In my dreams I can hear Grandmother’s distant screams drowning into groans, and this pushes me towards waking. I’m released by the insubstantial darkness – the healing feeling of sinking into infinite oblivion is gone, time shortens, nothingness takes shape, and the smell of clove from the wine boiling on the stovetop burns my nose.
I walk into the kitchen in my nightgown, barefoot. The earthen floor swallows the noise of my footsteps, and I arrive silently, as if my body had stayed in the other room, but Mother knows I’m awake – she already pulled my chair to the table. She nods, her eyes passing quickly over me, then sprinkles finely chopped bloodstalk, senca and black tearstopper into the large cauldron. She knows this will work — she’s familiar with every corner of the forest, down to the last hidden herb — but her lips are pressed thin by anger and worry. Burns on the body are painful and slow to heal. Luckily the soothing potion had rocked Grandmother to sleep, and the sounds I heard were merely echoes of last night’s pain in my head, or perhaps an even older memory, from seven years ago, when she was recovering from the poison.
I sit at the table and pull the chair under me carefully, out of habit to not make any noise, though I know that when Mother puts someone to sleep, they won’t be woken up by a slight creaking. I take a sip of the tea she prepared for me – it’s still hot. My mother’s brew could resurrect the dead: it’s as brown as the soil after rain to which the forest’s most ancient tree clings. For a moment, its smell cuts through the aroma of the elixir simmering in the large cauldron. I raise my cup carefully, so the tea leaves that have sunk to the bottom will not be disturbed too much. It’s a strong brew. Eagerness crawls in place of my sleepiness, and every sip strengthens my bones and muscles. My dull hair gains colour from the drink, its strands begin to stick together like roots, they run down my back to my hips, and by the time I finish half of the brew, the ends of my hair have already reached my bottom. I drink up the rest. The last sip burns my throat like radish, then my stomach, and my heart. The weight of my hair pulls my head back.
“Wait, I’ll braid it for you.”
Nobody braids like Mother. At the touch of her fingers my hair unravels into millions of strands, and she begins many small braids at the top of my head, then weaves them together into marvellous shapes, and some of my locks turn sand-coloured in the process. The results are amazing, I know – my hair conjures fear and longing, like a real crown on a monarch – though it’s not the beauty that counts, but the labyrinth that creates the beauty: the curve of the braids, their path, the way they tangle into one another in unchangeable patterns to represent a life that, from now on, is in Mother’s hands.
She does not give me a mirror, but I already know she has done a flawless job. I can feel each strand is in the right place: I now have all the power I need to carry out my task. I go back to my room, slip out of my nightgown and change. I cover my finely woven white dress with a pale red cloak, put on my thick soled shoes, and I’m ready for the journey. Mother pours sweet wine into a bottle from the small cauldron, puts it into the basket she wove herself (with strong straps so I can fasten it to my back), packs some sweet bread next to the wine and sends me on my way. Once again I remember Grandmother’s screams from the night before, the beast-like, inarticulate howls of pain that roused the forest. It’s the thought of the hard path ahead of me that presses on my shoulders, not the weight of the loaded basket.
It's always difficult to pass through a forest that has been hurt and is endlessly calling for help. It takes me hours to reach the place of destruction, and I make my way slowly. One would think that if the forest only burned down miles away, the parts that remain unharmed would be just as calm and healthy as they were before the fire, but that’s not true. I’m almost paralyzed by the lamenting of the trees, the constant weeping, the stirring of frightened animals, the wailing of the thicket, the never-ending, desperate begging coming from the roots. I stop for some rest, and to place my hand on the sighing tree next to me to let it know: I’m on my way. The branches tiredly embrace me, rustle their leaves as we part, then stretch out. They pass on the news, soothe their companions. The crying quietens by a thought, some whisper their thanks, others cheer me on. But there are more and more dead trees, charred animal carcasses. Black bones reach towards the sky like shrunken, mummified arms of giants, ashes whirl around in the wind, cinders fall to the dead earth. After a while it becomes hard for me to breathe, I am disgusted by the smoke that fills my lungs with every breath, by the stench of burned plants and animals that engulfs me with every step. By the time I reach the edge of the trees, I smell like death, but nobody will notice this in the village next to the burned forest.
On the outskirts of the village I shake the ashes from my cloak, pull the hood over my head, and shoulder the basket once more. I raise my head high as I make my way to the market. I walk slowly without stopping, I keep passing through the village, past the church to the market, walking leisurely between the stalls, browsing, but never asking for the price of anything. I don’t talk, just listen to the village as I do what I need to.
