“Thank you, beautiful girl,” say the cows
and you walk on.
Across the meadow, there is a narrow path
worn by cow hooves. Follow it.
First you come to the oven.
“Take me out, take me out,” cries the bread.
“I’m burning up!” You take it out,
a brown wholemeal loaf. Carry it with you
for the birds—they appear later.
Next you come to the apple tree.
“Shake us down, shake us down,” cry the apples.
“We’re ripe!” So you shake the branches, as though
you were dancing with them.
The apples come tumbling down.
You put three in your pocket.
Now you are at the edge of the forest
and the birds call, “Feed us, feed us!”
You ask the loaf, “May I?”
“This is what I was baked for,” says the loaf.
So you scatter breadcrumbs
and the birds come, sparrows and chickadees,
robins and finches and juncos,
and a nuthatch. They perch on your arms
as you feed them. Absentmindedly,
you whistle as they do.
In the forest, a wild sow approaches.
For the first time you are afraid and step back,
but she says, “My little ones are hungry,
and I smell something sweet.”
You pull the apples out of your pocket.
“May I?” you ask, and the apples reply,
“This is why we fell.”
You kneel while the sow watches protectively,
feeding the apples to her three piglets,
bristle-backed, with tusks just starting to form
but still striped as though someone had marked them
with her fingers. The sow nods and says,
“You are a kind girl.” Then, followed by her progeny,
she disappears into the trees.
You continue alone.
It is getting dark. You have passed through the oaks
and now it is all pines. You are walking on needles.
The light is fading when you come to the cottage.
It looks like the cottage out of a fairy tale:
peaked roof like a witch’s hat, dark green trim,
small-paned windows through which firelight is flickering.
Someone is waiting for you.
You have nothing left, no bread, no apples.
So you knock.
The woman who answers is old, small,
like a doll made of cornhusks.
“You’re hungry,” she says,
“and tired. Come in, my dear.
The soup is almost ready.”
There is a fire, and a cauldron on the fire,
and a chair by the fire, and a cat in the chair,
and you can smell the soup.
“Come on, then,” says the cat, and gets up,
but only to settle again in your lap
once you sit down.
Here are the things you know about the old woman:
she milks the cows, she causes the apples to ripen,
she teaches the birds their songs, she runs her fingers
along the backs of the wild piglets
to put the stripes on them.
Here are the things she knows about you:
everything, also your name.
“What are you called, my dear?” she asks.
“The beautiful girl,” you answer. “Or the kind girl.”
“No,” she says. “From now on, you shall be
she who makes it snow.
Or Holle, for short.”
Holle: it suits you.
“Here’s what I’d like you to do tomorrow morning.
Sweep the floor and dust the shelves,
wash the curtains and wind the clock,
polish the silver. And when that’s done,
shake out my bedspread until the feathers
fly like snowflakes. It’s time for winter.
Can you do that?”
You nod. Yes, of course.
That night you sleep under the cat,
in her attic bedroom.
The next morning, you put on an apron she left for you,
then sweep the floor and dust the shelves,
wash the curtains in a metal basin,
wind the clock and polish the silver. Finally,
you stand on the cottage steps under tall pines
and shake out the old woman’s bedspread.
Snow falls and falls, until
the forest is silent.
“Well done, my dear.” She’s wearing a gray wool coat
and carrying a battered suitcase. “Can you do that again
tomorrow morning, and the day after tomorrow?
I need to visit my sisters, and I’m not sure
when I’ll be back yet.
It takes a responsible girl, but I’ve heard good things
about you from the cows, the bread, the apples,
the birds, even the trees. And the cat likes you.”
“I’ll do my best,” you say.
She kisses you on both cheeks, then rises up, up,
through the trees until she is only a speck
in the colorless sky.
You go back into the cottage.
There is a cat to scratch under the chin,
and books with stories you have never read,
and you haven’t introduced yourself to the clock yet.
Besides, you like your new name.
It’s the right name for a woman
who makes the snow fall.
Diamonds and Toads
This fairy tale is a metaphor.
Because it really would be just as uncomfortable
to have diamonds coming out of your mouth as toads:
one hard, sharp, like a mouthful of glass. The other
soft, squishy, making you
disgusted with yourself, because…toads!
Ugh. At least the diamonds are valuable,
glittering in the palm of your hand,
although their edges leave your throat aching,
your mouth sore.
The diamonds knock against your teeth.
