Chapter 24
It begins with the tree.
Branches reach towards the sky; the tree is quite straight. Its roots, conversely, go deep into the soil and spread out, consolidating their hold on the earth, making their foundation unassailable.
It is the tree that watches over all. It was here before the people and the house, frosted brown and white like a cake; it will remain after they are dust and ashes. It watches and winds its way through their lives in much the same way as its roots wind their way into the soil; it is indelible.
The tree holds many stories, they lie in its trunk like age rings. Its memory is a long thing. Some years it sleeps, some years it wakes and watches and listens. Some years it remembers the lives it has given and tasted and taken…
There was a woman, once, young and dark and very lovely.
Her husband had thought a young bride ideal for the getting of heirs.
A more robust girl would have been better, he knew, but her green eyes and black hair caught him.
There was nothing else for it but to make her his wife and pray there would be children.
He loved her dearly; she was frail but this did not stop his efforts to plant his seed.
The man spent as much time riding his wife as he did his horse and to far less effect – at least on the horse he travelled, conducting business and growing his fortune.
His wife, however, seemed to be a barren field, a bad investment.
The juniper tree stood in the back garden.
The wife loved its spreading branches and the whispers it made when breezes sang through its limbs and leaves.
Of the many gifts her husband made her, her favourite was the simplest. A swing was hung from the strongest branch and on summer evenings the wife would sit and sway, dangling her delicate feet as she hung suspended above the ground, dress catching the air and fluttering behind her.
The tree spoke to her and it was words of love she heard, before her husband collected her and took her once again to bed.
One spring, when her husband was away travelling, she told the juniper tree of her fears and doubts, of the rigours of her marital bed and of a husband who loved her sometimes too much and sometimes not enough.
She leaned against the trunk of the tree, its rough bark smooth under her soft skin, its lower branches seeming to stretch and enfold her.
She sank to the base of the tree, curled between the roots and slept for some time.
In her sleep she dreamt of love without pain, of gentle caresses, of a lover who took time enough to ensure she was wanting and ready.
When she woke, there were small tears in her skirt and she was wet as she had never been with her husband. Confused, she retreated into the house, throwing uncertain glances at the tree.
She did not mention anything to her husband. When he was next inside her, she thought of spreading branches and the touch of bark, and clung to him, rising up to meet him as she never had before. He was surprised but pleased.
The wife began to glow and grow, and it became obvious that her husband had at last sown fertile seed. They were happy – he would have his longed-for heir and she a respite from his attentions.
The wife grew still.
Her husband was travelling, increasing his fortune so that he would leave a comfortable legacy for his coming child.
One night when they lay beside each other the wife said:
‘If I should die, bury me beneath the juniper tree.’
Her husband, startled by her turn of thought, but certain he would not have to fulfil his vow in the near future, agreed.
The child killed her. The daughter, pale-skinned, streaked with her mother’s blood, was handed to her father, who held the child tightly and named her Simah. The juniper tree flourished, new blossoms bursting forth, fed by the wife’s fertilising form.
The man was rich, and loved his little daughter, but he was lonely. A warm bed and an obliging, soft body were the only things on his mind. When Simah was five, he took a new wife.
Second Wife had a child of her own, a daughter not much older than the widower’s little girl.
Second Wife loved her daughter with all her heart and vowed she would love her stepdaughter just as well.
She did try (in her heart she knew she had tried), but every time her husband slighted her daughter in favour of his, it grew a little harder.
Each snub was a prick and her heart soon became a pincushion of jealousy.
She began to take her hurt out on his child, in tiny ways at first, then in larger, more bruising ones.
Simah understood only that her presence angered her stepmother.
She grew quieter, tried to shrink so as not to attract the woman’s ire.
Without conscious thought she began to dim, to fade, until she was a tiny voice that seldom spoke.
She would light up only when her father came home or when she played with her stepsister.
