How to Fracture a Fairy Tale: 2

by Jane Yolen

  I shook my head vehemently. “I am not that.”

  Masha grabbed my hand and pulled. “Then wake up. You promised.”

  And I remembered my promise. My foolish promise. I looked out the window again and the woman was indeed gone. In her place stood Elijah, staring at me. He put a finger to the side of his nose and looked sad. The lines of his long face were repeated in the length of his nose. There were shadows, dark blue with streaks of brown, under his eyes. My hand sketched them.

  “What are you doing?” Masha asked me.

  “I need to paint something,” I said.

  “Foolishness,” the girl next to me said.

  “No—art is never foolish,” I told her. “It is life-giving.”

  She laughed roughly and moved away from me as if I had something contagious.

  I looked over the tables—the boxes of pills, the jewelry, the documents, the little baby shoes, the old women’s handbags. And finally, I found a battered box of colored chalks some child must have carried with her. I picked the box up, grabbed up a marriage certificate, and went into a corner.

  “What are you doing?” asked the blovoka. “Get back here or I will have to report you.”

  But I paid no attention to her. I sat down on the filthy floor, turned the certificate over, and started to draw. With black chalk I outlined Elijah’s body and the long oval of his face. I overlayered the outline with white till it was gray as ash. Having no gum eraser, I was careful with what I drew, yet not too careful, knowing that a good painting had to look effortless. At home I would have worked with Conté pastels. I had a box of twenty-four. But I used what I had, a box of twelve chalks, most of them in pieces. To keep my drawing from smudging, at home I would have coated the whole thing with a light misting of hairspray. But home was a long way—and a long time—from here. And hairspray was, I guessed, a thing of the future.

  The blovoka began to yell at me. “Get up! Get up!” And suddenly there was a flurry of legs around me, as some of the women were shouting the same.

  Masha sneaked through the forest of legs and sat by me. “What are you doing?”

  “I am making a picture of someone you need to see,” I said. I sketched in the long nose, the black and wavy beard, and the closed-eye smile. I found a pink for his lips, then smudged them purposefully with fingers that still had black chalk on the tips.

  The blovoka had stopped yelling at me and was now yelling at the women who had formed a wall around Masha and me.

  I kept drawing, using my fingers, the flat of my hand, my right thumb. I spit onto my left fingers and rubbed them down the line of his body. With the black chalk I filled in his long black coat. I used the white chalk for highlights, and to fill in around his black eyes. Brown chalk buffed in skin tones, which I then layered on top with the ashy gray.

  “I see him. I see him,” Masha said to me. “Is it Elijah?” She put her hand on the black coat, and her palm and small fingers became black at the tips.

  Two of the women standing guard above us drew in a quick breath, and one said to the other, “I see him, too.” It was Eva’s voice. She knelt down and touched the paper.

  Someone suddenly called my name. A man. I looked up. Elijah stood there, in the midst of all the women, though none of them seemed to notice him.

  “Masha,” I said urgently, “do you see him there?” I took her head in my hands and gently turned it so she was looking up as well.

  “How did he get here?” she asked, pointing right at him. “In the women’s side?”

  Eva gasped at the sight of him.

  But Elijah smiled, holding out his hands. I stood and took his right and Masha took his left. Eva grabbed hold of Masha’s waist as if to drag her from me.

  “There they are!” came the blovoka’s shrill voice. “There!” The rest of the women had scattered back to the sorting tables, and Masha, Eva, and I were in her line of sight. Beside the blovoka were two armed guards.

  They pulled out their guns.

  This time Elijah laughed. He dragged us toward him, and then we turned a corner in the middle of that room, sliding sideways into a familiar gray corridor.

  Eva gasped again, then was silent, as if nothing more could surprise her. She held tight to Masha’s waist.

  And then we were flying through the flickering starlight and rushing meteors. A strange sun stood still overhead. As suddenly as they’d begun, the lights and sounds stopped when we came to the other side.

