Judy Budnitz - If I Told You Once

I lifted Anya, propped her outside the back door. Then I went to Baba’s bed, wrapped her brittle body in a sheet, and carried it into Anya’s room. I covered it in lace, arranged the armfuls of Anya’s red-gold hair around the head as if it grew there.

I blew out the candles. Moonlight from the one narrow window fell across Baba’s face.

The men had gathered again at the front door; they smashed their fists against it. The whole house shook. Their voices rose in unison.

I opened the door. The faces, thirty or more, filled the doorway, a single creature with many heads and countless hands. They reeked of musk and sweat and foul saliva held too long in the mouth.

Do you want to see her? I said.

They closed their mouths and nodded; I held the door open and they tramped past me. Heedlessly they stumbled into Anya’s room, pressing around the bed, all of them packing in at once.

I locked the bedroom door behind them.

Then I went outside, hoisted Anya across my back, and staggered out into the snow.

Soon we heard the screams, the blows, the breaking of glass, the splintering of wood. I tried to hasten my steps.

I had nearly reached the trees when I heard the crash of the door being broken down. Men were pouring from the house. Anya gripped my ear. I longed to fling her down in the snow and run, but she was so heavy I was rooted to the spot.

But the men did not come after us, though my tracks were clearly visible in the snow.

They were brawling with each other, hurling accusations, trampling the snow, staining the clearing with blood, beating each other with their fists. Each was accusing the other of touching the fairy-girl, as they had been warned not to do. Each blamed the others for turning their dream-woman into a rotting bag of bones and dust.

All of them held skeins of red-gold hair wrapped around their fists, or balled in their mouths.

I set out again, with Anya bouncing on my back like a sack of grain. Far away, down in the village, I saw a line of lights steadily approaching. It was the women of the village, who had finally decided to take matters into their own hands. They came carrying torches and kitchen knives, some with babies bound to their breasts. They were coming to burn out the witch, break her enchantments and end her filthy practices, and bring their husbands home.

I could hear them singing.

I walked for hours in the dark.

Near dawn I let Anya slide from my shoulder. Her skin was blotchy from the cold, her lips blue, her patchy hair disheveled. Looking at her flabby face, her piggish black nostrils, I remembered the strange desire I had once felt for her and wondered when exactly I had left it behind.

She rubbed her hands, glared at me.

I cleared a space in the snow, gathered dry sticks, lit a match. We huddled together, our breaths making clouds.

I heard a footstep and my heart froze.

A huge shape darted from among the trees, paused in the early-morning light, and squatted before our fire.

Anya gasped.

I smiled.

Ari picked at his teeth and watched us warily, crouching on his heels. He had grown a great deal in the months since I had seen him. He was broad shouldered, bulky, shaggy as a bear. His beard had begun, though he was still a child. Some clumsy past attempts at shaving had left scabs on his face. But his eyes were the same, and the curve of his spine graceful as a horse’s neck.

Oh Ari, I said. I went to him and cradled his head in my arms, stroking the stiff hair. He looked up at me, sighed, and curled his lip in the grimace that was as close as he came to a smile.

My brother, I told Anya. He can carry you, I said.

Ari’s lips were chapped and bleeding, and he licked at them hungrily. Did you escape? I asked him. Although it was obvious, from the coarse uniform he wore. The cheap army-issue boots were falling to pieces.

I tried to hold his hands. He shook me away as he always did. Then I noticed the leg iron, rusted with dried blood, on his left ankle.

Anya was watching us, fascination and disgust on her face.

I knew the soldiers would be looking for him. I had to bring him to a safe place. I knew we should have started walking right then. Ari could have taken Anya off my back. We might have gone a good distance before night.

But I fell asleep, my head pillowed on my arms.

Sometime later I struggled out of sleep to see Ari and Anya staring at each other across the fire. Ari looked at her with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, the way he looked at a new animal he had never seen before. His mouth worked; his fingers plucked at each other nervously. He ducked his head, then looked back at her and laughed. His laugh was a harsh sound, like choking.

Anya was pleased by his attention, I could tell. I could see the familiar, languid, lazy expression creep over her face. Ari held her eyes and eased slowly, fluidly closer.

Anya smiled. And then she ever so slightly loosened her coat, showed him a patch of white skin at her throat.

Ari reached out slowly to touch a stray bit of hair. She laughed nervously. And then Ari grunted, leaped, pounced. Suddenly she was splayed out in the snow. Ari had his mouth at her throat and was tearing insistently at her clothes, twisting her head this way and that, pressing and tugging at her limbs, sniffing in her ears and eyes.

He was just a child. He was only trying to see how she worked.

Anya screamed.

She screamed and screamed and would not stop screaming, not when I pulled Ari away from her, not when I slapped her face, not when the company of soldiers in their ugly brown uniforms came running stiffly through the trees, barking orders to each other and surrounding my brother with their guns.

They had been tracking my brother for two days; they had recently lost his trail but Anya’s voice led them back.

I stood and watched as my brother was taken away. The officer of the company stood beside me and barked orders. He wore tall shiny boots and carried a riding crop which he flicked impatiently against his leg. Between orders he ground his teeth; I could hear the rasp and squeak.

He sent one of his subordinates to fetch a horse and bring Anya back to the army camp. The other officers will be very glad to make her acquaintance, he said. I told him about her feet; he shrugged and said she would not need them.

I could not look at her as she was taken away. Her screams still echoed in my head. That gaping mouth.

Now I stood alone with the officer. I was not afraid of him. I could see his viciousness, it was something I understood. I had seen it before.

You should give up on my brother, I told him. He will never learn.

I’m not yet convinced of that, he said.

He’s too old, I said, he has been the way he is for too long for you to change him.

There are ways, he said.

What if there were others just like him? I said. Other ones, as big as him, and as strong, but young enough to teach the way you want.

What are you saying?

We have younger brothers, I told him. Take one of them, take all three of them, train them, and give up on Ari.

The officer chewed over the idea. I heard his teeth clicking.

What is the name of your village? he asked finally.

My village was too small to have a name.

So he said I would have to show him. He hoisted me up behind him on his horse, and we rode, to the jangling of bit and spurs, over hills and through forests, and I clung to his belt and felt immense hatred for the layer of red, bristly flesh that bulged over the collar of his uniform.

I did not know what would happen next. My younger brothers were not at all like Ari; they were ordinary, big headed, knobby kneed little boys with runny noses. I did not want to give them up to this officer. In my desperation I had been thinking only of my mother. I thought somehow that if I brought this man back to my mother, she would find a way to make everything all right. This man’s viciousness was no match for my mother’s.