The Starlit Wood

by Dominik Parisien

  “Ghosts of thoughts are lying

  on the shelves, rustling

  like a forest of dry leaves.

  Take me to them.”

  See? Metaphor—or was that a simile? She was getting better at this. Thea stepped through the archway and into the Library of Lost Books.

  The library was dark and silent, illuminated only by the moonlight that came through tall, mullioned windows. It gleamed on row upon row of books with gilt lettering on their spines. She put Cordelia down on the floor.

  “All right,” she said. “Look for someone who smells like me. I mean ‘smell for.’ You know what I mean.”

  Cordelia sniffed the air. Thea could see the shining circles of her eyes. Then she turned away and slunk into the darkness. This could take a while . . . but no, just a minute later Cordelia was back.

  “Well, that was easy,” she said disdainfully. “She may have gotten all the anger, but you got all the brains. They’re asleep, right in front of the fireplace.”

  Thea followed the cat across the dark, cavernous room to a stone fireplace. On a carpet in front of the fireplace, there was . . . nothing. “Invisibility cloak,” she said. “Show me where?”

  Cordelia nudged the nothing.

  Thea knelt down and felt the air . . . yes, it was fabric, scratchy like wool. She pulled it off. There, on the carpet, asleep and smelling distinctly of wine, were her shadow and Oryx the satyr. One of her arms was flung over his hairy chest.

  “What now?” said Cordelia.

  “I don’t know.” She had been doing the next thing and the next, as they occurred to her. Looking down at her shadow nestled against the satyr, she did not know what to do.

  “Well, that’s helpful,” said the cat in her most disgusted tone. She sat on the stone floor and wrapped her tail around her feet.

  Thea sat down beside her cross-legged, set the peacock mask on the floor, and put her chin in her hands. The green dress, black in the moonlight, puddled around her. How do you join a shadow to yourself after it has been snipped away? That was the question.

  “If I could get her back to Miss Lavender’s, I could ask Miss Gray to rejoin us—or maybe Mrs. Moth would do it? But I don’t know how to get her back there without waking her up. And if I wake her, she’ll never agree to go with me.” The shadow had made that perfectly clear.

  “Do you always wait for someone else to solve your problems?” Cordelia asked, as though posing a theoretical question.

  Thea put her hands over her eyes, ashamed of herself. Yes, mostly, up to now she had. Her grandmother, and then the teachers at school. But she wasn’t in school anymore, was she? She was an adult now, and adults solved their own problems. So did witches.

  “Wait.” She opened her eyes. Her hands were still in front of her face, but she could see right through them, to the bookshelves across the room. Both of her hands were completely transparent. Quickly, she put them in her lap, where she couldn’t see them. She didn’t want to know how much she had faded here, so close to her shadow. “Mrs. Moth said something—if only I could remember.”

  Cordelia yawned, pointedly.

  “That’s it!” Suddenly, it had come back to her—the conversation over tea, and a chance remark. “Magic is poetry. At least, poetry plus math. I always hated the math part, but all we need is for one plus one to equal one.” Carefully, she leaned forward and turned the shadow over—the other Thea made a sound but did not wake up. Then she sat back and pulled out one of her long red hairs. “You’ll have to be both needle and thread,” she said to the red strand.

  “Thread the needle, sharp as pain,

  sew the fabric, strong as grief.”

  She put the soles of her feet right on the shadow’s, her Keds to the soft black leather boots of the catsuit, and began to sew.

  “Join the twain, join them well,

  bind them as a single soul,

  so they cannot be unbound.”

  Starting at the heel, up the outside and a few extra stitches at the toe, down the inside, knot. Then the other foot.

  “Sewing spell, join them soundly,

  solidly and well.”

  Once she had knotted the thread again, she stood up. The shadow lay on the floor, just where the moonlight would have cast Thea’s shadow. Thea looked down at her hands. She could no longer see through them. They were completely solid.

  “Well?” said Cordelia.

  “I don’t know. I think it worked. I remember being at Miss Lavender’s and being in the box. If I’d been in that box, I would have hated me too! I think I do hate me. And my grandmother, and Anne Featherstone, and my parents for dying, and . . . Cordy, what’s wrong with my face?”

