by Judith Field
“Very well,” he said. Bone Mother nodded to herself. She was rarely wrong. “What’s your price?” He brought out his pouch.
“I can’t use your coins. No peddlers come to my gate! No, when you return to your fine house, send me gifts I can use. And make sure the offering is brought by a child.” She’d added this last part many, many years ago in a mostly failed attempt to outwit the hut. From the beginning, the hut ate any man or woman who brought the offerings. But at least at first, it left children alone. Eventually it had started taking the children as well, although not all of them. Some it let go, although Bone Mother couldn’t guess which ones, or why.
The man frowned, and then nodded. “I agree. When I return home, I’ll send you a dozen loaves, a pot of stewed eels, and a brace of pheasants! Now let me in.”
Bone Mother was surprised how many who accepted her bargain sent the gifts, later. Some realized that they could visit the oracle and leave without payment. But most sent something—a sack of flour, a basket of nuts, a string of glistening fish. And a few of them sent more precious gifts: needles, nails, or lengths of cloth. She guessed that the rich man would send something, but that his gifts wouldn’t be as generous as he promised.
Unlatching the gate was difficult with her stiff fingers. Finally, Bone Mother wrestled it open and stood aside for the man to enter. He paused in the muddy yard, eyeing the chickens with distaste. She gestured him into the smoky darkness of the hut.
“My name is Grigori Aleksandrovich,” he said, stooping to enter the low door. “I’m a merchant in Bysk. I’ve been offered a chance to make a very profitable investment, and I need to know whether to accept.”
Bone Mother squinted at the fat merchant, then picked through the bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters. The old woman plucked a pinch of one, a twist of another, the stem of a third, and crumbled them into a chipped cup. She took the steaming kettle from the fireplace hob and filled the cup. Bone Mother let the herbs steep in silence. The merchant stood with his thumbs hooked in his tooled leather belt, rocking on his heels. Finally, Bone Mother looked at him.
“Drink half.”
The merchant opened his mouth to protest, closed it, and reached for the cup. Quickly, he swallowed two deep gulps and clunked the cup back on the table.
“That’s foul!”
Bone Mother ignored him. She lifted the cup to her lips and sipped the remainder slowly, eyes closed. Holding the cup to her face so that she could smell the vegetable reek of the sodden herbs, she spoke.
“A storm is coming. Beware.” Like a waking dream, Bone Mother saw a ship with torn sails, wallowing in the trough between dark walls of waves. The foundering ship heeled impossibly far. The side of a towering wave snagged its mast, and in a moment it was swallowed by the sea.
She opened her eyes. The merchant shifted from foot to foot, anxious to leave. Bone Mother led him to the gate and stood, watching him until he vanished into the forest. The small herd of goats pushed past her, eager to start the day’s foraging. The tan and white goat leaned against Bone Mother’s leg.
“Aren’t you tired of them?” the old woman asked, scratching the goat’s ears. “They come for advice, but all they hear is their own greed or malice. If the merchant listened to me, he wouldn’t invest in the cargo of that ship. He’d die wealthy in his bed. But he’ll listen to his greed, and die a pauper.” Bone Mother saw him hanging from the rafters of his fine house while his widow shrieked.
“I’d turn them away, but I need their iron and wheat.” Tsvesti sighed. “Oh, go on then, catch up with the others!” the old woman said, pushing the goat away. “If I could go out there like you do, I’d never read the future for fools again.”
The old woman latched the gate and put the merchant out of her thoughts. Her weariness dragged her toward the earth, but she made herself chop firewood from the wind-fallen tree the hut had left in the yard. The chill morning climbed toward noon as she swung the ax.
Her thoughts finally quieted under the rhythm of the work. The days were so much alike, the seasons and years falling away one after another. Bone Mother had learned the trick of thinking only of the task at hand, the firewood or the weaving or the herbs in the garden, until she could slip through the passing days as lightly as a leaf on a stream.
As she stacked the firewood by the kitchen door, Bone Mother felt the call. She turned to the well. It was time; another rider approached.
