by Kelly Link
Her mother said: Was nothing else taken?
Nothing, said Herda Lomm. Not a coin from the till. But the box, the puppet theater I built, it was smashed into pieces.
She said to Sara Kasp: The show for your wedding is spoiled.
Sara Kasp said: Surely the wedding can wait?
Her mother’s scissors flashed through the cloth.
Her mother said only: No.
It was my best show, said Herda Lomm. Shall I tell you the story? You can imagine the box is right here, the theater, and the paper figures moving inside. Can you imagine?
Sara Kasp’s mother bent over the scissors. Sara Kasp sat in her father’s chair.
Herda Lomm said: A woman is to be married to a good man, the hardest worker in town, but she loves another, a man so lazy he leaves his lettuce to flower. This second man does not come to claim her, so she marries the first. At the wedding feast, the townspeople eat and drink and toast the bride and the groom. Then the shopkeeper’s wife wheels her box onto the green and the townspeople leave the high table and sit on the grass and they watch. While they watch, the bride steals away. The bride runs up the long road toward the man that she loves and sees to her joy that he is running to meet her. But the groom saw her leave and with the other good men of the town he pursues her. Into the pines, cries the bride to her lover, and they run through the pines and reach a small clearing. The lover says, we’ll hide in that well, and they run to the well, and the lover leaps in but the bride turns and looks over her shoulder. Her pursuers are calling her name, and among the voices she hears the voice of the groom, and of her mother and father, and she sees them break through the pines. She tries to leap in the well but the well is a stump. The groom pulls from the stump a woodcutter’s axe. He says, I cut this tree down to build us our house. There in the clearing is the house the groom built, a sturdy, neat house, all white block and stout beam, with other stumps all around. The bride and groom go into the house and the curtain comes down.
Sara Kasp said nothing. Then she asked: The townspeople in the show, what show do they watch?
Herda Lomm said: The same show. I made the same figures but smaller.
Sara Kasp asked: And the show in that show?
Herda Lomm’s face grew sharper but then she sighed and looked tired.
She said: There is no third show. The third box is empty.
She gripped the brooch at the throat of her dress. She said: Anyway, it’s all gone.
The night of the second day, Josep Hoit, the baker, came to speak with Sara Kasp’s father. Supper was still on the table, and Josep Hoit said: I’m sorry. You’re eating your supper.
Sit down, said Sara Kasp’s father. Sara, give him your chair.
Josep Hoit said: I can’t be long. My ovens are lit. I have bad news to give you. Today I opened the barrel of flour and a thousand moths flew up in the air, more moths than I’ve seen, and no flour left in the barrel. I opened the ice chest. The chest was cold as the winter, but the butter has turned. I took the eggs from the shelf, and the eggs are all empty with tiny holes in the top of each shell.
Sara Kasp’s father laid down his fork and his knife. His black beard, though he’d washed, was here and there whitened by limestone.
He said: If I bring you a sack of limestone well ground can you use it as flour?
Josep Hoit laughed.
Jorn Kasp, he said, you’re a quarryman through and through. You want me to bake stone cakes for the feast? And how will they rise? If you’ll wait until I go back to the market, I can fetch more flour and fresh butter and eggs.
We must, said Sara Kasp. What else can we do?
But her father said: Cakes or no cakes, we won’t wait. There’s new ground to break in Hayden Bost’s field, and rumors of merchants on their way to the valley to bid on stone for a palace. They have money to buy every block we can sell.
Josep Hoit said: I can make candies with sugar and water and mint. I can glaze whatever fruits I still have in my crates. I don’t doubt I can fill the long table. It will be a strange banquet. But if you won’t wait . . .
And Sara Kasp’s father said: We won’t.
The night of the third day, Sara Kasp pulled the chair in her room to the window. She lifted the sash. Part of the moon had been sliced away and more stars had come out.
She said: Tomorrow I’m going to marry.
