MARK KRAMARZEWSKI

TRUTH AND FIRE

I have always found honesty in the flames. The light writhes between the soft plumes of smoke and ash, performing scenes of knowledge and wisdom. It is most mornings that my eyes itch from soot and truth.

If anything truly starts, this story begins, much like the children themselves, with their mother. A thin slip of a creature, barely more than a child herself, and with no business this deep into the forest that night, nor any other. Whether it was love or duty that brought her to me, the fires did not reveal, but they did show her desperation to give her husband children. And so I was ready when she rapped on the door to my hut, despite the hour.

“No, girl. I won’t help you,” I answered from my chair and the warmth of my hearth.

“Please, my mother told me stories about you. I have nowhere else to go.” She leant, tired, against my closed door.

“Nonsense. The world is large, you have countless wheres to go.”

“Nowhere that can help me. Only you, Mother Mandrake. Please.”

If I’m honest, and before the flames I can be naught else, it was the respect in her plea that pulled me from my chair. It had been so long since someone had spoken to me with any reverence. I opened the door for her, “Come in, then. I will mix it for you.”

She paused a moment, her eyes wide, but bowed her head as she spoke. “Of course, you know already.”

“I know. I know that lump of a woodsman lays with you each night, dropping his worthless coins into your purse. Currency that can purchase no babe.”

“Oh, I assumed…”

“Of course you did. But no, the draught is for him to drink.”

I saw it then, a spark of something. More than determination or strength. I eyed her as I ground at my large stone mortar. She sat silently, but the reflection of my hearth’s light danced in her eyes. It was faint, but the fire’s power whispered in her blood.

“It will give you no happiness,” I declared, as I gave her the vial.

“Thank you, Mother Mandrake.” And with that, she fled back into the night.

My words were unkind, and inaccurate. She did have happiness, four years of it. Soon after her visit, she brought twins into the world. A boy, Henri, and a girl, Giselle. Four years of challenges, meagre suppers, fatigue, and joy. She loved her babes, and they returned that love, but she never truly recovered from the difficulties of pregnancy and labour. In the fourth year, the winter claimed her.

The woodcutter, who had struggled while she lived, floundered with her gone, and did what any fool man would do. He brought the wrong woman into his home to help him care for the children. A woman with plans to fill their beds with babes of her own, if only those beds were empty. It took her a few years and some harsh seasons, but her dark whispers slid through his ears, and one day their father took Henri and Giselle into the woods to look for berries.

Giselle told her brother that she had heard the woman scheming at night. She bade Henri to bring his sack of skimming pebbles with him. When moonlight came to the clearing and their father had not returned, they looked for their path home. It was only then Henri revealed that, jealously protective of his stones, he had instead been marking their journey with crumbs he’d gathered from the cabin floor. Crumbs that had long since been eaten by the birds of the forest.

It was another two days before my flames danced the children into my sight. By this time they were huddled together against a tree, their arms wrapped tight and numb around each other.

I flew from my hut with as much haste as my ageing limbs would allow. Dawn was teasing the sky by the time I found them. Their breaths were slow and barely made steam, but I roused them. I tempted them back to the world with barley sweets and some gingerbread I had with me, promising that and more if they could will their frozen frames to follow me. The boy sank more deeply against the trunk on an elm, sucking the sugar in his dry mouth, and I feared I’d still lose them there. But his sister met my eyes and forced herself to stand. It took three more pieces of gingerbread, but by noon I had them in front of my stove, asleep, with dribbles of mushroom soup on their chins.

Henri woke first. His widening eyes absorbed the sights of my hut, including me working my pestle against some lichen and dewberries. He scuttled backwards into a corner, knocking over a broom and bucket in his scramble. The clattering awoke his sister and she too soaked up her surroundings. She looked up at me, her chin firm against her obvious fears.

“Are you going to eat us, witch?”

I held back my smile, as it may have contradicted my denial. “No, Giselle, I’m not going to eat you.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I knew your mother. She sat where you now sit and asked for my help.”

“She’s lying!” Henri had found his voice.

