Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories

by Kelly Barnhill

  When Ronia Drake was pregnant, the girls’ father said, her belly twisted and rumbled from morning to night. He said that the girls were a constant tumble of arms and legs and wings. He said that if you placed your ear on Ronia Drake’s belly, you could hear the girls singing.

  “What did they sing?” the stepmother asked, not because she was interested, but because she felt it would be polite.

  “Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” her husband sang on the tips of his white teeth. The teeth that she insisted he bleach.

  “That’s not a song,” she said.

  “Oh, but it is,” he said, and he sang it again. “Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz.” He sang it gorgeously, lovingly, magnanimously. He sang it with a smile curving across those white, white teeth. He never sang that way for her.

  As her belly grew, swelled, puffed, she bought a stethoscope, and listened for the sounds of her own child singing. She heard silence.

  And the stepmother hated the girls.

  And the stepmother hated Ronia Drake.

  7.

  As Ronia Drake ran, she did not miss her daughters. She knew she should feel guilty for this but she did not. When she was young, she was afraid of being alone and filled the empty spaces of her life with boyfriends and best friends and intimate acquaintances. But now. Now, it was different.

  Ever since her husband learned how to bleach his teeth, how to artfully tousle his hair with pomade, and how to love the woman who would be her daughters’ stepmother, Ronia had her children on Wednesdays through Saturdays, and her husband had them on Sundays through Tuesdays. This arrangement worked for a long time while the stepmother did not conceive. But the stepmother wanted a baby. Of course she did. Pretty girl like that would want to pass it on. Ronia Drake, when she was young and slick with love, wanted a baby as well. She got two, and her body showed it. Then her husband left.

  So it goes, she told people.

  Finally, the waist of the stepmother swelled prettily. She bloomed, blossomed, was ripe and happy. At first. But after a while the growth was more rapid and uncontained. She doubled and tripled. She grew out of her maternity clothes and hired a woman to sew new shirts to cover her enormous middle.

  You’re fine, the doctors said, you have a healthy boy—and just one, so don’t worry. But the stepmother worried and Ronia Drake could tell.

  For two weeks, the stepmother had avoided allowing the girls into her home.

  I’m so tired, she said.

  My back hurts, my ass hurts, my belly hurts, my legs hurt, she said.

  You understand, of course you do, she said.

  Ronia Drake held her tongue. Lazy, she thought but smiled kindly instead. Of course she understood.

  Ronia Drake loved her daughters. Loved them. She loved the mown grass scent of their matching scalps. She loved their reedy arms and matching pale lips, and how, no matter what color they wore, the mind’s eye dressed them in green. She loved the way they pressed their fingertips on her cheekbone when she pretended to sleep. They were her girls, and she loved them.

  But when her husband—no, ex-husband—and sometimes her husband’s new wife, came to pick up the girls in the brand new Audi, Ronia Drake kissed their mown grass heads, and straightened their pink shirts and brown pants (though in her memory, they would only be wearing green), and told them to be good girls as she caressed their delicate faces, pressing her fingertips gently along their cheekbones. She stood on the curb and waved to them. They watched her through the window, their faces drawn and solemn. They waved back, the car rumbled then glided away, and her children disappeared.

  Then, Ronia Drake did not miss her children. She painted. She worked. She ran—long runs along the river, or the creek, or from one end of the city to the other. Sometimes she ran for hours without tiring. She felt unfettered, faceless and unnamed. Lost, yes, but there was a freedom in being lost. There was a freedom in abandonment too, if you thought about it right.

  She painted the walls in large, complicated murals that changed when she felt it was time for them to change. In the girls’ room, she painted a collage of important women, to inspire them. But when the girls found them boring, she covered up the severe suffragettes and resistance organizers, and painted bugs instead—delicate diplopods, luscious butterflies as they pleasured trembling flowers, and sure-footed arachnids pulling filament upon filament from their bellies. She painted figures that looked like girls if you looked at them in one way and bugs if you looked at them in another.

