The Magic Circle

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Once when I was following a natural path barefoot through these great southern fir trees, the path itself turned to velvet black stones. I picked up a stone and realized it was jet. Against my will, my eyes saw how the jet would shine with a vigorous polish. I wanted to throw it away—to hurl it at the skies. But I knew better. I placed it down gently, exactly where I’d picked it up from, and walked home and put on shoes. I never went barefoot again.

  Another day I was raiding a honeycomb when a large chunk of brown tumbled from the rotting tree. When it hit the ground, it split, exposing the golden honey glow of amber. I patiently set the honeycomb back in the tree trunk and turned my back on the amber. I went home. And I trained my tongue to favor rosemary, savory, and thyme. No more sweets for me. No more visits to the honey tree. From that day on I even forbade myself the taste of my own candies.

  Yet another day I knelt on the shore of a large lake and let the sand sift through my fingers for the sheer silky pleasure. The grains of sand turned to pearls. They glistened with the white innocence of Asa’s soul. I wanted to form a cup with my hands and drink of them. Instead, I brushed off my hands and stripped and swam in the cold waters until I was numb.

  Nature’s beauty turned ornamental, fashioned from plants and animals—these things lure me not. Nor do the surprisingly fragrant orchids, which come in shameless profusion. Nor do the yellow clouds of canaries, the melodious birds that were unknown to me before I came to this land. No assault on my vision or smell or hearing can win.

  I cannot be tempted by that which lived or lives, any more than I can be tempted by that which never lived.

  Eventually these assaults on my senses ended. Or, rather, eventually I stopped noticing them. Or, in truth, eventually, though I still noticed, the callouses on my spirit prevented wounds. I am impervious to nature’s perfection.

  Sometimes I catch a spider regarding me silently. I move closer. Once a sunbeam split through dew on a web and danced all colors along my eaves. But I turned my eyes to the spider alone. To the spider’s eyes. I always look carefully in a spider’s eyes. And sometimes I think I see a spark of fury in those eyes. I allow no impish cobwebs in my home. I sweep with a broom made from the witch-hazel bush. Fitting name, I think.

  Imps usually come to witches to help them perform their evil magic. Since I perform no magic, their presence cannot be mistaken for a cordiality. And since I am immune to temptation, they are not here to lure me. They have but one purpose: They are spies. The furious spiders that appear on my walls, on my pillow, in my cupboards less and less frequently in these last few years, they are all spies. I rub the shelves with vinegar each day, out-lawing the dust that can hide spiders. My home smells of fermentation, but it is a clean acidity. It is the best that I can do. The energy I once focused on healing and loving the divine being now works to keep the devils at bay.

  At times, though, I am alone. Totally alone. I believe I am alone now.

  I am setting the beet juice outside to cool when the doe runs past, fear making her hooves fleet. I do not ask her why she runs. I could, but I resist. Years ago, when I sat quietly on the south side of a hill admiring a fox family lolling about outside their den in the warm morning sun, the serpent devil slithered up behind me and licked my ears. Instantly I could hear the loving encouragement the vixen gave her kits. I fled, full of the pain of loss. From that moment on, I have understood the language of every animal, large and small. Yet I never talk with them. I know their company would only make the forbidden idea of human company more attractive. I learned that lesson from the vixen. I do not even allow myself to eavesdrop. I must shut my ears now so that I cannot hear this doe’s anguish.

  A flock of starlings is startled. They rise into the air in a noisy cloud of black and yellow. I hate starlings, of course.

  And a family of squirrels is racing by. The younger ones are curious, running back to the source of the fear, disappearing for many minutes, then racing on ahead again.

  I am not curious myself. Curiosity is an innocent emotion. I am only anxious. I shut myself in my candy house and build a fire. Most living creatures are afraid of fire. I grab my witch-hazel broom and hold it ready to thrust into the fire. I can use it like a torch if I must defend myself. I wish I could light a starling afire.

  Suddenly my window breaks. That window of spun-sugar glass. The pink shards melt in the heat from the burning bird. A starling lies on my floor enveloped in a red and yellow sphere. My ears hurt from its silent shriek. Before my eyes the flaming wings turn to ash and nothing is left but smoke.