“Oh my goodness, she’s here again,” I hear from behind my back. “Dear God have mercy upon us!” A desperate old woman whispers fearfully to those standing next to her. I stop and take pleasure in the way this makes the sound freeze to her lips. I slowly turn around, and stare at her intently. She goes pale, as if she’s having the blood sucked out of her. I turn my back and keep walking. “She looked at me,” she mumbles faintly. I feel like staring her down again, but I can’t waste my precious time. “She looked at me!”
“You’re not going to die from a pretty girl looking at you, Hajnal,” someone growls at her scornfully. It’s a serious male voice, but I can feel there’s uncertainty in it. And repressed fear.
“That’s no girl, you fool,” someone else answers him from the crowd. “She’s a witch,” he says, and the wind sweeps up the word, hurtles it forward – it follows me wherever I go.
I keep on walking. On either side of me the sellers cross themselves behind their rickety stalls. I look at them from time to time, just to make their hands tremble, their eyes gloss over, their mouths quiver when they open them to call me demon’s spawn, evil spirit, devil’s slave. The more they’re afraid, the stronger I feel. The lighter my steps become among the honey pots, the small linen bags filled with beans and lentils, the apples and pears heaped into crates. Some are selling walnuts, others are peddling jam they made out of plums, blackberries, apple and pear or grapes. They owe everything they have to this earth, but even though I’ve reminded them of this many times before, somehow they always forget it. For now, I don’t say a word, only listen. I keep going, doing what I need to.
“On my life, she hasn’t aged a day!” someone comments. She’s not jealous; there’s repulsion billowing in her voice. Glassware shatters on the ground – maybe the hand that held onto the table trembled, or the arm grasping a bottle had lost its strength. It doesn’t matter.
“You don’t look any different now than you did seven years ago either!” comes a reply from behind me. “That’s how it is when someone’s old – or young enough. Eight or eighty-seven, who can tell? Sixteen or twenty, who can know for sure?”
One thousand, or two thousand, I think to myself. Makes no difference for you lot.
“I’m not talking about seven years, Dom! I was already here long before you came along. I had seen her twenty years ago. Thirty years ago. Forty years ago.”
“Your eyes are not as good as they used to be, Granny.” This voice is kind and has a youthful ring to it. But the old woman snaps at him.
“I saw what I saw! This woman never changes. She’s like a vampire. And whenever she shows up, someone disappears. That’s what happened seven years ago, when the men of the Horgas and Vadász families disappeared. That’s what happened over twenty years ago, when the Teres’s oldest daughter suddenly vanished without a trace. Or thirty years ago, when… who did she take then, who was it…?”
“The Feketes’ oldest son,” a voice helps her out. It’s a quiet, raspy voice, but it seems to thrust the whole market into remembering.
“Before that she took Tommy the gravedigger, and his wife.”
“She came here even before that, I swear on my grandson’s life. My mother remembered her, from when she was a girl. She said her mother had seen her too. She always comes at full moon. The same pale red, hooded cloak. The same thick soled shoes. The same woven basket on her back. And the same, youthful face that never ages.”
“She goes around the village.”
“Picks the one who doesn’t have a future.”
“And we can search all we want. We won’t even find their dead body.”
“When she has eaten enough, she’ll disappear again for a while. But she always returns. And devastation follows her. When she comes, she brings destruction. She poisons the river. Or sets the forest on fire.
“Witch!”
“Devil’s spawn…” they whisper, then the shouting gets louder.
“Ghost!”
“Demon!”
“She comes at full moon. She must be a werewolf!”
“Unnatural creature!”
“Untouchable hangman!”
“Or just a girl from a village on the other side of the forest wearing her mother’s clothes,” someone tries to reason, but the others jeer at him.
“Striga! God have mercy upon us!”
“Our forest has already burned down. But that’s not enough for her. You’ll see: she will take one of us.”
I feel a strong urge to stop and stare at them, but the one I’m looking for is not here, so I keep going. Grandmother’s pain throbs inside me, so that I won’t forget why I came to the village. Not as if I could forget. In my dreams Mother did not birth me but sat down in front of her spinning wheel to weave the frame of my body from roots and memories, then dipped it in the magic of time. Time, as Mother and Grandmother often say, is an invaluable ally.
I reach the end of the market, and head towards the tavern. A boisterous group of men are drinking beer in the garden. They go quiet when I reach their table. The waitress places two pitchers in front of them with a loud thud as she stares at me in silence.
