The Nightmare Window
You’ve noticed my absence here—I know you have. True, I’ve received only two letters of inquiry: one disguised as a life insurance flyer, the other a blank sheet wrapped carefully around a dead cricket.
But I know what that insurance flyer and insect-corpse were trying to say, and I know they spoke for millions of souls impatient for Cabinet news: to put it simply, you missed me.
What kept me so busy? Oh, just saving your lives, or at least your sanity.
That’s right, you heard me. You’re welcome. And the story can now be told.
Those of you who on occasion walk, or hasten, past the Cabinet of Curiosities itself, that strange, many-turreted tower (by the way, I don’t know which of you scrawled “CREEPY OLD WITCH” on the sidewalk outside my window? but it brought a smile and a blush to this old face, as I know you intended)—anyway, those of you who pass by our quarters know that six months ago, a window appeared among the trees.
Just a four-paned window, in a wooden frame painted a dingy, peeling white, hanging seemingly from the sky itself.
I collected this window several years ago at an estate sale with a tragic history, my favorite kind. It seems a young couple had hung the window from their trees as a sort of whimsical art statement, I suppose. Artists baffle me; they don’t seem to realize that they are playing with fire.
In this case, within about a year, the fire they toyed with burnt them, and badly. This was not a literal fire, for the house still stands. But the fate met by the couple inside was so terrible, so unspeakable, that even years later their once-lovely house bears a tattered FOR SALE sign.
I doubt that house will ever sell, as long as human memory lives.
I read about the case one morning when the wind wrapped a yellowing scrap of newspaper around our iron gate. When the wind brings a story, you must always pay attention: the wind doesn’t joke.
I was profoundly troubled by what I read. Not by what happened to the young artist couple—tragic, etc., naturally, but I don’t care. I have no interest in them.
However, according to the newspaper account, when the police and ambulance workers leapt from their wailing, shrieking vehicles, one young paramedic was stopped by a grisly sight on the front porch: a butterfly with one wing torn off, spinning frantically on the ground.
“It just made me shiver all over,” the young man reportedly said. “It was like a hint of what we’d see inside.”
Well.
I am, as it happens, very fond of butterflies. So I decided to look into this case. I bought the window, brought it home, and hung it among the trees of our front yard. Some know-it-all passerby—was it you? —explained to a friend that the thing must be hung with fishing line or some such invisible thread. Ha-ha-ha, said the know-it-all: it couldn’t just be hanging from the empty air.
It could, in fact, and was. But these details need not concern you.
Once the window was hung, every night for the next month I climbed into a tree to watch it. I learned that this window has two interesting properties.
On nights when the moon is full, when that cold and waxy light spills through the panes—on those nights, and only then, a midnight watcher can see what lies behind the window.
The view is not a pleasant one. What lies behind the window are the creatures of our worst nightmares—everyone’s nightmares, the most dreadful ones, the ones you try to forget, and usually do.
You know the sort of thing. Skeletons, some still bearing ragged strips of flesh.
Shadowy black things leaving trails of oily slime wherever they go.
A crowned head, neck still bloody from the axe, eyes and mouth open wide in horror, hurtling toward you.
Crowds of ghosts, pale and gray as old photographs, human-shaped but with pieces horribly missing.
A snarling dog whose maw is a human mouth that drips blood.
A long stream of screaming, flapping night-birds.
That sort of thing, and much, much more—all that I saw behind the window on that first full moon last summer.
It gets worse. I also learned that on nights when the moon is new, a black disk in the black sky, then all those . . . creatures, let’s call them, that lie behind the window: all those nightmares crowd up to the pane to watch us.
And once in a while, at midnight during the dark of the moon, one of the creatures slips or slithers through the window-crack to have its fearful fun, until dawn, when it must return.
Do you see what I’m saying? I hope you’re keeping up. That fearful fun of a nightmare is what happened to the unhappy previous owners of this window. “This is a terrible nightmare,” at least one of them must have said, as the terrible, unspeakable things happened. Until he realized, or until she saw, that it was not a nightmare at all, but real as pudding real as a boot, real as a the scream in your own throat.
My concern grew. So for six months, at every full moon, I climbed the tree to watch through the window as creatures of blood and darkness fought and cavorted and danced on the other side.
And for six months, at every new moon, I planted my old face right in front of that window, so that they would know just who was waiting for them here, and think twice about slithering out.
And on the nights when the moon was neither full nor new, I took a single candle and ransacked our curatorial libraries for information.
I learned that when by chance the new moon happens to fall on the night of the winter solstice—the longest, darkest night of the year—then the worst of all happens. That night, the window opens, wide, wide, wide, and evert nightmare creature made hard and real comes streaming through, leaving a trail of blood and black slime on the sill.
And every house, all that long, long night—not just in my neighborhood, but everywhere in the world where one lies asleep—is visited by one or more of the nightmare crew. And when they are finished, the innocent sleepers are mad or they are dead, and I would not like to have to say which is preferable.
And, dear readers, as you perhaps know or perhaps did not, this past winter solstice occurred the same night as the new moon.
So I made certain preparations. And on December 21, as the dusk came on, I was already seated in the high branches of our lone evergreen, wool skirts gathered around my ankles. I am an elderly woman, far more elderly than any grandma you know, and I do not wear trousers. But I am an excellent tree-climber, and had at the ready a thermos of tomato soup as warm and red as human blood.