She waited, cup in hand. At least it was warmer now, she thought. Again, the rider appeared in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
“Greetings of the dawn to you, guardian,” spoke the rider from the shadows of a white cloak. This tall horse mincing in front of her was also white, with grey dapples like leaf shadows. Its pale coat was streaked with sweat.
“And also to you, rider. Refresh yourself after your labors.” She couldn’t tell whether the three riders were male or female. All of them kept their faces hidden, and none ever spoke more than the greeting. Although she knew that the riders of night, dawn, and noon weren’t human at all, in the privacy of her own head Bone Mother always thought of the black rider as “she.”
The white rider returned the cup and rode away, vanishing into the stubby shadows of the fence. Bone Mother thought wearily of her bed, but decided to dig the potatoes while the weather held. Winters were never easy. Even with the scraps the hut sometimes left for her and the gifts the children brought, by spring Bone Mother was always thin as a fence post.
She was on her bony knees in the garden with a digging stick when she heard someone cough. Bone Mother winced. From the sound, those lungs wouldn’t make it through the winter’s cold. She climbed painfully to her feet and went to the gate.
Outside, several long paces away, stood a boy of eight or nine. He was barefoot, and his shirt needed patching.
“Child!” Bone Mother called. “Do you come to fulfill a bargain?”
“I do… Grandmother,” the boy stammered, backing up a step. “Da says to tell you the cow died and we’ve less than usual, but he sent what he promised.”
The old woman thought for a moment. It didn’t matter whether the children came inside the gate or not. If the hut wanted them, it could reach out with its wickedly pointed fence and snatch them to shreds. This one was so thin. Surely the hut wouldn’t want him. And maybe she could brew something to ease his lungs.
“Come in, boy,” she said, opening the gate. “Let’s see what you’ve brought.”
The boy opened his burlap sack, showing her two blowsy cabbages, half a dozen dried smelt, and a bundle of rags. He brought out the bundle and unwrapped it carefully. Inside nestled four speckled quail’s eggs.
“I found these myself,” the boy said, offering her the eggs.
Bone Mother took them into her crooked hands. “A handsome gift,” she said solemnly. “I have some fresh goat’s milk and a little bread. Would you like to share my lunch?”
The boy froze, hunger chasing fear across his face. Bone Mother waited, letting the boy choose. Finally, he gasped as if surfacing from deep water: “Yes, please.”
“Come along then, and bring your bag.”
Bone Mother led the boy into the hut and sat him in front of the fire. Placing the cabbages, fish, and eggs on the kitchen shelves, she refilled the bag with a small sack of seed grain and a large portion of goat cheese wrapped in leaves. She set the bag next to the boy, along with the last of her black bread spread thickly with more cheese.
“The goats always give too much for one old woman to eat,” she lied.
Bone Mother chose a handful of dried herbs and brewed a tea. As it steeped, she watched the boy shove huge bites of food into his mouth with grubby hands. Beneath the grime, she could clearly see the bones of his wrists and his hollowed cheeks.
“What’s your name?” she asked, placing a cup of tea beside him.
“Daniil,” the boy responded, gulping the steaming tea to wash down his mouthful of bread. He started to cough. The coughs
became convulsive hacks and his lungs rattled in protest. Bone Mother took his empty cup to the covered pitcher where she kept the day’s milk.
The coughing ceased. “Boy, do you want more cheese?” she called. Only silence answered. Bone Mother dropped the wooden cup. It rolled with a sound like thunder against the floor’s worn planks. Slowly, she turned to look toward the fire. The boy’s sack stood by the empty chair. The floorboards before the fire closed silently over deep shadows full of teeth.
“Why?” she shouted. “Why this one?” With a cry of rage, the old woman hurled the pitcher against the dark plank walls. The clay shattered into a hundred brittle fragments.
Like my heart, she thought. Bone Mother put her hands over her face and wept.
When her tears had faded to salt tracks in the furrows of her face, Bone Mother washed the wooden cup and plate the boy had used and unpacked the things she had put in his sack. The day was fading into night as she returned to the well to meet the third rider.
