The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales

by Angela Slatter

  She knew now that she hadn’t killed her sister. She knew now that her mother had done it. And she didn’t know what to do. She could only watch.

  The father, returning from an evening at the tavern, staggered into the yard. From behind the house he heard a song, beautiful and gloriously lonely. He made his way to the back garden and saw a wondrous bird in the juniper tree. It sang him a song like none he’d ever heard:

  My mother she killed me,

  My father he ate me,

  My sister she hid me,

  Now my bones lie beneath the juniper tree.

  Alas, he didn’t understand a single word. When she had finished her serenade, she shook her beautiful head and dropped him something that flashed in the moonlight.

  It was a golden chain and it held, banded in wrought gold, a small bone, like that of a child’s finger. The man took it to be a religious piece, the finger bone of a saint, a piece of jewelry picked up by the bird in its travels, stolen because it was shiny. He believed in religion, not magic. He hung the gift around his neck and looked up.

  She was gone; she had seen his lack of understanding and disappeared.

  Second Wife, hanging out washing, heard the song. She did not understand the words but it sounded to her like the sonorous ring of funeral bells, and it struck at her heart with its pain and beauty. She thought of her little stepdaughter, of the way her head had rolled from her shoulders, and she felt pierced. Tears came unbidden.

  The bird, glorious fair, swooped down and hovered in front of the woman. It drank in her pain and her regret, her loss, and saw the empty place where Simah could have resided had jealousy not taken hold. In the bird’s beak appeared a juniper berry. Second Wife held out her hand and caught the berry as it dropped. With a flurry of feathers the bird was gone. The woman put the berry to her lips and swallowed, the bitter-sweet flesh and juice leaving their taste in her mouth long after the morsel was gone and she had returned to the house.

  She began to crave the berries daily; they hung on the tree’s branches, tantalisingly just out of reach, purple and lush. Second Wife stood, heavy and fecund, at the base of the tree and stared upward. The tree shivered and shook, and a hail of fruit fell upon her. She dropped to her knees and began to devour the berries.

  When they were gone and her mouth was rimmed purple with their juice, Second Wife raised her eyes and the tree, sensing she still hungered, shuddered until she was once again showered with berries. This second feast sated her and she curled into the roots at the base of the tree.

  The feasting became a ritual; no matter what she had eaten or how much, she craved the berries. In her final months they were all she ate, greedily sucking them into her mouth like a child at the breast, juice dripping from her chin. Gradually her hair began to darken and her eyes lost their blueness, hazing into green. Her skin, once golden, lost its colour even though she sat in the glare of the sun for hours at a time, consuming juniper berries. Her nature, once prone to blazing up, settled to a contented hum.

  Marlechina watched her mother from a distance, from the windows of her attic room, fingering the ribbons in her hair, singing quietly.

  She gave birth beneath the juniper tree. She’d woken in the middle of the night, pains familiar and strangely comforting, rippling across her abdomen. From the garden she could hear—ever so faintly—the song of the bird. She slid from the bed, away from her husband’s snoring bulk, and wrapped a shawl about her shoulders. Her feet took her where her mind did not think to go, a movement without thought but necessary nonetheless.

  There was no sign of the bird, but the tree welcomed her. She sank to the ground between its roots, and felt the pressure of a child anxious to enter the world. The smell of juniper berries was strong as her waters broke. The child came swiftly.

  Marlechina, in her attic room, woke to the sound of bird song. She looked from the window. The white of her mother’s nightgown caught her attention and she left her room, swiftly and silently.

  Second Wife looked up at her daughter and wept. She lifted the child.

  It was the doll. Simah’s doll, streaked with blood and birth fluids, still, hard, soulless. Second Wife sobbed.

  The bird perched at the top of the tree. In its beak, a juniper berry once again. It dropped the berry into Marlechina’s waiting hands. She knelt and gently squeezed the berry between the doll’s ever-so-slightly parted lips.