I chose the evergreen in order to disguise my presence. I have learned the hard way that when I sit astride a winter-bare branches in plain sight, I risk troublesome neighbors calling 911 to report a “crone in tree” emergency, which leads to the tedious necessity of slipping Forget-Me-Ever potions to the mental health authorities and, frankly, life is too short.
Midnight came, and I watched through the window.
I saw a nightmare-bat with long needle teeth.
I saw a man with a blood-spattered face, a bloodier axe, and a terrible grin.
I saw a furry black tarantula the size of a pony with rows of shark-teeth.
I saw a sneering doll whose fist clenched and unclenched as it laughed a high, mad laugh.
I saw a woman with long black hair whose face was smooth and featureless as an egg.
And as the distant church tower gently chimed midnight, I saw these nightmares, and many more, as they lifted the window. I felt the sickening rush of the nightmare wind sweep past me.
And what did I have to hold against them, to push them back—I, an elderly woman with an empty thermos and a wool scarf?
I had what you use against any nightmare creature: light.
At my signal, the sparklers I had tied all over our leaf-bare maple burst and fizzed with crazy light, one after the other, like wild birthday candles.
Light.
At my signal, in the huge bare oak, the flames of a thousand small white candles awoke and danced.
Light.
And the Cabinet itself, as if its eyes flew open, lit up in lines and curves and patterns of light, every window outlined in starry brightness, every turret, every gargoyle’s eye and lip, every doorway, every line of every roof, a dazzle of light.
It worked, of course. You’re here, aren’t you? The toothed and the bloody and the snarling and the mad retreated, with shrieks of fear and frustration, and the window closed again, I hope for a long, long time.
A man passing in the street, tipsy from a holiday party, remarked to his companion, “Look at this ridiculous display. Some people don’t have any better ways to spend their money. Just want the biggest light show in the neighborhood.”
He passed just under my tree, this gentleman. It was tempting, indeed.
But in the spirit of the season, I let him live.
A Map to the Center of Now
It began, as things so often do, with a map.
A map is a pleading thing. Explore me, it begs. See where I lead.
It would be a mistake to say that it is always dangerous to obey, but equally wrong to say it never is.
And stories are rarely told about uneventful journeys. Or, at least, interesting stories are rarely told.
Well, my dears, have I an interesting story for you.
The Cabinet was dark and mostly quiet, the only light in the entire place flickering from the lamp at my side, the only sound the occasional rustle or quiet scream from one of the collections. It was cold, so cold my breath crackled in the air before me. My fellow curators, being far cleverer than I, had fled the building and the snowstorm that raged around it, and I hoped they were searching for new treasures in warmer climes.
My fingers, cold and stiff as a corpse, sifted through the chest. The chest that was the reason I was still in our Cabinet of Curiosities, and not in some far-flung place, gathered around a cozy hearth with a group of murderous ghosts, or the like. I had been planning to go, you see, for there are many tales across many lands that have yet to be explored, collected, and displayed in our wondrous museum.
I had, in fact, been so on the verge of leaving that I almost didn’t notice the chest, placed directly outside our door at some point since I arrived back from lunch. Preoccupied and absentminded I may occasionally be, but I am quite certain it wasn’t there as I stepped inside and set down a box containing a most delicious slice of honey cake. Nonetheless, it was assuredly on the doorstep as I stepped out, eyes on the horizon and head full of a rumor of a mysterious potioneer somewhere on the other side of the Malevolent Mountains.
We shall, if you do not mind, gloss smoothly over the heap I found myself in after tripping on the chest, and move directly to my curiosity as to its contents. Curiosity, after all, is what we do here. Our specialty, you might say.
Where was I? Oh, yes, it began with a map.
The chest contained many intriguing items, letters, photographs, all worthy of exploration at a later date, but the map was what grabbed my attention the moment my chilled fingers set upon it. I’m ashamed to say I scarcely glanced at the other things, and perhaps I should have, but the map…the map. The edges of the parchment were ragged and frayed, the ink faded, but I could see the route, clearly marked. For it wasn’t simply a map, an illustration of strange and mysterious lands, but instructions, a path to follow in order to discover something in those lands. What that something would be, I did not yet know, but I was overcome, yes, overcome, with the need to find out.
Leaving a note for my fellows, should they return in my absence, I packed a satchel of those things that are always useful on such a trip: a compass, a notebook, a small leather case of various potions and elixirs whose lack I have regretted in the past. I watered the Cabinet’s collection of carnivorous plants and set on my way, out through the still-falling snow.
My footprints sank deep into it and were quickly erased behind me. One might have taken this as an omen, but if I did, it was a positive one. Adventure looks forward, not back! I arrived in good time at the train station and purchased a ticket for as far away as I could travel by such means. This was not, according to the map tucked safely away, my destination, but it was as near as I could get.
The sky darkened and the train chugged along, emptying at each stop until I was the only one upon it. This, too, I perhaps should have taken as an omen.
The lights went out. “It’s only a tunnel,” I told myself, though this explanation made, even to my own ears, little sense. I had seen much more frightening things in my time as a Curator.
An instant before the lamps flickered back to life, the violins began. And I was no longer alone. My fear was replaced instantly by excitement, for I knew this story, though I had only heard it secondhand.
“I’m on the skeleton train,” I whispered.
“Yes,” the skeletons cried, surrounding me. “Dance with us!”
Well, I have always been partial to a dance. How could I refuse? I felt young as I danced, skipping and leaping among the tangle of bones. I knew better, however, than to linger too long, so in the first rush of sunrise I leapt from the slowing train, and checked that my landing had broken none of my vials tucked away in my satchel.
