by Emily Brewes
“Ho, ho, ho!” he gusted, nearly blowing the girl over. “What brings you to my home, other than your fine tea-brewing skills?”
In silence, she held up the bloodstained handkerchief.
“Ah! It is you who seeks the boy. He’s in the clutches of a wicked lady who lives in a castle of stone and ice. I will tell you how to rescue him. Only what do you offer me in return?”
The girl, so humble and polite, curtsied and said, “My lord, I would offer my hand in marriage, to stay and make you tea, if I but knew my beloved brother was safe and happy.”
The old west wind sat back, stroking his beard. While he considered, his cousin took her leave. “I’ve places to blow and ships to push across the wide oceans. Take care, young lady, and know that my service is yours to call upon.”
She thanked the east wind well, who was then up, away, and gone.
“My cousin is soft-hearted. I will take up your offer of marriage, for surely that was the finest tea ever brewed. To find your boy, you must travel to the wicked lady’s castle. It lies high in the mountains, between a pair of crags like the tines of the Devil’s pitchfork. My back is too old to carry you there, but likewise is the way too long for you to walk. Therefore, I will give you loan of my horse. He will carry you swiftly there and just as swiftly back, for I will tell him of our engagement. Should you try to steal away home with your lad, the horse will find you and bring you to me.”
“Fair enough,” agreed the girl.
“As for the means to free him. You have the handkerchief you gave him?”
“I do,” she replied.
“Simply weep into it three fresh tears, then place it back in his breast pocket. This will warm his heart and break the spell that holds him fast.”
“What if the wicked lady should come upon me?”
“If she should catch you, she’ll turn you into a hen and feed you to her dwarf. But she’ll not catch you if you wear this fur of mine. It will make you invisible to her eye and keep you warm on your journey besides.”
She accepted the fur be placed around her shoulders, then took his hand to help her mount the horse.
“Grip tightly onto his mane, for he travels very quickly.”
This she did.
“Go swiftly and return directly. Already I long for another cup of that fine tea!” So saying, he smote the horse on his flank, sending it off like a bolt of lightning.
Moments later, they stood together outside the wicked lady’s courtyard on the mountainside.
“I’ll wait here,” said the horse. “Hurry and save your boy, for my master expects us back soon.”
At the horse’s words, the girl fell to her knees in tears. “Oh, why have I made that promise to marry that old west wind? As sure as I want my brother to be free, I also long to see my family again.”
The horse was moved by her lament and asked her, “Have you still the cloth stained with your own blood?”
She reached into the pocket of her smock and pulled it forth.
To this, the horse said, “Once you’ve waked his heart with the first cloth, weep four tears onto the second, and use this to bathe the boy’s eyes. Not only will he wake then but will recognize your face, which he would not do otherwise. Take his hand, and you’ll be whisked off home. There you may take proper leave of your family that you won’t pine for them when you’re wed. When this is done, I will come for you and bear you to my master.”
The girl threw her arms about the horse’s neck and thanked him well. Then she crept into the courtyard to free the boy. Into the lace-edged square, she wept three tears and tucked the handkerchief into his breast pocket. On the instant, a blush of pink warmth rose up his neck and across his face. Then into the second cloth wept she four tears. She brushed this over his left eye, then his right. When they opened and lit upon her, he cried out from joy and caught her up in an embrace.
The moment before they disappeared, the wicked lady stood at her door and saw that the boy was released. In her frustration, she screamed so strongly that she brought the whole castle down upon her head. Deprived of life, her spell on all the other statues was broken. They stood milling about the courtyard while the boy and girl were whisked away to their own homes.
By the hearth of her parents’ house, where the pair wept for the lost boy and their own lost daughter, she suddenly appeared. They ceased their lament and embraced her warmly.
“Do not be too joyful, for I cannot stay. I’ve sold my freedom for that of my brother and will be married to the west wind. I came only to say goodbye and that I’ll be well cared for.”
Her mother wept again, while her father nodded his head. “A deal struck is a deal kept. You must surely fulfill your promise.”
