Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold by Paula Guran

Author:Paula Guran
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Beyond the Woods
ISBN: 9781597808385
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2016-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

Father’s sled is outside when I get home. I didn’t expect him back so soon. The unhitched dogs flop in piles, pink tongues lolling. The cold shows me their breath.

He sits in Mother’s chair, rocking. He stops when he sees me. Frowns. Everyone thinks him handsome, but his hair and beard are too long. Thinness makes him look ill.

“This can’t go on.”

I look around. He’s swept the floor. I can smell the broth bubbling in the pot.

Mother’s not here.

I read out instructions from Mother’s cookbook and she follows them. I watch her stir the melting honey and molasses in the pan. The sifted flour looks like a snowdrift in the bowl. She adds spices. Ginger. Cinnamon. Nutmeg. It’s the smell of winter and Mother. I want to cry.

“How did you make me?”

She pauses.

“I forget.”

“Shall I remind you?”

“Oh, yes.” She looks like I’ve offered her a treat. Her skin is the color of withering leaves.

“It was like this. You made me from flour, ground by a firstborn’s hands, mixed with spices and the same firstborn’s tears. You added honey and molasses with a few flakes of salt so I wouldn’t be too sweet. You lit me with candle light.”

She looks at her hands.

“I’m your baby. Your Lebkuchen.”

Lebkuchen. Bread of life.

The door opens. Father, again. He hangs up his coat. Mother gets up when she sees him. She knows what’s expected of her now. He wasn’t always so keen to be rid of her. I remember that once he seized her in his arms and kissed her cheeks, her lips. His bewildered happiness was short-lived. Mother’s mouth didn’t move. Her face stayed smooth. Father backed away, confused. He spat on the floor, like he’d just eaten something bitter. He cursed and clipped my ear, thinking it was done to trick him out of childish spite.

“You don’t have to go,” I tell Mother.

Father shakes his head at me. I run to her instead, crying and clinging. Father’s hands fall on my shoulders and he prises me away. I wait for a shaking.

“Hush, Lebkuchen, hush.” His arms enfold me. “You know she has to go.”

Mother doesn’t need a second telling. She opens the door. The world outside is white. As she walks out, I notice she’s not wearing any shoes. Father clutches me tighter and kisses the top of my head. Snow mother. Fire mother. Lebkuchen mother. The farther she is from me, the less substantial she becomes. She gets fainter and fainter until she’s no more than a column of flour and spice dust, whipped away by the wind. The snow is streaked with sticky sweetness for the dogs to lick.

“Lebkuchen, just like your mother, with her gifts and face and books. You forget you’re also mine. No more of this now. You’re breaking my heart.”

He wipes my face. I notice that he’s trimmed his hair and beard. He fetches the comb and tugs at my knots and tangles. I sit quiet.

“Tsk, Lebkuchen, you’re too old to be carrying on like this. We’ve both been through a trial and you when you were neither woman nor child.

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