“No, she’s not,” Giselle responded. “We’ve been asleep here for hours. If she wanted us for meat, we’d be meat.

“Good girl.” I allowed the smile to peek. “Now, get up. That soup is the last free meal you’ll have from me.”

“You’re going to kick us out?” Henri squeaked.

“That’d make a waste of my day, wouldn’t it?” I replied. “No, you can stay here as long as you like. I’ll house you, feed you, care for you, but you’ll work for it.”

“No,” grunted Henri. “We should go back to the clearing and find our way home.”

“Our way home?” Giselle gasped, “Father left us out there to die!”

“You don’t know that!” Henri turned his head away, unable to meet her eyes, “He could be out there looking for us right now.”

“He won’t be, Henri. I told you what I heard. That woman wants us dead and he agreed.”

Henri clutched himself with folded arms and looked down at his feet.

Giselle tuned to me. “We’ll stay, if you’ll have us.”

And that was that.

They spent the afternoon clearing out a corner of my hut and laying down some bedding, before busying themselves with the evening work that was always needed. I stayed at my stove, lost in both the flames and my own thoughts.

“I’m sorry for earlier.”

I blinked out the sparks and turned to face her. “For what, girl?”

“For being rude. For calling you a witch.”

“I’ll take the apology for the first, but you’re right about the second.”

Her eyes widened, reflecting the light of my stove. I met them, waiting for her response to my honesty.

“What should we call you?”

“I don’t know. Your mother called me Mother Mandrake when she came here.”

“I don’t think Henri will want to call you Mother… but if our mother did perhaps… Grandmother? Baba?”

“Baba. Fine.”

And again, that was that.

#

Winter left and returned, and what had started out strange had become our every day. Our home was crowded, and there was never too much, but there was enough. I was sitting by my window, wondering about the chances of an early thaw, when Giselle pressed a warm cup into my hand.

“Tea, Baba.”

“Thank you, my dear. Come, sit with me.”

She drew a stool up beside my chair.

“Wasn’t your brother supposed to sweep this morning, not you?”

She hesitated a moment. “He says it is a woman’s task. That it is better for him to do the more difficult man’s work of collecting wood or water. He’s off fetching a bucket from the stream, now.” she added, too quickly.

I snorted. Far more likely that he was asleep under our very feet, nestled in the warmth of the chicken coop caged between the short stilts of my hut. But he kept my fires well fed with more wood than I could collect without him. And his troubles were her truth to find, not mine to tell.

“Has… has the fire said anything about my father?” The look on her face reminded me how young she was.

“The flames do not speak to me, they show me things. But no, they have not shown me of your father.”

“Oh. So… it doesn’t talk?”

“Not to me.” I decided it was time. “But it speaks to you?”

She nodded. “I think it told me what father and that woman were going to do.”

“The flames give truth to those who can see it, or hear it.”

“But what good is it? We were still left in the woods.”

“That’s not the flame’s fault though, is it? You just trusted the wrong person to help you.”

“But he’s my brother.”

“Yes, but a man is less his blood and more his deeds.”

She mused for a moment. “He didn’t really believe me, that’s why he didn’t bring his precious skimming stones. I think part of him still doesn’t believe Father left us. Or at least doesn’t want to believe it.”

“That’s the thing about the truth, Giselle. You have to have the courage to stare right into it.”

“And then it can’t hurt you?”

“Oh, no. Truth is fire. It can always hurt you. But best to see it coming, no?”

I left her there and went outside to cast food to the chickens as loudly as I could.

#

More seasons came and went, and years of watching the flames finally left their mark on my sight. Much of my world was shadow now, and I relied on smell, and sound, and touch to get by, such as caraway seed being ground in my mortar or the bubbling of soup come to a boil. Even the children’s growth towards adulthood was known more to me by the thickness of the hands and wrists when I held them.

The morning chores accounted for, and once Henri was safely out on one of his long walks, Giselle joined me by the fire. As I stared into the light, she closed her eyes to listen. It had become our private communion. Today, for the first time since I took the twins into my home, the flames revealed their old cabin to us.

