Fairy Tale Review Read online

  But in my story, the girl is only nine. Her name is Little Mina and her older sister’s name is Kate.

  Kate picks up every worm on the road and throws it back into the wet grass. When the pond overflows, she collects the frogs and puts them in a box at the foot of her bed. Kate brushes her strawberry blonde hair every morning. Powders the freckles on her nose when a traveler stops for dinner. But Little Mina’s hair grows in mousy patches. It looks like it was glued on by a drunk. Their mother, who owns an inn, doesn’t like it when Little Mina interacts with the customers.

  Little Mina tells Kate that she’s killing the worms, that the worms leave the grass because they’ll drown there. Kate laughs and calls her a know-it-all. She says that it must be hard for Little Mina, not knowing who her father is and she means it. Kate’s father comes to see her every few weeks. He wears fur on his collar and his sword has a hilt that was dipped in gold.

  He brings Kate chocolate. He gives the mother flour and wine and sugar. When he hunts, he brings them an entire deer.

  He does not know about Little Mina. When he comes to the inn, the mother locks her in the cellar and tells her to hush. Little Mina draws faces on the walls. She draws maps and swans and a man with a single wing.

  But after he leaves, Kate shares her chocolate with Little Mina. They take it to the river and watch fish jump from the water. They overturn rocks and look for salamanders. When Kate finds a turquoise one, she lets Little Mina name it. She wants Little Mina to have something of her own. One day, when she sees Little Mina with the hand mirror, pulling at her strange hair, Kate cuts some of her own and says, look, now we’re like twins.

  When Kate dies—let’s call it scarlet fever—everyone wishes it had been Little Mina. They build a statue for Kate by the duck pond. At the ceremony, a little boy talks about the time Kate defended him from bullies. Another boy says Kate was his soulmate, a hero, a lady. Little Mina wears a thin black cape tied around her neck. She does not talk. The mother does not stand with her. Nobody sees her. Black is an absence.

  From the edge of the woods, the witch watches her cry.

  When your girl wakes up, her skin sticks to the motel’s bedspread. She is naked and bleeding and she thinks he might have killed her, but the cuts aren’t deep. Too bad. There is an open cigarette pack on the bedside table, and small, rough stones are spilling out the top. She holds one to her eye. A sliver of light sneaks through the closed blinds and splinters in the center of the stone. The face of it is an entire landscape. Blood curls in the canyons. She takes one and fits it into the empty sore between her breasts. My baby, she says. Her mouth is dry. Her swollen tongue sticks to the roof of it.

  If only they were bigger. Long and sharp as a knife. The mother’s boyfriend is in the bathroom. She can hear the shower running. She can see steam coming from the open door. She wills her body to grow a diamond strong enough to kill him. She rolls onto her side and the sores hurt. Her right wrist is handcuffed to the bedpost. It wasn’t like that when she went to sleep.

  She reaches for the man’s bag. There must be something left. Pills. Powder. Something sharp.

  The statue of Kate is covered with snow. Snowdrifts grow from her shoulders. Little Mina rushes across the square without looking at it, she can’t look at it. She borrows a horse from one of her mother’s guests and rides to the witch’s house. The witch lives at the base of the mountain, where the forest starts in earnest. Her walls are made of living trees. The gaps between the branches are full of birds. The roof is a piece of sky she cut down and hammered onto the topmost branches. It took months to climb high enough and then she had to wait for a sunny day. She used her scalpel, and once she was finished, she folded it into a square small enough to fit in her purse.

  In your story the witch doesn’t have a roof made of sky. In your story, the witch is the woman at the gas station who sees the girl in the front seat, the girl too young to be so thin, too young to have her hair falling out, to have bruises on her neck, to be a junkie. Your witch pays and drives away. She nods at the mother’s boyfriend.

  I’m being consumed by sores, Little Mina says. My mother won’t call the doctor because there is no money to pay him.

  Your mother still owes me, the witch says.

  The witch had been called in for Kate too, but by then Kate was already dead. The mother shrieked and pulled her hair. Bring her back, she said. You’re the witch. Bring her back. But the witch said no one can bring back a dead girl.

  I don’t want to die, Little Mina says.

  She thinks of the way her sister’s room smelled at the end. The way Kate didn’t see any of them. Didn’t feel Little Mina’s hand in hers. Little Mina loved Kate. Kate was everything, and then she stopped breathing and everyone was alone.

  We’ll figure something out, the witch says. Come in out of the cold.