  There was a catch of breath; the doll gasped and moved in her mother’s arms. Her flesh became malleable, soft and warm as she squirmed, growing rapidly before their eyes.

  Marlechina lifted the child, and found her eyes open wide, deep and knowing. Simah’s eyes. The child became heavier. Marlechina had to put her down and within minutes the baby was no more. Simah stood before them, naked, and exactly as she had been on the day of her death. Except for the little finger of her left hand, which was missing. The sisters looked at their mother, now almost bloodless, but smiling.

  “Take care of your sister, Marlechina.” As the little girls watched, the earth beneath their mother’s body opened and drew her down, to rest beneath the juniper tree.

  * * *

  Skin

  I was sixteen when he plucked me from the sea.

  Caught in his fisherman’s net, I thought I would drown until he lifted me into the boat and began to hack at the rough fibres to release me. I should have known then how soft his heart was, to see him ruining a net so, but I was terrified. In his haste he cut me, split my tail a good eight inches and saw the fine-boned ankles lying within. He sat back, astonished, and I fought my way free of the pelt until I was naked and shivering in my human skin, huddled at the bottom of that little, little boat.

  His family told him to throw me back, to return my other skin and send me home.

  I learned his language and gave him children, two boys and three girls, all in the space of ten years. We were happy, for a long time, in our cottage on the tiny island inhabited by no more than fifteen families. They were all related, his cousins at one remove or other. And they were dark, some of them, so I knew they had selkie blood for all they thought themselves better than me. It made me laugh to see his mother come a-visiting, mouth all twisted like she’d sucked on something bitter, she with her eyes so black you couldn’t tell the pupil from the iris. She’d look at my children, her grandbabies, and something in her face would soften as she watched them frolic on the seashore like pups. Sometimes she’d look out to sea and wear a longing that her mind didn’t know, but her blood did.

  We were happy until my man began to drink. I’d made him prosperous, for the shoals gather where selkie wives bide. His nets were never empty and the purse was always heavy from the sales at the mainland markets. The money it was, that led him astray. He would come home drunk, barely able to row across the short span of water separating us from the town, throw himself onto the bed and snore fit to bring the roof down.

  When I begged him to stop he turned on me, called me fish and beat me for daring to question him. He was no longer the man who had saved me from a net.

  I could have gone to the beach, knelt down and spoken to the waters, told the fish to go away. I could have pulled my old pelt down from the top of the cupboard where he’d hidden it all those years ago, as if I wouldn’t sniff out my own skin. I could have taken to the water once more and left them all behind, but my children held my heart. My pride yearned though, for revenge, and I called up a storm just as my mother and aunts had taught me long ago; called it up one eve as he rowed home, worse for liquor and new-found temper.

  They say there had never been such a storm and there’s never been one since. I found him the next morning, when my anger burned low and regret took its place. He lay across the rocks, his clothes torn, his limbs broken. There was a skerrick of breath left in him.

  I made my way back to the cottage, ran back down to the beach.

  He was already very cold, limp, and for a while the skin would not take hold. When I began to despair it took a
grip at last, adhering to his shoulders, down his back, across his chest and limbs, and finally up his neck and over his face. He coughed; it sounded like a seal’s bark. Wriggling, he heaved himself out of my arms and flopped down the rocks to slip into the cold sea.

  He comes often, not only when I sing. Our children swim as well as their seal blood allows and they play together; somehow they know it is their father, although I have not told them, and they seem not to grieve. Some nights, I sit there with him damp and warm beside me, and we speak of things beneath the sea, things I will never again see.

  * * *

  The Bone Mother

  Baba Yaga sees the child from her window and knows that her daughter is dead. She bashes the pestle against the bottom of the mortar and swears she will not weep. The child is at the gate now, her hand nervously moving in the pocket of her apron. The old woman sits at the window to wait.

