Juniper & Thorn

by Ava Reid

I didn’t remember making the filling, but I must have—no

I couldn’t remember pouring it for myself, but I must have.

stuck two fingers down my throat, and vomited.

Let her never fall in love.

you are a mother, you are either wicked or you are dead.

I could hardly imagine having a witch as a mother. It would have been so dangerous!

and your daughters will always appear to you like nettlesome strangers.”

Wait for your Ivan, dear Marlinchen.

The mirror that never lies was covered over with pale cloth.

Maybe father lyinv

long after my sisters had lost interest in her, like she was a darling kitten that had grown into an ordinary and ill-tempered cat.

dark red drop

with a filling that I could not remember making.

Magic was always like that: it had ugly undersides. Wanting anything was a trap.

The fullness of my belly was unbearable, but with two fingers jabbed down my throat I could make it all vanish,

I tasted all three of our names, tangy and sharp as a bite of bloody meat. That was the flavor of wet gold.

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

“There are three Ms. Vashchenkos, and only one of them is me.

I visited upon myself one small violence after another,

sometimes I even felt myself go slick under the sheets.

I could not remember the last time I’d been part of something so warm.

that I often thought of my body the same way: uncouth, deserving of debasement.

Besides, how can anyone be entertained when the ending is so obvious? Of course the Dragon-Tsar will fall. Of course Ivan will win the tsarevna’s hand.”

from the desires that would doom us both, even if they were only mine.

it’s closer to the truth. People are resentful and cruel and desirous.”

how could he stand to be so near to me? Wasn’t he scared that whatever I was would catch?

Inside, when I did eat, I was usually wracked with panic, wondering when and where I would throw it up afterward. The kumys went down as easily as water.

A strange memory inhabited me; it possessed me like a ghost.

mothers were either wicked or they were dead. He frowned and told me that his mother was neither.

If they have daughters, it is generally a sign that something will go wrong. Daughters usually have a bad time in stories,

Witch, swan, girl. Witch-swan-girl.

And because she didn’t know what a bad thing it is to be a mother in a story (and did not know she was in a story at all),

And, because this is a story, the tsaritsa took one look at her daughter, smiled, and then died.

(if a mother is dead, she is allowed to be kind).

and a father has the right to kill his sons and eat them, if he so desires.”

I had gone out of the house alone and come back the same. My lie had not transformed me. Oblya had not sullied me.

But I felt somehow that my jaunt had caused this.

Undine had already chosen cruelty, and Rose had chosen cleverness. What else was left for me but kindness?

Third daughters always got the last pick of everything.

“I found it in the cellar. You must have made it. Don’t you remember?”

What is this random food and drink appearing about?

nothing that would sit in my belly with too much unbearable weight.

that sand was Sevas, my first secret, my first lie, safe as death. I brought the glass to my mouth and drank.

a glass container with filling for varenyky I could not remember making.

Again

The stories tended to give you three chances for these sorts of things.

Ordinarily I watched Papa eat with miserable, guilt-ridden envy, wishing I could allow myself such rich foods, and then chastising myself for my own ugly, indecent desires. Now I felt very little

Three secrets, three lies. Threes and threes and threes,

A hasty, reckless lie

his plate half-finished,

As if my body remembered something that my mind did not.

whispered to Sevas, “I didn’t know—how could I know—”

I recognized the gesture: tenderness and cruelty both.