The toads make your tongue feel coated
as though a snail had crawled across it,
leaving a trail.
Once there were two girls, sisters.
One, whose name was Tabitha,
woke up in a good mood. The sun was shining.
She did not mind the sheep
bleating in the meadow,
although some days she wished
they could be eaten by wolves
so it would be quiet, just for a moment.
Her dress was hanging in the closet,
freshly pressed (her sister had done the ironing
yesterday). Her hair was curling naturally,
rather than tangling in the brush, as usual.
So she sang as she went to the well.
There she met an old woman
who was secretly a witch. (Isn’t that how
it always goes?) The woman asked for water
and Tabitha gave it to her,
drawing up the pulley
with a smile and a “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
She’s the one who got the diamonds.
Her sister, Dolores,
woke up the next day with a headache.
It was raining, and rainy days always did that to her.
They also made her hair frizzy.
Her only clean dress
lay crumpled in the laundry basket, still damp
because Tabitha had forgotten to hang it on the clothesline.
(We can’t blame her. She was dealing
with the diamond problem, still lying down
with a hot compress on her throat.)
That morning, the breakfast
porridge burned
and the cat had left a half-chewed mouse in the parlor.
Ugh. So Dolores went to the well
in a foul mood
and told the woman to draw up the water herself.
She got the toads.
I told you this tale is a metaphor.
They used the diamonds
to buy more dresses, a carpet for the parlor,
a phonograph, some sturdy shoes,
and books. Quite a lot of books.
Tabitha was able to finish her degree
in library science. Eventually
a prince proposed to Tabitha, but she didn’t want
to become his main source of income, better than taxes,
which parliament wouldn’t let him raise, so she told him
she wasn’t interested.
It was the toads that kept the garden
free of damaging insects: cutworms, leafrollers,
loopers, hornworms, rootminers, the ubiquitous beetles
that chew through rose leaves, leaving them
looking like window panes.
Dolores grew the finest cabbages, tomatoes,
aubergines. Her orchard was the only one
not devastated by a new apple borer.
Her roses were perfection.
From their hips she made a syrup for sore throats,
for which Tabitha was grateful.
She patented it and created a thriving business.
Eventually Dolores married a gentleman
with a very large garden. She’s Lady Dolores, now.
Tabitha became a librarian,
so she rarely has to talk:
she can shush without triggering the diamonds.
Still, she wears a spectacular brooch
pinned to her sweater, because after all, why not?
Here is the moral: there are circumstances
in which toads are as useful as diamonds.
Or it may be, try not to get out of bed
grumpy, especially when there are witches
around. Or always be nice to old women,
because you never know.
Or maybe Tabitha and Dolores are really
one woman, and some days what comes out of our mouths
is diamonds, and other days, toads.
Which is better? I don’t know.
The moral of a fairy tale
is as difficult to figure out as what to do
about cutworms and beetles, or blackspot
on the rose leaves.
The Princess and the Frog
I threw the ball into the water.
The frog came out and followed after,
bringing me the golden ball—
which I did not want at all, at all.
Princess, he said, let me eat at your table.
I fed him as well as I was able.
Princess, let me sleep on your pillow.
He crept as close as I would allow.
He said, a witch enchanted me.
I’m not what I seem, you see,
but a prince in the form of a lowly frog,
forced to live in that wretched bog
where I found and retrieved the golden ball
you had deliberately let fall.
Why did you discard your treasure?
I said, because it gave me no pleasure.
The heavy scepter and orb of state
hurt my arms with their golden weight.
The scepter still lies within the pool,
among the weeds. I don’t want to rule
this country or wage the endless war
my father started. I want more
than political and diplomatic lies.
He blinked his iridescent eyes.
Kiss me, he said. And I did, despite
my misgivings. It felt appropriate,
almost as though I could hear my fate
knocking on the castle gate.
Then he turned into a prince, and I
into a frog, instantaneously.
He took me down to the pool again,
away from the troubling world of men.
There I swim in the cool green water,
and the only things that seem to matter
are the sun as it filters into the green
or the patter of a summer rain
on the leaves of the floating water lilies.
The flashing blue of dragonflies,
the stork that is my nemesis.
Who would have thought a single kiss
could release me from the strife
attendant on a human life
and bring me to the cool green heart
of the world, where all enchantments start?
Where life is still a fairy tale,
and I’m the princess of the pool.
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 rece
ntly 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.
Snow White Learns Witchcraft Page 21