Arcane II (10 page)

Her hair had to be kept in two pigtails from her temples, which Grandmother would braid at dawn. “It’s because your hair is like silk, so beautiful,” she’d say when she brushed Tatyana’s locks. “Such brown, like the chestnuts I used to pick as a girl.” But Tatyana didn’t understand why Grandmother thought her hair so beautiful when Grandmother herself had a cloud of dark waves, darker than the black of the house at night.

No matter how big she got, Tatyana wore the same dress. When the skirt grew too short or the sleeves too narrow, Grandmother would sew a new one, but it would be the same seam, the same color. Blue as the sky, or so had Grandmother said, but Tatyana had never seen the sky. The world outside was either grey during the day or black during the night, for nobody could see anything through the thunder-hum of the hurricane. Only Grandmother and Grandfather Grigory did, but that was because they went outside on the broom.

The hut with the four chicken legs tried to cheer her up. When Tatyana thought she couldn’t breathe from anger, the stairs would creak and shudder as they rose to meet the ceiling. The ceiling would shed its planks, which slid down to meet the steps and create a neverending staircase.

Above, Tatyana saw rooms which Grandmother had never shown her. Rooms with paintings of men, women, children, families. Pantries with sweets. Rooms with books. Rooms with toys or trinkets shaped like snakes that Tatyana would wind around her neck. Sometimes Tatyana would smile, but more often than not she would go to her room with her new friend, the hurricane.

She would tap the glass in dots and dashes, like one of the books had taught her, and then the winds would tap back in the same language. The hurricane had told her how people said the moon was beautiful, because he was blind, but all hearing. He told her how people lived together in cities, how the forests smelled of life and the sun of joy.

In response Tatyana would tap the same:

“Bring me someone, oh bring me someone to play with. So that I’m not alone, dear friend.”

“You ask me again and again I tell you I can’t.”

“Why?” It was the word her fingers knew best.

“Whatever I touch dies. Whenever I come people scream, animals run and trees moan. Behind me I leave tears and memories. I undo, and I cry as I do it. I am alone as you.”

“Then I will touch you.”

“You shouldn’t. I will peel your skin, turn you into a scarlet flower, spread your bones like seeds.”

“No, all will be all right, I have drunk from Grandmother’s brew. She always says nothing bad will happen to me when I’ve had my cup. I promise I will be careful. I will touch little of you. Please, I can’t be alone anymore.”

“So shall it be. I cannot live anymore without touching either.”

Tatyana laughed and felt like a cricket that could not find a place for itself. She ran to the kitchen and came back with a file. She began thinning the wood down by the bed as close to the wall as possible, so that Grandmother wouldn’t notice. Filings rained like snow until the wall croaked, choked and then whistled.

The hurricane rushed in. The smallest of tendrils spiraled in her hair and ribboned around her fingers as if it were a snake. Tatyana giggled and danced, her skirts spun and billowed as the tendril coiled, exploring the room and Tatyana, sensing, as it had only one eye, and it was a blind one.

“I didn’t hurt you,” the hurricane tapped.

“No, you didn’t,” she tapped back, and laughed when the tendril whooshed past her ear and then snaked in between the covers of her bed. Below the dirty white sheets, it looked like a real snake too, a neverending snake.

Tatyana learned how to cover the hole so that Grandmother would not notice, and day in Grandmother’s hut became a happy time for her.

Tatyana was thirteen when she finally had someone to really play with. The hurricane could stretch its tendril inside all of the hut. It could even follow Tatyana through the neverending staircase.

She did not think things could get better.

She was wrong.

***

When Tatyana was fourteen, she met a Grandfather Grigory whom she did not hate.

The ritual had remained unchanged. The door, Grandmother’s broom, her sickle smile, the drunken stagger of Grandfather Grigory. Tatyana’s heart shriveling like plums in the pantry as she readied herself to get him his cup of brew. That was when Grandmother said something different.

“Look, Tatyana. Your grandfather has brought you a present.”

True. Grandfather Grigory brought his arm up and from his sleeve something red and forked flickered. A head of apricot scales followed and a corn snake, the color of peach and pumpkin, slithered. Tatyana stood transfixed. A real snake. Not the skins Grandmother had in her room, nor the pictures in the book. A living snake to play with. How long had she imagined its hiss and now the actual sound reminded her of the butter’s gasp, dropped in the heated pan, or dried herbs being crushed.

