The Starlit Wood

by Dominik Parisien

  Then, taking Tabitha’s hands in hers, Amira breathes deep and stands up.

  The glass throne cracks. There is a sound like hard rain, a roar of whispers as the glass hill shivers into sand. It swallows fur and shoes; it swallows Amira and Tabitha together; it settles into a dome-shaped dune with a final hiss.

  Hands still clasped, Amira and Tabitha tumble out of it together, coughing, laughing, shaking sand from their hair and skin. They stand, and wait, and no golden apple appears to part their hands from each other.

  “Where should we go?” whispers one to the other.

  “Away,” she replies, and holding on to each other, they stumble into the spring, the wide world rising to meet them with the dawn.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Amal El-Mohtar: “Seasons of Glass and Iron” took shape at the request of my seven-year-old niece, Lara, who asked me to tell her a fairy tale. I wanted to give her one while also telling a story about women rescuing each other, and was struck by the thought that the iron shoes in “The Black Bull of Norroway” might enable the climbing of “The Glass Mountain.” After I told Lara her story—making quick work of leaving the glass hill in order to send the girls off on adventures together—the idea stuck with me. I knew I had to write it out at length for this particular anthology—a story about women reaching out of their respective tales to read each other’s lives against their grain.

  I’m often amazed by the things we’re willing to endure that we would never allow our loved ones to suffer, and the double standards that govern the stories we tell ourselves. I treasure the ways in which friendship can undermine the poisonously seductive narratives we sometimes trap ourselves in, and I hope this story goes a little way toward celebrating the enormity of what friendship means to me.

  BADGIRL, THE DEADMAN, AND THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE

  Catherynne M. Valente

  he Deadman always wore red when he came calling. Not all over red. Just a flash, like Mars in the nighttime. A coat, a long scarf, socks, a leather belt. An old sucked-dry rose in his buttonhole. A woolen cap with two little holes in it like bite marks. A fake ruby chip in his ear. One time he wore lipstick, and I cried in my hiding place. I always cried when the Deadman came, but that time I cried right away and I didn’t stop. Real quiet with my hands over my mouth. I can be a little black cat when I want, so he didn’t hear.

  Daddy always used to say the Deadman came to bring him a cup of sugar, and when I was a tiny dumb thing I thought that meant he was gonna make me cookies or blue Kool-Aid or a cake with yellow frosting even though it wasn’t usually my birthday. I liked yellow frosting best because it looked like all the lights in our apartment turned on at one time and nothing can be scary when all the lights are turned on at one time. I liked blue Kool-Aid best because it turned my tongue the color of outside.

  So I hid from the Deadman in my tree house and thought real hard about blue Kool-Aid with ice knocking around in it and a cake all for me with so much frosting it looked like an ice cream cone. My tree house wasn’t a tree house, though. It was the big closet in the hallway between the two bedrooms, the special kind of closet that has four legs like a chair and doors that swing out and drawers under the swinging doors. I heard the Deadman call it something French-sounding but he said it like a pirate kiss. Arrrr. Mwah. Daddy called it my tree house because it’s made of trees nailed together, so what’s the difference when you think about it. Whenever the Deadman came with his cup of sugar, I pulled out the drawers like a staircase, climbed in, shut the swinging doors tight behind me, and closed the latch Daddy screwed onto the inside of the pirate kiss closet. It was nice in there. Nothing much in it but me and a purple sweater half falling off a wire hanger that might’ve been my mom’s, but might not’ve just as easy. It smelled like a mostly chopped-down forest and crusty pennies. I tucked up my knees under my chin and held my breath, turned into a little black cat that didn’t make one single sound.

  “You got what I need?” my Daddy said to the Deadman. And the Deadman said back, “If you got what I need, Mudpuddle, I got the whole world right here in my pocket.”

  And then there was a bunch of rustling and coughing and little words that don’t mean anything except filling up the quiet, and in the middle of those funny soft nothing-noises the Deadman would start telling a joke, but a dumb joke, like the kind you read on Laffy Taffy wrappers. Nobody likes those jokes but the Deadman.

  “Hey, did you hear the one about the horse and the submarine?”