  “You’re crying. You humans do that.”

  Thea could feel tears coursing down her cheeks. Suddenly, she started to sob—loud, heaving sobs that racked her as she leaned forward, hands on her stomach, then fell to her knees. She felt as though she were going to split apart again, this time from anger and grief. She had never felt anything so painful—the racking sobs continued—no, she had, she remembered now. But it had been long ago, when she was a child. And it all came flooding back—her mother’s soft auburn hair, the sensation of riding on her father’s shoulders, the day she had been told they would not, no never, come back. She couldn’t bear it. She knelt on the cold, hard floor and sobbed.

  “You have to get up,” said Cordelia. “We have to go home. Look.”

  Thea looked up. Through her tears, she saw that it was brighter—no longer moonlight, but the soft blue light of early morning, beginning to come through the library windows.

  “What’s wrong with me, Cordy? Why can’t I stop crying?”

  “You’re both of you now.” The cat rubbed up against her, a rare gesture of affection. “Come on. You can do it, you know.”

  Thea stood up awkwardly and rubbed her hands across her face. They were slick with tears. She didn’t want to ruin the green dress by wiping them on it, so she just rubbed them against each other, hoping they would dry. She took a deep breath that hurt her ribs. Her stomach was still queasy and there was an ache in her chest, but somehow she felt stronger than before. As though the world had stopped tilting around her.

  “All right, give me a minute.”

  She knelt beside the satyr and kissed him on one cheek, despite his bad breath, then stroked his hair. “I liked you—a lot. And honestly, you’re pretty hot for someone who’s half goat.” Then she picked up the peacock mask from where she had set it down.

  “Can we go home now?” Cordelia yawned a wide cat yawn and blinked her eyes. This time, she seemed genuinely sleepy.

  “One more thing. No, two.” Thea found the Seeing Ball where she—the shadow—no, she as the shadow—had left it, behind Volume VII of The Collected Poems of Sappho. It was confusing, having two sets of memories. Going to school at Miss Lavender’s—being in a box for twelve years, like a long, dreamless sleep—attending her grandmother’s funeral—finding herself free in Mother Night’s castle—sitting in her Boston apartment, watching anime on YouTube and eating takeout sushi, afraid of everything, college and what the future held for her—capering around the gardens with Oryx, hiding behind the giant chess pieces, teasing the fish. Which were her memories? All of them, she supposed. She felt around the floor next to the satyr—there, the invisibility cloak, with its scratchy wool. She put it over her arm so that her hand looked as though it were floating in the air. Then she hoisted the soft, sleepy cat to her shoulder. Carrying cat and cloak and mask, she walked to the library door.

  “Morning has come, and morning’s star has risen:

  her chamber awaits its radiant messenger.

  Take me there.”

  She stepped through the library door into Morgan’s tower.

  The Morningstar was, in fact, not there. Putting Cordelia on the bed, where she promptly curled up and fell asleep, Thea changed into her own clothes. Thank goodness she had brought extra. And Mother Night had said something about
chocolate . . . yes, there it was, half a bar in the front pocket of her backpack. She broke off a square and put it into her mouth, chewing it quickly, automatically. But it was the best chocolate she had ever tasted—honestly, ever. Dark, sweet, bitter, creamy . . . had she never actually tasted chocolate before? Oh, for goodness’ sake, she was starting to cry again, and her nose was starting to run. Hastily folding the green dress before she could get tears or snot on it, she put it on the bed with the peacock mask on top and the invisibility cloak beside it. Then she took the notebook out of her backpack, tore out a sheet of paper, and left a note, with the Seeing Ball on top to weigh it down:

  Thank you so much for everything! I got my shadow and sewed it back on—very Peter Pan! Invisibility cloak is to the left <— If you’re on Facebook, friend me!!! <3 Thea

  She slung her backpack over one shoulder and draped Cordelia over the other—drat the cat, why couldn’t she wake up and walk? She had to keep sniffing so her nose wouldn’t drip. Somewhere in her backpack she might have a tissue, but she couldn’t search for one while holding Cordelia and trying to come up with a poem. It didn’t have to be long, right? Just effective.

