by Olga Grushin
When she smiles, I notice that her teeth are sharp and crowded in her mouth.
Carefully, I rise and edge a few steps away.
“I’m searching for the royal woodsman’s cottage,” I tell her, then pause for a startled moment: I have not realized it myself until now. I feel a twinge of guilt as I add, “It may or may not look like a shoe. My sister lives there. Well, my stepsister, really. Do you know where I might find it?”
“Oooh, a quest, I love quests!” the girl cries, and dangles her legs faster. “But you must give me something first.” She stares at me with her disconcerting eyes. “I’ve got it! Tell me a secret. Only it has to be a real secret. Something that no one else knows. Just us girls.”
And because I am still filled with remorse over my treatment of Melissa, I remember something sneaky, something shameful, from my childhood, something I have never confessed to anyone before.
“When I was eleven or twelve,” I say quietly, “whenever I helped with the family dinners, I would . . . I would put things in my stepsisters’ food.”
“What kinds of things?” the girl asks with interest. “Shards of glass? Nails?”
She grins with anticipation. Her teeth are really quite sharp, filed to points.
“No, nothing like that, nothing to hurt them!” I protest with a shudder. “I just resented them because they were happy. Because they fit in. They didn’t have funny accents, and they did well at school. Of course, only Gloria got good grades, but Melissa was popular, she had so many friends. So I’d crush bugs into their soup. Or sprinkle dirt in their hot chocolate. Or do other, even worse things . . .”
I stop. She considers me, her head tilted.
“No,” she then says flatly.
“No?”
“No. That was child’s play. Give me something else. Something grown-up. And hurry, or I might bite you. Even if you aren’t a fish.”
She is laughing as she says it, but when I look again at her sharp, bared teeth, I am not at all certain that she is joking. Her features, her voice, her gestures are those of a very young girl, hardly older than I was when I spat in my sisters’ dinners, but her eyes, as she holds mine, are old and hungry and savage, filled with some dark, ancient knowledge, and I suddenly feel that it is the wood itself studying me out of the stagnant pools of her irises, weighing my worth, deciding whether to swallow me whole.
I take a deep breath.
“I used to fantasize about leaving my children. I imagined just walking away from them, from the palace, without glancing back. I dreamed of living a rough, bright life on the edge of the world. I’d ride stolen horses, dance with the winds, spend nights with sailors and gypsies, drink, swear—be free. And in those dreams, I never sent a single word home, just let them wonder what happened to me. And I did not miss them.”
She worries her lower lip between her teeth.
“Better,” she concedes at last. “You seem so nice and simple, but you aren’t all that nice and simple inside. Nice is boring. Still, I want something that cuts even deeper. Try again.”
And I say it before I even know what I am about to say.
“My husband only pretended to love me when he married me. In truth, he has never loved me. Not one day. Not one bit.”
In the fallen hush, the plaintive cry of the bird on fire rises from somewhere far, far away. Up in the willow tree, the naked girl claps and swings her legs.
“Ooh, yes, that will do, that is a juicy little tidbit,” she sings out happily. “That will feed me for a day or two.” She licks her lips, once, twice, her snakelike tongue darting out in quick, greedy stabs. “You are free to go now.”
For some reason, having said what I said, I can no longer meet her eyes.
“Aren’t you going to point me toward the royal woodsman’s cottage?” I whisper.
“The royal woodsman’s cottage? But I have no idea where it is. Not in these parts, that’s for sure. No royalty around here. Or don’t you know—it may have taken you only an hour or two to get here, but you are very, very far from home, lost little girl. This is my domain, and I eat handfuls of silly princesses like you for breakfast. You should be grateful I have chosen to let you go.”
And even though she may be only a thirteen-year-old willow sprite with a wicked sense of humor, some sinister thickening in her voice sends a deep chill through my blood, quite as if all my insides have gone goose-bumped. I walk toward the trees then, quickly, without protestations or questions, not raising my head. The unnatural summer, I see, ends abruptly at the clearing’s edge; back in the woods, autumn reigns once again, damp and brown. But just as I am about to reenter the cool dimness, I stop in confusion: where previously one single well-traveled path skirted the glade, there is now a fork in the road, one path going left, the other going right, both disappearing into the forest.
