(A sample chapter from novella, The Juniper Tree.)
© 2007 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
2
Dad never knew how I started. He never knew what my Mother did.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS went by after the little witch pared the apple and embraced the Tree. White Quill stood quiet in the night, and the wind moaned low in the Juniper Tree.
A shadow crossed over the tree. It was the shadow of a dog, padding across the Beak.
The dog crouched down. It was all white except for the eyes and the ears and they were red. It stared at the house. All the lights were off except in the great-room where the Christmas tree lights twinkled through the glass terrace doors.
The white dog growled.
But lights shone from headlights in the woods. A black car drove up the drive and its tires crunched the gravel and stopped. And the dog slunk off into the woods.
Bjorn switched off the motor and stumbled out of his car. It was a long sleek luxury car, brand new, and it cost a lot. He loved that car. He had a party hat on his head, and he was mumbling ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ in the back of his throat like a saw cutting the heart out of a tree.
He staggered around the house onto the terrace, and swept the glass doors open with both arms.
‘Ariela? Ariela! Hey-ho, I’m late!’
He turned the lights on. The light flooded the stone terrace and shone out onto the Juniper Tree on the Beak.
King Bear stood still as stone.
His wife lay under the Christmas tree. Her black dress was flung up high above her knees. There was blood on her naked thighs. Her legs looked nasty pushed apart like that.
Bjorn tore off the party hat. He knelt and tugged down the dress. ‘Ari,’ he said, ‘Sparrow-witch,’ but she didn’t answer and she didn’t stir.
He scooped her up in his arms.
‘You’re so light, there’s nothing to you but air.’
He carried her upstairs.
Through the bedroom window, the stars glinted on the stone bowl with the paring-knife. The man didn’t turn the light on. He laid his wife down on the bed. He chafed her arm.
‘Ariela! Come back to me, Sparrow-witch!’
‘Bjorn. My king.’
‘What happened? What did you do? I’m calling the doctor.’
‘No, don’t. It’s done now. Everything is fine.’
She nestled her head deep in the pillow, closed her eyes, and smiled. ‘You were right,’ she said.
THE WINTER covered the woods and the house and the lawn with snow. The Juniper Tree never got snow on it. Maybe it was the wind always shifting its branches that kept the snow away. Or maybe it was the sea-spray and mist that leapt up the Beak day and night.
And a month went by and the snow melted. And two months were gone, and everything was green.
Then the rains covered the coast. It was raining everywhere, all the time. The rain spilled off the gutters around White Quill and overflowed the barrels. The grass in the lawn sprouted thick and wild.
And three months were gone, and the flowers came out of the earth, and Bjorn built a Straw Man under the Juniper Tree. In the afternoon the witch sat on the grass with wildflowers in her hair. She wasn’t thin anymore; the child was inside her, getting big already.
Bjorn came up behind her in his black tuxedo and his raincoat draped over his shoulders.
‘Hey-ho! Don’t look!’
She smiled and put her hands up over her eyes. ‘I won’t peek,’ she said, but of course she did.
He knelt behind her. He was wrestling with something under his coat.
‘All right – now!’
He pulled out a baby lamb with a red bow tied around its throat.
She gasped and laughed. She tried to hold him but the lamb skittered away. The man started after him.
‘No, Bjorn, let him be! I know what your name is, little lamb. It’s Giorgio, isn’t it? Giorgio, Giorgio! Veni qua, Giorgio!’
The lamb sidled on up to her. She kissed his head and his ears, and the wind rustled in the Straw Man’s flower crown.
And when four months were gone, all the trees in the wood grew green.
And when five months were gone, Ariela slept beneath the Juniper Tree in a muslin tent that her grandfather had brought her from his voyages around the world. Deep in the night the old tree smelled so sweet that her heart beat wildly, and she was beside herself with joy.
And when six months were gone, the fruit was large and fine, and then she was quite still. And she prayed beneath the Juniper Tree, and stole a handful of berries, and ate them. And when she kissed the little lamb, her kisses left dark stains on his fleece.
‘Are those juniper berries you’re eating? They can’t be ripe yet.’
‘No, I could eat them day and night!’ She took another handful and stuffed them into her mouth until her cheeks were two balloons.
He plucked one and tasted it. He spat it out. ‘Ugh!’
That’s when they heard the dog barking, deep in the woods. Bjorn didn’t see it and Ariela didn’t either, but it was the white dog. You could feel that it was.
And when the seventh month was almost gone she fell sick, and she was sorry she ate the juniper berries. That was when it happened. She hurt, and the child hurt, too, even though the Juniper Tree looked after him the way it always did.
When the eighth month came, she never went out. She stayed in her room, and only went out into the bathroom. That’s where he found her.
She was lying on the white tiles in the dark, reaching about, not knowing what she touched. The pain blinded her. Bjorn stood in the doorway like a giant, but he was helpless, he didn’t know what to do.
‘Ari, what is it?’
‘Oh – I’m dying—’
More pain came. She grabbed the bathtub lip. The wind tossed the curtains over the stone bowl and the light gleamed through the lace and touched the bathtub lip smeared with blood.
‘Promise me, King Bear. If I die, you bury me under the Juniper Tree.’
‘Under the tree?’
‘You’ll do it, won’t you? Promise me. Do you? Do you promise me?’
‘Yes, all right, yes, if you die, only you won’t die, please don’t die, now come into bed, try to stay quiet until the doctor comes.’
He lifted her gently with his big hands. He carried her into the bedroom. A bright light splashed through the window and a great growling voice followed it. Then the rain started pattering and roaring onto the floor.