  Masha dropped Elijah’s hand and looked around, but Eva never let go of her waist.

  This time I knew to ask the right question. “When are we?”

  Elijah said, “We are still in the same year but five thousand miles away. We are in America now.”

  “We are in America then,” I said.

  He nodded. “Then,” and he touched my shoulder. “Kiss the child, Rebecca. Assure her that she will be well taken care of here.” His face seemed no longer gray, but blanched, as if the traveling had taken much of his energy.

  “The woman, while not her own mother, will watch over her.”

  “Eva,” I said. “First mother.”

  “Of course.” We both nodded at the irony.

  “But I can’t just leave her,” I said, though I saw the two of them had found a table of food and were happily filching stuff and hiding it in their pockets.

  “You must. The child will have a fine life, a good family.”

  “Will I ever see her again?”

  “No, Rebecca, she will be dead before you are born. Besides, you have pictures to paint. Of me.” His smile was seductive, as if he were already posing for me.

  I think my jaw dropped open. But not for long. “Why . . . you . . . you . . .” Suddenly I couldn’t think of a word bad enough for him. Had this whole thing, this trip into the past, into that awful place, had it just been to satisfy his enormous ego? I stared at him. His face was positively gaunt, the eyes like a shark’s, dead giving back no light. How could I ever have found him intriguing? My cheeks burned with shame. “I’ll never paint that picture. Never.”

  He held up his hands as if to ward off the blow from my words. “Hush, hush, Rebecca. The picture has to be painted. This is not about me but about you. Not about you but about your people. For the children of the great Jewish diaspora. To remind them of who they are. It will begin a renaissance in Judaism that will last well beyond your life and the lives of your great-great-grandchildren and to the twentieth generation.”

  I don’t know what stunned me more—that a picture I was to paint someday would have that power, or that I would have great-great-grandchildren. I mean—I was only fifteen after all; who could think that far?

  “But why me? And why Masha? Why Eva?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at where Masha was sitting, now surrounded by a group of children her own age. She seemed to be playing, all that lost innocence returned to her in a single moment. Eva stood with her back to the wall, watching carefully, already Masha’s guardian, her angel, her mother. Elijah turned back and cocked his head to one side. “Surely you have figured it out by now.”

  I looked at Masha again. She looked over at me and smiled. It was my sister’s smile. How could I have not known—except Masha had never smiled before. Not in the camp, where there was nothing to smile at. Of course. My sister had been named after our great-grandmother, Mashanna.

  “If she’d died in the camp, you would never have been born,” Elijah said, even as he started to fade. “The picture never would have been painted. The great renaissance never to happen.”

  “But I was born . . .” I began.

  “Born to paint,” he said, before grabbing my hand and dragging us both sideways into the future and home.

  The Foxwife

  IT WAS THE SPRING of the year. Blossoms sat like painted butterflies on every tree. But the student Jiro did not enjoy the beauty. He was angry. It seemed he was always angry at something. And he was especially angry because he had just been told by his teach
ers that the other students feared him and his rages.

  “You must go to a far island,” said the master of his school.

  “Why?” asked Jiro angrily.

  “I will tell you if you listen,” said his master with great patience. Jiro shut his mouth and ground his teeth but was otherwise silent.

  “You must go to the furthest island you can find. An island where no other person lives. There you must study by yourself. And in the silence of your own heart you may yet find the peace you need.”

  Raging, Jiro packed his tatami mat, his book, and his brushes. He put them in a basket and tied the basket to his back. Though he was angry—with his master and with all the teachers and students in his school—he really did want to learn how to remain calm. And so he set out.

  Sometimes he crossed bridges. Sometimes he waded rivers. Sometimes he took boats across the wild water. But at last he came to a small island where, the boatman assured him, no other person lived.

  “Come once a week and bring me supplies,” said Jiro, handing the boatman a coin. Then Jiro went inland and walked through the sparse woods until he came to a clearing in which he found a deserted temple.