“You didn’t think it would be so easy, now, did you?” The girl laughs behind me. “This is still a fairy tale, you know. But you’ve been braver than I expected from the looks of you, and I am feeling benevolent. Let me see . . . Yes. If you take the path to the left, you will return to your old life, just like you’ve never left it, and no one the wiser. And if you take the one to the right, you will get an entirely new happy ending. A new, better prince and everything. What color eyes do you prefer?”
I look to the left. I already miss my children terribly.
I look to the right. I am tempted to start anew.
“What if I go straight?” I ask.
“Straight where?” Her laugh is just like the tinkle of the brook rushing over the pebbles. “There is no straight here, dummy. Only left or right.”
She speaks the truth, of course. The paths diverge, one veering back, one leading forward, but between them lies a perilous eruption of poisonous briars, a wilderness of weeds, a dark tangle of branches and roots so dense it is impossible to see through it.
I turn to ask another question. The girl is gone. Only the willow branch is trembling lightly, and the brook is still laughing with her young, cruel voice.
For a long while I stand unmoving on the edge of the quiet brown wood, not thinking about anything, just listening to the beating of my heart.
Then I gather my cloak around me and push straight into the briars.
At the Woodsman’s Cottage
My hands are soon bleeding, my clothes torn, my face scratched. This is a different kind of wood altogether—no longer the softly luminous, cathedral-like alleys of stately trees, but a snarling chaos of brambles, thistles, thorns, overgrown undergrowth. I cannot see three paces before me as I struggle through the wild brush, and my hearing is filled with the deafening crackle of branches snapping over my head and under my feet. Everything is untamed, everything is hard and sharp, everything is pushing against me. When I tumble into a ravine and find it filled waist-high with yellowing nettles, I almost weep with relief, so familiar does their gentle fire feel against my skin. Yet I pick myself up, clamber onto the other side, and plunge back into the murderous thicket. I do not stop, nor do I turn back—and in any case, I know that even were I to regret my decision and retrace my steps, I would not find the summery clearing with the laughing brook and the two paths diverging.
You are only ever given one shot at a choice in stories such as this.
Creatures in this part of the wood are curious rather than stealthy, almost as though they have never encountered a princess before. Birds and squirrels jump to lower branches to watch me closely as I fight my way past. For a while, a fawn walks gracefully through the brush alongside me, soundless next to my crashing and stomping, the white spots on its skin like round flashes of sunlight in the leaves. Then a wolf springs out of the bushes mere steps away, and the fawn vanishes just as suddenly as it appeared. The wolf stares at me with narrowed orange eyes, then follows me in turn, always keeping the same distance. I have no fear of it.
�
�Excuse me,” I say politely, “but have you seen a house built like a shoe?”
At the sound of my voice, the wolf tenses, twitches its ears, and swerves away, melting into the surrounding twilight. I notice that it has indeed grown darker all around me, as if the day, having only just begun, is already rushing toward evening. I stop to peek at the sky through the brambles, and it seems to me that I do see a star blinking far, far above. Something soft nudges my ankle, and I look down to discover what appears to be a family of plump brown mushrooms gathered at my feet. In the next moment they doff their wide-brimmed hats, and I am surrounded by lumpy, boulderlike creatures with twigs for their noses and moss for their hair.
I crouch before them. Their eyes are like birdseed, beady and excited.
“Pardon me,” I say to them, “but do you know where I can find a woodsman’s family that lives inside a shoe?”
