Juniper & Thorn(40)

Had we sold enough to make Papa happy? Had we spoken too freely with the visitors and made him angry? I was sure there was a protractor, or some devious spell, that could measure the particular curve of a smile. There was certainly a concrete answer that could absolve us as merely polite, or damn us as brazenly promiscuous.

Papa loudly cleared his throat.

“Well, Marlinchen,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

The bitterest relief sluiced down my spine. I nodded and pushed through the door, only letting out my breath once it had closed again behind me. The day had grown quite late, afternoon seeping into dusk, wind blowing up white petals and dandelion fluff. Angry clouds were scrawled across the sky. I surveyed the garden with watering eyes, trying to swallow past the hard stone in my throat. Beneath the juniper tree, the dirt was still undisturbed, flat and innocuous as it had been the night before I buried my black sand there.

I stood there for as long as I dared—Papa’s anger was an ugly wound that bled with very little prodding—considering my options. Indrik was out of the question, of course, and I didn’t think I had time to seek out the fiery serpent, even though Papa had a good appetite for snakes. The eyeless ravens would also be too difficult to catch; they would squawk and flap away from me as I crawled up the trunk of the birch tree. And I didn’t think I could bear to kill the sweet blubbering goblin.

My other option was not an option at all: to reveal Sevas, to reveal me. Anything to distract Papa. But I would sooner have died than done that, had my liver torn out and watched it bleed between Papa’s fingers.

From the corner of my eye I saw the spiny-tailed monster pacing along the windowsill, its eyes narrowed to red gashes. I held out my hand and beckoned to it as if it were an alley cat, and it padded toward me and gave my palm a vigorous lick.

Its barbed tongue left a swath of tiny cuts across my skin, but before it could scamper away, I lurched forward and snatched it up by the scruff of its neck.

I hurried down the steps and around the exterior of the house and lugged it toward the disused maid’s quarters while the monster hissed and spat and clawed at my skirts. Shreds of pink silk got caught in the burrs of its tail as I wrestled it onto the butcher block.

Now there was only the question of how to kill it. I had wrung the necks of live chickens many times, but the spiny-tailed monster had odd scales lining its throat and a plate of tough armor along its back. I held it down flat and squirming on the wood with one hand while I contemplated my options, and then with the other I reached for our biggest and sharpest knife.

Its claws raked the inside of my wrist and I gave a little huff of pain, tears squeezing to the corners of my eyes. Then I took the knife and cut a long slit down its soft belly, blood following my blade in a neat ribbon until it spilled over, unfolding and unfolding like a skein of red silk. It teemed over my knife and soaked into the butcher block and dripped onto the floor, rhythmic splatters that kept the time as well as the second hand of our grandfather clock.

I’d made a mistake, not getting something to catch all the blood—later I knew I would spend hours scrubbing it out of the floors, and days still finding it caulked black under my nails. The spiny-tailed monster only whined as it died, tails lashing, claws sinking into the wood with a muted finality. I’d given it a slow and bad death.

Undine would have mocked me for weeping over a monster, but I did anyway. My tears fell into the slit of its belly. It wasn’t really a belly anymore, just a still-clenching wound. When finally the monster went still I removed its claws gently from the butcher block and turned it over to start skinning it.

It was hard going with only my kitchen knife; it seemed to turn blunt and dull within the monster’s tough hide. I scissored two blades into its throat and peeled back the skin there. Its eyes plunked out of its skull, red and round as chokecherries. Most of the blood had drained by now, and the hem of my dress was drenched with it. The dense slickness of it on my palms was somehow familiar, but I shrugged off the twinging memory and I focused on the monster lying before me. It had two hearts, winging behind its sternum like a pinned butterfly. I cut the sinew from the cathedral of its rib cage and carved out its stomach.

Skin off and organs removed, at last I had pared away all the meat that I could, pink and wet-looking hunks that appeared somehow already chewed. It was not much, but I hoped it would be enough to sate Papa, for now. I threw it all into a pan with oil and dashed on what herbs I could find in the half-empty jars.

The whole time I thought of nothing but Mama’s clamshell compact buried under the juniper tree. I wanted to curl up around it like a cat around its litter. I wanted to tuck it back into the cleft of my breasts and let it grow warm again with the heat of my body. If I could have forced it down my throat, I would have. There was nowhere safer for it than inside my stomach like a swallowed peach pit. It occurred to me very abruptly that I was hungry.

I served up Papa’s food for him on a platter and poured him water from the sink. My left wrist felt so dismally buoyant without Mama’s charm bracelet. I already missed its companionable heaviness, and thinking about it jangling and jangling in the broker’s pocket made me want to weep all over again.

Papa was sitting on the chaise longue, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees with the look of an animal about to lurch.

“Oh, Marlinchen,” he said when I placed the tray in front of him. “You’re the best and kindest of all my daughters. I’m sorry about your mother’s things. You know I didn’t want to sell them, but we hardly had a choice. I’ll go to the market tomorrow and buy the fattest chicken I can find, still feathered and pecking. The ripest fruits and the freshest fish. Here, have a sip of this kvass.”