Swan Sister (15 page)

Do you ever go into the woods? Not the park, always so dusty-
dirty, torn paper wrappers and splintery seesaws, four old trees leaned up like broken boards against the fence. No, I mean the
woods
, the place where the town’s noise fades away as if there is no town at all; where the trees stand like an army, where the bears and wild pigs live, and Old Blanca the witch, the place all the grandmammas say
Stay away from!

In the woods everything is different. The light slants different, like underwater; the grass is sharp and pointy with morning frost. And the smells—a hundred scents, a thousand every second: dead-leaf spice and bitterroot, mold and rot and berry, I couldn’t guess or name them all but they don’t need names, they just are: like the trees, the needle frost, the slanting light: and me.

In town I have a name—Lupe, for Guadelupe—and a family: Mamma and Papa and Fernando—’Nando, my younger brother. When I want to be mean to him I call him Feonando, because
feo
means “ugly” or “awful.” When he wants to be mean to me, he waits till I go to sleep, then puts sweetgum in my hair; it sticks like glue, and the sugar-smell draws the ants. Sometimes I hate ’Nando a lot.

For a while we had another brother, a baby brother: Teodoro. He was tiny and chubby and oh, so soft; it made me happy just to carry him around. I used to put my face in the curve of his neck and breathe in his warm baby smell, then breathe out again in little puffs to tickle him and make him laugh. Mamma said I was like his second mother, Mamma said . . . But then the fever came, like a hot wind blowing over Teodoro, blowing like a desert till he stopped laughing and stopped eating, till finally nothing was left. Mamma let me help her wash him, and dress him in his little white nightgown, and Papa buried him in a dark brown box.

All that night I could hear the wolves out in the forest crying for the moon: It was a sound like the wind, or the moon herself, crying to be so cold and lonely in the sky, like Teodoro crying, all alone in his little brown box. . . . Finally I couldn’t help it, I sat up in bed and cried too, so loud that ’Nando woke up and yelled for me to stop. I hit him and he hit me and then Mamma came in, screaming, and hit us both.

Everything changed, after Teodoro died. Mamma was
quiet, not the good quiet that means you’re thinking, but the bad quiet that means you can’t think at all. She walked around our house like a ghost, hardly eating, never seeming to sleep. Papa just worked, worked, hunched at his bench making figures of mammas and babies, lots of mammas and babies, but all of them sad looking, so sad no one wanted to buy. ’Nando spent all his time at the park, acting foolish, getting into fights. And I went into the woods.

It should have been scary—the long crooked arms of the trees, the rustling leaves whispering behind your back—but I wasn’t scared. Maybe I should have been. Maybe I was too sad about Teodoro. Maybe I liked it there. It was quiet in the slant of the sun, and if you sat still, really still for a long time, the animals would come out, the squirrels and the birds and the chipmunks, and rush and eat and play right by you as if you belonged there, as if you were part of the woods too.

But you had to be careful, very careful, not to get too comfortable or feel too safe. Because the big animals, the bears and wild pigs, the wolves were in the woods too, and they knew you didn’t belong, some human girl sitting there with bare feet, hair the color of tree bark, it didn’t matter to them: they
knew
. They would trample you, or drive you trembling up a tree; the wolves, especially, would eat you up.

That very day I’d seen a wild pig, old boar tusking for acorns, his smell as big as he was: like a hundred old cabbages boiling at once, like something dug up from a year underground. I saw him and he saw me and I ran home as
hard as I could, hair flying, breathing through my mouth. When I tumbled inside, ‘Nando pinched his nose: “
¡Ay di mÍ!
Where you been all day, Lupe, out by the pits?”

Papa stuck his head out from the workroom; his face was powdered with sawdust, a pale brown mask. “The pits! It’s nasty there, Lupe. Why in the world—”

“I wasn’t by the pits,” I said, and pinched ’Nando, a hard twisty nip on his leg. He let out a yelp, danced out of reach and “The woods,” he called. “That’s where Lupe goes. Carlos and Aimi told me, they said she goes there every day.”

