There’s a story Grandpa used to tell by the fire about a Lady who was engaged to be married to a very rich man. He’d had many wives before, it was said, but they’d all vanished. This caused the Lady some concern, but her parents just saw his money and sent her off to be wed, and she being in the sort of predicament she was, resolved to find her own way through it.
So she moved into his house on a far-away island away from her family, with her solitary trunk, and look upon the wide expanse of the huge estate that stood, colossal and empty except for him and her and their silent gray-faced servants. The man she married was huge and had a long black beard take devoured most of he face, and beady, dark eyes that burned in his wide, dark sockets.
No one knew how he’d come upon his fortune, but he had many ships and was often away, and he said he was just as happy to leave her be, that his main interest was in travel, but he needed someone to tend to his home.The grey-faced servants moved her one solitary trunk into her cavernous bedroom and he bent before the bed and kissed her small hand and he kissed her small foot and told her she could have anything she wanted in all the world if she would simply agree to stay here.
“You may go into any room in the house, have anything it is that you wish to have, build anything my fortune can build you, and do whatever you wish with my fortune to please you. You may move what you wish moved, and all I ask in return is that you do not use this key. All I wish is that you do go into the room at the bottom of the tower, at the end of the hall, it is my private sanctuary and it is all I love besides travel. This is all I ask of you,” he said, and his eyes gleamed too hot and he held her small hand in his large paw and stared too closely at her.
“Promise me this and you may do what you wish with all I otherwise possess.”
“I do promise,” she said. He kissed her small foot and he kissed her small hand and the very next day sailed out into the world, waving goodbye and leaving her all alone in the wide, empty house with only grey-faced servant silently stepping around her and saying no words.
She promptly removed it from the ring and threw the heavy too-cold key into the ocean. She reviewed her husband’s books and accounts and began to neaten the household, paying the servants more and renovating their quarters until they were friendly and bright eyed and she opened up the extra, cavernously echoing chambers of the house to their families so the hallways rang with voices.
She balanced her husband’s financial empire, sending missives and inquires to various branches, and by the time he returned from his travels he looked bewildered that she was still there and all she had done, but conceded that she had followed the letter of their agreement.
“But what was the room then, Grandpa?”
“Who cares? If somebody tries to lead you into a trap, don’t follow them, and if you promise not do something, then don’t do it,” Grandpa had said, offering me a perfectly toasted marshmallow.
kiragecko 