  In the living room, she painted a girl sitting on a park bench with an old woman. The girl was unattractive, and would have been in an agreeable way, if it weren’t for the unpleasantness in her eyes and the slice of her mouth. The old woman was so old, the folds of her skin so complicated and fragile, as to render her shockingly beautiful.

  People asked Ronia: “Does she glow in the dark? How did you get the old woman to shine like that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

  People asked, “Is it just me, or is that the ugliest looking ugly girl you’ve ever seen?” They saw the way the girl had just moistened her lips with her cracked tongue, the way the tip lingered under her sharp teeth. They noticed the way her knuckles were bent, ready, itching to strike.

  “And look,” the people said. “The branches look like eyes.”

  “And look,” the people said. “The grass looks like a mouth. A grassy mouth with hungry teeth and a large damp tongue.”

  “Oh,” Ronia said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  8.

  Once upon a time, a little girl sat next to a witch on a park bench as the sun set over the park. The witch was old and kind, with fragile skin that folded and creased upon itself like a complicated map. When people walked by, the witch would smile, and though they did not notice, they began to relax, soften, become unaccountably happy.

  “You see,” the witch said to the girl. “It is neither good nor bad. It is itself, but can extend our goodness or badness, our foolishness or our intelligence. It’s difficult to use. It has consequences. It is not a toy for children.” She said this kindly, gently, attempting to put the girl off without being off-putting. She inquired after the girl’s studies, after her friends, but there was little to say in that department.

  Besides, the girl was busy rewriting the story:

  Once upon a time, there was a princess under a spell. A wicked spell. Cast by a wicked witch. The witch had magic that should not have been hers, while the princess was denied the honor of beauty. In order to break the spell, the witch’s magic needed to be stolen away. The princess broke the spell. She reached into the complicated folds of the witch’s throat and squeezed.

  The girl felt the old woman’s magic (neither good nor bad but unwieldy, with consequences) surge into her open, astonished mouth.

  9.

  The police arrived and scratched their heads, wondering where to begin. The paramedic told them what he knew, though he did not say how he came into that knowledge. Better to be vague, he thought. They began to mark the places where the body lay scattered in the damp, brown grass. The paramedic was worried about the ravens that gathered in greater numbers on every branch, on every park bench, on every sign. But they did not make for the meat. In fact, they had stopped calling altogether. They watched silently: a gathering, black-coated crowd.

  The girl speaking in tongues was coaxed onto a gurney and examined. Her eyes, dilated and wild, circled the sky while her mouth continued to make words that were not words.

  “All right, sweetheart,” the paramedic said. “In we go.” But the girl sat up, her long brown hair falling into her face. She grabbed the paramedic’s uniform and looked directly into his face.

  “Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” he began, but she shook her head.

  “Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” she insisted.

  The paramedic
ignored this, and with a one, two, three and a heave, he and his coworkers inserted the gurney into the open maw of the ambulance. He patted the back, and the driver took the girl away. The ravens watched her go.

  The paramedic walked to his bag and was reaching for it when he noticed a large, shocking green grasshopper on his hand.

  “Hello,” he said to the grasshopper, bringing his hand to his face. The grasshopper did not move, but stared at him with its iridescent eyes, its long legs gently wiping its mouth.

  “Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” said the grasshopper.

  “That seems to be a popular song these days,” the paramedic said, and then stopped. Because the song wasn’t just coming from his hand. It came from the grass, then the tree, then the tangled forest tumbling down to the river. Then it was everywhere.

  10.

  The stepmother leaned her expanding bulk against the door. She knocked the back of her head against the teak veneer, which she had ordered herself and had polished to a high gloss. Outside, inside, or perhaps in her head, the girls’ voices went from accusation to song to accusation again.

  “You,” they said, their voices sharp as scalpels.