She got up from the chair and looked at the dress her mother had arranged on her bed, wide and white. She saw her mother’s scissors beside it. She picked up the scissors and cut the dress into shreds.
In the story a cloud at this moment passes over the moon. The light behind the paper figures goes out. It’s dark for some time. Then Sara Kasp hears a scream on the other side of her door and one more and then nothing. In the front room of the house, she finds the table turned over and her father’s chair on its side. Blood has been flung all around. In a pool of blood on the floor lies her father with a hole for an eye, and in a pool of blood right beside him lies her mother with a hole in her chest. She kneels between them and she sees Carrick Cark.
He says: Sara Kasp, is this your doing?
She lifts the scissors. Her fingers barely fit in the slender loop handles. The long blades are closed and taper to a wicked point.
She says, no, and the blades of the scissors come open as she tries to shake free the handles but they are tight as two rings.
She says: Carrick Cark is it yours?
He says: Let me tell you a story.
A goose loved a cat who loved only her feathers, which he plucked to fill the fine pillows he sold at the fair. The cat cut the cloth for the pillows in all shapes and sizes. For comfort and beauty, they could not be matched. The queen of the land slept with the cat’s very best pillow under her head, a round silk pillow, all white, with lavender stitching of the face of the moon. Every month, the cat plucked the goose to the skin, but for her very last feather, and every month the goose’s feathers grew back. Soon they were rich, the goose and the cat, and their fame spread far and wide. The emperor himself commissioned a pillow that changed always its shape and was soft as a cloud. This required the cat work day and night sewing this silk panel to that, making folds within folds, and when it came time for the filling, the cat saw that he needed every one of the goose’s gray feathers, even to the very last one. If you take my last feather you know that I’ll die, said the goose. It’s the feather that pins my heart in my chest. The cat heard the emperor’s riders thundering down the long road. His pillow lay on the table unfinished. Even so it was a wonder to behold. The cat had woven the silk himself, woven it of so many threads arrayed in so many directions the grain of the cloth kept shifting and shifting and the pillow itself changed shape just as the emperor desired. But for that one feather, the pillow would be soft as a cloud. It was the cat’s finest work. The cat heard the emperor’s horses snorting outside the front door. He seized the goose’s last feather and tugged. The feather came out and quick as thought he sewed it inside the pillow and sewed up the hole in the casing. The pillow was ready. He brought it out to the riders who carried between them a chest on long poles and they exclaimed over the pillow as they set it inside. They gave the cat a list of new orders from a dozen Imperial princes. When the cat went into the house, he looked at the goose. Dearest, he said. You’re alive! She still had one feather in her chest, small and shining and silver. It had been hidden by the other. So that feather wasn’t the last, said the cat, and he smiled with relief. We have a dozen more orders to fill, said the cat. But at that, the goose pulled out her last feather and put it through the cat’s eye. Then her heart fell out of her chest and she died.
Sara Kasp says: I can imagine the goose and the cat, both made of paper, sliding side to side on long strings.
She thinks: Is that the third show? But no, the third box is empty.
And the dark box inside her, where she
locked the true Sara Kasp, fearful and weak—is that box now empty?
Carrick Cark gently slips the scissor’s loop handles over her knuckles. He lays the scissors in the blood on the floor. He says: Now we’ll have to go quickly.
They started out then from the house, and ran through the streets, and as they ran they heard murmurs behind them and the sound of doors swinging open and raised voices and Sara Kasp heard a woman cry out. The woman cried: Sara Kasp! and the cry was taken up and passed from throat to throat.
They reached the long road, and Sara Kasp ran to the right and Carrick Cark to the left. Their clasped hands held fast in a grip that made the bones grate.
This way, said Sara Kasp. To the right, the long road ran down out of the valley. The limestone blocks traveled that direction in carts. Where the valley widened, another road ran east to west, through the plains, to the coasts. To the left, the long road ran up the valley to Carrick Cark’s house in the pines, and there ended, and the mountains rose and the forests were pathless. But maybe Carrick Cark knew a way through the forest?
This way, he said.
