Juniper & Thorn

by Ava Reid

But even we were warned never to touch the juniper tree, which bore berries of the most dangerous variety: both poisonous and sweet. Whatever sick thing was in them, we could not be inured to it.

You should know, of course, that there are only two kinds of mothers in stories, and if you are a mother, you are either wicked or you are dead.

Undine discovered her magic, and our father dug her a scrying pool. Rose discovered her magic, and our father planted her a garden. I was nine and still chewed on my knuckles at night.

But there’s hardly anything in life worth doing that doesn’t make somebody angry.

“Well, you’re my first secret then, my first lie. Does that please you?” “Only if it pleases you.”

“I think I would regret it deeply, if I died at dawn knowing it’s been so long since you’ve seen the ocean. Won’t you let a rude intruder show you your own sea?” And selfishly, like a feather-veiled maiden, I did.

You think he wants some mute little china doll to cook his meals and wash his sheets? No. He wants daughters with teeth. The hurting is the point.

Maybe it wasn’t cruelty Undine had chosen, just the truth, as mean and banal as it was. And maybe I hadn’t picked kindness at all. Maybe I’d just shut my eyes and sat as still and silent as one of the women at the cotton looms, face made sallow by the factory lights, waiting for the machine to teach me what to do with my hands.

My eldest sister was right; I would smile blithely if someone tried to saw off my leg. But no one had ever told me that I was allowed to scream.

I wanted someone to write it down like a story in Papa’s codex so I could know what lesson there was to be learned.

And what was a story except a berry you ate over and over again, until your lips and tongue were red and every word you spoke was poison?

In the mirror, I watched my own shuddering metamorphosis as my reflection warped and cringed and bloomed, all in the span of seconds. I watched black scales pattern my naked belly and cover my bitten breasts. I watched my lips part, redder than red, my forked tongue lashing over rows of blade-sharp teeth. I watched the truth unfold before me, just like the wings that spread from my back.

If you ever loved me, it was only because I was a soft thing you threw down into the bottom of a pit to break your fall.”

The most banal thing of all was this: my father lived.