  “Odd,” thought Jiro. “The boatman did not mention such a thing.” He walked up the temple steps and was surprised to find the temple clean. He set his basket down in one corner, pulled out his mat, and spread it on the floor.

  “This will be my home,” he said. He said it out loud and there was an edge still to his voice.

  For many days Jira stayed on the island, working from first light till last. And though once in a while he became angry—because his brush would not write properly or because a dark cloud dared to hide the sun—for the most part he was content.

  One day, when Jiro was in the middle of a particularly complicated text and having much trouble with it, he looked up and saw a girl walking across the clearing toward him.

  Every few steps she paused and glanced around. She was not frightened but rather seemed alert, as if ready for flight.

  Jira stood up. “Go away,” he called out, waving his arm.

  The girl stopped. She put her head to one side as if considering him. Then she continued walking as before.

  Jira did not know what to do. He wondered if she were the boatman’s daughter. Perhaps she had not heard him. Perhaps she was stupid. Perhaps she was deaf. She certainly did not belong on his island. He called out louder this time, “Go away. I am a student and must not be disturbed.” He followed each statement with a movement of his arms.

  But the girl did not go away and she did not stop. In fact, at his voice, she picked up her skirts and came toward him at a run.

  Jiro was amazed. She ran faster than anyone he had ever seen, her dark russet hair streaming out behind her like a tail. In a moment she was at the steps of the temple.

  “Go away!” cried Jiro for the third time.

  The girl stopped, stared, and bowed.

  Politeness demanded that Jiro return her bow. When he looked up again, she was gone.

  Satisfied, Jiro smiled and turned back to his work. But there was the girl standing stone-still by his scrolls and brushes, her hands folded before her.

  “I am Kitsune,” she said. “I care for the temple.”

  Jiro could contain his anger no longer. “Go away,” he screamed. “I must work alone. I came to this island because I was assured no other person lived here.”

  She stood as still as a stone in a river and let the waves of his rage break against her. Then she spoke. “No other person lives here. I am Kitsune. I care for the temple.”

  After that, storm as he might, there was nothing Jiro could do. The girl simply would not go away.

  She did care for the temple—and Jiro as well. Once a week she appeared and swept the floors. She kept a bowl filled with fresh camellias by his bed. And once, when he had gone to get his supplies and tripped and hurt his legs, Kitsune found him and carried him to the temple on her back. After that, she came every day, as if aware Jiro needed constant attention. Yet she never spoke unless he spoke first, and even then her words were few.

  Jiro wondered at her. She was little, lithe, and light. She moved with a peculiar grace. Every once in a while, he would see her stop and put her head to one side in that attitude of listening. He never heard what it was she heard, and he never dared ask.

  At night she disappeared. One moment she would be there and the next moment gone. But in the morning Jiro would wake to find her curled in sleep at this feet. She would not say where she had been.

  So spring passed, and summer too. Jiro worked well in the quiet world Kitsune helped him maintain, and he found a kind of peace beginning to bud in his heart.

  On the first day of fall, with leaves being shaken from the trees by the wind, Jiro looked up from his books. He saw that Kitsune sat on the steps trembling.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The leaves. Aieee, the leaves,” she cried. Then she jumped up and ran down to the trees. She leaped and played with the leaves as they fell about her. They caught in her hair. She blew them off her face. She rolled in them. She put her face to the ground and sniffed the dirt. Then, as if a fever had suddenly left her, she was still. She stood up, brushed off her clothing, smoothed her hair, and came back to sit quietly on the steps again.

  Jiro was enchanted. He had never seen any woman like this before. He left his work and sat down on the steps beside her. Taking her hand in his, he stroked it thoughtfully, then brought it slowly to his cheek. Her hand was warm and dry.

  “We must be married,” he said at last. “I would have you with me always.”