They twitter and chatter in birdlike accents, then file off, giggling, one after another, into the weeds that reach to my shoulders. I wait a bit, but they do not return, so I press ahead. After another hour or two, it has grown completely dark, but the way has become easier little by little. Stars twinkle gently, their flickering light enough for me not to trip yet not enough to see anything clearly. Sometimes it feels as if I am walking in place, on the bottom of a sonorous well, with the night sky a perfect black circle above me. Now and then I enter colder pockets of drifting mists and guess at vague shapes swirling through them—pallid lilies, grimacing faces, beckoning hands with thin, ghostly fingers—but the fog clears swiftly, and I find myself walking on the bottom of the dark starlit well once again. Once, I am enveloped in a cloud of floral scents sweeter than a powder room crowded with perfumed court ladies, yet with the lightest tinge of rot at the very heart of the smell. It seems to me then that I am passing right next to a crumbling brick wall of some manor all entwined in blooming wild roses, yet I cannot be certain; and when I carefully put out one hand and feel about, I succeed only in pricking my finger on a thorn. Soon I start to feel drowsy, and drowsier still, until I am close to falling asleep on my feet. And perhaps I really do, for as I continue to stumble, to slumber, to stumble through the woods, I imagine a small log cabin striding past me on giant chicken legs, its one window fiercely ablaze, ruffled forest imps squawking and leaping out of its way by the dozen—and a sleek black cat on a golden chain who is singing a wordless song in a pleasant velvety baritone as it winds its way back and forth around an immensely thick oak tree in a blue woodland glade—and a glorious silver-haired maiden who is bathing in a silent forest pool, shining droplets of moonlit water running like pearls down her outstretched white wings—and other, stranger things that shimmer at the edges of my vision, beautiful and wild, yet melt into the dark whenever I turn to look at them directly. And as I walk, as I dream, through the obscure, glowing mysteries of the night, the ground evens out under my worn ballroom slippers, the unkempt brush slowly gives way to the magnificent trees of the morning, and the trees begin to part, and the path widens, and then I do trip, after all, but manage to catch myself, closing my eyes protectively for an instant—only to open them upon a sunny autumnal day, a clear pale sky over a meadow, and, across the meadow, a cheerful house painted bright yellow and shaped like a shoe.
* * *
• • •
I blink, half expecting the house not to be there when I look again—yet there it is still, just as solid, with its green roof, its red door, its blue weather vane fashioned like a rabbit. A dozen shirts of all colors, from prodigiously large to doll-sized tiny, flap and billow on a stretched clothesline in the small yard, and a cow is grazing outside the white wooden fence. As I stand there staring, a redheaded boy, barelegged and barefoot, no older than three, bursts out of the door, rushes into the yard, and, screaming with laughter, bends to pick up a handful of mud and flings it at the drying shirts. His aim is faulty: the clod of dirt arcs short of the clothesline and splatters the cow instead.
The cow looks up impassively, chewing all the while.
“Stop it this instant, you rampaging wildebeest!” cries the buxom woman who has just appeared in the doorway. “I should send you and your unruly brothers off to the woods. Not fit for civilized living, the lot of you!” Her apron is askew, her mouse-colored hair coming out of its bun in messy wisps, and there is a wailing baby propped on her hip. “Why can’t you be more like your sisters? Come here, you little monster!”
The boy ceases his laughter abruptly and edges sideways toward her, then turns around, a look of resignation on his reddened face, to receive a halfhearted slap on his behind; but her hand freezes in mid-motion when she glances up and sees me running across the meadow toward her.
“Your . . . Your Majesty?”
I throw myself, weeping and laughing, onto Melissa’s bosom. It is wobbly and warm, and smells of milk, mashed peas, and infant sleep, and for a few gasps I wish I were a child again, with a child’s simple sorrows and joys—and with a mother to right the world with one effortless flick of her wrist whenever the world would begin to tilt off center.
“Don’t call me that, don’t call me that!” I repeat between sobs and hiccups—and then become aware of the presence of the boy who is clinging to Melissa’s apron and the baby on Melissa’s hip, so close to me that our noses are almost touching, both children gazing at me in wide-eyed astonishment.
I inhale, straighten, and look down at the three of them. I am a full head taller than Melissa and, I am pained to notice, much thinner, while my gray silk dress, even stained and torn as it is, is infinitely finer than the coarse woolen sack she is wearing.
“I must inform you that I have left King Roland,” I tell her in an awkward, formal tone. “Could I impose upon you, please? It will be for a day or two only. Until I figure out what I should do.”