  Oh, why did I allow myself a wish? Oh, dreadful wish. I fall to my knees and lean over what isn’t there any longer. I have exercised an evil power without meaning to. The very fact that the devils have left me alone for so long is a type of seduction. I have been seduced into killing this bird. After nine long years I am still vulnerable. Oh, misery that owns my heart. I must stay on guard always, even if the devils are distant. For the evil power is mine always. It is a task not to use that power. A wearisome, difficult task. I must be vigilant.

  I leave the safety of the hearth and walk to my bed. I lie down and shut my eyes. I will not sleep.

  And yet I feel the sleep overtaking me. My eyelids are thick and wet as lily pads. I tell myself I could easily open them, but I don’t want to right now. It is by choice that I lie here with shut eyes. My choice. Yes.

  I don’t know if I slept. It is possible, for as the voices come to me, I feel that I am awakening. But the voices are not within my head. My body freezes. The voices are outside my home.

  “Throw me down some gumdrops, Hansel,” says a light, high voice. The sound is musical, but the words cut me as deeply as any sword. A child is outside my home. A human child!

  “Here, Gretel.”

  I hear the sound of something breaking from my roof.

  The child named Gretel laughs. “Maybe we won’t starve, after all.” Her laughter is not totally gleeful. A hint of panic whets her voice.

  I am totally alert. I am scanning my deepest thoughts. I find nothing to be afraid of. Yet I must not let down my guard. I remember how my mouth watered at the vision of my own grandchildren. I am not trustworthy.

  “Candy is good, Gretel,” says the child Hansel. “All the time they’ve been lying to us. Candy is wonderful.”

  “Hush. Don’t say wicked thoughts. We are eating this candy only because we need to,” says Gretel with a full mouth. “Recall the pastor’s words. We must deny pleasures of the flesh. We are not eating this candy by choice. We are not sinners.” There is fear in her voice. Her pastor is a powerful force.

  “I’m eating it because I like it,” says Hansel.

  A smacking sound comes from Gretel’s mouth. I know her tongue is working at the sticky gumdrop in her teeth. “It is sweet, I admit.” She gives a small, childlike laugh. “Very sweet. And the cottage is so beautiful. I cannot believe how beautiful it is. It is like heaven itself.”

  Her voice is full of awe. These children are agog at my home. The girl Gretel called it a cottage. The word sounds warm and cozy and happy. I feel myself standing up, not knowing what I am going to do next.

  “Oh, this one has peppermint flavor. Gretel, taste this.” There is the sound of something breaking from my roof again.

  I am slightly giddy. I speak, but my voice is musical, not my old, rough peasant’s voice. No, it is the gentle voice of a friend. I am saying, “Nibble nibble like a mouse, Who is nibbling at my house?” My words are sweet as the candy the children eat.

  “It is only the wind,” says Hansel from the roof.

  What a foolish, innocent child. Would that all of us could be so innocent.

  I open the front door and look upon the little girl in braids. Her eyes open wide at my ugliness. She drops the gumdrop, even though her whole body is aching for its nourishment. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth.

  “Don’t be afraid,” my sweet voice says. “You must be tired, and I can see you are hungry. I’ll fe
ed you.”

  The girl lowers her hands. The boy drops from the roof. He is younger and suffering even more from lack of food. They look at me with fear and hope. The bitter hunger of creeping starvation burns from those eyes.

  “I am ugly, it is true,” I say. “But you know better than to be afraid of outer appearances.”

  The girl motions to the boy to come by her side. He obeys. He trusts her. I admire that trust.

  “Come inside,” I say.

  Gretel stands motionless Hansel looks up at her. Then he looks at me. He wants to come inside.

  “I have known the pain of hunger,” I say. “And I have known the pain of loneliness. I can help you. Come inside.”

  Hansel takes a step forward. Gretel pulls him back.

  “You are a wise and careful girl,” I say to Gretel.

  “Who are you?” she says at last. Her voice is young and open and human. It is everything I am not.