As she waited, Bone Mother saw the faces of all of the children who had come to her gate. She hoped, each time, that this child would return home with tales of the old witch in the woods. The ones who never left weighed in her ancient heart like stones.
“Greetings of the day to you, guardian,” spoke the red rider, startling Bone Mother out of her thoughts.
“And also to you, rider,” she answered automatically, holding out the cup. “Refresh yourself after your labors.”
As rider and horse disappeared, the sun sank beneath the distant hills. Bone Mother tilted her head to watch the first stars glimmer above the dark forest. She felt older even than they were. Enough, she thought.
Bone Mother sank into her pallet and pulled the blankets over her head.
When she woke in the dark of morning and shuffled outside, the black rider was waiting by the well. “No more,” Bone Mother muttered to Tsvesti as she milked the goats, her voice tight with anger. “No more water for the riders, no more fortunes for the fools, and no more children for the hut!”
The goat followed her as she stored the milk and fed the chickens. When Bone Mother returned to the yard, the rider was gone. Together, the woman and the goat regarded the gate with narrowed eyes.
Slowly, the old woman undid the latch. The woods beyond lay hidden in shadow under the sullen sky, but she could hear the rustle of crows and the hiss of wind in leafless branches. Bone Mother pulled her blanket more tightly around her shoulders, and stepped through the gate.
Without an eyeblink of transition, Bone Mother’s step ended inside the yard. She turned to face the gate and stepped through again. Again, the step landed in the yard. Bone Mother tried walking backward through the gate. She walked through with her eyes closed. She leapt through, although she was much older than when she had last tried the gate and her creaking knees protested.
She could not leave.
Tears of fury gathered in her eyes. Bone Mother had tried to leave many, many times before, and the hut’s magic always turned her around. It always brought her back.
It needed her to feed it.
Bone Mother didn’t know how long the hut had been there, squatting by the well, just as she didn’t know how long she’d been there. She had no memories of any place before this, could not remember arriving at the hut for the first time and wondering how its dark, canted boards stayed upright. Could not remember first discovering its hunger. But there were things in the hut that Bone Mother had not gotten as gifts, bone needles, slivers of whetstones, lumpy clay figurines pushed to the back of shelves. And she had not dug the well, or made the clay cup for the riders’ draught.
Bone Mother felt the pull, and glanced at the well. The white rider sat motionless under the cloud choked sky. Turning her back, Bone Mother went to fetch the ax.
She knew not to use the ax on the hut. Once, long ago, she had lost an ax trying to destroy the hut, its steel head shattering brittle as ice against the dark walls. The memory of that winter, huddling close to the tiny fires she could coax from branches broken with her hands, still withered her flesh. Whatever the stuff of the hut actually was, stone or bone or the earth’s first shadows, it couldn’t be broken with an ax.
Bone Mother braced her feet and swung with all the force of her ropy arms. The ax bit completely through one of the fence posts. The post fell with an ominous crack, the yellowed skull atop it bouncing free. Satisfied, Bone Mother swung again. A chill wind tore through the yard, and lightning arced from the sunless sky into the forest. Tsvesti bleated anxiously, but the old woman bared her teeth and moved to the next post, her tattered gray hair whipped more ragged by the wind.
As she cut down the fence, post by post, the hut began to creak and sway. Back and forth it leaned, a little farther each time, until the thick, strong legs buried in the dirt could be seen beneath it. Bone Mother ignored the hut. She knew she didn’t have much time before it stopped her, and she swung the ax with wild strength.
At last, the final post fell. The wind and the lightning ceased, and the hut was still. Bone Mother dropped the ax and ran as fast as her spindly legs could move, past the white rider by the well, across the stretch of grass, and into the forest. She ran until her lungs wheezed and her legs shook, and she collapsed at the foot of an age-scarred tree. Wrapping herself in her blanket, Bone Mother fell asleep to the sound of dead leaves rattling in the wind.