No sooner had he spoken than the horse landed on their front step. The horse, seeing the sorrow on her parents’ faces, was once again piteous toward her.
“My child, lay the west wind’s fur across my back. I’ll take it to him and say that you were caught by the wicked lady. In your haste to warm the boy, you draped the fur upon him. Thence were changed into a hen and eaten. He will sorrow but let you alone.”
Again, she thanked the horse whole-heartedly. In repayment, she told the horse how to make such fine tea.
“At least the west wind will have that of me,” she said.
“You’re a good girl with a noble heart. The man who has you for his wife is well blessed.”
The horse was away in the blink of an eye. Then upon the step appeared the boy. On his face was a look of purest ardour.
“My sister! Without you, I’d be yet frozen, far from my family — and from you. How can I ever repay you?”
“I am repaid already, for my brother is home.”
They embraced for a long moment, then made a plan to meet the next morning in the wood between their houses.
FAMILY TIES
WHEN WE REACHED HOME, I was still a bit gimped from my legs, though I was walking more or less like an able-bodied human being again. The moment we got to the long drive from the road, I felt like a pin in a map to mark a point of origin. Home. Trying on the word in my mind was similar to digging an old sweatshirt from the bottom of a forgotten drawer: comfy and kind of smelly.
It was also a bit like recognizing someone familiar who’s wearing a disguise. The edges were fuzzed over with wild growth of strange plants. Even so in the full daylight, I could see the mailbox and the fence post I’d carved the word “fuck” into when I was mad at Dad. I pointed it out to Olivia, chuckling at the foolishness of youth. A thought occurred. “That reminds me: Did you ever find Dad?”
Olivia’s expression darkened. She didn’t look angry so much as sad, but anger wasn’t absent. It made me uncomfortable enough to start babbling.
“It’s just, you said you’d tell me later. Back at the tavern? I think. The days have kind of blurred together, and I can’t really make out what was a dream and what wasn’t —”
“You talk too much” was all she said, lifting a tangle of vines so I could limp under them.
On the other side, I stopped walking and took her by the shoulders. “You don’t have to be weird about this. All cryptic and shit. You can just go ahead and tell me. Did you find him or not? It’s okay if he died. He would’ve been, what, seventy-something now?”
She stepped away from me, my hand sliding off her. When she turned to look at me, her expression was soured by bitterness. “No, Jesse. It’s not ‘okay’ that he’s dead. You’re all weepy for your dumb dog. You don’t know what grief is, okay?”
Olivia stormed off, leaving me surrounded by hip-deep tangles. I went after her, but the way was slow going. I caught up with her at the door to Dad’s workshop. She was holding the door handle like she’d fall down if she let go. Her knuckles were stark against a paling tan, and her face was grey.
“Jeez, Olivia —”
“Is this okay, Jesse?” she asked, her voice trembling. “You’re older — you tell me.”
She yanked the door
along its rail. The wheels, so weathered and ungreased, shrieked their way over the rust-scabbed rod for about a foot before one jumped off completely. Before she could rage-hulk the door into the bushes, I stepped forward and put a hand between her shoulder blades.
“It’s good enough,” I reassured her.
Most of the windows were smashed out of the frames, so the only obstacle for the daylight was the growth that had crept up the wall. Through this filter of leafless twigs, there was enough to see by. I poked my head in through the gap of the open door. For the most part, it looked like Dad’s workshop always had: plywood-topped tables made of two-by-fours lining the walls, pegboards with the outlines of tools drawn on.
“A place for everything, and everything in its place.” I breathed deep as I took it all in. Smells of sawdust, lightly dampened by the exposure of an uninsulated building, and of something else. A strange tang crept in at the nose and lingered on the tongue.
That same breath was knocked out of me when I finally saw it. When I did see it, I was at least as shocked that it took so long to register as I was by the sight itself. An old oak office chair on casters sat to one side of a heap of bones. There were some rotting threads of denim and flannel mixed in, but most of the clothing was long gone. Directly above the bones was a dusty length of double-thick nylon cord tied into a blue and yellow noose.