Papa came all the way out now, frowning lines in the sawdust mask. In his hand was another mamma-and-baby, just born from the ragged wood. “The woods, Lupe? What do you do there?”

I sit and watch the trees, Papa, and the squirrels dancing like falling leaves. I listen to the sounds that are so small you can hardly hear them. I look for wolf tracks. I drink water from the stream I found. I think of Teodoro.
“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing,” hollow, like an echo from right behind me, so close I jumped—but it was Mamma, her hair hanging down like black seaweed, her eyes red. “Nothing she does all day, lazy girl. Why don’t you help your mamma? Poor Mamma, there’s no one for her now.”

Papa clutched the mamma-and-baby. ’Nando edged closer to the door. None of us spoke. Mamma squeezed my arm; her hand was damp and hot, as if she had a fever, like Teodoro. “I’ll help you,” I said. My voice sounded strange, as if I were far away. I wished I were far away,
back in the woods, so far inside no one could find me. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go to the woods for me,” Mamma said. “Go and see Old Blanca.”

Papa’s lips went tight; he set the wooden people down. “No, Maria,” he said, hands on Mamma’s forearms, his face close to hers as if he would kiss her, as if they were alone in the room. “That’s no errand for a child. Old Blanca is—”

“A
bruja
!” ’Nando shouted. “She eats children, she’s a witch!”

Mamma wrenched away from him, her eyes redder now, an awful red; they made me think of the wild boar, fierce and tusking, blind to everything but hunger. “Who else can help me? Who else will give me back what I have lost?”

“Maria, no! Maria—”

“I’ll go,” I said; I had to say it twice to make them hear. “I know the way, Mamma, I’ll go to Old Blanca for you.”

’Nando’s eyes were round and bright; Papa’s lips parted, but he said nothing. Mamma scrambled to fill a basket, the split-oak basket she used for the market, piling it with tidbits and scraps of shiny cloth, some wheat cakes, a spill of fat purple grapes, the half-made mamma-and-baby, and “You take this,” she said to me. “Take it and give it to Old Blanca. She’ll know what to do.”

“Take this too.” Papa held out one of his carving tools, a wicked little scraping knife with a yellow handle. “Be
careful,
querida,
” he said into my ear; he had tears in his eyes. “And hurry right back.”

The basket was heavy on my arm, as if it were filled with rocks, or bones. I tucked the knife into my skirt pocket and reached for my cloak, but it still had the smell of the boar, rank and fresh, so I took Mamma’s instead, long and soft and red. It brushed the ground as I strode toward the woods, the afternoon shadows pointing like fingers back the way I had come, the sun warning me to turn back, but how could I do that? Mamma needed me. And I wasn’t afraid, not really. Not of the woods.

I kept a wary eye for that old boar; I was wary anyway, I’d never come here this late before. The trees arched dark above me, like the inside of a church at night. Birds flew, branch to branch, heading for their nests; the squirrels scolded. I stepped rock by rock through the stream, careful to keep Mamma’s cloak dry. As the sun dropped lower still, its rays brushed gold through the trees, gleaming gold, like the eyes of wolves.

Old Blanca.
She eats children,
’Nando had said, which wasn’t true, how could it be true? But she did strange things there alone in the woods: dug for bones, brewed roots for poison, built altars of antlers to the harvest moon. People said she could see in the dark; people said she could fly. People said she could change into an animal—an owl, a mule deer, a wolf—any animal, whenever she wanted.

I knew where to find Old Blanca, we all did, knew enough to stay away. Past the stream there was a clearing
where the leaves had been brushed carefully away, the mulch and dirt beat into a ring as if someone had been dancing there, or walking in a circle. And past that, so tumbled down and covered with vines that it seemed like a pile of brush, was the
bruja
’s hut.

With one arm I tugged at the tangled brush, searching for the door; the basket handle dug into my arm as I knocked, one, two, firm with my fist and “Excuse me!” I called—and scared myself, my voice sounded so loud in the quiet. “Excuse me, Grandmother Blanca, I have something for you!”