I also checked the map. My journey would continue south, and I set off with a spring in my step toward the woods ahead. Dark as daytime, they were, when I was in the thick of them, trees on all sides of the worn path I traveled. A rumbling came from behind me, causing me to jump aside for a string of carts, piled high with circus tents and led by a boy with a great, bright red bird atop his shoulder.
“Lucky Luke,” I said, but the boy did not hear me, and the carts rumbled on. I followed in their wake, to the edge of the woods and out again, to the base of mountains that rose high above me.
The map fluttered in the cold breeze that swept down from their peaks and across the foothills on which I stood. My sleeves fluttered, too, and the cuffs of my trousers dragged in the mud, but I did not pay as much attention to this as I should have, too entranced was I by this adventure, leading me—I was sure now—back to places and times of which I had only heard, or hadn’t visited since my early days of gathering oddities and whimsy. Indeed, the landscape became more and more familiar as I trod the roads and passed through towns. Here, the dragons, there, the girl who had made grave errors in her birthday wishes welcomed me as an old friend and made me a cup of rather welcome tea.
But I did not linger. Possibly I should have. She might have seen. I might have seen, in a mirror over the sink.
I kept on, my warm cloak dragging on the ground behind me, over the mountain pass and onto the broken road. For days I walked, sleeping nights in the shelter of rocks and trees. From this height, I could see in the distance the city where a shadow had crept, and the forest where the spiders sang.
In a familiar village, I left my last bottle of honey in the town hall for the people to find.
And I kept walking. I knew, now, that something was amiss, but I had come this far.
High in the mountains, there was a lake. A lake of which I had only heard, and the map led me straight to it. It took more days, more weeks to reach, my worn shoes—too large now—stumbling over every dip in the track. My nights were restless, plagued with nightmares I had once thought long forgotten.
Not so forgotten now.
You might ask why I continued. It is a fair question, but I had to know. Not once had I shied from an adventure, no matter how terrifying the stories that warned of it had been. Danger is part of our collection. And so I kept on, and when the lake came into view, I knew precisely what I would see in its pure silver surface. I was not afraid. After all, I could always simply turn away, walk back the way I had come, visiting with my old acquaintances on the way, and reverse the effects of walking the map.
I slept that night by its shores, warm despite the mountain chill, my small hands curled up inside my oversized clothes.
I should not have done what I did, but it was early dawn, my dreams still swarming in my head. I wasn’t thinking, or I was thinking with a mind much less experienced, and I was thirsty.
So very, very thirsty.
I knew immediately I had made a rash mistake. I did the only thing I could do.
My notebook was full, after my long journey. There are always so many stories to collect. But the reverse of the map was clear. My pen crackled on the parchment.
Dear fellow Curators,
Please find me. I fear I may not remember you, or any of this, much longer. Come to that, I fear I will soon forget how to spell. I am six, perhaps seven years old, but time is different here, and the mountain wolves are howling.
Curator Trevayne.
***
Note: Curator Trevayne was successfully rescued, and is recovering with the help of the right medicines, which we have had to invent. She awoke long enough to recount this tale and ask for a slice of cake. All is back to normal.
Shoes on a Doorstep
“A Pair of Shoes” (1885) – Vincent van Gogh
(Gentle Reader: We at the Cabinet have been taking an extended and unannounced leave of absence these past few months, due to various ailments and nervous breakdowns related to the hazards of our occupation. We feel more or less recovered now, and will be resuming a more regular posting schedule in January 2015! In the meantime, here is a brief and simple tale from Curator Bachmann, with which we would like to wish you a lovely holiday season and a happy new year!)
*
There were once two children who lived on an island far in the stormy, frosty north. Their village was small and damp. It clung to the edge of the cliffs like a barnacle. Life was hard. But every twelve months, when the year came to a close, and the nights grew long and bitter, something wonderful happened there that made everything worthwhile. In December, always on the same day (the 6th for those of you who are curious) the children of the town would set out their shoes on the front steps of their homes, and the next morning the shoes would be full. Good children found sugared nuts and raisins and apricots and boiled sweets in their shoes. Bad children found nothing but ashes.
No one knew who it was who gave them this bounty. Not even the parents, for they had set out their shoes too when they were young, as their parents had before them, and as their parents had before them, and no one had ever caught the one who did it. It was thought to be an ancient creature from the mountains, older than time, there long before the barnacle village was ever built, and everyone agreed in hushed voices that it would have been rude to look into it too closely, because after all, it was done for free.
*
We return now to the two children at the beginning of this tale: they were not related. They were not even friends. They were neighbors, and that night, the night of the 5th of December, they both went out onto their front steps at the same time with their boots to be filled, and saw each other.
Now, on this island, at this time of year, the wind is so fierce and the snow so cold that anything weighing less than a teakettle is in danger of blowing away. So when the children stepped out of their houses, they were bundled up to their noses in scarves and coats, and they really only saw each others eyes.
One of the children was named Anna. Anna was small and pale and pretty as an elf. The other child was named Jón. Jón was large and looked rather like an ogre. He was cruel to all the other children of the village, except for the few equally ogre-like boys who were his friends. He never helped his father, and he spoke rudely to his mother. He brought out his shoe and Anna saw that it was massive, for he had taken his father’s boot instead of his own, and she smiled to herself because she knew Jón Einarsson would get nothing but ash the next morning. A bigger boot would only mean more ashes.
She set out hers, a dainty slipper that she had stitched and weighted down with stones, and darted back inside.