“He’s alone. She has left him.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Have you heard why?”

“I think… yes. She could not bear him children.”

“That’s what they thought,” I concurred. “But he could not give them to her. Not without the help your mother sought from me.”

“Oh.” She listened longer. “And then his guilt about us turned ugly and they fought and… she left.”

The fire showed me a portion more than that, of drunken rage and blackened eyes, but I spared her from it.

“And now he is alone.”

“What did you do to him, witch?” An adolescent voice shouted from the door.

We had been so caught up, we hadn’t heard Henri return.

“I knew it! You cursed him didn’t you!”

“No, Henri, it’s not like that!” Giselle ran to her brother’s side.

He shoved her to the floor and, looming over her, spat out his words. “And you, you sit at her side as she hexes your family? When she finishes with Father, am I next? So she can have you all to herself?”

“Baba loves us, Henri. She cares for us as if we were her own. Feeds us, clothes us, houses us!”

“You mean she’s trapped us. Made us slaves! I bet she made Father walk us into the woods that day!”

I should have held my tongue. Should have. “There’s no lock on this cage, boy.”

He stared at me, over his sister, then turned and fled.

Giselle watched him leave. She came to my side and took my hands in her trembling ones.

“Good luck, my child. Look after yourself.”

I felt her tears fall on my forearms, and then I was alone in the hut.

I sought solace in my hearth. The fire’s light cast away the clouded shadows on my eyes and showed the twins moving through the forest. My failing sight had kept me from seeing them clearly for over a year. They looked so much like the man and woman they would soon become. No longer small, frightened children, they worked their way through the wilderness to tamer woods and they found the old cabin that must have seemed so much smaller to them now.

They met their father as he pulled his hand wagon with his day’s lumber. All three dissolved to tears as they clung to each other. I hoped against hope and watched as they supped on broth and bread. But as the moon rose high, and their father shared some brandy with his returned son, the whispering began.

The flames showed me the tale they spun while Giselle slept. Of a witch who lured the children away from their home. Who locked them in a cage and forced them to work for her, while also fattening them for slaughter. I saw their plan to bring the village to my home, with torch, axe, and rage. They would not find me easy prey. Age had pilfered from my body, but not my mind, not my power. I turned from my hearth to begin the work.

But then a curious gust rushed down my chimney and my fire flared into hectic action. Before my eyes, the frenzied lights played out the future before me. The village men, angry and fearful, would drink in Henri’s tale. The mob would force its way through the forest towards my home as Giselle followed, pleading with her father to stop.

At my door, I saw myself standing defiantly, as I had planned, in front of the mass of ignorance and hate, ready to unleash my fury. But before I could act, Giselle would throw herself forward. She would hold herself firm in their faces and speak the truth, fearlessly. Words of rescue and of haven, a denial of capture and servitude. The crowd would turn to Henri. Caught between his father and his sister, the boy could only do the inevitable. He would call her out as a witch, her soul beshadowed by my own darkness. Despair would overcome my resolve, and I would falter as the men surged forward. I wrenched my eyes away before the flames could show her burning beside me.

For the first time in almost a century, fear infused me. Was this the future I had coming? A child burning at my side for the sin of loving me?

The flames showed the truth, and I had the courage to stare right into it. I could not fight. I could not flee. Only one thing could save Giselle. It would hurt, but before fire and truth, I would be fearless.

Before my resolve faltered, I knocked the stone guard free from the hearth. The fevered wind blew spark and ember into my home, igniting the dried herbs and old wood. The fire blazed and I gave myself to it. Through the agony, I thought of her, and how the fire spoke to her.

I willed myself to think of the future. After the flames claimed me and the pain had gone; when the wicked tales had been spun, corrupting my truth into terrible fable. I willed my spirit into the flames so it could be my voice she heard in the hiss of the oven and the pop of the embers. I would tell her I had no regrets. That I loved her. And I would help her to stare into the truth and stand before it. Fearless.

Mark Kramarzewski    ©    2024