  “I am an old woman. I live alone. I have a simple life.”

  Gretel seems to gather courage from my words. “I am Gretel. This is my brother, Hansel. What is your name?”

  “You can call me Old Woman.” I step back so she can see the inside of my home. The kitchen table is within view. A bowl of wild cherries I gathered only yesterday sits there invitingly.

  The girl licks her lower lip. Her eyes suddenly become decisive. She walks up and takes my hand. She is older than my grandchildren. But the roundness of her cheeks is familiar. If I could love these children, I would. Her eyes are forceful. I recognize that she is trying to win me over. Hunger has made her desperate. But there is no need for her to work so hard at winning me. I have an instinctive attraction for her.

  We go into the candy-bedecked house.

  seven

  COOKING

  Endive soup,” I am saying, “is good for you.”

  “With chicken to flavor it,” says Gretel. She pulls a chicken wishbone from her pocket. “I saved this from the last time we had chicken. More than a year ago. It was delicious.” Her eyes shine with the hope of satisfying the hunger that makes her cheeks twitch. “I brought it with me for good luck.” She puts the wishbone carefully back in her pocket. “We need a chicken thigh. A nice, juicy chicken thigh.” She licks her top lip. “The dark meat and blood would add flavor.”

  I look at her sharply, afraid the voices will start in my head. “And how is it one so small as you knows the art of the kitchen?”

  “I helped my mother cook,” says Gretel. “She called out what I was to do as she spun wool, and I followed the directions.”

  “I helped, too,” says Hansel. “I brought Mother the wool.”

  “You have a flock of sheep, then?” I ask doubtfully. These children wear old, tired garments. They haven’t the look of children whose parents own animals.

  “Oh, no,” says Hansel. “I gathered bush wool.”

  I am confused. I look to Gretel for an explanation.

  Gretel laughs. “You know, the tufts that remain when flocks are transferred from one grazing area to the next. I showed Hansel how to collect it. That was before our mother died.” Gretel rummages through my small collection of pots and pans as she talks. “I enjoy cooking.”

  “Your mother is dead,” I say softly. Orphans have come to me.

  “But our father is alive,” says Hansel, sitting at the table, swinging his short, stubby legs.

  “And he has married a most wretched woman,” says Gretel.

  “A real witch,” says Hansel.

  His words hurt my ears.

  “She sent us into the woods, thinking we would die right away.” Gretel has chosen a pot. She rubs out the inside with her filthy skirt and smells it. I would smile at her vain effort if I were not afraid of offending this earnest child. The pot obviously has passed her test, for she now sets it on the kitchen table. “We wouldn’t have even gotten lost except for the fact that Hansel is so stupid.”

  “I’m not stupid,” says Hansel.

  “Putting bread crumbs in your pockets instead of stones was very stupid, Hansel. Your brain is pea-sized.” Gretel speaks with great audacity, I am thinking, for one who came so close to starvation’s door.

  “What is this story of bread crumbs and stones?” I ask.

  “Well, the first time our stepmother sent us out in the woods—”

  “Our wicked stepmother,” says Hansel.

  “Yes, our wicked stepmother,” says Gretel. “The first time, I told Hansel to fill his pockets with white stones. So he did. And all along the way we dropped white stones. That night, when the moon shone bright, we followed the white stones back home.” Gretel has spied a basket of onions in the corner. She takes one and peels.

  “You should have seen the look on the witch’s face when we showed up the next morning,” says Hansel.

  “Please, please,” I say, “don’t call her a witch. Just call her your evil stepmother.” And I am already wondering if this woman, so maligned, is truly a witch. But a witch would have more effective ways of disposing of unwanted children. So she is just one more wayward soul. I wonder what mistake she made, what crime of the soul she committed, to bring herself to the state of mercilessness that these children speak of.

  “But the next afternoon when she sent us away again,” says Gretel, now chopping the onion with my only knife, “stupid Hansel here—”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “He puts bread crumbs in his pockets instead of stones.”

  “It takes time to gather that many stones,” says Hansel. His eyes water from the onion. I smile. This one is no use in the kitchen at all. I pull my small hand towel off the bowl of rising bread dough near the hearth and hand it to him. He dabs his eyes and walks over to the window.

