Tide King (17 page)

“I am not a witch,” Ela agreed. She had seen the girl's mother often in the village, while buying cabbage and oxen bone, things the villagers gave to her for free, along with milk and honey and lamb's meat, if she promised to stay away, not to bewitch them.

“I think you are lying.” The girl half-skipped around the bone house, her curiosity buoying her bravery. She had played a little closer to the bone house each day, throwing rocks up the hill and drawing pictures in the loose hillside with sticks, returning home when her mother called her back. “She said a witch lived in the bone house, that I shouldn't come here. Are you a Baba Yaga?”

Ela smiled. The girl, four or five, was too young to be scared of her, to understand the things she represented, by her continued vitality, to the older villagers—death, brittle bones, tepid health. But these things were natural and did not have their source in Ela. They were a conclusion to a story, an end to a beginning, a night to morning. Things Ela could only dream of.

“I have a lalka.” Ela cut to the fat of the girl's heart. “Would you like to see her?”

“Are you sure you're not a Baba Yaga?” The girl stared at the doll resting in Ela's arms. Ela imagined the girl had been told stories about Baba Yagas, witches who turned themselves into young, beautiful princesses and lured men to their huts. They lured children, too, and ate them, packing the bones in the mud and stone of their houses. She had heard such stories herself from her own mother. But the promise of a doll, to love and hold even for a few minutes, to a girl who wrapped cloth and hay around sticks and pretended to nurse them, would be too tempting, Ela figured. She had all the time in the world to find out.

“I'd better not.” The girl moved her right foot backward toward the hill, then her left. Then her right again.

“What's your name?” Ela asked. She brought the doll to her cheek. “I'm Ela.”

The girl retreated farther, feeling for the incline of the hill with her feet.

“Come back tomorrow.” Ela smiled still. “Maybe I will find you your own lalka.”

She left the lalka, the second one, blonde and almost as new as when her mother had bought it, by the clothesline of the girl's little stone cottage. From the hill, she watched the girl's mother come out and beat a quilt that hung from a rope tied between the cottage and a tree. It was hard not to see, a heap of white and gold, like a fallen angel, at the base of the hill. She could make out legs and arms and fingers. And the little girl who peered out the window at it could see them, too.

If the girl's matka glanced to her right, she would see it. But like most of the villagers, who traded with her for tinctures, always giving her, out of fear, more for them that she'd asked, she knew the girl's mother would ignore her, pretend she did not exist, and if all else failed, bargain to keep Ela from cursing or bedeviling her.

Ela never saw her look, but when she finished beating the quilt, she walked over to the hill, picked up the doll, and threw it back toward the bone house as hard as she could. The girl's eyes followed its trajectory before they disappeared into the darkness of the cottage.

The moon sat high, the sky purple, full of hot breath. Ela rested at the top of the hill, feeling the faint breeze pull the strands of hair from her wet forehead. With surprise, she watched the little girl steal from the cottage and scramble up the hill, her eyes greedy and shiny, full of doll cheeks and hearts.

“You came.” Ela's shoulders went up; she smiled. “Come.”

The girl's eyes went toward the bone house, and her mouth opened, hungry for the doll, but Ela took her hand. Together, they entered the edge of the forest.

“Do you hear the wood owl at night?” Ela asked, and the girl nodded, afraid to breathe. “I will show you where he lives.”

They wound through the dark trunks and thick undergrowth. The girl became less scared. The crickets talked to the frogs, who talked to the owl. They were as busy as the village on trading day, when the girl and her mother took their cattails and milk and other meager crops and tried to get for them a few cups of flour, a bowl of oxen tail.

“See, you are not as alone at night as you think,” Ela smiled. “There is always someone awake.”

“Where is your matka?” The girl asked, and Ela did not answer. She bowed her head so low the girl held out her hand, afraid she would trip on a stone or a root. What was at first affected, a ploy to fool the little girl, became real as grief poured from a spot above her and filled the bend in her neck, her eyes. She was talking to an actual person, albeit a girl, who did not think she was going to kill her. She realized she missed simple things, the sound of a voice in response, even a word, yes, no. A nod. The pressure, a light itch, from the fingers.

In fact, the girl seemed to pity her. She squeezed Ela's hand reassuringly. “I bet you could live with me and my matka. My name is Safine.”