A loosened strand in my wreath of hair starts slipping out of the complicated arrangement as if to break free, but the power of the magic braiding weaves it back in place. The movement pulls my head back, and one of the men – who thought he could smile at me freely – grabs at his heart and is unable to breathe for a moment. Found you, I think to myself. I start walking, but look back and smile at him, then I nod towards the forest.
I know it was you, I think to myself.
You know where I’ll be waiting, he reads my movements.
I walk to the burned part of the forest, where necrotic branches beg for relief, just as loudly as Grandmother groans for her soothing and regenerating potion. Oaks and hornbeams gasp for air in the thick smoke, their bark charred, they breathe heavily as they stretch their twigs for help. They remind me of Grandmother’s arms, blackened and burned to a crisp, reaching out towards me. The scorched privet and hawthorn look like the remains of hair that melted into her skull. It’s unimaginably painful to be burned alive, but Grandmother takes all suffering upon herself so that we, Mother and Daughter, can keep on doing what we need to. Seven years ago, when someone poured poison into the river, and every plant began to wither in the eastern part of the forest, and every animal that ate of them died, Grandmother vomited poison for two years. Pale as parchment and all skin and bones, she vomited and vomited, regurgitating in every colour imaginable the toxic matter that had seeped into the earth, sometimes expelling the poison so violently that it seemed like her jaw was the rock at the edge of the forest from where the river cascades down below. Back then I thought there is nothing more painful than not being able to eat or drink for years, and yet still be vomiting endlessly because the poison magically keeps filling you up, while knowing that it won’t end so easily, that you won’t get dehydrated, won’t die of exhaustion, because time is your merciless ally, it will keep you and make you vomit until the world begins to heal.
Humans are ungrateful and often evil, yet they can count on dying from unbearable pain. But we are bound to bear the unbearable. This, however, doesn’t mean that we are willing to helplessly watch unbearable destruction happen.
The scorched forest is still shrouded in smoke, but my red cloak is visible from afar, it attracts the man, who now can’t think of anything else but the fact that I chose him.
“It’s dangerous for such a young girl to be walking out here alone,” he says instead of greeting me. He’s a handsome young man, with a confident voice and a beckoning smile. But the moment I lean against the burned stump behind me, the fire is ablaze once more in my mind. I can see our memories: the carelessly laid fire, the empty bottle of pálinka, the man’s panic as he thinks a wild boar is coming, the branch held into the fire to scare the animal, the blazing stick hurled away in a frenzy, and the mindless running as he abandoned the trees and animals when the flames began to gnaw at them.
“I’m not alone,” I push myself away from the tree to clear my mind.
“Lucky you,” he replies, and I nod, though I know that the biggest misfortune of all would be if I was human and believed him. “Where are you heading?”
“My mother’s mother lives in the heart of the forest. I’m taking some wine and sweet bread for her, maybe it will give her some strength. But she’s very ill; who knows if she can still drink, or eat? She mostly just sleeps all day.”
“Then you must hurry to make it in time with the food and drink, right?”
“Indeed,” I nod. All his words sound familiar to me, for he is a forest meddler, and Mother spins such people’s thread of life in a way that guarantees they would never surprise me.
“Then let me help!” he offers. He’s almost begging, like he wants to serve me. But all he can think about is how it would feel to dominate me, if I was the one serving him night and day. “I’ll take your basket so that you can move quicker. We’ll reach the house faster this way.”
“That’s a very generous offer,” I answer. “Or are you looking for payment in return?”
He seems taken aback, sensing that I can see right through him, but brushes the thought aside. Surely a wench like me wouldn’t be able to see beyond those words, he tells himself. Such a young girl doesn’t know life yet, only fairy tales.
“Payment? Nonsense!” he forces a laugh. Normally such noise would rouse a flock of birds or startle a rabbit into jumping out of the shrubs, but now the burned forest is silent, and I am too. My companion can hardly hide his embarrassment, wiping his sweaty palms on his dirty leather trousers. Perhaps he finds it strange that I’m not laughing with him, that I don’t even smile, but I have no intention of easing the tension, of making this any easier for him. I feel like we’re walking in a graveyard. “I’m helping you out of goodwill. But of course, it would be my pleasure if in the end you could reward me with a kiss.” He says it smugly, with a greedy look in his eyes.
I know exactly what it is that fairy tales call a kiss. The thing he calls pleasure. I know what the longing of a man like him means: he would scorch up my innocence, the way fire carried by the wind scorches up the forest; he would poison my body and make me vomit for years on end every time I thought about that thing I could never get rid of, because that something won’t heal by the next day, or in nine months. But of course, he thinks I’m too innocent to comprehend what it is that he desires but is too afraid to say out loud.