  “The greatest magic

  brings you home.”

  She stepped through the tower door into the kitchen of the headmistress’s house.

  Mrs. Moth was in an apron, making breakfast. “Good morning, Thea,” she said. “When we didn’t see you yesterday, we figured you’d found your way to the Other Country. Why, look at you!” She said it in the tone of an aunt who has not seen you in a while and remarks on how much you’ve grown. “Emily, Lavinia,” she called. “Thea’s back! All of her, thank goodness.” Then she held out a paper towel for Thea’s dripping nose.

  “Well, how do you feel?” asked Miss Gray. Thea had taken a shower and brushed her teeth, examining herself curiously in the mirror. She looked tired, and her eyes were red, and there was a shadow following her around, everywhere she went. She kept seeing it out of the corner of her eye and flinching. She could not get used to it.

  “I don’t know.” She ate the last spoonful of her oatmeal. “Confused. Sad about my parents. Angry about being put in a box. Glad to be here. Any minute now I’m probably going to burst into tears again. Sometimes I feel like kicking things, and sometimes I feel like dancing around the room. Although I haven’t actually done either of those things yet.”

  “Oh, but you will, my dear,” said Miss Lavender. “It’s very confusing, being all of yourself. You’ll find it quite uncomfortable for a while. But you’ll get used to it. We all do.”

  “Coffee, anyone?” asked Mrs. Moth.

  “Not for me,” said Thea. “I think I’ll go to Booktopia for a latte. There was a book on writing I wanted to get—John Gardner.” Maybe even the Anne Lamott.

  “Good for you,” said Miss Gray. “I always liked your pieces in The Broomstick, especially that article on Hans Christian Andersen. He really was a charming man, although terribly insecure.”

  “And Sam’s quite attractive,” said Mrs. Moth. “Though very young.”

  “This is about literature, not romance,” said Miss Gray. “Anyway, you think anyone under a century is young. Have a good time, Thea.”

  “I’ll try,” said Thea. Miss Gray had read something of hers and actually liked it! Maybe she could write some poems or an article. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? The novels could come later. . . . She smiled at herself, then sniffed again and wiped her nose with the balled-up paper towel.

  On the way out, she scratched Cordelia behind the ears. The cat curled up more tightly on the parlor sofa, purring in her sleep. Thea put on her jacket and scarf, then stepped into the cold New England morning, her shadow accompanying her up the path and into the town, toward the bookstore and anywhere else she might want to go.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Theodora Goss: I’m not sure which I read first, Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Shadow” or Ursula Le Guin’s essay “The Child and the Shadow,” which is a Jungian interpretation of the Andersen fairy tale. Regardless, my own reading of the fairy tale was deeply influenced by Le Guin’s, as well as by other stories I’d read of shadows or doubles, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s “The Fisherman and His Soul,” which is partly a response to Andersen. One thing struck me about these stories: the protagonist is never female. There must be stories of women who are double, but if so, I haven’t read them: traditionally in literature women are the other, so I guess they don’t get an other? They have no shadows. . . . Therefore, in writing my own version of the Andersen story, I created Thea. Her other comes out of my sense that Jung is right about the shadow: it represents a dark, wild, but also vital part of the self that must be incorporated rather than rejected. Without her shadow, Thea can’t be her complete adult self. The story also comes out of my understanding of depression: without her shadow, Thea experiences symptoms of depression, which include lethargy, loss of motivation, loss of a sense of self. I hope once she regains her shadow, Thea will go on to live a fulfilling, creative life. . . . And I believe we must all connect with our shadows if we are to live deeply and creatively, to our full potential.

  WHEN I LAY FROZEN

  Margo Lanagan

  ell me again, Tommelise,” Mrs. Markmusen wheezes from her great bed, “about the Mother and Father.”

  I open my eyes and glare into the darkness. I’ve spun thread since dawn, with those four hideous spider-sisters the Edderkops weaving and whispering around me. My fingers throb and my mind aches from holding off my revulsion. All I want to do is sleep.

