Tide King (5 page)

Witches, they were sometimes called. But as long as the tinctures worked, no one became upset. They overlooked, or allowed, out of supposed generosity, Barbara Zdunk and her daughter to live in a hut of mud and river rocks and animal bones on a little patch of hill near the edge of the woods, where the ground was barren and cracked and the coyotes howled and nobody bothered but the gypsies, and only then for a little while. From their spot on the unprotected hill, Ela and her mother could see the thick ring of poplars and willows that surrounded the city below, the dense maze of terracotta-tiled roofs protected within it. When the customers were particularly foul or rude, Ela stood on the hill and squashed their houses between her thumb and forefinger.

They traveled so far west in the highlands that they passed through the forest and came upon a clearing, burned to black chalk by a lightning strike, and nothing grew in this grave save for a plant with three to four long stems, little white bouquets of flowers topping them. Burnette saxifrage. Ela remembered her mother talking about such flowers. They were part of the old folklore, when the goddesses purportedly roamed the earth. Her own mother did not pay much attention to the stories except to pass them along to the older, more superstitious villagers in order to sell them her tinctures.

“There were once three scythe-wielding goddess sisters,” she told Ela as they picked the flowers. “Who brought death. One of the sisters, Marzana, hurt her leg and lagged behind them as they moved through the towns, lusting for blood. But no matter how much she begged for them to wait, they went on without her. So she sought revenge. She limped through the villages the sisters had not yet visited and told the townsfolk to eat and drink saxifrage to protect themselves from her sisters of death. They did, and they survived.”

“Is that why these flowers survived the white heat?” Ela asked, rubbing her hand in the coarse soot. How anything had survived, had grown here after the lightning strike, she did not understand. In the past, she'd seen trees halved, rock blackened by the swords from the sky. “Marzana gave them the blessing?”

“It's not likely, the lightning, my sweet. The saxifrage is hardy, like weeds. It needs not much love to prosper.” But in truth, Barbara did not know why they grew in the dead soil or why they did not succumb to the lightning. She caressed her cheek with the petals from one of the flowers and felt a tickle, a surge down to her feet, as if the herb had captured the electricity from the strike. But when she brushed her cheek again, the sensation did not return.

“Matka, do you believe such a thing?” Ela smelled the flowers, running her thumb and forefinger down their long stems.

“Believe what?”

“In magic.”

“Of course not—but the roots and leaves we find have healing properties, some by themselves and some mixed with others. And maybe we'll be able to help Antoniusz. Would you like that, Ela?”

“I would.” Ela skipped around in a circle. “Maybe when Antoniusz is healed, you will love him?”

“Come.” Her mother Barbara gathered the herb in the apron of her skirt, and beckoned. “Time is not to waste.”

There were two men who loved Ela's mother, Bolek and Antoniusz. Bolek was sixteen, a farmer's son, one of many spit in Reszel, Poland, hard like rock and yet soft with youth, a sheep's head of blond hair that would probably thin as had his father's, eyes like river water, the brain of a squirrel. For years, he had visited Barbara, to get tinctures for his father's gout, his mother's headaches. Barbara had watched the sweetness of his boyhood, when he had fawned over Ela and confided that he wished men could have babies, shrivel into the erect swagger of manhood. And yet he could still charm them, bringing grapes and cheeses he had filched from the village, his angled jaw and easy smile reminding Ela of a jackal. When Bolek came, Ela's mother sent her outside to play far from the bone house. The first few times she heard her mother screaming, she ran home and tried to pull away Bolek, who lay on top of her mother on the straw bed, by his knobby toes.
I am feeling pain in a good way
, Ela's mother explained, shooing her away.
Because Bolek is helping me with my back
.

Antoniusz was the other man who visited. Although Ela's mother talked with Antoniusz for hours, she did not let him help with her back. A friend of Ela's father, Jan, who had died in one of Poland's many uprisings, Antoniusz still led the underground resistance. Although Ela did not understand most of it, Antoniusz and her mother often talked about the continual partitioning of Poland among the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian empires as the gentry of Poland, who favored political alliances over a strong state, sold out to the highest bidders. The resistance, mostly peasants who were tired of both sides and who yearned for freedom most of all, had survived in pockets under Antoniusz's leadership, who had too many connections in the village gentry to be killed.

But the same gentry weren't afraid to send a message to lesser men and women, especially witches, fox dung like Barbara Zdunk, and drove her off her land shortly after Jan's death. In their new home at the top of the hill, Ela's mother had collected branches, thick as wrists, and the bones of boars and bears to build the skeleton of a shelter and packed it with mud from the forest. At one end, she tunneled out a chimney, which she lined with river rocks and the bones of bats and rabbits and birds. She collected wisps of straw that had traveled outside her neighbor's barns and made a mattress for her and Ela, then a baby, to sleep.