The next morning dawned, clear and glittering, and the children of the village all leaped from their warm beds and went outside to fetch their shoes. All over the town, whoops and shouts were heard, and not a few angry tears and knowing nods where only ash dripped out of boot-tops.
But Anna’s shoe was full to the brim, and she had no reason to cry. She brought it in and showed it to her parents, who beamed at her with pride, and though Anna was very happy, a little corner of her heart wanted to see Jón get his ashes. So while her parents smiled and sorted through her treats, she crept back to the door and looked out. And what should she see but Jón Einarsson dragging his Father’s great boot up off the step. . . . And it was full of jewels! Treasures and pearls and bits of ribbon! Walnuts and prunes and gingerbread! So many wonderful things that they fell out of the top and rolled into the snow.
Anna watched, open-mouthed from the step. Jón saw her, and grinned most wickedly and kicked his door shut after him, and when Anna went in and sat down with her treats she scowled at them and could not eat a single one.
*
The year passed, and summer came, which meant rain and wind, instead of snow and wind, and then it was December again, and Jón was no kinder, and Anna was no happier. She had watched him through the months, looking for some secret goodness that perhaps she had missed, some hidden well of kindness that would make him deserve the rich gifts he had received. She saw no evidence of it. In fact, Jón seemed to become more unpleasant and ogre-like by the day.
December 5th came again, and again Anna went out with her shoe. She did not feel bad that her shoe was a little bigger this year. Her feet were a little bigger too, after all, and she had been extraordinarily good the past twelve months. She had helped old Elinsdottir with the milking and had shoveled snow and baked bread and worked very hard. And just as she was turning to go in, she saw Jón come out of his house. He was carrying a sack this time! Not even a shoe! And he was grinning ear-to-ear as if he deserved it, being a greedy pig, and he had not done anything kind in the entire year!
She scowled at his closed door after he had returned back inside, and went into her own house digging her nails into her hands and muttering. Last year had been a mistake, she was sure of it. Whatever creature came down from the mountains and filled their shoes, it would realize its folly and it would give Jón ashes this year, just as he deserved.
The next morning, when Anna rushed from the house, she did not even glance at her own shoe, which was very well-filled. All she saw was Jón’s sack, brimming with honey-cakes and peanuts and raisins and crowned with a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg. She wanted to shriek. She threw her shoe inside, not even seeing where the contents fell, and when Jón came out to collect his sack she stood on the step and glared at him, trembling with rage. He grinned again and took the sack inside, and kicked the door closed after him, and Anna stood fuming in the wind and the snow until her nose was red and her eyelashes coated with snow. Her Mother noticed her before she froze solid and dragged her inside.
*
The next year was a bad one. Jón was a horrid oaf. He seemed to have gotten very swollen and sick, and Anna could hear his parents fighting through the walls of their house, which seemed to only increase Jón’s horribleness. Anna sulked sometimes and snapped at her parents, but only sometimes, and in general she was as industrious as ever. Most of her spare time she spent watching Jón, and she witnessed his horribleness with glee, for surely this would be the year where their benefactor realized his mistake and brought justice to their doorsteps.
When December came again, Anna set out her shoe confident in the knowledge that Jón would receive ashes, lumps of coal, perhaps a switch. Other bad children received ashes. Jón was not good. He would too.
But it was not so. The next morning Jón received a large sack of salted fish and pretzels and tangerines and cinnamon cookies, and Anna received a shoeful of ash.
This was too much for Anna. The injustice of it made her cry and wail. Had she not helped Helgi Georgsdottir with the new baby? Had she not been quick and smiling the whole year, and only sulked a little? And Jón, who did nothing, and sulked a thousand times worse than she, had received better and more? So the next day, she packed a small bag and went up into the mountains to search for the one responsible.
It was a dangerous path, and unwise to undertake alone as the light was short and the nights deadly cold, but Anna could not abide this injustice any longer.
She walked until her breathing came fast and hard, winding through the gray craggy peaks, and at last, when she was sure she would have to turn back before the sun went down and she lost her way, she happened upon a small cave next to a brook. There was a man in the cave. The man was very tall and dark. So tall, he had to fold his stick-thin legs and arms around himself so that he would fit. She walked up to him and poked him and asked: “Are you the one who fills the shoes every year?”
He opened one glassy eye and looked at her. “Yes.”
She quailed somewhat, because the voice that came from him was old and rather sly, but she would not be deterred: “You have been making mistakes these last three years. You have been giving Jón Einarsson jewels and pretzels, far more than anyone else, even more than the good children, and he has been dreadful. And this year, I, who have been very good indeed, received only ash.”
The tall man opened his other eye and looked at Anna sharply. “Yes.”
“Well, it’s not fair! He has been bad! I have been good!”
“Oh? Did you not receive a lovely shoe the last few years, every year but this one?”
“Yes, but- ”
“And was it not full of raisins and gingerbread and good things?”
“Jón is bad! You gave him diamonds!”
“And you think that makes me unfair? Jón received many pretzels, yes, so many he got a stomachache and was sick for all of December. And he received jewels, it is true, so many that his parents fought and are very bitter now. And he was greedy, and it will do him no good in later life when he thinks that this is the way things will always be. A bad man will be his own unmaking, whether he is dressed in silk or rags.”
He paused, staring at her very darkly. “And a false little girl will be her own unmaking too. Was your shoe not full of just enough lovely things that you were not ill? You had everything you needed.” The tall man extended a finger at her. “And yet you were far too busy looking at Jón’s diamonds to be happy. If you want more, be as wicked as Jón, but do not be surprised when your wickedness turns and bites your foolish hand.”
