happy, but he could lean on those women to make them giggle more in the presence of the beautiful husband, and to ask him to lend his big, strong hands. The beautiful husband was a kind soul, and so he was easily persuaded, though never tempted to stray.
The clever wife saw through the attention paid her beautiful husband, but her attempts to warn him were met with reminders on his part that he felt no temptation. Didn't she trust him?
At night, she greeted her beautiful husband at the door, though he was late once more because of other women's requests. She kissed him and held him close. She brought him to their warm bed. All the while, she said nothing of other women or lateness or trust.
For three nights, she greeted her husband at the door, told him how she loved him, and said nothing of his lateness. On the fourth night, he was early. In his fist, he clutched a bouquet of wildflowers he'd picked for her, as he'd done when he was courting her. He told her how he overheard some gossip about a woman who vowed to corner him in her bedchamber. He was sorry he hadn't listened. They spent the night in one another's arms.
The imp was not ready to give up. It went to their companions next, planting notions to create doubt where there was none. Suddenly, all the clever wife's friends could speak of was how difficult it was to stay in love. The beautiful husband's friends asked him when he would stop listening to his wife and behave as a man should. The beautiful husband was smart enough to answer that he was the lucky one, to have a wife worth listening to, while the clever wife told her friends that, though love often wavered, theirs would not. The clever wife and beautiful husband laughed together about how wrong their friends were. They felt sorry for anyone who might treat marriage as a chore, one's spouse like an enemy.
The imp needed help. It departed for the underworld, where it bought a curse from a powerful demon. It slipped the curse under the beautiful husband's pillow, and chortled to think of the chaos it would create.
When the clever wife rolled over the next morning to tell her beautiful husband she loved him, as she always did, he smiled and opened his mouth to tell her he loved her, too, as he always did. But no sound emerged. He cleared his throat, but still nothing came. He got up, drank his coffee, and tried a third time. Still nothing.
The clever wife proposed that her beautiful husband stay home if he was sick, but he thought the fresh air might do his throat some good. Indeed, within an hour of his leaving their cottage, he could speak again. He picked his clever wife a bouquet of wildflowers on his way home that evening and prepared to tell her the good news. But, as soon as he stepped over his threshold, his voice left him. The flowers dropped from his hand. His clever wife asked what was wrong, but he could not say. He shook his head and went outside to work on their garden.
The second day, his voice was once again silent until he left their cottage. He was able to speak to everyone he met that day. Upon his return, his voice left him. He tried to communicate in gestures, but even his clever wife couldn't understand, and grew frustrated with his attempts.
The third day was the same. He woke, and made no sound when he tried to speak. The clever wife had some business outside the cottage. When she returned that evening, long past when her beautiful husband should have come home, his belongings were gone. There was no sign of her beautiful husband. She closed her eyes tight and wished him at her side, but, when she opened them, he and his possessions still weren’t there.
She went to her husband's friends to ask where he was. They were still under the imp's influence, though, and laughed at her plight. She asked his parents next, who frowned and shrugged and asked what had happened. She went to her own friends, who knew nothing of her beautiful husband’s vanishing. She went to the fields where he toiled daily, but none who worked alongside him could say where was. In despair, she asked the women at the marketplace. They offered only forced smiles, and no information.
Finally, the clever wife went to her younger sister. The clever wife's sister was twice as smart, for which the villagers had branded her a witch. She didn't mind, because people traded her recipes and valuable objects for her knowledge. She listened to her sister the clever wife, gave her a handkerchief to cry into, and reassured her that there had to be a reasonable explanation. They went back to the clever wife's cottage, and sought clues. Under the husband's pillow, they found an ugly, twisted lump of flesh. It was a cow's tongue, burned and mangled. The sister threw it in the fire, having recognized it as a curse object. Then the clever wife confessed to her sister of her beautiful husband's wordlessness in their last days together.
Then the clever wife's sister gave her three things. The first was a tea that would help her sleep. The second was a chip of ice from the top of a mountain in the farthest northern reaches. It would freeze the clever wife's heart, so that she could continue to love her husband without feeling pain. The clever wife swallowed it down, and drank the tea her sister offered. Soon, she was asleep, and dreamed of a reunion with her beautiful husband.
The clever wife woke the next morning to a knock at the door. She went to it without getting dressed, certain her beautiful husband had felt the curse lift and returned to her. But the man on the other side of the door wasn't her husband, and he averted his eyes from her nightclothes. He had come to deliver a message, he said. Her beautiful husband had gone far away and would not return.