Sara Kasp heard Gravin Dammersen’s voice. He was on the road beside her, and other quarrymen behind him, and Carrick Cark pulled her hand and they were running again, running up the long road.
When the story is told at night on the green, there is a light in the box and the stones are cut out of paper. Small stones move in front of the light, so many that it goes dark in the box.
Sara Kasp is running up the valley and the valley is dark and the townspeople are running behind her. She hears the voices of quarrymen shouting, the voices of her mother and father, her own child’s voice shouting and shouting, and the road beneath her feet seems to shake as she runs.
What do you feel? says Carrick Cark in her ear. She feels his breath on her ear and his hand in her hand and than she feels less than that, less heat and less weight. They run faster and faster.
Once a woman died in the night on the road in the town. She was walking under the stars. She was walking with a man. They were to be married the very next day. Then she died on the road. The man knew it was no fault of his own. He was afraid he’d be blamed, and he carried her body into the pines where a house had burned down and he dropped her body into the well. She ran away, he said to her mother and father. I saw her go down the road with a man, a tall man, in a green coat. And her mother and father said: How could she? Our daughter? We’ll forget that we named her, that we ever called a daughter by name.
That’s one story told at night on the green, about whom who can say? No one remembers.
Sara Kasp still comes down to the town from the pines and opens up windows and takes little girls from their cradles. I can tell you she raises them well.
Lime and the One Human
S. Woodson
Once in early autumn, a particularly small and ragged fairy emerged from a hole at the roots of a tulip poplar, into the dazzling green light of the woods. The fairy wore a tattered dress of petals. A purple orchid, withered and vaguely sticky, perched atop her head, and around her neck hung a crude bit of jewelry fashioned from a bit of string and seven irregular beads. Each bead contained a book, shrunken to minuscule size and encased in a shell of magic. She carried no other provisions.
The fairy, like all of her kind, was nameless (which is to say that her true name was secret even to herself). Her preferred nickname was Lime, after the tree from which she had first germinated. Alighting on a yellowed leaf, she sprawled in the sun and began, briefly, to doze—for her long journey through the roots of the world had wearied her.
Five minutes later, she awoke, feeling much refreshed. She yawned, exposing the bulge of her venom glands and a mouthful of pointed green teeth. Her nose twitched. On the breeze, she could smell flowers.
Leaping into the air, Lime followed her nose to a clearing overgrown with the most wonderful variety of plants: clusters of verbena and anise hyssop, heliotrope and pansies, double-petaled impatiens and cone-flowers in every hue of the rainbow. With a cautious glance forwards and back, she flew into the clearing and landed on a mound of impatiens. She held one of the flowers in her hand.
She plucked the flower from its stalk, and at that very moment another fairy burst from cover of leaves and tackled her to the ground.
“I thought you looked like a thief!” squealed the fairy. “And now we’ve caught you red-handed!” More fairies emerged from the leaves, giggling and pointing.
“What a dummy!” they cried. “What a dunce!” They pinned down Lime’s arms and legs, and sat on her wings. Lime cursed and hissed and bared her fangs, but the other fairies only laughed.
“You don’t get it,” said a violet fairy in a handsome cape. “You stole from us and we caught you, so that means we get to punish you.”
“The Law says she has to be our prisoner for sixty months,” said a fairy with coiled antennae, “and do whatever we say.”
“Who wants a prisoner, though?” said a blue fairy with wings like rumpled silk. “Let’s just toss her in the mud, or make her eat a bug.”
“You won’t make me do anything,” said Lime, “because I haven’t stolen anything! Am I supposed to believe these are your flowers?”
“They are,” said the violet fairy. “This is our community garden.”
“Fairies,” said Lime, “don’t garden.”
“We do,” said the blue fairy. “It was Old-Timer’s idea. She has all kinds of wild ideas.”
“That’s because I’m the only one around here with any brains in my head,” snarled a voice from the trees. The crowd stilled their laughter as an apple-red fairy swooped into the clearing. The fairy’s crooked fangs protruded over her lips, and the horns of beetles crowned her cap.