“That's okay, Safine; no one wants me to live with them.” Ela shook her head, wiping her eyes. “My mother died. I have been alone for a long, long time. I am so lonely for company, but the villagers think I am a witch. They do not understand why I grow no bigger.”

“I am big for my age, my matka says. Maybe you are small for yours?”

“No.” Ela patted her shoulder. “I will tell you sometime. Tonight, let me enjoy the fact that I finally have company.”

Every night, Safine stole away and saw Ela. Sometimes, they walked in the woods; other times, they lay on the grass in the moonlight, talking softly. Safine told her that she and her mother hoped to go to America soon to be reunited with their Ojciec, who had sailed months before to get work in a city called Baltimore.
To work in the factories
, Safine explained vaguely.
To make us rich
, she said surely. They were not able to harvest a big enough crop of rye on their land in Reszel; there was no other choice.

One night, they even went inside the bone house. To a stranger, Ela supposed, it was small and dark and smelled sourly of herbs and vodka, but her quilts were soft and warm, full of colorful swaths she had gotten from the women in the village who by turns pitied and feared her. Ela watched Safine's eyes sweep the house, looking for the angel-haired, nameless lalka, bite her tongue not to ask about it.

But Ela sensed her disappointment, and the next night, when Safine went to the hill, Ela waited, a doll in each arm. She held out the blonde doll, but Safine did not take it right away.

“Where did you get such beautiful lalkas?” She asked. Her eyes said it all; it seemed too good to be true, something Matka had always warned her against. Only a Baba Yaya, Safine's cloaked eyes reasoned, could produce such beautiful dolls.

“My matka gave me them.” Ela's arm dropped back to her body, the blonde lalka's hair swinging toward the ground. “I have been waiting so long for a friend to play dolls with.”

Ela pulled the wooden horse from under the bed and opened the secret compartment, revealing the herb. Despite its crumbled brown leaves, she felt a charge move down her fingers and into the air as she fondled it. She did not know why Safine would be the one; perhaps time and loneliness had left her impatient, careless. There would not be another opportunity. She breathed deeply and looked at her.

“If you want the lalka, it's yours,” Ela explained. With one hand she held up the lalka, and the other the burnette saxifrage. “But you must eat this herb. It will make you stay young and beautiful. Your hands will not curl like your matka's; your face will not line, and your lips scowl. You will experience a long, prosperous life.”

“Tomorrow night, may I take it?” Safine answered, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I do not feel so well tonight.”

“Do not fear this.” Ela put her hands on Safine's shoulders and sought out her eyes. “I would never harm you.”

“I know.” Safine nodded, and bent over so Ela would not see the quiver of her lip. “But I must get home tonight because I feel very tired. I shall take it tomorrow, when I feel better. I promise.”

“Please, trust me.” Ela smiled. She drew the lalka and herb behind her back, out of sight. “It's all right.”

“Why do you not grow any bigger?” Safine looked up at Ela the next night, sitting in the tree next to their cottage. She swung her bare feet in the air, not meeting her eyes. Safine hit the bark of the tree with her hand. “How does the herb work? You must tell me, or I cannot be your friend.”

“Come back to my house and I will tell you.” Ela jumped down from the tree, a little smile staining her lips. Safine looked back at her own house for a moment before following.

“Before my matka died, the soldiers had come to our house for her lover, who did a bad thing.” Ela sat on the bed, holding the lalka and the herb. “A bad thing he blamed on my mother. But my mother made medicines, and some of her medicines were made from this flower. I ate this flower before the soldiers came. Antoniusz, my stepfather, says the soldiers shot me, and he buried me himself. I didn't remember anything for a long time after that. But I woke up in the ground. Little by little, I dug myself out. When I got out, so much time had passed, my mother was already dead. And many springs have passed since. But I am still a little girl.”

“But why?”

“It was struck by lightning, this flower—I have tried other flowers of burnette saxifrage, and cannot replicate the medicines. It must be the soul of the lightning captured inside. It healed all the rabbits and frogs we maimed. And it healed me. I am very old, and I cannot die.”

“But why?” Safine shook her head.

“The herb—do you understand?”

Safine looked at the flower as Ela held it out to her.

“If you eat it, you'll never die.” Ela nodded to her as Safine shook her head. “Won't it be fun? We could play dolls and live in my cottage and the villagers will give us things because they are scared of us and want us to stay away. We can have beautiful clothes and honey and butter and dolls and even meat.”

“Can my matka take it, too?” Safine asked. “I would miss her.”