She caught the man's sleeve and asked if he had seen her beautiful husband. The man blushed and stammered and hurried away without answering her question.
The next morning brought another messenger, but she was waiting. She was awake and decent, and asked the messenger in. He declined, and said only that her beautiful husband wished for her to stop trying to find him. Surely such a clever woman could find a man more deserving of her company.
She didn't want a man more deserving. She wanted the one who fit her, and who she'd vowed to spend her happily ever after with. The messenger only shrugged and turned to leave. She followed, demanding the location of her beautiful husband. The messenger said that he hadn't spoken with her husband, that another messenger had given it to him to relay. Then he climbed on his horse, and was gone.
The clever wife had another day to plan what she would do if another messenger came. This time, when the knock sounded, she pulled the messenger inside. While he spoke his message, which was very like the last, she sprinkled her sister's third gift on her threshold. When the messenger stepped in it on his way out, his footsteps glittered.
The spell would show everywhere the messenger had been before stepping in the potion. All the clever wife had to do was follow. She put on her shawl, and began walking.
She walked for two days without stopping, the footsteps lighting her way at night. On the third day, she came to a humble inn. When she entered, she recognized the woman tending bar. The woman had looked the clever wife in the eye and told her she didn't know where her beautiful husband was.
The bartender made no attempt to escape or pretend she didn't know what the clever wife wanted. She went into the back room, and out came the beautiful husband.
The clever wife wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him for joy. But he was looking at her with contempt in his beautiful eyes. Her frozen heart pounded, aching despite her sister's gift.
She told him of the curse, and that it was destroyed. He told her he wouldn't return. He was better off out here, with no clever wife to make him feel stupid, no clever wife's clever conversation to silence him. The imp had had seven days to work his evil inside the beautiful husband's heart.
Heat flooded the clever wife's chest, melting her frozen heart. But the sleep her sister had gifted her had also given her strength. She staggered, but told him the truth: all she'd wanted was his happiness. If he would gain it by her absence, so be it. As she spoke the words, she hoped they would reach him, would show him how foolishly he had chosen. But his expression never changed.
The clever wife walked home. The journey that had taken three days when she was full of hope took a fortnight with her feet dragging. When she reached the home she once shared with her beautiful husband, she wept on the bed until her tears flowed into dreams.
When she woke, she saw what had come of the home she once shared with her beautiful husband. She spent the day cleaning and polishing and clearing cobwebs. She pulled weeds from the garden, and began to repair the thatch, as her beautiful husband had said he would. She couldn't shake the hope that he would return, and be pleased with her for keeping their home so neat.
Days turned into weeks, then months. Before she knew it, a year had passed since she'd seen her beautiful husband, and she could hardly remember what his face looked like. She still felt a pang when she thought of him, but there were always more important matters to attend to.
One day, the imp peered in the windows to gloat over its success. It had destroyed two people's sickening happiness. It expected to find the cottage abandoned, or the clever wife weeping on the floor. Instead, she was sewing, and humming while she worked. The imp peered closer, looking for the beautiful husband, but she was alone.
Furious, it pounded on the front door. It chose to make itself visible, and so the clever wife saw what looked like a child with eyes too old for its face at her door. She invited the child in with a smile, and offered some tea.
The imp asked if she hadn't had a husband. She confirmed she was married, but that her beautiful husband was gone.
The imp asked bluntly what she was so happy about, then, and her smile grew.
She was happy for what he had taught her. Nothing could take away the life she'd built for herself since he left, or the knowledge that she was a whole person all on her own.
The teakettle whistled then, and she turned to make tea. The imp fumed. What was wrong with her?
The clever wife finished preparing the imp's tea, and handed over the cup. It only took the cup for something to hide its frown behind, but the spicy odor was too much to resist. As imps are accustomed to the fires of the underworld, the near-boiling tea was no difficulty to swallow in one gulp.
Suddenly, the imp's eyes bulged. The tea, which had been hot a moment before, turned to ice in its stomach. The imp clutched its belly, trying to vomit, but the tea stayed lodged where it was, a solid, cold mass. The imp heaved and shook before it finally lay still. When it stopped twitching, it dissolved into mist.
The clever wife sipped her tea and took a seat by the window. Perhaps her beautiful husband would return, now that the creature could no longer influence him. Or perhaps he was happier in his new life.
Regardless, she noted, she must make certain to thank her sister for the tea.
About the Author: Alice Keezer graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington in 2001 with a Creative Writing degree. While she would love to put her writing skills to good use, she's attached to such luxuries as food and shelter.