  “Tzzz, tzzz,” they sang, their voices an insistent whir.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” she shouted. “This isn’t how the story goes.” Her hand itched. Except it wasn’t her hand. Ronia Drake’s hand itched. But that couldn’t be right. Ronia Drake was dead. The stepmother watched it happen in a slick of water, and water can’t lie. The old woman told her so. And a dead woman can’t itch.

  And yet the hand did itch, and it was driving her mad. That and the constant drone of the girls outside the door. She rubbed Ronia Drake’s hand on the lump of her belly. The child inside did not move. It never did. And it did not sing. She rubbed harder, trying to block out the itch, trying to block out the sound that whirred in the tile, in the air, in her bones. As she rubbed her belly grew. Her buttons popped off and cracked the far window with a sharp ping. Her knees buckled under the weight, and she crashed to the ground.

  She looked at the hand. Ronia Drake’s hand. A thing she did not expect. (Unwieldy. With consequences.) It had to go.

  With great effort, she grasped the edge of the sink and lifted herself up. She threw open the door to the medicine cabinet, cracking the mirrored surface against the wall. Grabbing her husband’s razor, she hacked at the skin that bordered Ronia Drake’s ugly hand with her own pale and creamy skin. It wasn’t enough, of course. How could it be?

  “More,” she said to the razor. “Be more, goddamnit.”

  And the razor was more. First it was a butcher knife. Then a machete. Then a scimitar. The blade was so sharp it glinted and sang in the air.

  “Tzzz,” sang the blade.

  “Shut up,” commanded the stepmother. “Just cut.” And it cut. The skin cut quietly. The bone sliced with a short, quick snap, and Ronia Drake’s hand fell softly to the ground with a thud.

  As the stepmother reached for a towel to stop the bleeding, the glossy surface of the door split apart and the air sang. Grasshoppers, electric green and delicate and utterly wild, swarmed into the bathroom. They covered the shower curtain, inundated the sink, blanketed the toilet. They blocked out the light, crawled into her mouth, stopped up her nose, crowded onto her eyes. And they were beautiful. The stepmother thought, You look just like Alice. Then she thought, No, perhaps it’s Anna. But before she could decide, darkness thundered all around her and she was lost.

  11.

  The paramedic shaded his eyes, even though it was overcast. One cloud, dark, thick, and undulating, approached quickly over the tops of the empty trees. The cops stopped scratching their heads and looked up at the sky.

  “What the hell is that sound?” one of them asked.

  The cloud moved faster and faster. When it arrived, the paramedic saw that it wasn’t dark at all. It was green. Deep green, like a still pool. And not a cloud, either.

  Grasshoppers landed lightly on the brown grass. They balanced on the beaks of the motionless ravens and buzzed wildly in the air around the cops and paramedics and everyone else who stopped at the edge of the police line to watch.

  The paramedic cupped his hands around his eyes. He crouched down to get a better view. The grasshoppers seemed familiar, though he did not know why. He seemed to recall a girl perched on the top of a stone chimney, and another girl who shared her face crying on the ground beneath. He remembered a woman, tall, with long, dark hair and shockingly blue eyes, kneeling next to the girl on the ground, her eye fixed on her child clinging to the edges of the stone.

  “Ronia Drake,” he started to say, but a grasshopper flew into his mouth.

  “Hush,” he thought he heard it say. Or maybe it was “Tzzz.”

  A moment later, the cloud lifted as quickly as it came, tumbling over the twisted bramble and down to the river. By the time the cops and paramedics registered their astonishment and looked down at the ground, at the places where they had marked the locations of the remains of Ronia Drake, the markers still lay on the grass, untouched, but the severed, bloodless pieces of the body were gone.

  12.

  The night after her husband left her, Ronia Drake lay alone in her bed and cried herself to sleep. During the night she had a dream. She dreamed she had fallen off the path in the park and then tumbled in the bramble as it fell to the river. She rolled until she reached a narrow ledge, where she found a table and two chairs. She sat down. An old woman sat on the other side. She had hair so white it seemed to glow and delicate skin that folded again and again upon itself.

  “Tea,” the old woman said, handing her a cup.