“Take it, my dear. You deserve it for being such a good girl,” Grandmother said.

Tatyana danced, like when she did with the hurricane.

The snake found its place around Tatyana’s neck, the cup of brew found Grandfather’s hand, and with that, Tatyana was off to show her snake to the hut.

The hut’s boards clapped in joy as Tatyana ran story after story through all the rooms, until the arms of the hurricane outside became solid dark. After many steps and knees burning like the poker in the fire place, Tatyana sat on a chair in a hallway with only one door. After catching her breath Tatyana realized she had never been to this floor before.

The thunder-hum outside was a muffled moan, the floorboards remained solid and mute. The door opened when she neared, and inside the air smelled like iron, heavy like glue on her nostrils. She breathed in the last air of the house as if she readied to jump into deep water, or so she imagined.

Inside, darkness shared its space with light, one that didn’t pass through the hurricane into a mushed haze. It was clear like silver and glass. What she then noticed was how the room was a heart of quiet. There was no sound, no memory that a hurricane was outside squeezing the hut, other than the ringing in her ears.

This room was a room of jars and skulls and things Tatyana did not understand. It was a room of secrets, Grandmother’s secrets. Here Grandmother performed her greatest secret with knives and blood. Tatyana could not piece it all together. Her mind was blind though she could see.

Grandfather Grigory lay dead, his skin grayed, Grandmother’s hands bloodied, his arms over the edge of the table, the knife stuck in his chest, his eyes empty, the blood flecks on Grandmother’s new-moon grin, the smell, her fingers pulling out intestines.

Tatyana retched.

“Ah, Tatyana. You found my cabinet,” Grandmother said, pulling Grandfather Grigory inside-out, his innards nigh infinite in length. “Good, good. Means your monthly bleeding is regular.”

“Grandfather Grigory...” Tatyana managed.

“Sweet child, we both know that this isn’t your grandfather. You don’t have a grandfather and that is that. You only have me.”

Grandmother came, patted Tatyana. Her fingers haunted Tatyana’s dress with blood. Then she took Tatyana’s trembling hand and placed the knife in her palm.

“Why?” Tatyana muttered, but did not resist, when Grandmother guided the blade into Grandfather Grigory’s arm, cutting the flesh from the bone.

“We have to eat the best meat. We are witches, now, aren’t we?”

Tatyana retched again.

“Not on the meat, my dear. You will spoil it.” And Grandmother guided her head away from the table, leaving streaks of blood which Tatyana could not wash for a long time.

***

From then on, Tatyana spent a lot of her time in Grandmother’s secret room. She liked the quiet. It was different, it was new. A new comfort. What she enjoyed more, however, was watching the sky, the oval plate of sky, which swallowed her gaze outside. The dawn, the day, the sunset and the moon called her eyes until her neck grew sore. The conversations with the hurricane followed a certain pattern.

“You leave me alone. Do you not wish to be my friend?” it tapped.

“No.”

“Then why do you leave me?”

“I like the quiet.”

“Then you do not like my breath?”

“No. It’s different. I’ve never been in silence. It’s peaceful.”

“I don’t know what peace is.”

“I am sorry.”

“Then stay with me. Do not become a witch. Do not study what she tells you. Do not eat dead men.”

“I can’t. Grandmother cooks everything with meat and has all the other food locked away. I do not want to die from hunger.”

“Do not become a witch.”

“I won’t. I’m there to watch the sky. Oh, it is so beautiful.”

“How fortunate for you, to see through my only, blind eye.”

“Do not be like that that. I don’t listen to what she says.” Here Tatyana lied. She loved all the secrets Grandmother taught her. She felt like she could be the most powerful girl in the world with everything she had learned. “I hate her.” Here Tatyana was truthful. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to skin dead men. But I can’t not see the sky.”

“Then stay here. I will show you the sky, the land, the sea and the people.”

“You can’t.”

“I can.”

And the thunder-hum thinned to a whine, wrapped around a boom. The winds shifted in pain. A slit in the hurricane wall stretched, letting the world in.