Although he had survived the uprising through the fortune of his connections, the indifference of fate had thrown Antoniusz from his horse years later. His leg had been broken in so many places that he walked with a limp and could no longer work in the fields, forced to whittle pipes and other objects, relying on his sister's care. Barbara was convinced she could strengthen the bone, soften the scars of muscle that were his calves. After they dried the leaves and roots of the burnette saxifrage they had collected, Ela's mother seeped them in potato vodka. She added other ingredients—a Chaga mushroom tonic she had used to rid the villagers of consumption, dandelion root for liver sickness, some extracts of amber—and seeped them as well, some for a few days, others for a few weeks. Some jars grew dark and cloudy while their secrets brewed, and others stayed clear. She also set aside a second batch of ingredients Ela recognized as those her mother sold in her “love” potions to the younger women of the village.

“Are you making Antoniusz my father?” Ela asked as her mother set some unused burnette saxifrage on the window ledge to continue drying.

“Antoniusz can never replace your father, in your heart or mine.” Barbara bent toward her, brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “But perhaps we, or I, can grow our hearts larger so that there is room for Antoniusz also. Would you like that?”

“But who will help with your back, Matka?”

Her mother laughed, her head arched backward, and Ela put her hand on the creamy trunk of her mother's neck, felt the vibration of enjoyment in her throat without understanding.

“Don't be mad, little one.” Barbara grabbed both of her hands and kissed them. “My back is better. Who knows? I may not need Bolek after all.”

“I don't believe it was Bolek who helped your back, anyway.” Ela sat back on the straw, and Barbara rubbed her feet. They were little, smaller than Barbara's hands, smudged with dirt.

“You don't?” Barbara kissed a big toe. “Why not?”

“Because Bolek's too stupid. Yesterday, he even left with his shirt on backwards.”

“Well, he was in a hurry.” Her mother smiled. “There is still a war to fight, and he may not come back. Let's pray for his victory and safety.”

“Don't worry, Matka—I will protect you while Bolek is gone!” Ela took Barbara's face in her little hands, probing her eyes until Barbara looked away. Ela's eyes were the same color as Jan's, and his memory lived in them, green lichenous orbs that made Barbara shiver. Ela's hair fell heavily, like a shawl over her back, almost to her bottom, rich chestnut like a horse's mane. The memories of him flared in Barbara's gut, like sour goat's milk, his broad back, his flat hands and soft voice, the way he held her in bed, and some days burned more than others. She knew there would never be an herb for this.

“You will get married someday, to a brave soldier.” Barbara pulled away and began to straighten the bed. “And where will I be then?”

“I'll marry a king, Matka, and you can live in our castle!” Ela bounced.

“You don't really believe you will marry a king, Ela, do you?” Her mother bit her lip. “We are peasants. You and I are considered worse than that. It is enough that we are allowed to live. Do not let the fire of your pride burn a target on your back.”

“But if Poland becomes free like Antoniusz says it will, I can marry anyone I want.” Ela shook her head. “Is that not right, Matka?”

“Yes, you're a smart girl.” Barbara stood up. “You will be as wise as your father some day. Come, help me pick some horseradish for dinner—Antoniusz will come soon.”

“It is a fool's errand,” Antoniusz agreed. “For Bolek, surely, but Dąbrowski especially. Does he think Napoleon won't double-cross him again?”

“Maybe he thinks a defeated or weak Prussia is the best hope for everyone,” Ela's mother answered.

They talked of such things as Ela played with her lalka, the names of men floating around her like bright butterflies that eluded her attempts at capture. The lalka had real hair, the toymaker in Reszel who sold it to Ela's mother claimed, dark like Ela's, and its arms and legs moved as well. Ela liked it so much Barbara had bought another, a blonde with blue eyes, for her birthday the following month, and hidden it under the bed.

Ela smelled Antoniusz's pipe, the musk of cloves and tobacco, and felt happy. When he was around, she could hear her father's voice in the rustle of the forest, see his thick shoulders in his shadowed form. Antoniusz's mangled leg, thin and weak, was tucked under the stool, while his healthy, firm one lay in front of him. A low fire heated a cauldron of horseradish soup in the corner of the room.

“If Prussia goes down, Napoleon will install a French government, not a Polish one,” he argued, leaning over and coughing, his face almost in her mother's lap. It was much too crowded for three in the bone house, barely livable for two.

“The Polish Legion is his mongrel.” Antoniusz cleared his throat and sat up. “We're lucky if we get a few scraps of rotten meat out of the deal.”

“For people who do not get much meat, it is a king's ransom.” Her mother crouched before the pot. The steam reddened her cheeks, and when she turned back to Antoniusz, he smiled, blushed.

“Since you are so worried about him, maybe I will try to talk Bolek into joining the underground resistance instead of Napoleon's army under Dąbrowski.” Antoniusz rubbed the thigh of his good leg. “He will be safer with us, and fighting for our cause, not someone else's.”