Humans. How can so much rottenness pair with such naivety?
“A kiss as a reward for your efforts,” I smile. “If you carry my basket all the way to the house.”
He immediately helps me put down the basket. He brushes my back with his coarse palm as if by accident, then shoulders my load.
He can barely contain himself. My basket is light, he can’t even feel it, but he breathes heavily every time I look at him. We walk like this for over an hour, him and I, only thinking about the kiss: a whirlwind that can turn the body inside out, a fire, a poison that people say only time can heal.
He doesn’t even notice that I have led him into the part of the forest that no human can find by themselves. He just points out that he’s never been here before. Or that he’s never seen such a flower, or a bird of that kind. That he thought trees like these only existed in fairy tales. How it’s already dusk. And how fortunate it is that the fire hasn’t reached these parts.
“The house is right in the middle of the forest, you say?” he finally asks.
His voice is full of longing, he wants to be there already, in the middle of the wilderness. He imagines there might be a clearing somewhere, a nook that he can make his own, where he can rest and make me serve him.
“In its heart,” I answer. “Past those hazel trees, where the three giant oaks almost grow into one another.”
“You can hear wolves howling from here,” he says and looks at me in awe. “And you come to this place every day?”
“I’m not afraid of wolves,” I say. “They’re howling because they’re afraid. The moon is too big for them today.”
“You’re brave,” he grunts and pulls his jacket tighter around himself with his sweaty hands.
“Let’s hurry!” I say to him casually and hasten my steps. My hood slips to the back of my neck, down to my shoulders, and he moves closer, I can almost feel his breath on my nape. He’s admiring my braids and tries to reach for one with trembling fingers, he wants to tease me, to pull a lock from the tightly twisted crown, but as soon as he manages to loosen a braid, the strands of hair stick together and spring back into place like snakes slithering under dried leaves. As I turn on my heel, I see the forest meddler staring in surprise, his reaching hand stiff, as if contorted by a cramp. I lean over to him.
“We’re getting close now,” I promise, and as I say these words the cottage appears from behind the hazel trees. The heart of the forest never fails us.
A wolf is howling in the distance, dry branches crunch under our feet. The buzzing of insects mingles with animated birdsong, and the wind is playing with the leaves. The forest greets us.
“We’ve arrived,” I say and open the cottage door wide. We enter, and I let the door slam shut behind us.
“What the…” he begins but is unable to finish the thought. There’s too much going on in front of him, and even more that stays hidden from sight.
What appears to be a stone house on the outside is a pulsing refuge on the inside, with walls made out of thickly interwoven vines. Grandmother’s bed grows out of the flowery grass floor, a tree’s hard, twisting branches make up her bedframe, and thick moss exuding a lush smell of healing herbs grows in place of her straw mattress. Grandmother’s blackened body sinks into the bed, she’s barely breathing, but I know she’s here with us. Mother sits next to her on a chair woven of plant stalks. She looks up for barely a moment when we enter, then quickly averts her gaze and doesn’t pause her work. Her palms are facing inwards, as if she’s holding a plump, invisible pitcher, but instead of a pitcher it’s ancient magic that fills the space in-between, where threads slide, twist and merge into complicated knots. Fine strands grow out of Grandmother’s headboard: silky, transparent plant threads that look like needlegrass, but glow in a thousand colours and are stronger than forged iron when twisted together. The braids of destiny cascade down in strands as they topple over Mother’s hands, and the grass and flower-covered floor accepts the sacrifice, graciously pulling the thread of life into itself, so that it can become one with the roots that hold this world together.
The strands between mother’s hands lunge at one another, and in the blink of an eye the magic pulls the threads into thirteen knots: a large one in the middle and twelve smaller knots around it. As the pattern tightens, the neck of the forest meddler snaps to the side, his eyes close, his body goes limp, but he doesn’t fall to the floor: the invisible threads of destiny keep him afloat. If anyone saw, they would think he’s a body laid out in a coffin – but no one can find their way into the heart of the forest, unless we guide them.
As a breath bursts from the forest meddler, Grandmother gives a loud sigh in her bed and wakes from her stupor. She opens her eyes wide, and Mother drops her hands tiredly into her lap. The complicated knot is floating in front of her, and all around her the thread of life keeps on twisting and turning.
I’m looking at the forest meddler. He’s lying in front of me, incapable but undead, at the mercy of whoever finds him. A true fairy-tale like state. Where a kiss is never only a kiss.