  “Yeah, I heard that one, D,” my Daddy always said, even though I never heard him tell a joke ever in my whole life and I don’t think he really knew the one about the horse and the submarine at all. But after that the Deadman would laugh a laugh that sounded like a swear word even though it didn’t have any words in it and he’d leave and I could breathe again.

  Everybody called my Daddy Mudpuddle, just like everybody called the Deadman the Deadman and everybody called me Badgirl even though my name is Loula, which is pretty nice and feels good to say, like raindrops in your mouth. Where I live, we don’t call anybody by the name they got at the hospital.

  “It’s ’cause I’m a real honest-to-Jesus old-timey gentleman, Badgirl,” Daddy told me, and clinked our mugs together. His had a lot of whiskey and mine had a very little whiskey, only enough to make me feel grown up and stop asking for cocoa. “Almost a prince, like that cat who went around sniffing all those girls’ feet back when. So when I’m escorting a lady friend and I see a big nasty mudpuddle in our way, I always take off my coat and lay it down so my girl can walk across without getting her shoes dirty.”

  “Daddy, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Who cares if her shoes get dirty when your coat gets ruined? Why can’t she just walk around the puddle? What’s wrong with her?”

  Daddy Mudpuddle laughed and laughed, even though what I said was way smarter than what he said. I thought people called him Mudpuddle because his clothes usually weren’t too clean, and the cuffs of all his pants were all ripped up and stained like he’d walked through the mud. But I didn’t say so. It’s not a nice thing to say. I liked the story where my Daddy’s almost a prince better, so I let that one stay, like a really good finger painting hung up on the refrigerator. Besides, I’ve never done anything very bad except get born and one time swallow a toy car and have to go to the hospital, which Daddy couldn’t afford, but I still get called Badgirl. One time Daddy tucked me into bed and kissed my nose and whispered, “It’s ’cause you were so good your Mama and I had to call you Badgirl so the angels wouldn’t come and take you away for their own.”

  And that’s stupider than putting your coat down on a mudpuddle, so I figure names don’t really have any reasons or stories hiding inside them. I wasn’t good enough to still have a mama now. I wasn’t good enough not to swallow a toy car and cost all that money. Names just happen to you and then you go on living with them on your shoulder like an ugly old parrot.

  I remember the first time the Deadman came and Daddy didn’t have what he needed. But only barely. I wasn’t tiny anymore but I was still little. Daddy’d taken me to the thrift shop and bought me a new dress with blue and yellow butterflies on it and a green bow in the back for my first day of school, which was in a week. It was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen. It had green buttons and every butterfly was a little different, just like real life. It was gonna make me pretty for school, and school was gonna make me smart. So I decided to wear it every day until school started so that I could soak up the smart in that dress and then I’d be way ahead of all the other kids on day one. You think funny things when you’re little. You can laugh at me if you want. I’m not ashamed.

  Anyway, I was playing with the toy from my Happy Meal, which was a princess whose head came off and you could stick it on three different plastic bodies wearing different ball gowns. I took her head off and on and off and on, but I got bored with it pretty fast because what can you do with a toy like that? What kind of make-believe can you get going abou
t a girl whose head comes off? All the ones I could think of were scary.

  Daddy was all jittery and anxious and biting his fingernails. I don’t think he liked the princess either. She didn’t even have any shoes to get dirty. She didn’t have any feet. The bottoms of her ball-gown bodies were all flat, smooth plastic like the bottom of a glass. He wasn’t himself. Usually he’d give me plenty of warning. He never wanted the Deadman to see me. He said nobody who loved their baby girl would let the Deadman near her. He’d say:

  “Deadman’s here, Badgirl, go up in your tree house.” And I’d go, even though I didn’t hear anything out on the stoop. I never heard the Deadman coming, never heard a car engine or a bike bell or boots on the sidewalk or anything till he knocked on the door.

  But this time he didn’t even seem to remember I was there. The knock happened and I wasn’t safe in my tree house with the purple sweater and the pirate kisses. I wasn’t turned into a little black cat that never made a sound.

  “Daddy!” I whispered, and then he did remember me, and picked me up in his arms and carried me down the hall and put me in his bedroom and shut the door.