And then the tall man closed both his eyes again and did not speak another word.
Anna shivered then. The sun was going down outside. A cold wind was whistling around the mouth of the cave. She felt afraid, and she ran, ran, ran and became very lost and very tired. Night fell. And when at last she saw the lights of her village twinkling through the snow, she was cold to her bones and covered in frost. She came to her house and burst in, and her parents, sick with worry, sat her by the fire. She did not speak a word, but looked around her as her fingers thawed, and she saw that the cottage was warm and the fire stoked and the curtains drawn against the wind and snow outside, and her parents were cheery and red-cheeked with relief, and her shoe was full of ashes but she did not care. Tomorrow she would mix the ashes with grease and make pencils.
As for Jón Einarsson he died of liver failure and was thrown into the sea.
Clara and the Djinni
Clara Jane Cow was an unfortunate name for a child. But it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Her great-great-grandfather had come across the sea in a creaky boat from Lithuania, and in Lithuania ‘Cow’ was a fairly common name. It meant ’tiller of black soil’ and was properly pronounced Gov. The problem was, no one in North Carolina knew that.
When the first letter for the great-great-grandfather arrived, from his dear old mother in the steppe, the postmaster took one look at the envelope and laughed so loud that the birds were startled from their roost under the post-office roof and the rafters dropped dust into his wide-open mouth. The news spread like wildfire, because of course when someone laughs everyone wants to know why, and before anyone even had the chance to meet Yigur Cow and learn the truth about his surname, the whole town had made up its mind.
Yigur Cow was one of those loping, good-hearted men who expect other people to be the same, and so when folk at the general store or by the hitching posts shouted after him, “Hey! Hey, Mr. Cow!”, he thought they were simply being very friendly and chalked up their terrible pronunciation to inferior schooling. He never quite realized what the problem was, and nor did his wife. But their children did. And their children’s children did. And now it was Clara Jane’s turn to notice.
If, in the past eight years of her life, things had been different, if she had been born into a family that was not named Cow, if she had a regular, pointless name like Wheeler or Charleston, if the other children at the little school by the brook had not teased her, if she had not climbed up into the hayloft of the Cow barn and cried until she couldn’t stop, well then, she may never have found the djinni. But she did, and so it happened.
*
The djinni was kept in a small, regular-looking wooden box – it might once have been a sewing box – shiny, and worn smooth from a hundred years of leathery, lye-soaked fingers. The wood was dark, almost black, with shades of cherry just peeking through where the varnish still clung. There was a keyhole, and no key.
Clara Jane had no idea it was there. She was having a good cry. She was rolling about, mourning the day of her birth, and the hayloft being what it was, scratchy stalks of dry grass were getting into Clara’s dress and makingher cry more; it was as if the straw were in league with the horrid children at school, as if everything, the very universe, were conspiring against her.
She stood up after a bit and began to pace, still sobbing, and after another while a particularly harsh stab of sadness and shame overtook her and she threw herself down in a comfortable-looking heap of hay. . . . and landed on the djinni’s box. Right on the corner.
She sprang back up with an indignant cry, because now she was sure the world was simply one great cruel thing that would not even let her weep without hurting her. She spun to look at the heap of hay, rubbing her back where the box had bit into it.
She saw the djinni’s box. Just the corner, dark and silent, poking out from among the gold and dull green of the hay. . .
*
I will tell you right now that this is not a wishing story. It is not the sort of story where you know what will happen, and where you can nod wisely as all of Clara’s wishes go terribly wrong and think how she really should have been more content, because who cares what your name is anyway?
Clara Jane cared, for one. She cared a lot. And there was no one who could have told her it was not a bad thing to be called Clara Jane Cow without her spinning about and laughing loudly in his face, and then punching it, too. It is bad, she would say. You try it.
No, this is the story of a girl, and a djinni who had run out of wishes.
*
The djinni had a silky voice, like ink and oil, and as it stood there, hovering, its lower extremities tapering into shadow, it eyed Clara. It was dark and vaguely boy-shaped, and though it was constantly shifting, a thousand strands of night and starlight, it was not frightening.
Mostly because it looked terribly depressed and morose. It practically dripped self-pity.
“I suppose you want a wish,” the djinni said, and Clara Jane’s mouth dropped open. She wasn’t surprised that it spoke. Djinni’s were supposed to speak. She was surprised that it was such a stingy, grotty djinni.
“Aren’t you supposed to give three wishes?” she asked.
In her mind, she added that to the long list of injustices her life had seen. A wish, not three, like in every fairy story she had ever heard.
“Oh, I would if I could, but someone else used them all up. So in fact, you can’t have any. But I thought I’d ask, for politeness sake.” The djinni sighed, its chin coming to rest on its shadowy chest. Apparently it was done eying Clara.
“So, I can’t wish for anything?”
Another mark on the tally.
“You can, if you fancy to, but I’m not sure it will do any good.”
Clara felt a sob creeping up again, all the hot, bitter tears that had not fallen yet rushing up again. They were not for the defective genie and its lack of wish-granting, no, but she had not been anywhere close to being done crying before. This encounter seemed only to highlight the plight of her life.
She took several quick, gasping breaths. She couldn’t very well cry now, with this sad-looking creature hovering about, watching her. She wanted it to go away. She picked little bit of hay nervously from her dress.