Bone Mother’s sleep was knotted with dreams. In them, she pushed her way through a dark forest. A clotted underbrush of brambles bloodied her skin and snatched at her hair. Bone Mother fought free of the thorns to the edge of the forest. A campfire leapt toward the bright smear of stars overhead. Beside the fire squatted an old woman as big as a bear, naked. Raven feathers fluttered in her wild gray hair. Beside this enormous woman stood a girl child.
Bone Mother came closer, but neither the old woman nor the child looked at her. The old woman plucked a handful of long, yellow teeth from a bear’s skin spread on the ground before her. With a sudden, sharp gesture, she flung the teeth in an arc and studied the pattern they made. The old woman poked the teeth with a broken-nailed finger, then looked up into Bone Mother’s face. Her dark eyes reflected the flames, and the shadows drew harsh lines on her fleshy face. The vast old woman spoke, the sound rumbling in her throat.
“The teeth said you were coming, and the teeth never lie.”
Bone Mother studied the other woman. “Who are you?”
“I am Bear Mother. And you’re running away, yes?”
“Yes,” Bone Mother nodded. “I won’t do it any more. No more riders, no more prophecies, no more children eaten by the hut.”
“Did you make this hut?”
“No! Why would I make such an evil thing? The hut’s always been there.”
The enormous woman gestured to the girl, who ran to fetch a branch. “Not always,” she growled. “If you want to be free, you have to destroy it.” Holding Bone Mother’s eyes, the old woman thrust the branch into the fire. The flames leapt high into the dark night.
As Bone Mother watched, the fire shrank to a pinprick, and the huge woman and the girl vanished. Bone Mother was alone in the dark, one fist clenched around something small and hard. She shoved the thing blindly into a pocket of her skirt, then stretched both hands before her to feel her way through the darkness. Her fingers brushed against age-smoothed planks.
Bone Mother jerked back, and fell from her pallet to the floor of the hut. Its magic denied her escape again. She sat on the floor, arms around her knees, until dawn.
¤
Under a stark gray sky, Bone Mother found her dropped ax. The fence was whole again, although without the skulls she had added over the years. She leaned the ax by the hut door and milked the goats one last time before chasing them all out of the gate. Tsvesti nibbled her sleeve reprovingly before trotting after the others. The chickens were more difficult to persuade, but finally Bone Mother was the only living thing inside the fence.
The old woman went into the h
ut. She gathered the last of her food, seeds for spring, the herbs, the iron kettle, the precious knives worn thin by the whetstone, tied them into bundles, and dragged them into the yard. They made a pitifully small pile to mark an entire life. Bone Mother glanced at the white rider, motionless by the well, and turned to the wood pile. She piled firewood against the outside of the hut, carefully packing each pyre with dried moss for kindling. When she was satisfied, Bone Mother struck the flint.
At first, nothing happened. Limp ribbons of smoke twisted feebly into the sky. The ground is too wet, she thought, or the hut is too strong. I am foolish, and tired, and too old to finish this battle. But then the anger in her heart smoldered to life, and Bone Mother breathed it into the kindling to nurture the tiny flames. The bonfires caught, and the flames clambered up through the firewood to stroke the boards of the hut.
Still, nothing happened. The young flames curled around the ancient dark wood of the hut and slipped away, finding no purchase. Bone Mother pressed her knotted fists to her mouth.
“Die,” she muttered, willing the hut alight.
The hut’s shingled roof began to smolder, and then the fire claimed it with a shower of sparks. The flames from the firewood licked eagerly up the walls to join the blaze growing on the roof. Finally, the body of the hut caught fire.
The timbers groaned and the frame shuddered as the hut began to thrash. It twisted from side to side as if to shake off the flames. With a noise like falling trees, the hut drew its ancient, mud-speckled legs from the ground until it stood towering over the yard. It took a ponderous step toward the old woman, then another, stamping toward her to grind her frail bones into the dust of the yard.
The earth trembled beneath the fury of the hut’s advance. Bone Mother stumbled backward and lost her balance. As she fell, something flew out of her pocket: a long, yellowed tooth. Bone Mother snatched the tooth from the ground and whirled to face the hut. It loomed over her, one rootlike foot raised to crush her. The old woman flung the tooth through the hut’s open door, into the inferno at its heart.