Juniper & Thorn

by Ava Reid

My sisters were beautiful without ruse or artifice, which was my curse, really, not my father’s. My father’s curse was never to be satisfied with anything, so to him my sisters were beautiful, but not beautiful enough.

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.

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

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

It would cause me no grief to see you married off to a man with a face full of boils that spew pus in your marriage bed, or to a man who blackens his wife’s eyes for burning dinner.

People want to ruin things that are clean and new. It’s no fun stamping through old dirty snow.