The djinni lifted its head partway and eyed her again. Then it raised one finger and asked politely: “I could not help but overhear your wailing. These walls aren’t what they used to be.” It tapped the dented old sewing box with one inky strand of leg. “Why were you crying?”
Clara Jane’s gaze turned sharp. If she told him why she was crying, she would have to tell the djinni her name, and then it would probably laugh.
“I wasn’t crying,” she said, and frowned. “I was singing.”
The djinni dipped its head agreeably and sank back into the box. “Oh, pardon me. What a striking voice you have. Are you going to wish for something? You might as well. I can’t give you anything, but perhaps it will make you feel better. Go ahead, give it a try. If I could grant wishes, what would you ask for?”
The djinni spoke in a slow, drippy voice, never sounding as though it were terribly interested in the answers she might give.
Clara thought for a moment. What would she wish for, if she were not the unluckiest girl in all the world? Many things. A new name. A new face. A new house, far, far away from here.
“You’re grinding your teeth,” the djinn observed, turning its head aside to stare tragically at a beam of sunlight.
Clara stopped. She took a step toward the djinn.
“Do you want to know? I’ll tell you then. I will. I would wish for you to hang Johnny Traverse from the rafters until his head burst, and I would want you to eat up Sara Prigg, and then I would want you to pinch the teacher black and blue because it’s her fault, too. She could stop them, and she never does.”
“That’s very gruesome. What a gruesome child you are.”
“Well, you can’t do any of it anyway. What sort of djinni are you if you can’t grant wishes?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself the same thing recently. A lousy one, I suppose.” The djinni gave an expansive sigh and curled into a ball. “I can tell stories, though. That’s something.”
Clara turned away angrily. “I don’t want to be told stories.”
“They’re very good stories,” the djinni mumbled, curling into a tighter ball. “I’ve been told they are. Young Henry VIII liked them, at least. . .”
“About what?” Clara said despondently and sat down heavily in the hay next to the box.
“Oh, everything. Everyone I’ve ever met. You know, Solomon, Caesar Augustus. . . . I’m thousands of years old.”
“So why can’t you grant wishes!”
“Because it’s difficult, and I’m all out!” the djinni snapped. And then it deflated again. “That’s why. What sort of story would you like to hear?”
“I don’t know. One that isn’t boring.”
The djinn’s eyes widened slowly, dull and milky. “I’ve never heard a boring story in my life.”
“Well, go on, then.”
The djinni dropped its voice low and began to tell a tale. It started very boring, Clara thought. There were endless-long sentences about the sky and the color of the tiles in a courtyard, and the sound someone’s voice made when it rose, and the colors some improbably perfect girl’s hair took on when when the light changed. (So many colors – crimson, chestnut, auburn. Clara did not think it possible that one person’s head of hair could change so often without the help of wigs or dye, but the djinni sounded quite convinced).
Clara Jane yawned expansively which threw the djinni off for a moment.
But then there came a line, just one sentence, and suddenly Clara was listening. The line was about the main character of the story, the improbably perfect girl. She had been kidnapped from her parent’s home and taken far away, and while Clara had instinctively disliked her a second ago, that line came and went, and Clara found herself interested, almost despite herself.
The line was this: but Esmerelda did not want to be betrothed to the horrid Jezra, the shifter, the poison-slinger, and nor indeed did she wish to leave her beautiful home forever, and so she fled to the highest tower of Jezra’s castle and tried to think of a way in which she could dodge her fate.
*
Clara Jane Cow was, as usual, very frightened when she went to school the next day. She dreaded it most awfully on her way down the rutted road. She practically shook all the way through class. And yet, somehow, it was not quite so bad as the day before, and the day before that. Now, when the teacher rang the bell and the children spilled like roaches out of the schoolhouse, Clara went and sat by the brook and thought lengthily about the girl Esmerelda and how she would escape the wicked monster Jezra, to whom she was to be betrothed. (Clara didn’t know what ‘betrothed’ meant exactly, but it was clearly an awful thing.) And as soon as the teacher dismissed the class, Clara sprang up and ran all the way home, and it was not that she did not hear the screams and taunts of the other children, because she did, but they were not all she heard today. There was something else now, and it was almost as important.
As soon as she was back at the farm, she threw her books down on the porch and climbed the creaking ladder to the hayloft, and opened the djinni’s box and listened in the dark as it spun Esmerelda’s tale, on and on, the strands of it floating into her mind, and deeper. Clara’s mother came and poked her head through the barn-door, but all she heard was Clara’s quiet breathing and an occasional laugh, and a very soft voice which may have been Clara’s own, whispering. When Clara came down she was very happy.
*
The djinni continued Esmerelda’s story for one hour every evening after school, and not a word more, though Clara begged for more and tried to bribe the djinn with gingersnaps and apples. (To no avail.) The story went on and on, and Esmerelda got into an alarming amount of trouble for one person, but she was clever and brave, and she usually found a way out of it again.
As for Clara and the djinni, they could not help but become quite good friends, though the djinni was still very sad over the fact that he could not grant wishes.
“You know, it’s not the same, telling stories. Not the same as giving people castles or one hundred fire-breathing camels. I’ve come down the world, really, absolutely sunk.”
And Clara looked at the djinni from where she was resting her head on her hands and smiled.
She didn’t say it, because she didn’t quite know how, but her smile said, It’s almost the same as granting wishes. In fact, maybe it’s better.
*
Esmerelda finally escaped the clutches of Jezra and was promptly captured by thieves. Clara was both inconsolable and jubilant at the same time.