No answer, only the faraway bird sounds, the brooding quiet of the hut. Something rustled behind me, a stealthy sound. I turned fast, the scraping knife snatched from my pocket—but no one was there.

Heart pounding, I knocked again, more firmly this time. Maybe she was sleeping inside; maybe she had turned herself into a spider with tiny little ears. “
Abuela
Blanca! Please, my mamma needs you!”

Still there was no answer. Perhaps she was not home after all. My shoulders slumped; I thumped the basket down. Now what? Leave it there for the mice to nibble, the raccoons to gnaw to bits? Go home and tell Mamma that I had failed?
Who else can help me? Who else will give me back what I have lost?

A third time I pounded at the door, hard now, with all my strength. “Let me in! Let me in,
Abuela
Blanca!”

—and just like that, like magic, the door opened, swinging on its hinges as easily as a breeze. My heart galloped
like a racing horse. I took a step, two steps, I was inside.

It was a strange place, but pleasant, as if the woods had come indoors: jumbled, dark, and fragrant, with hanging roots and tumbled apples, big jars of clear stream water, a squat black stove like a little campfire—but no one was there, no one but a skinny white cat curled, half-dozing, by the stove.

“
Abuela
Blanca?” I asked, feeling frightened and foolish and excited all at once: Maybe it was her, maybe she truly could change her shape! But the cat just opened pale eyes at me, and blinked, and yawned—then leaped up, bow-backed and hissing, not at me but at something behind me—

—as the room faded away like a candle snuffed, and I whirled on my heel so fast I dropped the basket, grapes and cakes and wooden people spilling on the floor, the knife again bright in my hand—

—to see a gray wolf, timber wolf,
lobo
with hard yellow eyes. Big, oh he was big, he seemed almost as tall as I was, his great gray haunches and paws, he stared at me and I stared at him, the cat beside me, her puffed-up tail brushing my legs—

—as the wolf lunged forward, so fast I couldn’t move, his red jaws open and I think I screamed, a wild wailing little scream and the cat screamed too, a pink shriek as the wolf snatched up in those red jaws the wooden people, mamma-and-baby and
crunch! crunch!
he bit them in two, their bodies falling one way, their sad little heads another,
and for some reason this took away all my fear, took it and turned it into rage, the way Old Blanca turned roots into poison, turned herself into birds and beasts and “Stop it!” I cried, and struck at the wolf, drove the knife with all my might—

—but he was gone, disappeared, as if he had never been at all: I stood there trembling so I almost dropped the knife. The room came back to life around me, the crackle of the stove, the cat sniffing my sandals, the smell of the herbs so strong I felt dizzy and had to sit down, right there on the floor beside the cat. “
Abuela
Blanca,” I said out loud, although I knew she could not hear. “I’m going now. I’m going to tell my mamma—”

“Tell her what?”

I think I screamed again, a tiny scream; I know I fell over, right on my back like a turtle, staring up from the floor at a tall gray woman in a dirty white dress standing over me, arms crossed; she wasn’t smiling.

“What are you going to tell her? That Old Blanca was busy? I
am
busy.” She had a voice like two sticks rubbed together, raspy and dry. “Too busy for you,
niña
. Take your clutter and go.”

“I brought—I brought you . . .” the basket, where was the basket? But now the grapes were squashed, the wheat cakes scattered, the wooden people ruined—

“Are you looking for this?

Like magic, her hand was under my nose, long hairy fingers holding the mamma-and-baby but somehow—more magic? real magic?—they were whole again, heads and bodies,
the mamma with her arms around the baby . . . and they were smiling, both of them, happy carved smiles as “Go home,” Old Blanca said. Was she smiling, too? “Go home and tell your mamma to wait for the moon.”

Wait for the moon? What could that mean? I got to my feet, took the wooden people, pulled my skirts in a curtsy and “
Gracias,
” I said. “I will tell her.” I curtsied again, turned for the door but “You,” said Old Blanca,
Abuela
Blanca. “You like the woods, don’t you, Lupe?”