If I Told You Once

I wondered where he slept now.

The wind thrashed around the house, the boards creaked; I heard the softest of breaths as my mother blew out the candle. One of my brothers cried out in his sleep: Look out—the fire! and then subsided. My father let out a businesslike grunt as he hoisted himself over my mother and began the task of creating yet another child. There came a sound I never heard from my mother during the day: a cooing, like mourning doves. The dim light from the window grew even softer; it began to snow.

It was falling thickly and steadily. It was the sort of snow that could hide a person’s tracks completely in a matter of hours.

It was time to leave.

I dressed in underclothes, flannel petticoats, skirts, jackets, woolen stockings. My mother had knitted the stockings so tightly they could almost stand up by themselves. Last I put on the boots, which would have fit half the people in the village. The local cobbler made boots in only two sizes, for the sake of convenience.

I wrapped my head in a shawl. My brothers and sisters were quiet, their faces blissful in sleep. They lay in a tangle of curves and bulges, whorled shapes, like vines in the garden patch. I suppose they looked like me, their hair, their eyes, but I had never bothered to notice. For too long I had thought of them only as annoyances that asked impossible questions and demanded breakfast.

I dug beneath my mattress and pulled out my secret, the egg I had kept warm under my body for years. It was still as deep and glittering as ever, with the city inside: the pointed towers, the starry sky, the carriages pulled by white horses with feathered headdresses, footmen with velvet trousers and mustaches like wings. I thought I saw them move. Perhaps it was my breath.

I left by the window and set out, the air prickling my face, the snow swirling around, white clouds against a darker sky. I tried to step lightly, but my footsteps crunched rudely in the snow, like cows chewing.

I did not look back.

It was the only home I had ever known. I could feel it behind me, hunched and glowering, its shoulders frosted with snow.

I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck, a sharp twinge that ran down my spine. I tried to run, but like a dream my steps seemed to grow even slower as my heart raced.

I knew my mother was watching from the window.

Standing with her arms folded beneath her breasts, chin out, her braid swaying pendulously behind her. She was at the window, or perhaps she was in the yard, heedless and barefoot in the snow, her eyes raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

I could feel her drawing me to her; like a spider she was sending out her threads, I could feel their tug in the small of my back. They drew tauter with every step I took. I knew if I paused, those threads would tighten, they would snap me back, I would be pulled home gliding so smoothly over the snow like an errant sled.

Oh, how she pulled at my hair. My scalp smarted.

I knew she was rolling up her sleeves, stretching out her arms; she was pursing her lips kisslike to draw in such a breath that my clothes streamed out behind me; she was undulating her fingers in the entrancing way she used to hypnotize the chickens before she chopped off their heads.

I kept walking, I knew not to look back. My mother had taught me nearly everything she knew, so I knew what she was up to, I was wise enough not to look at her face.

And yet if she had called out my name then, I think I would have gone running back to bury my face in her lap. The warmth of her body through her clothes, a smell like fields of wheat. Her voice could do that.

But she did not call out. Perhaps she was too proud for that.

I forged on, forcing stiff marionette knees. Her eyes nipped at the backs of my legs so that I stepped faster, and faster. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the village looked no bigger than the magic city inside my egg, and my mother was too small to be seen.

I was free of my mother at last. The threads snapped. I had beaten her. My body was my own; I felt something melt inside me, a hot jelly, sliding loose and shifting downward, pulsing. It was a frightening feeling, not unpleasant.

To the east, a faint glow paled and spread; the bare trees were thrown into stark black silhouettes against the paling sky. And I was very, very cold.

I tramped for hours as the snowfall abated. My nose and lips were numb, they were blunt stupid things stuck to my face; I wished I could knock them off the way you knock icicles from the eaves.

I thought of my mother. I supposed she had cursed me, cursed me the way I had seen her curse soldiers: with words too dangerous to utter aloud, so that she had to draw their shapes with her fingers in the air, with her own face carefully averted. The venom of her curses was so powerful it could sometimes rebound and scald her, like drops of boiling oil bouncing off the pan.

The thought of my mother’s curses brought on a stitch in my side and a blurry, sticky cloud in my right eye.

I had no idea where I was going, I only knew I was lengthening the distance between myself and home. Between myself and a life like my mother’s, a path worn deep in the dirt, a path packed so hard no grass could ever grow there, much less flowers.

I had never been outside my village, but I knew there were places that were different. I had glimpsed them in the egg, and in the words of the bandit in the woods. I thought of him, my bandit, with his sharp face and strange talk. I saw him lying in the snow, sunk deep as if in a feather mattress, his throat necklaced with blood and the marks of wolf’s teeth.

After I had found him so, I went home and burned my wolf hood. It made an awful stink. My mother watched but said nothing.

I would never have to feel her eyes again.

The thought should have made me happy.

I walked on. Once I heard an ax biting into wood, echoing through the trees. It reminded me of my father. From the sound alone I could judge the weight of the ax. I hurried on.

Twilight was falling, swiftly creeping up behind me.

I told myself I would keep traveling until I found a city, a place like the one I had seen in the egg. I would give myself a new name, walk among a different sort of people. I wanted to walk slowly in gardens, carelessly snapping twigs off branches as I passed, tossing pebbles in a fountain, watching the surface of the water break apart and, quivering, come together again to show me my face. That seemed the most perfect kind of luxury.

I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets. They should have been empty. I had brought nothing.

And yet I drew from my pockets several chunks of bread, some large leathery mushrooms, a carved wooden comb.

Gifts from my mother. She must have known all along.

In another pocket I found a pouch filled with my mother’s favorite herbs, the ones without names, dried and tied in bundles. There were plants like miniature trees, like tangled pubic hair, seaweed, bird feathers, crumpled paper. The smells rose up from the bag and fought each other.

My egg was knotted in my petticoat.

How stupid of me to think I could leave home without my mother knowing. She had known I would leave before I did. She had allowed me to leave. Perhaps she had watched, and tugged at me with her eyes merely to test my resolve. It seemed no matter how I tried to escape, I was still entangled in my mother’s plans.

I saw her braid swinging.

I saw her figure plowing smoothly through the snow before me, as if she had cart wheels beneath her skirts instead of legs.

I walked for five days.

On the evening of the fifth day I saw smoke in the distance. As I came closer I came upon a village, not unlike the one I had left. I wanted to go to one of those houses, ask for a place to sleep. But I couldn’t; they were too familiar. I had the sensation that whichever house I called at my mother would open the door. She’d fill the doorway, dusted with flour, sleeves rolled, arms folded, children clinging constantly to her skirts as if they’d been sewn there as ornaments.

So I skirted the village as night fell. I smelled bread baking.

How ugly the trees were now. Behind me the lights of the village glowed like warm embers.

Then, like a granted wish, I came abruptly to a clearing in the woods, and a small house with a peaked roof and smoke curling from two chimneys. A stone path led to the door, and I found myself knocking on it before I’d had a chance to think.

I could hear rustling inside, the crackle of fire. The doorstep on which I stood was worn, and the spot on the door where I’d rapped my knuckles was a silky smooth depression in the wood, as if countless hands had knocked before me.

Yes? said a voice and the door opened slightly. I stared into eyes that were a disturbing yellow, lashless and unblinking.

She looked me up and down. The eyebrows rose in crafty peaks.

Are you in trouble? she asked sharply. She wore shoes tipped with iron.