  “Always? What is always?” asked Kirsune. She tried to pull away.

  Jiro held her hand tightly and would not let her go. And after a while she agreed.

  The boatman took them across to the mainland, where they found a priest who married them at once, though he smiled behind his hand at their haste. Jiro was supremely happy and he knew that Kitsune must be, too, though all the way in the boat going there and back again, she shuddered and would not look out across the waves.

  That night Kitsune shared the tatami mat with Jiro. When the moon was full and the night whispered softly about the temple, Jiro awoke. He turned to look at Kitsune, his bride. She was not there.

  “Kitsune,” he called out fearfully. He sat up and looked around. He could not see her anywhere. He got up and searched around the temple, but she was not to be found. At last he fell asleep, sitting on the temple steps. When he awoke again at dawn, Kitsune was curled in sleep on the mat.

  “Where were you last night?” he demanded.

  “Where I should be,” she said and would say no more.

  Jiro felt anger flowering inside, so he turned sharply from her and went to his books. But he did not try to calm himself. He fed his rage silently. All day he refused to speak. At night, exhausted by his own anger, he fell asleep before dark. He woke at midnight to find Kitsune gone.

  Jiro knew he had to stay awake until she returned. A little before dawn he saw her running across the clearing. She ran up the temple steps and did not seem to be out of breath. She came right to the mat, surprised to see Jiro awake.

  Jiro waited for her explanation, but instead of speaking she began her morning chores. She had fresh camellias in her hands, which she put in a bowl as if nothing were wrong.

  Jiro sat up. “Where do you go at night?” he asked. “What do you do?”

  Kitsune did not answer.

  Jiro leaped up and came over to her. He took her by the shoulders and began to shake her. “Where? Where do you go?” he cried.

  Kitsune dropped the bowl of flowers and it shattered. The water spread out in little islands of puddles on the floor. She looked down and her hair fell around her shoulders, hiding her face.

  Jiro could not look at the trembling figure so obviously terrified of him. Instead, he bent to pick up the pieces of the bowl. He saw his own face mirrored a hundred times in the spilled drop
s. Then he saw something else. Instead of Kitsune’s face or her russet hair, he saw the sharp-featured head of a fox reflected there. The fox’s little pointed ears were twitching. Out of its dark eyes tears began to fall.

  Jiro looked up but there was no fox. Only Kitsune, beginning to weep, trembling at the sight of him, unable to move. And then he knew. She was a nogitsone, a were-fox, who could take the shape of a beautiful woman. But the nogitsone’s reflection in the water was always that of a beast.

  Suddenly Jiro’s anger, fueled by his terror, knew no bounds. “You are not human,” he cried. “Monster, wild thing, demon, beast. You will rip me or tear me if I let you stay. Some night you will gnaw upon my bones. Go away.”

  As he spoke, Kitsune fell to her hands and knees. She shook herself once, then twice. Her hair seemed to flow over her body, covering her completely. Then twitching her ears once, the vixen raced down the temple steps, across the meadow, and out of sight.

  Jiro stood and watched for a long, long time. He thought he could see the red flag of her tail many hours after she had gone.

  The snows came early that year, but the season was no colder than Jiro’s heart. Every day he thought he heard the barking of a fox in the woods beyond the meadow, but he would not call it in. Instead he stood on the steps and cried out, “Away. Go away.” At night he dreamed of a woman weeping close by his mat. In his sleep he called out, “Away. Go away.”

  Then when winter was full and the nights bitter cold, the sounds ceased. The island was deadly still. In his heart Jiro knew the fox was gone for good. Even his anger was gone, guttered in the cold like a candle. What had seemed so certain to him, in the heat of his rage, was certain no more.

  He wondered over and over which had been human and which had been beast. He even composed a haiku on it.

  Pointed ears, red tail.

  Wife covered in fox’s skin,

  The beast hides within.

  He said it over many times to himself but was never satisfied with it.