Clara’s parents decided, in a doting way, that she was slightly mad. Her peers, in a less doting way, decided she was tedious and insufferable. She cared not at all for either opinion.
*
One day, she came home from school and scurried up the ladder, only to find all the hay gone and the dim loft full of furniture. A strange man was clattering about, setting up a brass lamp.
“The old box?” her mother said, when Clara came barreling toward her, sobbing. “Well, I threw it out! I didn’t think we’d need it. The loft is being rented now that we have the new stye.”
That was the end of the djinni. Clara looked, far and wide, as hard as she could, but she never found that old box with its shiny wooden sides and hint of cherry. She cried for many nights, convinced she would never know the end to Esmerelda’s story, whether she would escape the thieves, whether she would find her way back home, and be happy again. Clara felt she could never leave her room again, never go anywhere. What good was it, when there was no story and no silly, mournful djinni to tell it.
But eventually, when she was done crying, and her parents made her go to school again, and everything was forced to go back to normal, she climbed up into the hayloft, which was now full of a furniture, and sat down, and thought of Esmerelda and the thieves. She began to speak, softly:
The thieves lived in a cave, in the heart of a mountain made of bones, and that was where they took Esmerelda, though she fought them with all her might. . .
It was not the same as when the djinni spoke. She was worried she would get it wrong. But after a while she realized she couldn’t get it wrong, even if she tried. It was her story now, and she could make it any way she pleased.
*
Clara Jane Cow never changed her last name. And people never stopped laughing at it, not even when she was eighty-nine years old, living in a mustard-y old house in the middle of a cornfield. But when they did laugh, she would simply stare at them, and then she would go away through her rooms full of books, and while you would never see, you could hear a silky, oily voice telling the most marvelous stories you ever heard.
“And one day, Esmerelda rounded the last bend and climbed the last hill, and was home. . .”
*
(Curator’s note: Cow does not mean ’tiller of black soil’ in Lithuanian nor is it properly pronounced ‘Gov’, but as this tale was dredged up from the bottom of a well, some parts were ineligible and could not be precisely deciphered.)
Little Doors of Blood and Bone
The first thing Ida unlocked was the cat.
The cat’s keyhole was on its breast, a few inches under the chin. It squirmed hard when she held it, but once she thrust the old iron key inside, it went quite still.
A little door made of fur and bone swung open.
What was inside? Not bone and blood and beating heart, as Ida had thought. Bone and blood were there, of course, but were not what this key revealed.
Instead, when Ida peered inside the little door, she saw a blue flame, teased and roused by a silky wind that swirled around it, smelling of smoke and sunbeam-dust. As Ida’s peering face blocked the bone-and-fur door, the wind withdrew, and the flame sank almost to nothing. Scattered around its embers were sharp, curving things—fangs, or claws, or both—and the tiny bones of birds.
Ida closed and locked the cat’s chest. It leaped away without looking back.
All this happened a good while ago, back when your grandma’s mother was a girl. Times were hard then, hard enough that a young girl worked after school in an old folks’ home, sweeping floors and serving mush to help her parents pay the rent. That was Ida. She wasn’t afraid of work, or of very much else.
In that old folk’s home was a woman named Mae, who had not said a word as long as Ida had worked there. She was thin as paper, with hollow eyes and frizzy gray hair, and she rocked back and forth in her bed, smiling to herself. After a while, Ida stopped noticing her, only set the bowl of mush on her bedside table and picked it up, usually untasted, half an hour later.
But one night, when Ida reached for the bowl, a papery brown claw snapped around her wrist. She looked up.
“I see your lock, little miss,” the old woman hissed. Her black eyes had some old fire in them. “I have the key, and you can’t hide nothing from me!”
Ida tried to pull away, but Mae’s long yellow nails dug into her wrist. In her other thin hand, she held up an old iron key.
“This . . .” Mae began. She stopped, wracked by a violent cough. “This!” she said, and her eyes glowed, looking at the key. Then, “This,” she said a third time, and now her eyes, still on the key, clouded over with fear and despair. Round, sticky tears rolled slowly down Mae’s face.
“You take it now,” she said to Ida. “I don’t,—“ she coughed. “I don’t . . . I don’t want it any more! Take it, please, take it from me now!” Her voice climbed, frantic.
Ida put the key in her pocket, more to get it out of the woman’s sight than anything else. Mae turned over in her bed, back to Ida, her bony shoulders shaking silently.
It was busy that day at the home, and Ida forgot about the key until she was walking home. Slipping a chilly hand into her apron pocket for warmth, she felt cold iron.
And with the her hand on that iron, everything looked different. At first she couldn’t tell how everything looked different, only she saw that it did. But in a second or two, she saw.
When she had her hand on the key, everything had a lock. Not just doors and mailboxes, but everything. The trees had locks, and so did each schoolbook under her arm. The postman who tipped his cap at her in friendly hello—he had a keyhole lock in the side of his face. So did the woman driving by in an automobile — her keyhole was right in the middle of her forehead.
Ida took her hand off the key. Everything looked normal again.
She put her hand back, and saw, she saw, that even every flower had a tiny lock on its stem. And ever person around her, all of them were locked up tight.
And, as Ida realized: she had the key.
As soon as she got home, she unlocked the cat. After she’d had her look, and the cat had fled, she tried unlocking a book. Books were expensive, but Ida loved to read, and over years of birthdays and Christmases she had carefully collected a whole shelf full. She brought the key to the shelf, and selected a favorite old story to unlock.
