I tell her what I’ve always told her.

The kingdom is yours. It’s your spinning wheel, your charming prince, and your whistling dwarves. I sparkle, and I shimmer, and I do that magic thing with the glass. (Smoke and mirrors: that one’s mine.) She’s hard to please, this one, and suspicious, too. And that breath: like a poisoned apple, the still-beating heart of a princess. Something. But I never said. She could break me.

I’m framed in gold. That’s gilding the lily; don’t you think?

I tell her what I’ve always told her.

The kingdom is yours. It’s your glass slipper, your grandmother’s house, and your homemade porridge. I shine on her like the sun, and my rays are gold-plated, pretty much. I could be the element itself, and the orb. But she’s a cold one, and lately, she doubts. I could also be had for impersonation (the element, the sun—take your pick. So provincial).

But for her, I gleam. I resist—but acid and moisture only, and perfectly, even then.

I tell her what I’ve always told her.

The kingdom is yours. It’s your willing woodsman, your squealing little pigs, and your oven warming for yummy kids who lose their way. I soothe, I mollify, and I appease. I flatter like the blarney stone, so kiss me. (Not a trace.) The adulation, the sweet talk, and the praise—oh, for crying out loud. Fairest of them all, my glassy ass. I will not bend. I can’t. I won’t. It’s not in my nature.

I am fixed to hang for as long as, for as long as.

For Elvira Eliza Field, the second wife of James Strang, founder of a mid nineteenth century Mormon monarchy on Beaver Island, Michigan

It was funny, you know? One minute I’m a part of the crowd come to hear the Gospel of the Lord direct from the Lord’s own, a prophet!—and the next thing, well, the next thing, he wants to meet me.

I was, well, I don’t know what I was. Curious?

Brother James (he called himself Brother James) sent for me, and we’re sitting alone in a room together, and there’s this feeling like, maybe something spiritual because it’s all so hard to understand—

like the Bible sometimes.

And Brother James reaches for my hands, kind of like a man does for a woman, I guess, and he tells me we can be married. If I wanted. I did want.

Oh, God, I wanted.

Isn’t that funny, to be with this famous man God talks to—all the time? He talks to God! And God answers him, Brother James said!

But I did think maybe it was wrong, and I told Brother James, because if my daddy found out I was holding hands with the Almighty himself, he’d take the strap to me till I couldn’t sit down till next Tuesday.

But Brother James said God told him having extra wives was really what God wanted for his men followers in this big new church everyone liked so much, and that we would have a special marriage, a “spiritual marriage,”

and I would be kind of like his heavenly wife, which sounds better than a plain old regular wife, so I said yes. Oh, God. You know I did. I was his wife, and we were together, and I should be blushing but I wasn’t, and then he had me cut my hair short. Oh!

And I had to be called Charlie for a while, and dressed like a boy, and be his “assistant” while he brought big crowds of people to the new church, Brother James’s Mormon church.

Well, I didn’t care what church it was, or what James wanted me to call him. I just wanted.

He made me want. And I didn’t hardly care, but James, he wanted, too. And we traveled up and down the coast for the big crowds, but mostly for the wanting.

And we went to this island, and I was Charlie, though everyone knew I wasn’t, and I knew I wasn’t, but we all pretended until God told James who told everyone else that heavenly wives were okay. More than okay.

I could go to hell, I thought then, because it did all seem strange, but I was having too much fun to stop and ask forgiveness for being a special spiritual wife. I don’t see why I would.

Mrs. Legal Wife seemed upset, and I didn’t care. Isn’t that mean?

I didn’t care. She left soon anyway, and I was never really the first wife, even after James took more wives. But first spiritual wife suited me fine. Together we ran the place, James and me.

I saw my chance and I took it.

We wanted and we ruled and we wanted and we ruled so much and so hard and for long enough and the world watched and then came the guns and the glory and dying—

well, dying is like wanting, you know?