We shared a hedge with him, and we could see the fruit-tree tops in his orchard above the hedge from our orchard. Bluebeard lived well. All his horses were strong and elegant, his carriages beautifully appointed and maintained. His gardens flourished. Even from a distance, his house sparkled. Yet he made everyone uneasy. I, the youngest of five children and the one most often alone, spent much of my time pushing hedge branches aside to peer between them. I saw Bluebeard in snatches; I knew that his head was bald, his brows thick and black, and that his eyes, under the shelves of his brows, held dark fire. His beard, though, as everyone said, was a strange color of blue, lighter than lapis but not so light as the sky, more as though he had dipped it into the sky’s reflection in a dark lake. Like everyone else, I found him strange. On those rare occasions when I saw all of him, I shivered. When I was young, my family kept our distance from Bluebeard with ease. My father, a merchant, prospered; we had friends all around us and could afford to ignore one neighbor.