  Underneath the chilly blue sky roof, the witch takes her scalpel from the drawer and lays it next to the tweezers. Little Mina climbs onto the kitchen table and lays naked with her belly, her palms, to the sky. A few sprigs of dried lavender hang above her. The mother doesn’t know where Mina is. She doesn’t care. She is angry at Little Mina for wanting to live.

  You’re younger than I expected, Little Mina said.

  The witch warms her hands in the fireplace. Her skin is smooth and her hair is rich. Long looping braids wrap around her head like a dark and heavy halo. She is even more beautiful than Kate was.

  Not every part of me is young, the witch says. She holds up her hands. Raised and ropey veins under mottled, elephantine skin. Short and swollen nail beds. And then she touches the sore on Little Mina’s hip. She presses gently and spreads the skin. She takes her scalpel and cuts. Takes her tweezers and pries. The harder she pulls, the harder the flesh holds onto the diamond. The diamond is precious to the flesh. It will not let go.

  The first one’s the hardest, the witch says. She drops the diamond into a ceramic bowl by Mina’s feet. She presses her hands over the open skin and it heals. It is luminescent, like someone’s draped a piece of moon over it.

  The gap-toothed girl takes the microwave and throws it into the dumpster. She buys a new microwave and a new fish with the money the jeweler gave her. Rough diamonds aren’t as valuable as cut diamonds, he said. Think of all the work I’ll have to put in. Do you know how hard it is to cut a diamond? But still, there’s a bit of money. Enough to buy a match and burn down the house. Enough to buy a truck and throw the microwave onto the floor of the passenger seat. Enough to get to New York City.

  She changes her name so that her mother won’t find her. She calls herself Chloe. Sickle-shaped scars are littered across her skin, but she wears long sleeves and no one knows. She is giddy with the value of her body. She looks into the mirror in her new apartment and says, you are the most valuable girl in the entire fucking world.

  The witch takes five diamonds as her fee. One is so small, it resembles a piece of fairy dust. She places it in a locket made of stellar ash, which she wears around her neck. She keeps other things in there too, she says. A piece of hair from Joan of Arc. A fingernail from Merga Bien. An ear canal from a snake.

  Who’s Merga Bien? Little Mina says.

  The witch dabs lavender honey on the scars.

  An old friend, she says.

  The witch wraps a cheesecloth around a clear blue diamond with two stars inside. She places the diamond and the cheesecloth in a basket and gives them to her garden gnome. The gnome glares at Little Mina. He mutters to himself, calls Mina the daughter of the devil.

  I can give you a better life, the witch says. If you trust me.

  And that sounds okay to Little Mina because she has wanted a better life for nine years. She wants to be loved. She wants a father. She wants a mother. She wants someone to be proud of her. She wants to be somebody like Kate.

  Nothing in her says stop. Nothing in her says, this woman might want something from you in return.

  So the witch sends her garden gnome to the castle with
a letter and a basket. Standing at the window, they watch him walk into the woods, his footsteps small and deep in the snow.

  When the prince arrives at the inn, Little Mina’s mother lays her only tablecloth on his table. She feeds him pancakes with blueberry butter and lemon zest and she asks if he is lost. The prince is handsome in the traditional way of princes. His hair makes an S across his forehead. He has thick eyebrows, the measure of a strong person, and a nose that’s already been broken by the hilt of a sword. He is engaged to marry a princess from the north, but he doesn’t much care for northerners and the king has said that whichever prince—and there are twelve—finds a solution to the kingdom’s debt will be the next king. I’m not saying that his intentions are impure. It is noble to save an unloved diamond girl from a life of sadness and it is noble to save a kingdom from bankruptcy.

  If only Kate were still alive, the mother thinks. She was so beautiful! She could woo a prince.

  Does Little Mina live here? the prince says.

  The mother stares at him.

  What do you want with her?

  I want to marry her, he says.

  But she’s only nine. She’s an ugly little child. She hasn’t even a last name.

  I’ll wait. In five years she’ll be fourteen. But in the meantime I’ll bring her back to the castle. Let her stay with me and in time we’ll know each other.

  The mother continues to stare.

  I’m only sixteen, the prince says.

  The mother goes to fetch her in a daze. She doesn’t know about the diamonds. Not yet. By the time Little Mina comes downstairs, there are two more princes in the dining room. One has a mustache with flecks of silver in it. He refuses to sit with his brothers. He paces in front of the fireplace. The band across his chest is decorated with twenty-seven engraved buttons. As the eldest, he shouldn’t have to fight for the crown. It should simply be his.

