The Collected Enchantments, page 38
turns into a tree, who bears me human children.
And all I can think of is her hard black eyes,
which sometimes looked at me with such disdain,
her small red mouth that never told me the truth
and laughed when I believed her.
That fox’s face, which was probably always a mask.
Sometimes I go into the forest alone
and whisper into the hollow knot of an oak:
I’d rather spend an hour in fairyland
than a lifetime elsewhere.
Then I stand in the green silence, with only the cries
of birds, the shush of the oak leaves high above,
and wonder if she’s listening.
The Fairies’ Gifts
The fairies came to my christening.
They were not invited—my family,
not being royalty, did not know
any fairies personally.
They just showed up, as fairies
do sometimes.
One was older, about four centuries old,
the other was younger, less than a century,
a teenager, in fairy years. She
was the older one’s apprentice.
What shall we give the baby? she asked
the older. Fairies always bring gifts,
for better or worse.
They were both dressed
in diaphanous things: thistledown, moonshine,
spider silk, the wishes children make, the vows
made by ardent lovers, fairytale ever-afters,
the wind as it blows through birches.
They both had wings,
like moths.
What do you suggest? asked the older.
The younger recognized this as a test.
Beauty? she said, looking at her mentor
nervously. Grace? Oh, I know. Let her be smart
and good at sums. Or maybe the ability
to play any instrument, carry a tune…
The older shook her head.
All those things can be learned, she said.
Let us give her, between us, courage
and the ability to endure.
Snow, Blood, Fur
She looks at herself in the full-length mirror of the bridal salon. She resembles a winter landscape, hills and hollows covered with snow, white and sparkling. She is the essence of purity, as though all that has ever blown through her is a chill wind. The veil falls and falls to her feet. She shivers.
“Are you cold, Rosie?” her mother asks.
She shakes her head, but she is cold, or rather she is Cold, a Snow Queen. If she breathed on the mirror, it would frost.
“Well, you look beautiful. Just beautiful. Nana would have been so proud.”
When she gets home, she goes up to her bedroom and opens the closet door. In one corner, in a wooden toybox she has kept from her childhood, is the wolf skin. She puts it on, draping it around her shoulders, then steps into the closet, pulls the door closed behind her, and sits down beside a parade of high-heeled shoes.
It is dark, as dark as she imagines it must have been in the belly of the wolf.
Sometimes she still has nightmares.
She is walking through the forest. Pine needles and oak leaves crunch under her boots. Once in a while, blackberry bushes pull at her dress so she has to stop and untangle the canes. She is wearing the red cloak her grandmother knit and felted. In it, she looks like a Swiss girl, demure, flaxen-haired: a Christmas angel. Her grandmother gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday.
Suddenly, on the path ahead of her is the wolf. Dark fur, slavering red mouth. Sharp, pricked ears, yellow eyes as wild as undiscovered countries. Or it is a young man, a hunter by his outfit. He has a tweed cap on his head with a feather in it, and is carrying a rifle. When he sees her, he bows, although she cannot tell if he is serious or mocking her.
“Aren’t you afraid of the wolf, Mistress Rose? He has been seen in this forest. Perhaps I should escort you, wherever you might be going.”
In her basket is a bottle of blackberry cordial, a small cake with currants. She is taking them to her grandmother, who has rheumatism. She has been told to beware wolves … and young men.
She shakes her head, eyes down. Hurriedly, she passes him, but as she is about to reach the bend in the path that will take her out of his sight, she turns back, just once, to look.
The wolf is standing in the middle of the path. Then, he disappears through the trees, off the path, where she is not allowed to go.
When she reaches her grandmother’s house—small, tidy, with green shutters, apples ripening on the crooked tree, bees dancing around the skep—she knocks on the door. Hearing no answer, she opens it. There is no one in the parlor. She puts the cordial and cake in the pantry, leaves the basket on the kitchen table.
“Nana!” she calls. Could her grandmother be asleep?
In the bedroom, which smells of lavender, all she sees on the bed is the young man, naked. She has never seen a naked man before. He is beautiful, and grotesque, and frightening.
“Rosie Red, come to bed,” he says. “You see, I have gotten here before you.”
She takes off the red cloak.
“Rosie!” her mother calls. “The florist is here with the centerpiece. Rosie, where are you?”
She knows what it will look like: lilies and gladiolas, so perfect they seem to be artificial. Scentless.
It is very quiet in the closet. It is very dark. She draws up her knees and puts her arms around them.
When she wakes up, the wolf is lying next to her. Where she lay, the sheets are spotted with blood. He has left his rifle on the chair, beside his discarded clothing.
She rises, still naked. Her father taught her how to use a rifle. One shot, and his body jumps on the bed. He yelps, although she does not know if he has woken up or passed directly from dreams into death. Two shots, and he lies still.