Mother’s hand twitches, and roses begin to grow from the invisible coffin. We have a job to do, she’s reminding me. As if I could forget.
I think of the fairy tale where the princess waited a hundred years for salvation until a prince who could have saved her came along, but he chose to sully her instead, so she first had to give life to others before returning to life herself. I was never a child and will never be a woman, but I always knew that this cannot be how the story ends. Because no prince should ride off into nothingness after committing something wicked in a forest.
“Promises are made to be kept,” I say and lean close to the man.
His lifeless mouth is cold and dry when I kiss it. It takes a while for the life to spread through him, it takes some time for the poison to upheave his body and burn it from the inside like uncontrollable fire that only leaves death in its wake. His eyes open, he starts to convulse, to scream at the top of his lungs, but the invisible coffin keeps him captive. He wants to jump on me, wrestle me, break my neck, tear me to pieces, but all he can do is scream in an increasingly beastly way, until his body gives an immense crack and splits into two, like an apricot cut in half, revealing an embryo shaped monstrosity as the tattered human skin falls to the floor like the discarded cloak of a beggar. His thick blood pools on the ground, flowers bloom at our feet as the grassy floor drinks up the huge puddle, and my cloak turns bright red. The burnt layers begin to peel from Grandmother’s skin in small pieces and turn into dust. The skin underneath is light pink, like that of a newborn, though the body is so ancient that not even Time keeps track of its age.
The embryo stuck in the air starts to grow: the strange, naked body convulses, shakes, its limbs, claws and snout lengthen. The dirt covering its body slowly hardens, fades, then – as if by magic – splits into millions of hairs. Now he howls in unison with the other wolves, swinging his bushy tail and flashing his yellowy brown eyes angrily at me, but I hold his stare. I step closer and put my hand on his head. This calms him down to an extent, but he keeps on growling, showing me his gums and sharp teeth in warning – but I’m not afraid of wolves. Mother releases him from the shackles spun from threads of fate, and the animal shakes itself, then jumps onto the floor next to me. He nudges his discarded human skin with his snout, grabs it with his teeth and drags it away, then creeps back and whines as he looks at the remains of the pool of blood, a dim red stain on the green carpet of grass.
I snatch off my red cloak and spread it in front of him. The coarse cloth flutters to the ground, then transforms into thick, red blood. The wolf stares in surprise at his reflection in the puddle.
“Do you know why your ears are so big?” I ask.
He howls, like he’s lamenting to the moon, but I know exactly what he’s saying.
“So I can quickly hear if the forest asks for help.”
I nod, and he gingerly circles the puddle of blood.
“Do you know why your legs are so strong?”
He stares down at his muscly limbs, then turns his snout towards the sky and wails.
“So I can run fast when I need to protect the forest.”
“And do you know why your teeth are so big and sharp?”
“So I can demand respect from those who don’t respect the forest.”
I carefully crouch down and extend my arm. The blood hardens at my touch, and looks like stained glass for a moment, then softens into cloth again. I grab my red cloak, straighten up, and put it back on. Then I open the door wide, take a deep breath of the fresh forest air, and set the wolf free. He doesn’t even look back, just breaks into a run to join the pack as soon as he can.
In seven years he’ll run to me just as eagerly. He’ll rub up against the heart of the forest, lick my hand lovingly, and recount how faithfully he served the forest, how he took some of the weight off my shoulders. And I’ll reward him for his service: I’ll kiss his hairy snout, and he’ll howl one last time at the moon that glows like a lantern, then hunker down next to me. His last breath will warm my bare feet. The wolf will then submit to Mother’s magic with a loud crack, split into two like the pit of a ripe apricot, and reveal a familiar stranger to me. When he wakes, he will look at me with respect and put his new clothes on without shame.
Wolves will guide him to the edge of the forest in the middle of the night, back to the village where he’ll arrive a stranger. His new body will hide his past, the trees of the forest will keep his memories. He’ll not remember that he had to become a beast to understand the wilderness; all he’ll know is the woodland has a heart, and that he must protect and nourish the forest. He will build his cottage on the outskirts of the village, and when the round moon shines from above, he’ll walk into the woods, following the wolfsong that will lead him to my hide. He’ll sit in front of the door, knowing, feeling that our hearts throb to the same beat. I’ll be lying in the insubstantial darkness, waiting helplessly, and dreaming in my bed of roses about a time when instead of pain, a kiss would push me back into my timeless body, because a kiss is never only a kiss, but for once may be a promise for us to live happily ever after, until the end of time.