Fairy Tale Review by The Translucent Issue (retail) (epub)

Author:The Translucent Issue (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press

In the forest, the third pair of hands played tricks on the girl. They snapped boughs. They sent lights flickering in her face—lights with no origin and no endpoint, lights without destination, which did not guide but mesmerized. The girl closed her eyes, but then she could not walk straight. The third hands slapped a tree; the tree pulled its root up from the ground. Marjolaine tripped, smashed her nose on rocks. The third hands threw sticks down from the sky; Marjolaine batted them away. She walked on.

The third hands showed themselves, dancing, but the girl said, “This is my over-active imagination, which the mother warned me about.” She pulled herself into the hollow of a little dead tree. In her sleep, a disembodied voice said: “But the mother was at the side of the father when the father chopped the finger.” The hands allowed her rest; they folded themselves and waited for B-Y’s instruction.

The left eye said: “She was tested by the stupid mother.”

The right eye said: “She is still in the middle of her test.”

The second hands: “The test has not yet begun.”

B-Y said, “She barely knows the meaning of a test. Continue when she wakes.”

In the forest, the hands waited. They existed in the part of B-Y’s brain that did not require sleep. They had a remarkably short attention span. What does not sleep is by nature impatient. Except in instances of violence, the hands were nearly always bored. They sighed, went deep into the woods, out of earshot of the little girl, and took turns slapping each other. The third set of hands were like all of B-Y’s hands—wirey and fast, of closer relation to spiders than humans: spiney-veined, wrinkled, thin, but deathly strong—and the skin that stretched over them was baggy-smooth.

When Marjolaine woke, the hands were there, laughing. Marjolaine was disconcerted, as any of us would be. She said, “These hands are not a vision.” Although she was tempted, she did not throw her head, but kept it on straight. Her finger had clotted and was brown with dirt and half-dried blood. It pulsed but did not itch. She knew this was a bad sign. The third hands cackled, dark-voiced, high-pitched. “What’s your name, you stupid girl!” they screamed, and before she could respond, they shouted, “What a stupid name!”

Before there was the mother who advised the father, there was a mother who had died. This was the mother Marjolaine believed had birthed her, though she couldn’t know for sure (her father a known philanderer). This mother had told Marjolaine that it was impossible to know in life when something would come along to change everything. She told the girl to be prepared to see whatever was in front of her—it could be something bad, it could be something good. “Do not pretend you can prepare yourself,” her mother said. “You cannot.” This was good advice, in the city, in the village, in the forest, and especially in the place where the girl was headed. “I cannot prepare myself,” said Marjolaine, “so I had better not try.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.