Her fiancé works for an accounting firm.
“Leroy has such a good job,” says her mother. “He’ll take care of you, Rosie. What more could any woman want?”
When he touches her, she shudders, as though his fingers were made of ice.
The police say she is very brave. Did they not find the remains of her grandmother at the edge of the woods, buried under oak leaves? Mauled—that is the only word. Mauled, gnawed, half-eaten.
They make her sit and drink a glass of blackberry cordial—for the shock, they say.
There is blood on the bed, a great deal of blood. It is the wolf’s blood, they say, and she nods.
Later, her mother will bleach the sheets, but whenever she looks at them, she will think there was blood here, and here, and here.
“Rosie, the cake has arrived!” It has tiers and tiers of vanilla sponge iced with fondant, topped with sugar roses.
She imagines the table downstairs, in the dining room. The cake, the flowers, the gifts on display: Limoges dessert plates, engraved demitasse spoons.
Wearing the wolf skin, she does not have to be herself anymore. She does not have to be Rose. She can be something else entirely: pain, longing, anger. She can be silence if she wants to. She can be the word “no.”
And what about Leroy? He is no wolf.
But wolves, she has learned, are not the dangerous ones after all.
This is a fairy tale, so all times are the same time: all times are now. She is always walking down the path, letting the white silk slip fall to her feet, pointing the rifle at the sleeping wolf, telling the story—the only story that makes sense—to the policeman. She is always trying on her wedding dress. It is always the season for blackberries and small red apples. She is always sitting in the darkness, warm and safe. She is always running through the forest, under oaks and pines.
All she wants is the wolf’s pelt, made into a cloak. Her mother does not think it is suitable, but her father consults the furrier. The red cloak has grown too small for her; she will wear the fur cloak, so much warmer in winter.
She wears it to visit her grandmother’s grave, in the parish churchyard. “Nana,” she says to the headstone. “Nana, I’m so sorry.”
She is fairly certain that if she wears the white dress, the one that makes her look immaculate, the one she may someday be buried in, drops of blood will appear on the bodice. Then streaks will run down the skirt. It will turn as red as a poppy among the wheat, as a flame on a match.
She rises, opens the closet door, and climbs out the window into the branches of the oak tree, then drops down on all fours and lopes, slowly, knowing that no one is watching, toward the forest.
She only stops once, to howl.
When You Have Lost Yourself
It takes a while to find yourself again
after you lost yourself in the dark forest,
accidentally letting go of your hand,
losing sight of yourself. “Where did she go?”
you ask the owl, the squirrel, the skeptical fox
who looks at you like a philosophy professor
when you have given an answer so obviously wrong
that he can tell you haven’t read the textbook.
Unfortunately, there are things no philosophy textbook
will tell you, like how not to lose yourself,
where the paths in the forest go, or what the trees
are whispering as you pass—the oak, the beech,
the alder. Are they talking about you, or
the other you, wherever she is wandering?
It takes a while to find yourself—it takes
looking behind each tree, under each rock,
on the backs of leaves, among the meadow grasses,
asking crickets, chickadees, woodpeckers,
calling up to the distant circling hawk,
who can see the flickering tail of a hare as it runs
across a clearing. Perhaps you have hidden yourself
in his burrow, lined with fur, under an oak tree?
Perhaps you have hidden yourself under the roots
that overhang the stream, and only dragonflies
notice your eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Perhaps you have hidden yourself under the litter
of last year’s leaves, or up in the canopy,
which is already turning red with autumn.
And once you have found yourself, what will you do?
I suggest taking yourself back to the cottage
near the clearing, sitting yourself in front of the fire,
making yourself some soup on the ancient stove,
with carrots, potatoes, and beans, flavored with parsley,
then putting yourself to bed and telling yourself
one of the old stories. It is after all
stories that tell us who we are, stories
that remind us where the paths might lead, and how
to talk to foxes so we can ask directions,
how to find the witch at the heart of the forest,
who might, as it turns out, be yourself after all,
stories that tell us what we could become,
stories that guide us home.
The Mermaid’s Lament
They are there, they are still there:
eyes eaten long ago, replaced by coral
and therefore more beautiful, transformed.
Jaws grinning as though at a fine jest.
Their ribs, like the ribs of the ship itself, become
homes for small fish, eels, and squid, more welcoming
than in life. Only their bones
remain, furred green with sea moss,
and the rings on their fingers, looser perhaps
than they once were,
and the green floating hair.
They are there, still there, alas,
lying on beds of algae
under the dark wave:
all the loves I could not save.
Conversations with the Sea Witch
In the afternoons, they wheel her out on the balcony overlooking the sea. They place her chair by the balustrade. Once there, the queen dowager waves her hand. “Leave me,” she says, in a commanding voice. Then, in the shrill tones of an old woman, “Go away, go away, damn you. I want to be alone.”