  But Daddy’s door doesn’t shut all the way. It’s got a bend in the latch. Daddy’s room had a lot of cigarettes put out on things other than ash trays and a TV and a painting of frogs on the wall. I didn’t like the smell but I did like being in there because normally I wasn’t allowed. But even though that part was exciting, I started shaking all over. Deadman’s here. I wasn’t safe. Safe meant my tree house. Safe meant the drawers turned into a staircase and the smell like a chopped-up forest. I watched Daddy go back down the hall. I could make it. Little black cats are fast, too. I slipped out the bedroom door and scrambled up into the pirate kiss closet. I didn’t even pull out the drawers into a staircase, I got up in one jump. I locked the lock and held my breath and turned into a little black cat that doesn’t ever make a sound. I pulled my butterfly dress over my knees and felt the smart ooze out of the fabric and into me. The smart felt big and good, like having your own TV in your bedroom.

  The Deadman knocked. I could see him through the crack between the tree-house doors. He had a pinky ring on with a red stone in it. The Deadman had real nice eyebrows and a long, skinny face. His shirt was cut low but he didn’t have any hair on his chest.

  “You got what I need?” Daddy said. And the Deadman said back:

  “If you got what I need, Mudpuddle, I got the whole world right here in my pocket.”

  Only Daddy didn’t. Daddy stared at his shoes. He looked like a princess-body without a princess-head.

  “I’m just a little short, D. I started a new job, you know, and with a new job you don’t get paid the first two weeks. But I’m good for it.”

  The Deadman didn’t say anything. Daddy’d been short on his sugar a lot lately. And I knew he didn’t have a new job. Or an old one.

  “Come on, man. I’m a good person. I know I owe you plenty, but owing doesn’t make a man less needful. I’ll pay you in two weeks, I swear. My word is as good as the lock on a bank. I’m a gentleman. Ask anybody.”

  The Deadman looked my Daddy up and down. Then he looked past him, into the living room, at my princess’s three headless bodies lying on the carpet. The Deadman chewed on something. I thought maybe it was bubble gum. Red bubble gum, I supposed. Finally, he twisted his pinky ring around and said:

  “Did you ever hear the one about the devil and the fiddle?”

  Daddy sort of fell apart without moving. He was still standing up, but only on the outside. On the inside, he was crumpled up on the ground. “Yeah, I heard that one, D,” he sighed.

  “I tell you what,” the Deadman said. “I’ll give you what you need this week—hell, next week too and the one after—if you give me whatever’s in that armoire back there.”

  Arrr. Mwah.

  Daddy looked over his shoulder, all frantic. But then he remembered that he’d put me in his room with his TV and his painting of frogs and I was safe as a fish in a bowl. Only I wasn’t.

  “You sure, Deadman? I mean, there’s nothing in there but an old purple sweater and a couple of moths.”

  Daddy kept looking on down the hall like he could see me. Did he see me? Did he know? Little black cats have eyes that shine in the dark. Sometimes I think the only important thing in my whole life is knowing whether or not Daddy could see the shine on my eye through the crack between the doors. But I can’t ever know that.

  “Then I’ll guess I’ll have something to keep me warm and something to lead me to the light, my man,” laughed the Deadman, and he made a thing with his mouth like a smile. It mostly was a smile. On somebody else it would have definitely been a smile. But it wasn’t a smile, really, and I knew it. It was a scream. No, Daddy. I’m in here. It’s me. But I still didn’t make a sound, because Daddy loved me and didn’t ever want the Deadman to see me.

  “Okay, D.” Daddy shrugged like it didn’t matter to him at all. Like he couldn’t see. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he really put his coat down over those mudpuddles.

  The Deadman gave him something small. I couldn’t tell what it was. It wasn’t a cup of sugar, for sure. How could something a man needs so much be so small? Daddy started back toward my tree house, but the Deadman stopped him, grabbed his arm.

  “You ever hear the one about the cat who broke his promise?”

  Daddy swallowed hard. “Yeah, Deadman. I heard that one a bunch of times.”