“Let the loner go,” said Old-Timer. “A prisoner’s just another fairy for me to keep in line and I don’t need it.”
With groans of disappointment, the other fairies unhanded Lime. “You’ve come from far away, haven’t you?” said Old-Timer, eyeing Lime’s shriveled hat and ragged dress. “Wearing that worn-out tropical flower, looking like you haven’t sewn new clothes in a decade. You have a clan?”
Lime glared and shook her head.
“Well, you can’t join ours,” said Old-Timer. “And you can’t take from the community garden unless you’re part of the clan. But I’ll let you have a cup of nectar, if you want it, out of hospitality.”
“I don’t want your hospitality,” said Lime, “or anything else to do with this terrible forest.”
Old-Timer snorted. “Suit yourself. But if you won’t take my hospitality, maybe you’ll at least take my advice. This place here is called the Woeful Woods, bordered on one side by the meadows and the other by a human town. If it’s flowers you want, feel free to look in the woods or the meadows or even the lands beyond, but steer clear of human territory. They keep plenty of gardens, but just as many dogs and cats and children. A lout like you would be caught in a second.”
“I’m not stupid or slow enough to be caught by any human,” said Lime. “And I’m not afraid of pets, either. Is that all your advice?”
“It is,” said Old-Timer. “Whether or not you choose to listen to it. Now get out of here, lone traveler, and leave our clan to its business. Unless you’ve changed your mind about the nectar?”
Lime buzzed into the air and darted away from the fairies’ garden. “I’d rather drink frog-spawn!” she yelled over her shoulder. “I hope a whole crowd of humans comes through and tramples your awful flowers!” She fled, already thoroughly sick of the Woeful Woods and its denizens.
As she sped through the trees, an amber-yellow fairy descended from the branches and fell into pace her side. “Don’t you dare follow me!” Lime cried.
“Calm down, Loner,” said the amber fairy. “I’m not here to start trouble.”
“I’m serious!” said Lime. “Leave me
alone or I’ll fight you! I’ll pull out your antennae!”
The amber fairy giggled. “You’re a bad liar,” he said. “Just stop a minute and talk. Where’d you even come from, anyway?”
Lime tried to outrace the other fairy, but he easily matched her speed. She stopped, lest he follow her all the way back to the hole at the roots of the tulip poplar.
“Where I’m from,” she said, “is none of your business. Did you chase me down just so you could interrogate me?”
“I was only trying to be sociable,” said the amber fairy. “You’re a real cagey one, you know that, Loner?”
“Stop calling me ‘Loner’,” said Lime, “and get out of my sight.”
“What’s wrong with ‘Loner’?” said the amber fairy. “It’s better than my nickname, at least.” He paused expectantly. Lime merely glowered at him.
“It’s Pipsqueak,” he said. “It’s one of those ironic nicknames, right? ’Cos I’m so tall.”
“Good for you,” said Lime.
“Did you come here flower-hunting?” asked Pipsqueak. He glanced at her threadbare dress. “Hoping to make new clothes?”
“Maybe,” said Lime, “And maybe not.”
“No need to be shy about it,” said Pipsqueak. “Listen: if it’s flowers you’re after, I know a place you can go: a place nearly as good as our garden. Follow me and I’ll show you.”
“And if I don’t want to follow you?” said Lime.
“I won’t leave you alone until you do,” said Pipsqueak. “So just come with me.” He flew through the trees, and Lime, with a sigh of resignation, followed after.
He led Lime to the outskirts of the woods and a solitary building: a squat house built of brick and green-tinged vinyl. A fringe of weeds sprouted from sagging gutters. A messy but thriving garden teemed with hostas and begonias, with roses and crepe myrtles still clinging to flower, and scraggly mums just beginning to bud. A gravel path ran through the garden, and at the end of the path stood a mailbox with the name “A. E. Erskine” stenciled on it in paint.
