He sent Marlechina to her bed and, almost before she disappeared from the dining room, he was on his wife as if he would eat her, too. Plates and pot were thrown aside ashe lodged himself firmly within her. Second Wife thought her happiness complete.
The woman grew round.
When her husband was home from his travels, she would draw his hand to her swelling belly and run it over the taut skin. She was kinder to her own daughter, gentle as she watched guilt swim in the child’s eyes and dark shadows grow beneath them.
But she did not say, It was me.
She found herself thinking of the dead child as she rubbed her belly, blinking away tears and wishing things had been different.
Marlechina thought of her stepsister often. One morning as she played beneath the juniper tree, she heard the most marvellous song. Looking up, she spied a magnificent bird, plumed red and blue and gold. The bird sang and its notes began to sound like words:
My mother she killed me,
My father he ate me,
My sister she hid me,
Now my bones lie beneath the juniper tree.
A shower of colour fell towards Marlechina. She reached out, grasped the rainbow, and found coloured ribbons in her hand. The silk shone, glowing like gems in the sunlight. She looked up again but the bird was gone, only the ribbons in her fingers and the memory of its words remained.
She knew now that she hadn’t killed her sister. She knew now that her mother had done it. And she didn’t know what to do. She could only watch.
The father, returning from an evening at the tavern,staggered into the yard. From behind the house he heard a song, beautiful and gloriously lonely. He made his way to the back garden and saw a wondrous bird in the juniper tree. It sang him a song like none he’d ever heard:
My mother she killed me,
My father he ate me,
My sister she hid me,
Now my bones lie beneath the juniper tree.
Alas, he didn’t understand a single word. When she had finished her serenade, she shook her beautiful head and dropped him something that flashed in the moonlight.
It was a golden chain and it held, banded in wrought gold, a small bone, like that of a child’s finger. The man took it to be a religious piece, the finger bone of a saint, a piece of jewellery picked up by the bird in its travels, stolen because it was shiny. He believed in religion, not magic. He hung the gift around his neck and looked up.
She was gone; she had seen his lack of understanding and disappeared.
Second Wife, hanging out washing, heard the song. She did not understand the words but it sounded to her like the sonorous ring of funeral bells, and it struck at her heart with its pain and beauty. She thought of her little stepdaughter, of the way her head had rolled from her shoulders, and she felt pierced. Tears came unbidden.
The bird, glorious fair, swooped down and hovered in front of the woman. It drank in her pain and her regret, her loss, and saw the empty place where Simah could have resided had jealousy not taken hold. In the bird’s beak appeared a juniperberry. Second Wife held out her hand and caught the berry as it dropped. With a flurry of feathers the bird was gone. The woman put the berry to her lips and swallowed, the bittersweet flesh and juice leaving their taste in her mouth long after the morsel was gone and she had returned to the house.
She began to crave the berries daily; they hung on the tree’s branches, tantalisingly just out of reach, purple and lush. Second Wife stood, heavy and fecund, at the base of the tree and stared upward. The tree shivered and shook, and a hail of fruit fell upon her. She dropped to her knees and began to devour the berries.
When they were gone and her mouth was rimmed purple with their juice, Second Wife raised her eyes, and the tree, sensing she still hungered, shuddered until she was once again showered with berries. This second feast sated her and she curled into the roots at the base of the tree.
The feasting became a ritual; no matter what she had eaten or how much, she craved the berries. In her final months they were all she ate, greedily sucking them into her mouth like a child at the breast, juice dripping from her chin. Gradually her hair began to darken and her eyes lost their blueness, hazing into green. Her skin, once golden, lost its colour even though she sat in the glare of the sun for hours at a time, consuming juniper berries. Her nature, once prone to blazing up, settled to a contented hum.
Marlechina watched her mother from a distance, from the windows of her attic room, fingering the ribbons in her hair, singing quietly.
She gave birth beneath the juniper tree. She’d woken in themiddle of the night, pains familiar and strangely comforting, rippling across her abdomen. From the garden she could hear – ever so faintly – the song of the bird. She slid from the bed, away from her husband’s snoring bulk, and wrapped a shawl about her shoulders. Her feet took her where her mind did not think to go, a movement without thought but necessary nonetheless.
There was no sign of the bird, but the tree welcomed her. She sank to the ground between its roots, and felt the pressure of a child anxious to enter the world. The smell of juniper berries was strong as her water broke. The child came swiftly.
Marlechina, in her attic room, woke to the sound of birdsong. She looked from the window. The white of her mother’s nightgown caught her attention and she left her room, swiftly and silently.
Second Wife looked up at her daughter and wept. She lifted the child.