  “So the birds ate the crumbs, of course,” says Gretel. She wipes her hands on her skirt.

  “You need an apron,” I say, as I shape the bread dough and put it on a flat pan. I open the oven in my hearth and slide in the pan.

  Gretel looks down at the stains on her skirt. “I’ve slept in this for three nights now. It doesn’t matter how much dirtier it gets.”

  I nod. She is a practical girl.

  “Where’s the endive?” Gretel looks around the kitchen area as she talks.

  “I have to cut it.” I take the knife from her and leave, walking quickly through the late-afternoon rays. I can see the moon rising already. It is a full moon of the new month. I walk to the corner of my garden just inside the marigolds. Without the marigolds, all my endive would be eaten by the rabbits. But the smell of marigolds protects it.

  I look at the marigolds as if I’m seeing them for the first time. They are cheerful and simple. I make a pocket of my skirt and fill it with endive. Then I cut two sprigs of marigold. I march back.

  Gretel’s shoes stand just inside the door. She is on her knees, helping Hansel take his off. She rises as I come in. I walk to her and weave a sprig of marigold into each of her braids.

  “You will be a beautiful woman,” I say.

  “I’ll settle for being good. Like you,” says Gretel.

  I want to smile at her no-nonsense attitude. It is a pity she didn’t have a beauty-loving mother like mine to soften her core, to open her to the pleasure around her.

  Gretel walks to the window and catches the reflection of herself in the spun-sugar glass. “Still, flowers are a treat now and then.” She smiles and returns to the table.

  I want to clap my hands with happiness at the evidence that this child is not yet so bound by her pastor’s strict warnings that she cannot enjoy beauty. But I don’t clap. She might think my happiness trivializes her efforts to be pious. I won’t risk alienating this fine child. She is working again already. I nod silently.

  She soaks the endive in the water bucket. “And the chicken?”

  Fear tightens its grip on my chest. “I have no meat.”

  Gretel looks at me solemnly. “We got very poor in the last year. We had only what meat we could hunt. You are an ol
d woman. You cannot be a good hunter.” She lifts her chin proudly. “Poverty and age are nothing to be ashamed of. We will use much garlic.” She takes fresh garlic from her pocket. “I found it in the woods. We’ve been chewing on it, to keep the evil spirits at bay.”

  “And fennel, too,” says Hansel, holding up a limp stalk. “Mother said fennel helps in the night battles against the devils.”

  I step back automatically. I have seen both plants growing wild in these southern woods. I have stepped around them with care. “Add the garlic and fennel to your own bowls once they are on the table. I am neither a garlic eater nor a fennel eater.” Then I move closer to Gretel and put my fingers on her cheek. “You are not just lovely to look at,” I say, “you are clever.”

  “I’m clever, too,” says Hansel.

  “That remains to be seen,” says Gretel.

  “Don’t be hard on your brother,” I find myself saying, although I, too, don’t know if this boy is clever.

  “Our mother always said that,” says Gretel, looking at me with guileless eyes. She smashes the garlic expertly and puts it on a plate on the table. She looks around. “Where are the hot pads?”

  “Hot pads?” I say, feeling a small panic. I must be careful not to betray myself. I have been inured to the pain of heat ever since my brief hours as the salamander of vermillion in that birch grove those nine long years ago. Fire can eat my flesh, but it causes me no pain. I have no need of hot pads.

  “I have to hang the soup pot on the hook in the fireplace.”

  “But the pot isn’t hot yet,” I say, stupidly.

  “Of course it’s not hot,” says Gretel, looking at me curiously. “But the hook is hot. What if I touch it? Where are the hot pads?”

  “Here,” I say, picking up an old towel from the small stack by the wall. “You can use this.”

  Gretel takes the towel from me with a doubtful face. She sets the pot on the hook in the fireplace. Then she turns to me with a face bright from the heat of the fire. “Tomorrow we can catch a rabbit.” She smiles faintly. “I’m very good with a slingshot. There are not many foods better than roast rabbit.”