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| (Italian Greyhound, via Wikipedia) |
Author's Note: I'm putting this one at the beginning because this is going to seem like a really weird story to anyone who hasn't read the original story. This Storytelling isn't my best, but basically it zones in on a particular part of the Italian fairy tale The Fair Angiola, which is a story very similar the story of Rapunzel, where the daughter (Angiola) of a woman forced into a contract with a witch after taking some produce from the witch's garden is taken by the witch one she turns a certain age. In this version, however, when the prince comes to rescue Angiola from her confinement in the witch's tower the witch chases after them, and just as they are about to lose her she puts a curse on Angiola that she will now and forever have a dog's face. Of course, the witch's little dog followed Angiola because he loves her, and eventually when he and Angiola have been living in a cabin in the forest for some time, with the prince visiting occasionally but unable to marry Angiola because of her cosmetic issues, he goes back to the witch and asks her to lift the curse. The witch, having calmed down some, gives the dog a vial of water to lift the curse, and Angiola and the prince and the dog live happily ever after.
I thought that the idea of having the face of a dog was really intriguing. I was waaaaaaaay to tired this go-around to go into the depth of sensory detail that I would have liked to in this story, but I know that dogs have things like only being able to see in blue and yellow and seeing in the dark and a really sharp nose that would really freak a human out if they suddenly developed those traits and lost their human ones...but anyway, here's the story...
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All Angiola could ever smell was the scent of the witch’s magic.
Her nose was stronger now, of course, than it had been before. It was one of the few perks of having one’s face turned into a dog’s that she could think of. There weren’t that many others: her world had turned all blue and yellow, and her peripheral vision had turned uncanny while looking forwards was nearly impossible (especially with her nose in the way). She also tended to pant a lot, as it was summer and the weather had turned very, very warm. Panting was not a particularly attractive pastime, and she did so hope that Duccio would not hold that image of her in his head for the rest of their married lives—if he did, in fact, ever end up marrying her.
No, she did not particularly enjoy having the face of a dog.
She left the cabin less and less as time went on. There really wasn’t any point to leaving, as seeing the outside world just reminded her in a thousand-fold ways that the witch had cursed her. She couldn’t see the green of the leaves on the trees, or take a breath without all the smells of the forest overwhelming her. Thankfully, she never got any urges to chase the various small animals that crossed her path, but even that small favor seemed insignificant in the larger breadth of her problems.
The witch hated her. So did Duccio’s parents, and they’d never even met her—they only knew that she was a peasant girl with a face like a dog’s, and therefore entirely unsuitable to marry their son the prince of the kingdom. Maybe even Duccio hated her. Hadn’t his visits become shorter and farther apart, lately?
Really, the only thing that made her life bearable was Poalo.
Poalo was a small ball of energy. She knew, theoretically, that he was quite old, but she supposed that being a witch’s dog might give you a longer life span than most. He liked to fetch, and to roll in the dirt, and to be scratched at just that point behind his ear. But, most of all, he liked to talk, and his barks and whines and growls were the only noises she could manage to create with her new snout-mouth.
She missed talking the most, she thought. Her conversations with Poalo were what kept her sane, when all she could manage to convey to Duccio was a faint sense of frustration and anxiety, translated through soulful gazes where his eyes were the wrong color and she always ended up making desperate sounds deep in her throat. Being a witch’s dog, Poalo had not only lived quite a long time but had also had quite a few adventures that he was more than happy to tell her about. He had once, he told her, been turned into a squirrel by the witch when she wanted him to spy on another witch in the next kingdom. Before, he had been quite a large dog. Now, he was only about as long as Angiola’s forearm and barely reached about her anklebone when they both stood side by side.
It had been an adjustment, he’d told her, but he’d managed. As she would eventually adjust to her new face. He’d licked her nose, then, then settled down between her and the fire in a boneless heap, nose tucked underneath his tail.
Yes, Poalo was the only reason for her continued sanity.
One day, as they were both sitting in silence for once with nothing to do but wait out another long, Duccio-less day, he touched her ankle with his nose and laid his chin atop her knee, staring into her eyes in that slightly-pathetic, entreating way he had. “I could go back to the witch,” he said carefully, “and see if she couldn’t give you something to make your face back into a human’s?” He paused. “Although I at least think you look prettier this way. Human faces aren’t nearly as beautiful as dog faces are.
She hugged him. “You don’t have to, Paolo,” she whined, burying her face in his fur. “I know she wasn’t very gentle with you, either.”
He dragged his sandpaper tongue over her shoulder in a slobbery kiss. “But I would. For you.”
It was her turn to pause, and while he did so he began washing her hands. She watched him for a long moment, considering his offer. Then: “She cut off part of my finger, once, when I was little, because I didn’t want her to take me away from my mother. I’d hate to think what she would do to you, if you went back.”
“I’m not afraid of what she might do to me,” he growled. “I only want you to be happy. It pains me to see you unhappy.”
The whine left her throat before she could stop it. She loved him so very much, but—she smoothed the short furs of his coat—she didn’t want him to get hurt by the witch. While the witch loved them both in theory, in practice she was given to volatile moods and cutting off the small fingers of forgetful children. Not to mention turning the face of the girl who had been like a daughter to her into a dog’s.
But he wanted her to be happy.
“All right,” she said to him. “But be careful.”
When he left that night, she stood at the door and stared out into the darkness after him. She could see much better in the low-light with a dog’s eyes than she could with a human’s, and she watched his white pelt bob in the distance until it faded out of sight.
Then she went back inside, heart heavy, to wait for both of the loves of her life to come back.
***
Source: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885). Untextbook.
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