If I Told You Once. Judy Budnitz

      I forged on, forcing stiff marionette knees. Her eyes nipped at the backs of my legs so that I stepped faster, and faster. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the village looked no bigger than the magic city inside my egg, and my mother was too small to be seen.

      I was free of my mother at last. The threads snapped. I had beaten her. My body was my own; I felt something melt inside me, a hot jelly, sliding loose and shifting downward, pulsing. It was a frightening feeling, not unpleasant.

      To the east, a faint glow paled and spread; the bare trees were thrown into stark black silhouettes against the paling sky. And I was very, very cold.

      

      I tramped for hours as the snowfall abated. My nose and lips were numb, they were blunt stupid things stuck to my face; I wished I could knock them off the way you knock icicles from the eaves.

      I thought of my mother. I supposed she had cursed me, cursed me the way I had seen her curse soldiers: with words too dangerous to utter aloud, so that she had to draw their shapes with her fingers in the air, with her own face carefully averted. The venom of her curses was so powerful it could sometimes rebound and scald her, like drops of boiling oil bouncing off the pan.

      The thought of my mother’s curses brought on a stitch in my side and a blurry, sticky cloud in my right eye.

      I had no idea where I was going, I only knew I was lengthening the distance between myself and home. Between myself and a life like my mother’s, a path worn deep in the dirt, a path packed so hard no grass could ever grow there, much less flowers.

      I had never been outside my village, but I knew there were places that were different. I had glimpsed them in the egg, and in the words of the bandit in the woods. I thought of him, my bandit, with his sharp face and strange talk. I saw him lying in the snow, sunk deep as if in a feather mattress, his throat necklaced with blood and the marks of wolf’s teeth.

      After I had found him so, I went home and burned my wolf hood. It made an awful stink. My mother watched but said nothing.

      I would never have to feel her eyes again.

      The thought should have made me happy.

      I walked on. Once I heard an ax biting into wood, echoing through the trees. It reminded me of my father. From the sound alone I could judge the weight of the ax. I hurried on.

      Twilight was falling, swiftly creeping up behind me.

      I told myself I would keep traveling until I found a city, a place like the one I had seen in the egg. I would give myself a new name, walk among a different sort of people. I wanted to walk slowly in gardens, carelessly snapping twigs off branches as I passed, tossing pebbles in a fountain, watching the surface of the water break apart and, quivering, come together again to show me my face. That seemed the most perfect kind of luxury.

      I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets. They should have been empty. I had brought nothing.

      And yet I drew from my pockets several chunks of bread, some large leathery mushrooms, a carved wooden comb.

      Gifts from my mother. She must have known all along.

      In another pocket I found a pouch filled with my mother’s favorite herbs, the ones without names, dried and tied in bundles. There were plants like miniature trees, like tangled pubic hair, seaweed, bird feathers, crumpled paper. The smells rose up from the bag and fought each other.

      My egg was knotted in my petticoat.

      How stupid of me to think I could leave home without my mother knowing. She had known I would leave before I did. She had allowed me to leave. Perhaps she had watched, and tugged at me with her eyes merely to test my resolve. It seemed no matter how I tried to escape, I was still entangled in my mother’s plans.

      I saw her braid swinging.

      I saw her figure plowing smoothly through the snow before me, as if she had cart wheels beneath her skirts instead of legs.

      I walked for five days.

      On the evening of the fifth day I saw smoke in the distance. As I came closer I came upon a village, not unlike the one I had left. I wanted to go to one of those houses, ask for a place to sleep. But I couldn’t; they were too familiar. I had the sensation that whichever house I called at my mother would open the door. She’d fill the doorway, dusted with flour, sleeves rolled, arms folded, children clinging constantly to her skirts as if they’d been sewn there as ornaments.

      So I skirted the village as night fell. I smelled bread baking.

      How ugly the trees were now. Behind me the lights of the village glowed like warm embers.

      Then, like a granted wish, I came abruptly to a clearing in the woods, and a small house with a peaked roof and smoke curling from two chimneys. A stone path led to the door, and I found myself knocking on it before I’d had a chance to think.

      I could hear rustling inside, the crackle of fire. The doorstep on which I stood was worn, and the spot on the door where I’d rapped my knuckles was a silky smooth depression in the wood, as if countless hands had knocked before me.

      Yes? said a voice and the door opened slightly. I stared into eyes that were a disturbing yellow, lashless and unblinking.

      She looked me up and down. The eyebrows rose in crafty peaks.

      Are you in trouble? she asked sharply. She wore shoes tipped with iron.

      I nodded.

      Well then, she said briskly, come inside, though you should have known to come to the back door.

      The room inside was small and familiar. Wooden chairs, a low bed, a stone floor. Bunches of herbs hung drying near the fire. A piece of knitting lay interrupted on a chair.

      She helped me remove my clothes. What I had at first thought was a hat perched on her head was in fact a dense mass of silvery gray braids wound together, a huge round loaf of hair. Her hands were spotted with age.

      She hung my clothes on a chair to dry and said: Why don’t you sit and warm yourself for a minute? I opened my mouth to speak but she clicked her tongue at me and turned away.

      There was a smell in the air, musty, faintly sickishly sweet; I could not place it. On shelves nearby stood stoppered jars and bottles of the sort people used for pickles and preserves. I looked closer and saw stored there twisted roots suspended in brine, the pale floating bodies of frogs, the milky globes of cows’ eyes, and jars and jars of a viscous liquid, reddish brown, with a dry crust on top.

      A kettle stood on the hearth, and two mugs. Had she been expecting me? No, the mugs had been recently used; dregs of tea clung to the insides.

      I heard the woman scrubbing her hands vigorously in a tub of water. Did you happen to bring anything to give me? she asked, peering over her shoulder.

      I shrugged, shook my head.

      Ah, they never do, she said to herself. She turned then and came toward me. I quickly backed away. Are you ready, then? she said. Her bared arms were terribly thin.

      Don’t be changing your mind now, after you came all this way, she said. Hop up on the chair now, there you go. Her voice was firm; she grasped my arm and I found myself standing on the chair. Strands of my hair hung before my eyes like the bars of a cage.

      She looked up at me with those yellow eyes, she put a hand on my thigh to still its trembling. The smell in the room was strange and terrible, a sweet rottenness; I could taste it.

      My tongue seemed to have gone to sleep.

      I saw that she held in her hand a bit of metal, like a piece of twisted wire.

      Lift your skirts dearie, she said, you know it has to be done.

      Her voice carried such command that I automatically gathered my skirts in my hands; I had lifted them nearly to my knees before I came to my senses and pushed her away and tumbled off the chair.

      Hush, hush, she said and reached