“Fuck.”
“That’s right, fuck. Mum took us away from him, and he killed himself. How ‘okay’ is that?”
“Jesus, Olivia …”
“It’s true! Just look — look at what that bitch did to him!”
I caught my breath. There was something that finally made a terrible kind of sense. “Olivia,” I said, “I need you to listen to me.”
She turned away to head for the house, so I put a hand on either side of her face and pulled her back to me. “Listen! Mum said something to me before she died, something that didn’t mean much until just now.”
“What?” she growled, swiping my hands away, though momentarily relenting.
“Leaving didn’t make Dad kill himself.” I had to stop for a moment, taking a few swallows of cold air. Before I went on, I looked Olivia in the eyes. “We left because Dad killed himself.”
THE DAY MUM DIED was a lot like any other day Underground. We’d moved to a double residence across the hall from the Metzlers a couple months after Olivia left. The closet I came to call home was on the Metzlers’ side of the hall, two doors down.
The tilapia farm was still on shaky footing, and with only the two of us, upkeeping a whole camper didn’t make sense. Cost more than we could earn to maintain, that was certain. I’d gone looking for work and found the Heap downtown. Mum followed shortly after, and we set up shop.
At first, Mum had done some reconditioning on the better things I came across at the scrap. For a small amount of labour, we could sometimes double what a thing was worth in trade. A bit of elbow grease or a dot or two of solder could fix what was broken. We got solvent from a woman who collected food scraps from all the neighbours, fermented them in a five-gallon plastic bucket, then distilled out the white spirit using an old chemistry set and a fan run by a stationary bicycle. Like Mrs. Metzler, she was cheerful and broadly built. Prairie stock, Mum said. The phrase offered vague notions of Eastern European immigrants posed before fields of head-high wheat. An image from a history textbook.
The solder was reclaimed much the way Asa went about it. A thin Japanese man of indeterminate age lived in a dead-end culvert toward the southern edge of the neighbourhood. He traded us for textiles or for glossy magazine paper.
Like I say, we’d been settling in. Stella and my mum got on well enough to be sisters. Fought like it on occasion. They’d disagree about something and get their dander up. Days passed under the grim pall of silent treatment, until Mr. Metzler would come stumping up to our door to invite us to dinner. Just like that, all was forgiven.
Mum seemed to find the cycle comfortable, if not comforting. When she came back from a row with Stella, she wore the same dark expression that Olivia did when she was truly, exceptionally pissed off. But it was gone within the hour, or by morning. Like a cloud foreboding rain, it was impermanent.
They’d had a fight the day before she got sick. It was a bad one. I’d heard Mrs. Metzler shout, “And don’t you dare come back, you goddamned ingrate!” The statement was punctuated by a dented can hitting the wall beside our door. It was a ’shine cup, glass being expensive and hard to come by and plastic too delicate for high-octane juice. Mum stepped on the thing with her boot, crushing it flat, before coming inside.
“Sounds like she’s in one of her moods again,” I offered.
Mum snorted and stomped off to her bed, drawing the curtain closed. I shrugged and went back to my book. The cover was worn so I couldn’t make out what it was called, but it featured a young man named Paul and a planet entirely covered by sand.
“You finished cleaning that batch of salvage?” Mum inquired from within her nest of blankets.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Take ’em down to trade and don’t let them fleece you like last time. Ten tokens, at least.”
I sat up. It was well past suppertime. Not that the post would be closed, but I usually did a drop off on my way to the scrap. “You mean in the morning?” I asked.
“I mean now, Jesse. Right now.”
In all my time, I’d not heard her voice as it was then. Not angry, not sad, not exactly. A bit tired maybe, but mostly resigned. That’s what I came to realize, anyway. Point is, it made me want to stay. Something in that voice spoke of danger. At the same time, it was a voice that brooked no argument.
“Up and at ’em, Vanderchuck,” I muttered, gathering the salvage into an old canvas hockey bag.
