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Charming because that's what they thought he actually was. Maman remained unconvinced. What Papa thought, he kept to himself. Chances are good I would have followed my mother's lead, had it not been for one thing:
    It was Charming Oswald (as I preferred to call him) who finally convinced my mother to turn me loose in the great outdoors.
    For years Maman had argued (with success) that the best way to hold the spells that threatened me at bay was to keep me indoors, as far away from unexpected things as possible. It was true that I wouldn't be able to engage in any of the more traditional forms of princesslike activities, including the thing at which she excelled: painstakingly boring embroidery. But there were other ladylike tasks I might pursue, such as painting bowls of fruit or braiding rugs to set before the fire.
    No matter how many times I ate the fruit instead of painting it, usually getting juice all down my front, and no matter how many times my rugs contained gigantic and mischievous bumps that threatened to send anyone foolish enough to tread upon them hurtling headlong into the fire, Maman insisted that indoors was safer than out. For me, at any rate. There were simply too many surprises out of doors. And after all, as she was fond of saying, usually as a way to end one of our inevitable arguments, even a simple stick, properly wielded, is capable of drawing one bright drop of blood.
    In vain did I vehemently protest and my father gently suggest that she was being just a tad over-protective. The spells spoken over me in my cradle weren't supposed to be fulfilled until I was sixteen years old. Couldn't I at least go out from time to time till then? Well-supervised, of course.
    Her answer was always the same: No. No. A thousand times, no. And that was the way things stood, until Oswald managed his amazing transformation and became genuinely charming. And no sooner had he completed one transformation, than he performed another: He changed my mother's mind.
    "Well," he said one day, a particularly fine one, as I recall. So fine it had provoked an unusually impassioned plea on my part to be let out, and an equally impassioned denial from Maman.

    21

    All this happened shortly after lunch. We were in my mother's solar, a bright room at the top of the tallest tower, the room in which we always sat when the weather was fine. The fruit that had not been consumed at luncheon was now arranged into an improbably artistic pile and prominently displayed in a dish on a sideboard. My paints and easel stood nearby. Maman glanced significantly at them both from time to time, while her fingers worked her current piece of embroidery.
    I wasn't about to do what she wanted, of course. Instead, I sat on the windowseat beside my father and tried my best not to pout. Not that I held back from this as a rule, but I did not want to pout in front of Oswald. My father reached over and tousled my hair in an attempt to cheer me up.
    "Really, Philippe," Maman protested at once. "You'll make her all mussy, and she does that often enough all by herself. You were saying?" she asked, switching her attention back to Oswald.
    Not that she really wanted to know what he would say, but giving him her attention was an excellent way to show she was put out with me and Papa.
    “I was saying that I'm sure you know best, Aunt Mathilde,"
    Oswald said with an engaging smile. He really was astonishingly handsome, particularly when he smiled, a thing I may have neglected to mention before. His hair was everyday enough: dark brown. But his eyes were gray and flecked with gold. Like the ocean on a stormy day when the sun breaks through and flashes across the surface of the water for just a moment. When you looked at Oswald, you didn't want to look away. There was a thing about him that captured you and wouldn't let go.
    At the moment, he was standing in front of the fireplace on what was, perhaps, the most unfortunate of all my rugs.
    Fortunately for him, there was