Once again, the Forest Girl eats and dresses well; she soon forgets what she has done and that she’s been evicted from paradise. The gold on her finger doesn’t disappear. At night, when she sleeps, the golden finger does what the leather-bound key once did. It nestles between her legs and finds a way to give her pleasure.

The wedding takes place, the Forest Girl shares her bed with the king before he retires to his rooms, and after several encounters, she is surprised to discover how pleasurable it is to be with him in this way. The king loves her. The Forest Girl loves the pleasure she gives the king, loves his velvet and his satin, loves how well the servants treat her. She loves her hairdresser, who ornaments her hair with precious stones. She loves the baker, who makes delicious pastries. She loves the kingdom’s cheeses and its bread. She also loves her memory of a ball that lasted all night in a gorgeous palace. And even more than that ball, she loves the gaze and the arms of her prince.

• • •

One night when she’s falling asleep, she sees her whole life, from when she had a father, a mother, hunger, and a name (Anna) to when she became the Forest Girl. Then she went back to being Anna, but her name was Cinderella, and then she became a queen. How does one girl become another, and then another? Her story is one of hunger and laughter, then one of adoption by a cold, luminous woman who gives her the keys to know herself and tests her. And before she even learns what she likes, the keys take advantage of her, making her feel a pleasure she neither understands nor wants, playing—without her realizing it—with what she ought to have been seeking. Sleep takes its hold, and she has a dream in which she becomes the Girl Who Walked on Bread:

Once upon a time there was a woodsman who lived with his wife at the edge of a poor village. They lived in misery; in front of their hut, there was a muddy stream swarming with flies. Because the woodsman and his wife were devout, peaceful people who were more virtuous than any of their neighbors, the saints blessed them with a strikingly beautiful daughter. Though she was lovely to behold, she was arrogant and mean-hearted. She looked down on her parents for their poverty and gentleness. She called them shameful names. She liked to step on her mother’s apron for fun.

“What are we going to do with her?” her mother would say. “She has every reason to look down on us: we’re poor, we’re humble, but she’s all we have! Today she steps on my apron, tomorrow she’ll step on my face.”