Before I left, I hung by the door. I wanted to say something, to ask her if I could stay instead, or if there was something else I could do. Make a cup of tea. Anything but leave. Nothing came out. All the words crowded together, jamming in my throat, leaving me mute.
Just beyond the edge of this held breath, I thought I heard her crying. My face flushed red and I took off. Being in proximity to another human being’s strong emotions felt taboo. I’d do the trade, come back, and she’d have herself together. Maybe I’d be able to sweet-talk a dram of what passed for wine in the Underground. Take out a loan on some cake. A treat would make everything better. It was what Dad would’ve done.
I was back in no time, with a pair of molasses cookies carefully folded in a clean handkerchief and tucked in the breast pocket of my overshirt, and ten tokens jangling in my jeans. Once I’d explained things, Reg at the post said I’d owe him the rest, but he was doing me a solid on account of my mum being poorly. Soon as I stepped through the door, something felt amiss. I’d expected silence, but the silence of sleep or possibly of muffled sobs. The texture of this silence was all wrong.
“Mum? I’m back. I got cookies.”
I hung the hockey bag up by the door and crossed to the curtain hung ’round Mum’s bed. After a long, uncomfortable moment, I knocked on the bed frame. There was a groan from beyond the curtain. Then a wet, spluttering cough and a laboured breath. A cold fist of panic tightened around my stomach.
“Mum, you okay?”
Pulling the curtain aside, I saw the soles of her bare feet. They stuck out, blotchy pink and white, from beneath a stack of blankets. They kind of tensed and arched downward as the lumpy pile of bedclothes was lifted up. At the other end of the bed, her neck crooked at a painful angle, Mum’s face shone pale and slick from the covers. The whites of her eyes were webbed red with straining capillaries.
After far too long, it finally dawned on me that she was having some kind of seizure. I rushed to the head of the bed, trying to remember any first aid. I noticed I was kneeling in cold vomit. That indicated this had been happening for a while, maybe since I’d left.
“Hey, Mum. It’s me. I’m here,” I said as soothingly as I could muster.
H
er body jolted again, back arched like a strung bow, fists clenching and unclenching, eyes rolling back. They made contact but didn’t see me. From her throat came tiny creaking noises. Part of me knew I should get somebody to help. Mr. Metzler or the barber — the closest we had to a doctor, or more accurately a surgeon. A child’s superstition kept me by her side instead. Because I also knew, with a child’s certainty, that the moment I left would be the moment she died. I stayed, and I held her hand, and I waited for it to be over.
When the tremors stopped, I edged to the pump and filled a bottle with water. Never took my eyes from her the whole time, which meant I spilled at least as much as I got in the bottle. Then back at her side, trying to prop her up.
She was pale and grey, her skin clammy with cold sweat. I put the bottle on a shelf above the headboard. Then levering one arm and shoulder under her back, I lifted her so I could shove balled up pillows, clothing, and blankets until she was nearly sitting up. Her lids drooped over eyes that wouldn’t focus, and a thin thread of drool leaked from lips that hung slack. Gentler tremors rippled through her arms and legs, like a marionette whose strings were being jiggled.
“Oo … Ool-ah …”
I wasn’t sure if she was trying to speak, or if the dance of tremors was just shimmying through her throat. I held her head as I tipped the tiniest sip of water into her mouth. When she seemed to swallow that without choking, I poured a tiny bit more.
“Do you think you could eat something?” I fished the cookies from my pocket. Thankfully, they’d stayed in the hankie, because they’d gotten smashed to pieces at some point. Mum tried to pick up a lump of cookie, but her muscles were still feeling their oats and wouldn’t obey. Frustration began building in her eyes.
“Hey, it’s okay. Let me.” I found a piece big enough to pick up but small enough that I couldn’t see her choking on it. “Open wide!”
That went well enough that I gave her a bit more. Some more water, some more cookie. After a while, her arms and legs fell still.
“Feeling any better?”
Mum squeezed her eyes closed tight and nodded. She even managed to pat my arm with a hand weak enough to belong to a ghost.