  They drank.

  “Watch out for puddles,” the old woman told her.

  “All right,” Ronia Drake said, her mouth inside the teacup.

  “And take this.” She reached across and fastened a pendant around the neck of Ronia Drake.

  “What is it?”

  “Change,” the old woman said. “Change is good.”

  When Ronia Drake woke up, her legs were covered in red scratches and cuts, and a pendant was fastened around her neck. She never took it off.

  13.

  Once upon a time, there was a man who had a wife that he lost and another wife who was locked up and was therefore as good as lost. He could not remember his first wife, though he knew he should. He had an inkling of daughters, as well, but that came and went.

  Still, he felt lonely.

  Still, he felt lost. Once, someone told him that there was a freedom in being lost. And in abandonment too, if he thought about it right. But he could only think about the blank spaces where a family ought to have been.

  The man’s other wife lived in a tower far away. He rode to see her when he could. Once upon a time, this wife was pretty. Pretty as a princess. But not anymore. Not since they plucked the baby, purple and twisted and waterlogged, from her distended womb. Not since she was found in the bathroom with the hand of a dead woman and razor slices up and down her arm. Now she lived in a white tower with white walls and a long white gown that tied in the back. Now, her feet were large and ungainly, her face lopsided and haphazard, like a potato left too long in the ground. Now, she whispered stories of witches and insects and a wicked, wicked woman named Ronia Drake.

  Each time he heard that name, he felt a jolt in his heart. Ronia Drake, the man thought, and though he could not place it, he liked the sound of that name. It had a comforting heft and weight. It was familiar, somehow.

  Once, the man went walking in the park and fell off the path. He had been warned never to stray from the path, you never did know who lived in those woods. Although for the life of him, he could not remember who had warned him, if anyone had. He fell off the path and tumbled into the greening wood. Halfway down, he reached a ledge of sorts and stood. The ledge became a path that switched back and forth. He followed i
t. He couldn’t go up, but he assumed the path would lead him to a boat landing, or maybe a road.

  As he walked, he became aware of something following him, something with soft, sure steps. He turned.

  A deer stood in front of him, brown and sleek and lovely, her coat shining like a queen’s. Her narrow head tilted slightly to the right, and breath clouded prettily from a damp, black nose. Her eyes were wide and intelligent and blue.

  Do deer normally have blue eyes? He couldn’t remember.

  Above each eye rested a grasshopper, glimmering like a green jewel. The grasshoppers tilted their iridescent faces toward the man, and he could have sworn that one of them winked.

  “You,” he said.

  “Tzzz,” said the grasshoppers. Or perhaps it was the deer. Or perhaps it was the wood.

  Once upon a time there was a prince who searched for his lost love in the deep, dark forest. He never returned.

  1.

  The Insect has never been in love.

  The Astronomer has never been alive.

  It is important that you understand this.

  2.

  The Insect paces his office, allowing the tips of his forelegs, the ooze and suck of the pulvilli between his tiny, delicate claws, to graze against the stacks of books, the stacks of papers, the stuff and rustle of a life dedicated to learning and study and endless pontification. He has been, until now, and in his own estimation, a grand professor and a great scholar. Until now. Shed scales, he thinks. It is only shed scales. And abandoned husks. The remnants of word and lecture and useless thinking. He listens to his lower feet as they scuttle against the old stone floor—a thin, cold, lonely sound.

  The Hon. Professor Pycanis Educatus—called the Insect, or the Pyca, or the Bug-in-Spats, or the Insectus Insufferabilis, or the Hon. Doctor Please-Swat-Me Creepy-Crawlie, by his students and former students and current colleagues—was one of only nine of his kind when he was born. Now, he is the only one. At one time Pycanum bellus gigantis were numerous in this part of the world—and widely known for their devotion to the arts and sciences, as well as the noble pursuits of athleticism, skepticism, gnosticism, and algorithmic recalculations. Not anymore. They are gone now. All, all gone. And he is alone.