  Vasilissa stares at the house. It is a tumble-down black dacha, somewhat forlorn in the late spring light. Chickens scratch at the dirt in a desultory fashion. A fence runs around the yard, and the gateposts are festooned with human skulls.

  The blond girl shivers. Her stepmother sent her here and her mother, reduced to the tiny doll wiggling in her pocket, seconded the notion. She, however, is not so sure. Ludmilla, her father’s second wife, means her harm but she is loath to think that her own mother has the same intent.

  “Go to Baba Yaga and get us some coals for the fire,” Ludmilla told her. Shura, her mother, said she should obey. “Ask Baba Yaga no questions she does not invite.”

  “Why, Mother, must I go?” Vasilissa had whispered to the twitching wooden doll. The thing had started speaking to her six months ago—five months after her mother’s death, and one month after Ludmilla had married her father. She still doubted sometimes that the doll really did speak, but seeking out a priest and telling him the tale would be far worse than a little madness. Thus, she listened to the doll, who had never set her wrong.

  “Because she is your grandmother, but she won’t treat you any better for that. She has her own rules. Just do as I say and no harm will befall you.”

  Vasilissa had set out for Baba Yaga’s compound. She walked a day and a night and on the evening of the second day she has come to the black dacha. A thundering of hooves splits the air and a torrent of air pushes past her, shoving her to the ground. She is familiar with the occurrence by now—in the mornings a woman in white charged past her, and at midday a fierce female rider in red did the same. Now, at dusk, a black rider takes her turn. She gallops past, through the gate, and disappears up the stairs of the dacha.

  The little girl has spent the last hour sitting in the forest, watching the house, trying to ignore the tiny voice of the doll. At last the urging becomes too much and Vasilissa rises and drags her feet as she approaches the gate. The skulls glare down at her, eyes glowing red. She passes under their gaze, icy with fear.

  Although she has been waiting for it, the child’s knock startles Baba Yaga. She drops the pestle and it clunks heavily against the side of the mortar. From the air three sets of disembodied hands appear and she gestures for them to move the mortar back into a dark corner of the room, then she shuffles to the door.

  The girl cowers under the Bone Mother’s gaze. For the longest moment the old woman says nothing, just looks at the child, trying to see a trace of own daughter in the youthful features. Vasilissa peers with the same intent, thinking that the eyes set deep in the wrinkled face once looked out from her mother’s face. A smile cracks the withered visage.

  “What do you want, girl?” Her voice is the sound of the pestle grinding against the mortar. Vasilissa clears her throat.

  “Please, Grandmother. My stepmother sent me to beg some coals from you. Our fire has gone out.” Her feet are rooted to the spot as she stares up at her grandmother. Baba Yaga is tall and very thin, her face is a map of wrinkles, tattooed with age spots; she has a long nose and a surprisingly full mouth. Her hair is long and iron grey, pulled into an untidy plait hanging down her back.

  “Stepmother? How long has she reigned?” Her heart trips at the idea of loss, of not knowing how long her daughter has been gone.

  “Ludmilla and her daughters came to live with us five months ago,” Vasilissa keeps her voice carefully neutral.

  “How does she treat you?”

  “As a stepmother does.”

  Baba Yaga grunts and steps aside so Vasilissa can pass into the parlour. The girl looks behind her surreptitiously.

  “What, child?” The question is sharp. Vasilissa swallows hard.

  “They say your house stands on the legs of giant chickens and moves around and around.”

  Her grandmother’s bemusement is obvious. “Who would believe a stupid thing like that?” She leans down to the child. “When did you ever see a chicken big enough to support a dacha?”

  Vasilissa giggles in spite of herself and steps across the threshold into a dim room filled with the smells of things that have lived for a long time. The doll in her pocket shakes.

  After supper, Vasilissa watches her grandmother sleep in the big old bed across the room. Her face is less lined in repose but Vasilissa still thinks of each furrow as a journey taken, a map of her grandmother’s past and perhaps one of Vasilissa’s own future.

