‘If I should die, bury me beneath the juniper tree.’
Her husband, startled by her turn of thought, but certain he would not have to fulfil his vow in the near future, agreed.
The child killed her. The daughter, pale-skinned, streaked with her mother’s blood, was handed to her father, who held the child tightly and named her Simah. The juniper tree flourished, new blossoms bursting forth, fed by the wife’s fertilising form.
The man was rich, and loved his little daughter, but he was lonely. A warm bed and an obliging, soft body were the only things on his mind. When Simah was five, he took a new wife.
Second Wife had a child of her own, a daughter not much older than the widower’s little girl. Second Wife loved her daughter with all her heart and vowed she would love her stepdaughter just as well. She did try (in her heart she knew she had tried), but every time her husband slighted her daughter in favour of his, it grew a little harder. Each snub was a prick and her heart soon became a pincushion of jealousy. She beganto take her hurt out on his child, in tiny ways at first, then in larger, more bruising ones.
Simah understood only that her presence angered her stepmother. She grew quieter, tried to shrink so as not to attract the woman’s ire. Without conscious thought she began to dim, to fade, until she was a tiny voice that seldom spoke. She would light up only when her father came home or when she played with her stepsister. On the worst days, she fled to the back garden and hid in the branches of the juniper tree, eating its berries, her face turned to the sun and the wind, taking in for a short while the breath of a place where she was welcome.
Second Wife’s girl, Marlechina, was fond of her stepsister, and tried her best to protect Simah from the worst of Second Wife’s temper. She watched as her mother grew into someone she did not fully recognise. When Simah entered the room it was as if Second Wife darkened. Marlechina did what she could but, ultimately, she was a little girl, no match for the dark worm that curled inside her mother.
When her father was away, Simah was fed less than Marlechina; her clothes became old and worn in spite of her father’s wealth; no new toys became Simah’s while Marlechina’s collection spilled from her room like a flood.
Simah’s father loved her in the casual way men love their daughters, affection without attention. And her father, as fathers are apt to be, was blind when it came to his wife. The domestic sphere troubled him not at all – as long as his belly was sated with tasty foods and his bed was filled with an agreeable softness, he did not worry about what happened in his own house.
On one of his trips, the husband sent gifts home ahead of his arrival. A large box arrived. Inside it, Second Wife found a beautiful necklace for herself, a pretty ring for Marlechina, and for Simah, ribbons and the biggest doll any of them had ever seen. It was almost as big as the little girl and looked enough like her to be a sister, with dark curls and huge blue eyes.
The children held their gifts happily and Second Wife looked, the one to the other. All she saw was the size of Simah’s gift compared to that of Marlechina’s – she did not weigh up the value or even consider that her husband had thought carefully in order to give his stepdaughter a gift she would treasure. She saw it as yet another snub. As she seethed, her own daughter spoke: ‘Mother, may I have an apple?’
‘Yes, in the trunk over there,’ she answered. Simah, glancing shyly over the top of her enormous doll, risked a tentative request.
‘Mother, may I also have an apple?’
Second Wife turned on the little girl, a refusal at her lips, then paused and nodded. Simah followed her stepsister to the trunk. The woman shadowed her.
Marlechina drew an apple from the trunk and skipped outside to watch the sun shimmer across the red stones of her ring. Simah leaned into the great trunk to reach one of the rosy red apples lying at its bottom. Second Wife grasped the lid of the trunk with both hands and slammed it closed.
The child’s body dropped slowly to the floor outside the trunk, now as still as the giant doll. The woman opened the lid and stared at the child’s severed head. Blue eyes reproached her.
Shaking, Second Wife picked up the body and sat it at the table, then plucked the head from the trunk by its dark curls. Using a long purple scarf, she wrapped the neck tightly so the head appeared to be connected. Only a little blood escaped from beneath the silk. Second Wife hid in the parlour to watch what might happen.
Marlechina skipped inside. She looked at Simah so still and pale at the table, her doll lying on the floor beside her.
‘Sister, may I play with your doll?’ Receiving no reply, Marlechina gently shook her sister, which provoked nothing but a head wobble.
‘Sister, I would play with your doll.’ Once again, she received no reply and she frowned at her sister’s unusual perversity.
‘Simah, answer me! I wish to play with your doll!’ She reached out and violently shook the little girl’s shoulder. This produced a more startling reaction – Simah’s head rolled from her shoulders like a pumpkin dislodged from a windowsill.
Marlechina screamed, and her mother, watching from the parlour, charged into the room, demanding to know what had happened. Marlechina wept as she blurted out the story. The mother looked at the sad little body and its severed head and began to weep. Second Wife steeled herself – she was, after all, a woman who had decapitated a child.
‘No one must know what you did, Marlechina,’ she said. Marlechina shrank, fear and guilt frosting her veins. ‘Get me the biggest pot in the pantry. I will put this to rights.’
Second Wife cooked her stepdaughter; she made a lovely stew, with plenty of vegetables and a thick brown sauce. Someof the meat she kept aside, to hang later in the smokehouse to dry. Marlechina stood beside her mother, weeping. Her tears fell into the pot, the salt of her grief seasoning the dish.
When the meat had boiled from Simah’s tiny frame, Marlechina took the bones and wrapped them in a cloth. She carried the sad little bundle and the doll to the back garden. She hid them under a thick pile of leaves at the base of the juniper tree, and ran back inside. She did not see the earth move and shift, the doll and the bones sliding into the dirt as if swallowed, taken to a place of safety.
The husband returned, his belly growling as the odour of cooked meat filled his nostrils. Second Wife piled the plate high with tender flesh and he ate ravenously, not noticing that his wife and stepdaughter did not touch the dish, nor that his own child was nowhere in sight. He ate and ate; the more he had the more he wanted and soon the large pot was empty.
When he finally pushed back his plate he looked for Simah.
‘Where’s my daughter?’ he asked, picking slivers of meat from his teeth. Second Wife looked meaningfully at her own child, and he shook his head. ‘My own daughter.’
‘She has gone,’ said Second Wife, her voice rough. ‘Gone to visit her mother’s sister; she wanted to see her aunt.’
The father grunted, disappointed and disapproving that his daughter had left without his permission, though a stronger imperative had begun to take hold. His belly filled with forbidden meat, he now eyed his wife’s sweetly curved flesh.