He sank her deep into the pillows.
Another light flashed in the window, and a big boom shook the whole house, and every light went out – like that. The rain came down in a great big sigh, just raining and raining onto White Quill and the Beak and the Juniper Tree. The old tree bowed under the rain and looked up under its branches to the house, waiting for the one sound that would tell it that it was done.
Late in the night, almost come morning, the Juniper Tree heard the sound. It was a little mewling caw, like a bird’s croak. It was the first sound the child made in his life.
AND SO that night the child came. The little witch won at last her heart’s desire, and she named him Falco, for that was the name she had called her little brother, when she was a small girl and fancied that she had a little brother.
She hardly minded the doctor. Mostly she lay in bed and looked at Falco. Her eyes were so greedy, it was like they were licking him head to toe and eating him up. The child didn’t mind. He loved her with all his little heart even before he knew what love meant. She was every happy thing to him. Even when Bjorn put Falco in the crib so Ariela could rest, she lay looking at the little one with smiling greedy eyes.
Bjorn saw the doctor out and came back in. He had a little bottle in his fist, and an eye-dropper that went with it. He held the bottle under Ariela’s nose and she sniffed.
Falco lay in his crib and waved his arms and laughed.
‘Is it right this time?’ asked Bjorn.
‘Almost. Almost, my poor, dear witch’s assistant! Milk and sweetwater have to be mixed tanto, tanto. You know what my grandmother said? She was so old. Very Sarda. Molto primitiva.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said, Give the baby one drop of this – one drop only, mind you, one drop is plenty, and more than enough. Two drops and it’s murder! And then the baby is blessed.’
‘Blessed?’
‘Si. Beato. Beato, so that as long as he is loved, he will be the happiest child alive in the world.’
Bjorn picked Falco up from the crib. He held him in his big arms. He winked at him. ‘What a Thanksgiving King he’ll make!’
‘Let me hold him again.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re tired.’
‘Bjorn…’
Whenever she said ‘Bjorn’ in that way, he had to do what she wanted. That was the law. So he let the child sink back into her embrace, and into the warm milk-smell she had.
She held Falco up above her in her hands. The child looked down into her face laughing underneath him. She lifted him up, and down, and up, and down, and he waved his arms in the wind.
‘Oh, pretty bird! Falco! Falco! Sventola, Falco, sventola! Fly, fly! Oop!’
‘Let me, don’t strain so.’
‘Ah, mio King Bear, this is so much … tanto … he is so much… Falco! Mi piaci. I see you … at last…’
There was a little hiccup in her voice. The child felt it right away, but the man didn’t. He only knew that she closed her eyes, and her lips still smiled, and a little sweat shone on her face.
‘He looks just like you. That’s why I like him. He looks like the baby brother you said you wanted.’
Bjorn put the child back in the crib. It cried. It wanted her back. How could he take her away?
‘Ari?’
Bjorn felt her neck and wrist. He listened to her breast. He fell back into the rocking chair and stared at her. His face was set like stone.
Outside, the branches of the Juniper Tree were dancing in the wind.
The child cried for a long time. The man just sat and stared. He stared at the bed where his wife lay. She was there and she wasn’t. It looked like her, but the sparrow-witch had flown away. She flew high in the wind and was gone.
Already it was getting dark. The dark crept up out of the corners of the room, it seeped through the floor boards, and it sifted down across the ceiling.
From the little bottle Bjorn drew out the eye-dropper. He leaned over the child, dark against dark, and squeezed one drop onto the tiny lips.
The child licked at the drop, warm on his tongue. He felt it spreading down his mouth, his throat, into his tummy. It tasted like his Mother. It filled him up and he stopped crying.
‘Here. Not too much, now. What was it she said?’
Bjorn took back the bottle. The child reached for it, wanting more. People always want too much when they can’t have any more.
‘Look, Ari. It’s Falco. Look… Do you want more? Here.’
Bjorn dipped the eye-dropper into the little bottle and pulled it out again. He put the end of the eye-dropper into the little mouth. The child tried to suck on it, but it was glass, and hard. But Bjorn squeezed, and filled the mouth with liquid, so warm, so sweet.
Bjorn sat back on the bed, and the hand lying beside him stirred.
‘Look, you’re moving. Was it a trick? Tell me it was a trick. Wake up and laugh at me because I’m an idiot. I won’t mind. Really…’
The child pushed the eye-dropper away and cried again.
‘More? No, Falco, no more. There isn’t any more.’
Bjorn put the bottle on the night-stand, very gentle, so the glass only made a tiny little tink when it touched the marble. He let the child slide into his lap. His face never looked at his son. He was looking at his dead wife.
Then the dark engulfed the room.
WHEN DAY BREAKS past the forest the Beak is always wrapped in fog. Giorgio liked to crop the grass then, when it was wet and full. But that morning Giorgio went to the end of his tether, as close to the house as he could go, even though he had already eaten that grass down to the roots.
The white dog was lurking at the wood’s edge.
And the Juniper Tree was all twisted up that morning, even worse than usual.
Under the Juniper Tree the man was digging with a spade. There was a pile of driftwood under the stone seat where the woman’s corpse lay in her velvet dress.
The white dog sat under the dark trees and licked his teeth and stared at them with hungry eyes. At last a whistle sounded, and the dog got up and padded away.
Giorgio tugged against his tether. Bjorn trudged back into the house. The Juniper Tree drooped its branches over the grave of the little witch.