They, who have been trained almost from birth to obey, leave her, bowing or curtseying as they go. After all, what harm can come to her, an old woman, a cripple? They do not call her that, of course. One does not call a queen dowager such things. But their mothers and fathers called her that long ago, when she was first found half-drowned on the sea shore—the crippled girl.
“A poor crippled girl,” they whispered, incredulous, when the prince emerged from her room and told his father, “I’m going to marry her. She saved my life in the storm. She has no name—not as we have names. I’ll call her Melusine.”
Elsewhere in the castle, the king, her son, is issuing orders, perhaps about defending the northern borders, perhaps just about the education of the young prince, his heir. The queen is walking in the garden with her ladies-in-waiting, gathering roses. The young princess, her granddaughter, has stolen into the garden, where she is playing by the water-lily pool with her golden ball. In a moment, it will fall in. She has always been fascinated by water. She takes after her grandmother—her fingers are webbed. There are delicate membranes between each finger.
In the chapel, the former king, her husband, lies in his grand tomb of black-veined green marble. Next to it is another tomb, where she will someday lie. Now, it is empty like a promise unfulfilled. She knows it is there—she can feel it patiently waiting, and she knows it will not have to wait much longer. After all, did she not exchange five hundred years of life in the sea for one human lifetime? Once she lies beside him, completely surrounded by stone, she will have left the sea permanently at last.
But she is not thinking of that now. She is waiting for company.
She does not have to wait long. Soon after they leave—the servants, who have lives about which she knows nothing, about whom she thinks no more than she would of the white foam on a wave—the sea witch rises.
“Greetings, princess,” says the witch. That, at least, is the closest we can get in translation, for she speaks the language of the sea, which is not our language. In the air, it sounds strange and guttural, like the barking of seals. In the water, it is higher, more melodious, like the song of the sleek gray dolphins that sometimes visit our waters. It carries far.
“Greetings, witch,” says the queen dowager. It is obvious, from her tone, that this is an honorific. “How goes it beneath the water?”
And then the sea witch tells her: all is well at court. Her eldest sister is a beloved queen. There have been storms along the southern coast, causing shipwrecks. Which is good—that stretch of the coast was suffering from over-fishing, and this will keep the fishermen away for a while. The whales that were trapped in the main harbor of the capital city have returned to the open sea. When Melusine became queen, it was forbidden to harm a whale, and her son continues that tradition. Her middle sister’s second child has recently emerged from his father’s pouch. The sea-folk, although mammalian, reproduce like sea-horses: a child, once born, is deposited in the father’s pouch and emerges only to suckle its mother’s breast until it can fend for itself. The sea is a dangerous place. The sea-folks’ children must be strong to survive.
“And how is your throat?” asks the sea witch. “Have you tried the poultice I recommended?” It is made of seaweed, boiled down into a paste.
“Better,” says the queen dowager. “But I feel death coming close, witch. Coming on human feet, soft and white and tender.”
“May it not come for a few years yet,” says the sea witch. She herself will likely live for another hundred years. “Who will I talk to after you are gone?”
The queen dowager laughs—the situation is, after all, ironic. And then she puts her hand to her throat, because it aches.
Two old women—that is what they are. Two old women who have lost the ones they loved, whom the world has left behind. All they have now is these conversations. Do not pity them. They get more enjoyment out of these talks than you imagine.
It was, the queen dowager thinks, a fair bargain: her voice, the voice that produced the beautiful songs of the sea-folk, like dolphins calling to one another, for a pair of human legs. Of course they were useless. A witch can split a long, gray, flexible tail into a pair of legs, pink and bare, but she cannot make them functional. What is inside them will not bear a body’s weight. The crippled girl, lying on the sea shore, in love with the prince she had saved from the storm, hoping against hope that somehow she could make her way to him, perhaps by crawling higher among the rocks, knew she might die there, among the pools filled with barnacles and snails. She knew the crabs and seagulls might eat her soft white flesh. The rest of her might dry up in the sun.
Was it luck or some vestige of the sea witch’s magic, or true love, which has its own gravitational power, that he was walking on the shore at exactly the right time?
As soon as he saw her, he said, “You’re the girl I saw among the waves. The one who rescued me.”
She tried to answer—she had lost her song, not her vocal cords—but he could not understand what she was saying, and her voice tired quickly, trying to speak through this new medium. The sea-folk learn to understand human speech, from listening to sailors in their boats and children playing along the shore. They must guard the sea from us, so they learn about us what they can. But we, proud and ignorant, thinking there is no intelligent life but that of the air, do not learn about them, and so only a few of us speak their language. Those who do are often considered mad. They spend their lives gathering things the tide has thrown up, living as they can on the detritus of the sea.