  Mudpuddle hit the light switch in the hall and the lamp came on, the one that had all those dead bugs on the inside of it. The Deadman danced on ahead of him and took a big swanky breath like he’d bought those lungs in France. He hauled on the doors of my tree house, but they didn’t come open because of the secret latch on the inside. Daddy Mudpuddle put his hands over his face and sank down on his heels.

  “This thing got a key?” the Deadman said, but the way he said it was all full of knowing the arrr mwah had more than a moth inside.

  It’s okay, I thought, and squeezed my eyes tight. I sank down in my blue-and-yellow-butterfly dress. I’m a little black cat. Little black cats can be invisible if they want.

  Daddy looked sick. His face was like the skin on old soup. I’m a little black cat and I have magic. He flicked out his penknife and stuck it in the crack between the doors. The latch lifted up. I’m a little black cat and little black cats can do anything. The Deadman opened the doors like a window on his best morning.

  The Deadman didn’t say anything for a good while. He looked right at me, smiling and shining and thinking Deadman thoughts. His eyes had blue flecks in them, like someone had spilled paint on his insides. I’m a little black cat and no one can see me. He pulled down the purple sweater and shut the doors again.

  “I’ll come back for the moths, Mudpuddle. It’s such a cold day out. I’m shivering already. You stay in and enjoy yourself. Have a hot drink.”

  The Deadman took his red and disappeared back out the door.

  After that, the Deadman came around a lot more often. I didn’t have to hide anymore, though sometimes I did anyway. Mostly I played with my toys and thought about who came up with the names for all the colors in the sixty-four-color crayon box or whether or not rhinoceroses were friendly to girls who really liked rhinoceroses or how much three times four was because those are the kind of things you think about when you’ve soaked up all the smart in your dress and some of the smart in your school, too. Deadman and Daddy got to be best friends. They didn’t talk about the day of the closet, ever. They’d lay around and drink and eat plain tortillas out of the bag and watch game shows on the living room TV. The Deadman always knew all the answers. The first thing I ever said to him was:

  “Why don’t you go on one of those shows? You’d make a million dollars and you could move to a nice house that’s really far away.”

  I popped my princess’s head off and stuck it on the blue ball-gown body. The Deadman turned his head and looked at me like I was a twenty-dollar bill lying on the sidewalk
with no one around.

  “Wouldn’t be fair to all those other contestants, Badgirl.” He glanced back toward the TV. “What is plutonium?” he said to the game-show man in the gray suit. Then back to me: “Why don’t you come and sit by me? I’ll let you have a sip of my . . . what are we drinking, Muddy? My vodka ’n’ OJ.”

  “Don’t want it.”

  “Come on, it’s just like water. It’ll make you grow up fierce and bright.”

  But I didn’t want his nasty vodka in his dirty mug that had a cartoon cactus on it saying GOOD MORNING ALBUQUERQUE. I didn’t know where Albuquerque was, but I hated it because the Deadman put his mouth on the A and ruined it forever.

  “Don’t be rude, Badgirl,” my Daddy said, because he loved me but he’d heard the one about the cat who broke his promise and he didn’t want to hear it again.

  So I sat down between them and I hated them both and I drank out of the Albuquerque mug while the man in the gray suit told us that the dollar values had doubled. The Deadman touched my hair, but after a while he stopped because little black cats bite when strangers pet them. Everyone knows that.

  The Deadman started showing up in the mornings and saying he’d walk me to school so Daddy could get to his work on time. Daddy didn’t have a work, but he made me promise never to tell the Deadman that, so I didn’t tell, even though nobody who has a work lives where we do and eats powdered mashed potatoes without unpowdering them. I said I didn’t need to be walked anywhere because I wasn’t a baby, but the Deadman just stared down the hall at the pirate kiss closet till Daddy looked too and then nobody said anything but I had to walk to school with the Deadman.

  I didn’t like walking with the Deadman. His hands were clammy even when he wore gloves, and he always took the long way. He talked a lot but I could never remember what he said after. One time I thought I should ask him questions about himself because that’s what nice girls do, so I asked him where he was from. Grown-ups asked each other that all the time. The Deadman swept out his arm all grand for no reason.