  Will I look like her? Would my mother have looked like her had she lived? Is it so bad, to have lines to show where and who you have been?

  Baba Yaga stirs, snores a little, settles. The little girl snuggles into the small bed she has been given and closes her eyes. Sleep comes quickly and she does not trouble the little doll for the first time in many nights.

  They rise before dawn and eat a light breakfast, then Baba Yaga leads Vasilissa into the stable yard.

  “Today, you must earn your keep. When I leave, you will clean the yard, clear out the stables, and sweep the floors. When you have finished that, take a quarter of a measure of wheat from my storehouse and pick out of it all the black grains and wild peas you find there. Then cook my supper.” She leans down and whispers. “Or you will be my supper!”

  The girl giggles, not in the least bit afraid.

  “Yes, Grandmother. I bid you good day.”

  “My riders will come, my riders three. First is my glorious dawn, then my bright day, and last my tenebrous night. They cannot harm you, and will answer if you call.” Baba Yaga climbs into the mortar, an ungainly scramble, grasps the pestle in her left hand and a long straw broom in her right.

  The mortar, responding to her commands, rises in the air with a grinding sound and floats to the opening gate. Baba Yaga uses the pestle to steer and, with the broom, sweeps behind her to cover any trace of her passing. Vasilissa thinks it an extraordinary way to travel, when there are several fine horses peering at her from the stables. She shrugs.

  When her grandmother has disappeared from view, Vasilissa pulls the little doll from her pocket. She puts a few crumbs of bread in front of the thing and a spoonful of milk.

  “There, my little doll, take it. Eat a little, drink a little, and listen to my grief.”

  The doll shakes itself as if waking and eats up the morsels with alacrity. Vasilissa speaks once again.

  “Today, little doll, I must clean the yard, clear out the stables, and sweep the floors, then separate a quarter measure of wheat from black grains and wild peas. Then I must cook supper. Tell me, little doll, what shall I do?”

  “Cook the supper, of course. Leave the rest to me.” The tiny thing jumps up and stands on the top step, raising her arms before she fixes the child with painted blue eyes. “Best you don’t see this lest you become too old too soon.”

  Vasilissa bows her head and goes inside the dacha. She prepares her grandmother’s supper, never tempted to look outside at the storm of activity the doll creates. Some things are best not known, some wisdoms should not come too soon.

  The mortar makes it way through the trees doing surprisingly little damage. Baba Yaga knows her paths and,
as she sweeps behind her, she ensures that no one can follow her trail, trace her back to the black dacha too easily. Not everyone appreciates her place in the scheme of things.

  Baba Yaga is a woman who cannot be bound. She will bear no more children, she will bow to the wishes of no man; she is independent, adrift from the world and its demands. The world, in ceasing to recognise her value, has granted her a freedom unknown to maids and mothers. Only the crone may stand alone. She heals when she can and, when she cannot, she ushers others along their path, easing suffering, tempering fear.

  The people of the forest know enough to leave signs when she is needed: a red rag tied to a fence or gate post. An offering is left, too, so as not to actually hand anything over to the old woman and risk the catching of old age, which some of them seem to think of as a contagion. She’s a last hope to most, too feared to be willingly approached except in desperation. Oftentimes they wait too long. Mourners put such deaths down not to their own inaction, but to malice, to the crone being hungry to take a life, to feed herself on the juices of the living. She is deathless, strange thing that she is, and they assume she must feed off them to maintain this ever-life.

  When she does manage to save someone, there is still fear—gratitude becomes a strange, haunted animal, constrained by a niggling unease, an idea, however unreasonable, that the price of her aid is too high. She should, she tells herself over and again, be used to it; inured to the ache it causes her. But she isn’t; she suspects she never will be, and she fears for herself if she ever does become numb. Pain tells her she is still just a little human; something less than mortal, but more than a stone. This comforts, sometimes.