Tatyana gasped as she saw the greens, the blues, the browns and the whites of a mountain forest. Her lungs ballooned with the gasp and held it in, hoping to stop time, to keep the image alive and eternal. But with a heavy groan, the thousand spinning arms of her friend the hurricane collapsed.

“Thank you, my friend,” Tatyana said, her tears staining the window pane.

In the days to come she pestered Grandmother for knowledge about the outside, which became harder than hunting mice for her snake. One day, while making poison from belladonna, Tatyana asked, “Will I go out, if I am to be a witch?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When you are ready,” Grandmother said with a tone that made her voice smothering and elusive as smoke. A tone that promised to tease, mislead, and even punish.

Tatyana sighed and kept quiet, only stealing glimpses of the sky through the skylight.

***

At sixteen, Tatyana hated Grandmother with all her heart. She felt like a dog with rabies in a cage: restless, without solace. Grandmother had left her to cut Grandfather Grigory on her own, from head to toes. Shave the body, stuff the hair in bags to use for pillows and mattresses. Skin him for leather. Pull the nails off. Store the eyes in a jar with vinegar. Strip the meat and roll it in salt. Store the organs in a cauldron with salves. Scrape the bones clean and then polish them.

By the time she was done, her dress would stick with viscera, her skin crusted with blood and sweat scented with death. And no matter how many times she washed the fabric of her dress, the blue remained stained.

Tatyana’s snake had died as well, leaving no one for her to touch. Tatyana missed how the snake would sit around her neck, its head in her right shoulder. At night it had slept in a bundle on her stomach. Tatyana still reached at the spot over her shoulder to rub the apricot scales that were no longer there.

***

No matter how well she listened and performed to Grandmother’s liking, she still wasn’t allowed to go outside. Tatyana would curse and bang on the table to Grandmother’s indifference. She even cut her hair, so that Grandmother wouldn’t braid her, but even that was never acknowledged.

Neither the hut nor the hurricane could console her. The hurricane tapped music on the boards of her house, and tapped in verse to Tatyana, but she was as dark and irritable as a storm cloud. Lightning in her eyes, thunder in her voice and chill on her breath.

One day Tatyana decided to steal a secret from Grandmother. She would learn what Grandmother did with Grandfather Grigory when she sent Tatyana to bed. She stayed and peeked through the keyhole in the wood. There Grandmother sat with the latest Grigory, whom she did not introduce, as the door to the room with the fireplace was now locked so that Tatyana wouldn’t interrupt. Tatyana’s breath felt short as if a serpent had slithered in her chest.

This man who was called Grandfather Grigory—such an ugly name—made her lungs flutter. He was tall, broad-shouldered, but lean. His muscles showed through his firm flesh, the jaw so defined, the skin without blemishes, without a flaw. He was beautiful.

Longing burst in her blood, in her body. Why had she not seen a man like him before? Of the many paintings in the hut, she had not seen a man to make her heart stop or dash out. It was as if her heartbeat was the tide and that man the moon. At this moment, a huge piece of her restlessness shifted and morphed, shed skins, changed shape. She could identify why she was without a place, why she burned between her legs, what her body needed. It was lust—as she had read of it—but she couldn’t even see it herself, recognize it, because she had never been out. Had never lived.

And Tatyana had to watch as Grandmother consumed his lust, her skin like the mahogany cupboard she had to polish every day, her breasts like dark moons. Tatyana’s hatred for that woman burned in her chest with such heat she thought she could melt a cauldron to a puddle. Tatyana thought that if she screamed her voice would strike the hurricane silent, that people on the outside would look up, see her through the winds and rescue her. But she did not dare, for she knew Grandmother would think of a punishment if she did. Maybe she’d decide that she didn’t love Tatyana anymore and then eat her like she did with all the other grandfathers Tatyana had lost.

Because of this, Tatyana stepped away from the door and walked the steps, each movement as slow as an iceberg pushing the land apart. She stepped so lightly even the steps had no idea she was walking on them, forgetting even the tiniest squeak. Tatyana breathed in, sucking the scream in, snorting its tendrils, burying it underneath new breaths, until her chest burned and ached. Her diaphragm had stretched and maybe, Tatyana thought, her lungs would pop out from her ribs’ embrace and like a balloon carry her away.