Her mouth gapes open, but before she can answer, the doorway behind her fills with a multitude of people, a veritable crowd, it seems to me, and they push and shout and shove until we are propelled into the yard, and there I find myself surrounded by children, children, children, little children, bigger children, children who are only a few years short of being adults, children pulling at the tassels of my velvet bag (“Ooh, Mama, look, look how fancy,” a pink blond girl purrs), children pressing their chins into my knees (“So soft!” sighs another girl as she rubs her cheek against the fabric), children touching my hair and my cloak, children looking me over with unabashed curiosity.
“Is this our other auntie?” asks a scrawny boy with scabs on both knees and one finger deep in his nostril.
“Yes,” Melissa replies, and her eyes are shining. “This is your auntie the queen. She will be staying with us for a while. For as long as she wants.”
And I try to thank her, but just then the yard erupts with noise, as they all offer me their names at the same time, calling out “Tom Junior!” and “Myrtle!” and “Mary!” and “Peter!”—but there are far too many of them, and I cannot keep track, I cannot even count them; every time I start my surreptitious count, six, seven, eight, the red and blond heads bobble, shuffle, dart, dip under my elbows and behind my back, and I must start anew, three, four, five . . . Melissa clucks and giggles and chides, like an immense mother hen in the midst of her brood, then gathers everyone and guides them back inside her house shaped like a shoe. And the house is astonishing—cramped, cozy, mad—filled with odd angles, slanting floors, sharp corners, dipping ceilings, round rooms, narrow rooms, rooms like shafts, rooms like honeycombs, rooms where you can only crawl on your hands and knees, rooms where you must squeeze yourself between the walls, rooms that become chimneys, and for a while, all is chaos, for there are fights breaking out, and three big dogs getting tangled in everyone’s feet, and two cats hissing, and I gift my velvet bag to the blond girl (Myrtle, I think), who is so overcome that she will not stop running around, squealing in delight, showing it off to everyone; and milk is spilled, and braids are pulled, and one
pillow explodes, so there is goose down floating everywhere. Yet my stepsister, ever so lightly, holds the strings of this merry pandemonium in her capable hands, and eventually order is restored. The boys are sent off into the yard to feed the animals and tend to the turnips in the vegetable patch; the girls busy themselves with sweeping floors, washing dishes, and singing the baby to sleep. Melissa ushers me into a nook below a twisted staircase, sits me down on a chair fashioned out of a tree stump and painted with purple polka dots, underneath a garland of drying garlic that keeps bumping the top of my head, and asks me: “What happened? My dear, what happened?”
And I clam up. For what can I tell her? That I almost murdered my husband? That I left the palace without ever meaning to do so, and now I cannot go back?
“Oh, you poor thing, but you must be so tired,” she says when I do not reply, and pats my hand. “Why don’t I warm up some good mushroom soup and after you eat your fill, you can go straight to sleep. Things will be clearer once you rest.”
And all at once I realize how exhausted, how incredibly exhausted I am. How long has it been since I left the witch and the fairy godmother at the cauldron and started on the rutted road toward the wooded horizon? How long was I lost in the trees, talking to beasts, making bargains? It feels like days, if not months—sunshine and starlight, summer and fall. Is it morning or evening now, and what season?
I do not know, nor do I want to know—all I want is sleep, peace, oblivion.
Declining Melissa’s insistent offers of food, I follow her up the rickety staircase, pass through rooms upon rooms of slumbering, playing, gossiping boys and girls, navigate a maze of turns and twists to the end of a corridor, then climb the rungs of a ladder to a low-ceilinged loft where luminous dust clouds hang in shafts of light slanting through chinks between logs (it must still be daytime, then), and a bed of sorts is waiting for me—a pallet placed directly on the floorboards, draped in cowhides and wolf furs. Melissa keeps apologizing for the absence of a proper guest room, of a proper bed, of proper linens—“We hardly ever get any visitors here, but Tom will make a good, solid bed for you soon, he’s made all the things in the house, it’s no bother!”—but I hear her words only with great difficulty as I struggle out of my burr-studded cloak, my gaping satin slippers, my torn, soggy dress. I do not notice when she leaves. A thick woolen nightgown is draped over a three-legged stool painted with lopsided poppies. I put it on—it is several sizes too big and balloons about me like a small tent—and crawl under the hides.