Inside, she found dead flowers, and a broken sea shell, and the faintest seagull cry. That was nice.
In another, she found an old candy wrapper, and wet tea bags, and a sigh that touched her skin with a breath as cold and moist as a ghost’s. She locked that one back up quickly.
In a third, she found a tipped-over bottle of blood-red ink, a pile of rusting iron nails, and a small gray bird with a little black cap, still and dead, one onyx-bead eye wide open and staring at her.
Ida snapped the little door shut and locked it, and didn’t unlock any more books.
Instead, she went outside to a tall, broad cottonwood tree, walking around it until she found the keyhole buried in the deep creases of its trunk. At first she thought she’d found a diamond inside—but then she saw it was sunlight shining through a single large dewdrop, even though the sun had already sunk below the horizon. All around the sun-water jewel were chanting voices, rising and falling on vowels of a language Ida did not know.
Ida listened to the lovely music for a while, until her mother called her to dinner.
At the table, over a very small chicken and very large bowl of potatoes, her father asked how her day had been. His voice was kind, but his eyes were tired and distracted. Ida could not help but notice, when he stretched out his hand for more potatoes, pulling his shirt askew, that there was a rusting keyhole in his chest.
Her mother put dinner on the table without much talk at all, and at one point put her face into her palms and squeezed them hard against her eyes.
“Honey . . . ” said her father.
Her mother interrupted him. “It’s all right, forget it,” she said.
Ida saw that her mother had a keyhole in her throat, just above her collar bone.
That night, when she heard their breaths turn to long, slow sighs, she crept into their room with a flashlight to see what she could see.
Delicately, she pulled back her father’s pajama shirt and fitted the key in. His skin gleamed under the bright moonlight. Inside him, she found a blue jay’s feather, sky-blue streaked with midnight. Beside it were the scattered seeds of a dandelion that someone’s blown to make a wish.
The third thing inside her father was a locked metal box, that you might keep files or money in. It was dented as if it had been pummeled with fists or heels, but it was still locked, and even Ida’s magic key did not work in it.
The feather and wishing-seeds and locked metal box made Ida sad, though she couldn’t say why. She locked her father back up, and moved to her mother.
Inside her mother, Ida found dead grass folded into the shape of a St Brigid’s Cross, and a violet hair ribbon tied in a tight knot, and a glass fishbowl full of murky green water, too clouded and filthy to keep any fish alive.
This made Ida sad as well, more sad than she could say, so she closed her sleeping mother back up and went back to her own bed, key still in her hand, and cried a little. She wished that terrible, crazy Mae had never given her the key. She was hugging herself and sniffling, face buried in the pillow, key still in her left hand, when with her right hand she felt something just over her left shoulder.
Something hard. Something metal.
A keyhole.
She stopped crying. She sat up, key in hand.
She thought very hard, very hard indeed. She thought of the dewdrop sparkle and chanting sun of the tree; and the little dead bird; and the thick, green, fishless water.
Ida did not turn her own lock that night, and Ida didn’t sleep.
When dawn came, she slipped out of the house in the gray light, key in her pocket. She half-ran all the way to the nursing home, jiggered the back door where the lock was loose, and slipped in. In seconds, she had crept into the room of mad old Mae.
Mae was sprawled in her bed, muttering in her sleep. Her keyhole was just below her collarbone, a little to the left. Careful and silent, Ida slipped the key in and peered inside.
Inside the old woman, the dawn lit up a dusty space as empty and hollow as the inside of a doll.
“It all came out,” Mae whispered. She had not moved, but her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, bright and mad. “See? I opened myself up, and it all came out, and rolled and ran and flew and drained away.“ She laughed, a high, unhappy laugh. “I’m empty now. It’s all gone, it’s all gone, all gone.” She laughed her mad laugh over and over.
Mae’s roommate was awake and crying. Nurses and orderlies were calling each other in the hall to come.
Ida slipped out the window and ran.
She ran. She ran not home, but in the opposite direction, as far as she could. She ran till the sun was high, ran through the farms and pastures surrounding her little town. She ran until she came to an empty field; no cows, no crops, no wildflowers, even, nothing but dirt and scrub. She dug, then, using sticks and her own hot, sweating fingers. She dug as deep as could, pulling out rocks as she went, ignoring their keyholes. Then she put the key at the bottom of the hole, piled rocks on top of it, filled it with dirt, and walked home.
When she came in after being gone that whole long day, her mother exclaimed and shouted and hugged her and cried. Ida didn’t mind the shouting. She only hugged her mother, and said “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over.
But she was not apologizing for what her mother thought she was apologizing for.
So years passed, and more years passed. Ida grew up, then Ida grew old, then Ida died.
Meanwhile, the rocks of the earth didn’t want the key. They pushed it slowly up and up, back near the surface of the earth.
And meanwhile, a builder bought the scrubby field and covered it with brand-new houses. During the building, many a tractor and backhoe only barely missed digging up that old iron key. Soon the scrubby field had become a new neighborhood. Years passed, and it became a somewhat older neighborhood.
It became your neighborhood, in fact.
And in the backyard of a house in that neighborhood, the key still lays there, just under the surface of the ground—buried so shallow, a dog could dig it up.
It’s buried in your backyard, in fact.
That’s why I’m telling you this story today. Just in case you find that key.
I’m not going to tell you what to do with it, if you find it–if your dog digs it up, or you dig it up, or the earth casts it up at your feet.
I just thought you ought to know.