Multicursal: a portfolio by Natalie Schliekelman

pain that I should have considered instead of my own. Painful to consider is that even in my two-faced freedom, I was only a marionette of the Fates, through no agency of my own, with no cause nor effect from my own doing. In my worst moments, I fear that I was to be a pawn even in my finality, and that my misfortune is recompense for my father’s crimes against all that is good.

To call me a pawn would be an overstatement of my worth. Even a pawn can checkmate a king.

The culmination of my practicality was simply a plot device, a prize, in someone else’s hero journey. No bildungsroman of my own. Ariadne, the pretty face and heartsick fool, gifting the hero with what he needs because I think he is handsome and I want him to make me his own.

Do you ever consider that maybe I just wanted to end the reign of the monster? That the only way I could think of to escape my insubstantial fetters was to give myself away to another man?

I present him with my intimate threads, entwining myself in him in the hopes of pleasing. Girls are merely bedside pawns and those who cannot shape their lives are better dead.

I gave everything to a hero who turned out to be no more virtuous than a monster in a maze. I was nothing more than a scrap to be discarded, once all of my use was done and he believed that every piece of me belonged to him. When did he start seeing my devotion as desperation?

On that island, I dreamed that perhaps I could finally be free of dominators. Long ago, I learned to never give the gift of my soul to a man, and I dreamed that I could finally set her free, like a dove from a cage, a herald of love and freedom.

I should have known better than to weave myself a fantasy. No matter what sentience the imagination creates, a doll is still just that: a beautiful toy.