On the worst days, she fled to the back garden and hid in the branches of the juniper tree, eating its berries, her face turned to the sun and the wind, taking in for a short while the breath of a place where she was welcome.
Second Wife’s girl, Marlechina, was fond of her stepsister, and tried her best to protect Simah from the worst of Second Wife’s temper.
She watched as her mother grew into someone she did not fully recognise.
When Simah entered the room it was as if Second Wife darkened.
Marlechina did what she could but, ultimately, she was a little girl, no match for the dark worm that curled inside her mother.
When her father was away, Simah was fed less than Marlechina; her clothes became old and worn in spite of her father’s wealth; no new toys became Simah’s while Marlechina’s collection spilled from her room like a flood.
Simah’s father loved her in the casual way men love their daughters, affection without attention.
And her father, as fathers are apt to be, was blind when it came to his wife.
The domestic sphere troubled him not at all – as long as his belly was sated with tasty foods and his bed was filled with an agreeable softness, he did not worry about what happened in his own house.
On one of his trips, the husband sent gifts home ahead of his arrival.
A large box arrived. Inside it, Second Wife found a beautiful necklace for herself, a pretty ring for Marlechina, and for Simah, ribbons and the biggest doll any of them had ever seen.
It was almost as big as the little girl and looked enough like her to be a sister, with dark curls and huge blue eyes.
The children held their gifts happily and Second Wife looked, the one to the other.
All she saw was the size of Simah’s gift compared to that of Marlechina’s – she did not weigh up the value or even consider that her husband had thought carefully in order to give his stepdaughter a gift she would treasure.
She saw it as yet another snub. As she seethed, her own daughter spoke: ‘Mother, may I have an apple?’
‘Yes, in the trunk over there,’ she answered. Simah, glancing shyly over the top of her enormous doll, risked a tentative request.
‘Mother, may I also have an apple?’
Second Wife turned on the little girl, a refusal at her lips, then paused and nodded. Simah followed her stepsister to the trunk. The woman shadowed her.
Marlechina drew an apple from the trunk and skipped outside to watch the sun shimmer across the red stones of her ring. Simah leaned into the great trunk to reach one of the rosy red apples lying at its bottom. Second Wife grasped the lid of the trunk with both hands and slammed it closed.
The child’s body dropped slowly to the floor outside the trunk, now as still as the giant doll. The woman opened the lid and stared at the child’s severed head. Blue eyes reproached her.
Shaking, Second Wife picked up the body and sat it at the table, then plucked the head from the trunk by its dark curls.
Using a long purple scarf, she wrapped the neck tightly so the head appeared to be connected.
Only a little blood escaped from beneath the silk.
Second Wife hid in the parlour to watch what might happen.
Marlechina skipped inside. She looked at Simah so still and pale at the table, her doll lying on the floor beside her.
‘Sister, may I play with your doll?’ Receiving no reply, Marlechina gently shook her sister, which provoked nothing but a head wobble.
‘Sister, I would play with your doll.’ Once again, she received no reply and she frowned at her sister’s unusual perversity.
‘Simah, answer me! I wish to play with your doll!’ She reached out and violently shook the little girl’s shoulder. This produced a more startling reaction – Simah’s head rolled from her shoulders like a pumpkin dislodged from a windowsill.
Marlechina screamed, and her mother, watching from the parlour, charged into the room, demanding to know what had happened.
Marlechina wept as she blurted out the story.
The mother looked at the sad little body and its severed head and began to weep.
Second Wife steeled herself – she was, after all, a woman who had decapitated a child.
‘No one must know what you did, Marlechina,’ she said. Marlechina shrank, fear and guilt frosting her veins. ‘Get me the biggest pot in the pantry. I will put this to rights.’
Second Wife cooked her stepdaughter; she made a lovely stew, with plenty of vegetables and a thick brown sauce.
Some of the meat she kept aside, to hang later in the smokehouse to dry.
Marlechina stood beside her mother, weeping.
Her tears fell into the pot, the salt of her grief seasoning the dish.