Juniper & Thorn(90)

“But why those men?” I asked around the lump in my throat. “I could have killed any man who walked down Rybakov Street; it would have been easier. But I went all the way to the boardwalk instead, I chased down the broker, and I flew up into the rafters of the ballet theater.”

Rose looked at me with her damp violet eyes. “Think of a potion like a sprinkling of rainwater: it can sprout a seed, but it cannot coax up a plant from a tract of barren land.”

Her words were terrible, but they were true. My monstrous form had still thrummed with all my human desires. I’d gone to the boardwalk because I wanted to see the ocean. I’d killed the broker because I wanted Mama’s charm bracelet back. I’d gone to the ballet theater because I wanted to see Sevas again.

And I’d killed Undine because she had nearly imperiled the one thing I wanted most in the world.

The mirror that never lies had already told me as much: the seed of Papa’s monster had been living inside me, at risk of blooming, long before he had even begun feeding me the black juice. Perhaps it had been born with me, a fetal twin. Perhaps so many of Papa’s furious words had made it calcify in me like a pearl. Perhaps eating my mother’s meat had made it swell like a growth of rot. Perhaps it had blossomed under Dr. Bakay’s hands the way a skilled wizard could raise the dead from their graves.

Whatever the cause, I could only try to guard that small, ruined piece of myself, administer to it carefully without encouraging it to grow, until it could be lulled to a gentle death. I would not allow it to be fed any longer.

“Show me how you did it,” I said at last. “Show me how you made that black juice.”

Rose stared at me for a long time, and I stared back. In the gauzy nightgown that showed the shape of her breasts, her violet eyes watery and clouded, she looked so much like Mama that it broke my heart, just a little bit. I had to believe there was a small, tender morsel of love still at the core of her, like a plum stone.

Without a word, Rose turned and vanished through the doorway. I followed close at her heels. Our footsteps were matched to the ticking of the grandfather clock as we walked out into the garden, abruptly bathed in bone-pale moonlight.

I crossed the threshold and walked into the cold soil, and it sucked at my feet as if it were water. We passed the sleeping bodies of the day laborers, mounded in our garden like knuckles of rock, so still I could imagine moss growing over them and vines flowering up to lash them to the ground.

At last Rose stopped walking, and I skidded to a halt behind her. The whole garden was quiet as midnight, and even the snakes had stopped hissing. The twisting branches cut the blue sky into jagged, uneven shapes, like pieces of a shattered vase. There was the canopy overhead, lush with its scraggly foliage, and below us, folded safely under the dirt, was our dead sister. Rose stepped right to the base of the tree, hiding herself from the moonlight. When she turned back to look at me, her eyes were pearling with tears.

For all the stories Papa told us, he had never spoken a word about this. He had only ever warned us away from it, without giving a reason why. Stories weren’t meant to be questioned; they were answers in and of themselves. They were meant to preempt any question you might ever have, to steal the words right from your mouth. If you were a third daughter, your fate was written out before you even drew your first breath. If you thought to ask why certain plums were suffused with poison, well, you might as well be a loathsome scientist. If you began to wonder how a wizard came to own his tower, you were a capitalist, with viperous schemes behind your eyes. Who else would ever dream of asking why?

“Come on, Marlinchen,” Rose said, and I stepped forward to join her, both of us embraced by the slender branches of the juniper tree.

Together we reached up and began to pick down the berries, working in mirrored silence, until the whole tree had been stripped bare.



The grandfather clock gonged seven, and I was leaning over the stove. Oily smoke rose from the pan of varenyky, and hot droplets of grease leapt up at my hands and face. I shut off the burner and spooned the varenyky onto two plates.

Just as I had knelt down and began to open the oven door, I heard Papa’s footsteps on the stairs. A thrill of fear raced along my spine, and I finished my plating hurriedly, not caring that the sleeve of my nightgown trailed a bit through a heap of sour cream. I cut six fat slices of black bread and smeared them with butter, then licked and licked the knife until it was clean. I poured two glasses of tepid water, watching dust motes drift across the surface like dead fruit flies.

In the garden, the eyeless ravens were singing long-forgotten lullabies. The goblin was tracing a short path in the herb plantings, pacing with its hand on its chin, looking contemplative. Indrik was accosting one of the day laborers, who perhaps had not shown him proper deference. The man in question stared up at the pale blue sky, as though he could imagine hurling himself right over the fence made of snakes. Early morning sunlight turned everything the sweet pink-and-white color of an eyelid flipped inside out.

I took both plates into the sitting room and laid them out on the cloven-footed coffee table just as Papa settled himself onto the chaise longue. It was as if we had not spoken in his room last night, and as if his first daughter were not dead.

“Thank you, Marlinchen,” he said, looking down at what I had served. “But who is the other plate for?”

“Dr. Bakay,” I replied. I wiped my damp palms on my nightgown and brushed back the curls from my sweat-dewed forehead. “Shall I go fetch him?”