  “Well,” I begin, as politely as I can manage, “it all started when the Mother kissed me alive—”

  “Snik-snak, not that dull stuff!” The phlegm rattles in Mrs. Markmusen’s angry throat. “You know what I want to hear. One night, you heard a sound . . .”

  I wrap my blanket tighter. I hate that story. I wish I had never told it to her.

  But this mousewife saved my life, I remind myself—and it cost her. To share her food with me last winter, she went without. And because she did, she bore no young, either in spring or later in summer. The least I can do in return is satisfy her craving for these upsetting stories.

  “I heard a sound, yes,” I say. “I heard movements I could make no sense of, that were not any movement of sleep. And cries, from the Mother and then the Father, small cries but urgent, like warnings.”

  “You should have heeded those warnings and stayed where you were,” Mrs. Markmusen growls.

  “I should have! You are so right! But I rose from my bed, and I picked up my foxfire torch.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear . . .”

  “I crept along the shelf to the corner and peeped around to where the Mother and Father slept.”

  The mousewife’s bedclothes rustle, and the big wooden bed frame lets out a crack. “But they weren’t sleeping, were they!”

  “They were not.” I shut my eyes tightly, but still I see, lit by torchlight and moonlight, the vast, peeled bodies surging out of the bedclothes. Their faces open and roam over each other like cattle desperately browsing. The Father, in agony, grows his extra, stunted leg, and the Mother takes fright and crushes it under her bottom in a frenzy, her bared breasts swinging, her hair a frizzled storm around the black hole of her mouth.

  All during my telling, Mrs. Markmusen’s bed cracks and cricks at the horror of it, ever faster and louder. Her promptings shrink to hisses and moans, of disbelief, of pity. She understands my discomfiture. She shares it, but she shivers and struggles where I can only lie and stare. She cries out in my stead, for the most I can do is coldly set forth the Mother’s and Father’s actions.

  “I really feared for the Father’s life,” I say. “He lay so stiffly, and he gaped so widely. And the Mother, on top of him, looked so ill and unlike herself, all unbound and shaking without her clothes, her face and hair tossing about—”r />
  “Oh!” cries Mrs. Markmusen. “Oh! Oh! How dreadful for you!” Her bed cracks hard and suddenly, fit to break with her writhing. As long as she doesn’t begin to cough . . .

  “Dreadful!” she says. “Terrible! Oh, you poor, poor—Oh! How you must have suffered!” Crick and crack and gasp and huff of bedclothes.

  I wish I could writhe and shout like her and be done with it. Instead, I lie quiet, and the wrongness of it stays inside me, a stone in my belly. I fled the Mother and Father’s house long ago—the spring before last, and now my second summer is waning—but I carry that stone with me still.

  “What did it mean?” I plead into the darkness as Mrs. Markmusen subsides. “Why would they want to kill each other? During the day they went about so measured and civil, their clothes so neat, and their hair—”

  “I cannot help you.” Mrs. Markmusen sounds weary from giving voice to all my terrors. Then the coughing takes her, long and dreadful.

  “It is a great mystery,” she whispers when she’s recovered, turning her face to the wall. “Sleep,” she says. “The Edderkops will arrive early, and you must be up and spinning if they’re to have thread for their work.”

  A few last gasps and jolts shake her, and then she sighs asleep. But I lie wide awake with memories moiling before me. When I flung myself into the grass from the Mother and Father’s windowsill, I thought that I was leaving their madness behind. But then I found that the whole world was mad. Toads and fish, deer and cattle, birds and beetles—whenever I happened on new beasts, they would set to clambering and slithering over each other.

  Worse, if they were not with another of their kind, they would turn on me and try to crush or drown me, or rub me out of existence. The terror and the formless shame of those memories still dog my every step. The fine unsettling rustle of Edderkop fingers at the loom fills my days, but the beasts’ grunts and pants and mindless exclamations haunt all my nights.

  Long ago, in the snow-time, I would rise and creep away from this noise of my mind. I would fetch a bowl and a bottle of water, and a small ration of grain from the mousewife’s larder, and hurry to the tunnel where the bird-woman lay, thawed from the sleep that the snowstorm had put her in, yet trapped here by winter, just as I was.