  Little Mina underestimated the stature of princes. She stands in the doorway, holding onto the wall. She has brushed her mousy hair and pinched her cheeks. Her dress is made of milkweeds that the witch plucked and sewed together for just this occasion. It is so light. She thinks it might blow away if someone opens the door. It feels like wearing clouds.

  You don’t have to choose now, the eldest says.

  Of course not, says the first. You’ll want to pick well. No need to rush.

  But do come with us, the youngest says. We’ve always wanted a sister.

  He smiles shyly at her. A boy of eight. If he weren’t wearing a crown, he could be a baker’s son. Round, pleasant cheeks. Soft brown eyes.

  On the way to the castle, Little Mina shows the youngest boy her scars. The diamonds rattle in a basket at her feet.

  Is there such a thing faster than this carriage? she says. She is feverish with happiness. She’s never moved so fast in her life. She’s never left her village, except to wander the woods by the witch’s house. Through the window she sees a river laden with white water, beautiful brick houses on either side. Someone in a fishing boat waves to them and she waves back.

  Of course! he says. There’s such a thing as a galloping horse! There’s such a thing as a cheetah!

  The other princes ride their own horses outside of the carriage. They don’t talk to Little Mina for the whole trip. But the youngest one won’t stop talking. He’s been waiting his whole life for someone who will listen to him. He tells her about the time he put red food coloring into the moat and everyone thought it was blood. She tells him about the time she put honey into her mother’s clogs.

  As they’re entering the capital, she gives him a yellow diamond to keep.

  Chloe sells her diamonds on 47th Street. For fun, she works as a waitress. She is pretty and her memory is good. The chef flirts with her. One night he tells her a secret. He says that he was born with webbed arms, but that the webs were cut right away. He says that he still has webbed toes. He slips off his shoe and runs the webs along her Achilles tendon.

  I have a secret too, she says. She pulls back her sleeve and shows him the half-moon scars on her forearm. Shows him the scars on her lower back. Shows him the new sores forming on her thigh. Chloe is consistent. Her diamonds don’t fail. They don’t refuse to grow. Because in this version of the story, science doesn’t matter. In this version, there is no such thing as truth.

  How often does this happen? he says.

  Regularly, she says. Whenever I see a homeless person sleeping on a grate. Whenever I see a girl crying on the subway. I take their sadness and I make it my own.

  What about you? he says.

  Ha! I grow diamonds! I bought my own apartment! I don’t have sadness.

  In that version it might be true. In that version gap-toothed Chloe might fuck the chef and steal his heartbreak—the chef had been divorced, the chef had lost his father. She might use him to wash away the stench of the mother’s boyfriend. She might become the international CEO of a company. Be on the cover of Vogue. Be celebrated by the entire country for her mutation. She might buy a brownstone and a white tiger and only wear spider silk. And one day, in a windowless hotel room in Reno, her mother will see her on TV and say to the boyfriend, don’t you wish you picked her.

  The king treats Little Mina like a princess. She has everything she could want. To look at her, you’d never know the kingdom is nearly bankrupt. You’d never know two men lost their lives to bring her the baby unicorn. You’d never know how little the gardener is paid to bring her fresh flowers every morning. And it’s not necessarily the things that make Little Mina happy. Every day people want to see her. When she walks onto her balcony, the townspeople wave and shout, Good afternoon, Diamond Girl! The princes ask what her favorite dessert is and then they make the chefs prepare it. At first, she doesn’t know how to respond. She says syrup and they laugh. Syrup is not a dessert. Chocolate soufflé is a dessert. Crème brûlée is a dessert. Lemon meringue is a dessert.

  The mother comes to live in the capital and they treat her like an aunt. They support her, because she’s the mother of the diamond maker. She visits Little Mina every day. Dotes on her. She says, you are the most valuable little girl in the entire world. She brushes Little Mina’s hair like she used to brush Kate’s.

  Months go by and Little Mina learns how to order white truffle cheesecake and blood orange fondue. The princes travel for weeks to get the truffles. There are trolls who guard the truffle fields and the princes pay them in gold. They order blood oranges from the other side of the world. Little Mina smiles to think of how much they love her. How they will do anything for her. They don’t complain. They say she is the best thing that’s ever happened to them.

  For her twelfth birthday, she’s given a mirror made of silver and in it she looks beautiful. But as she carries it from the feast, everyone watches her go and they are all thinking the same thing: it’s been over two years and she hasn’t produced a single diamond.

  The king turns the diamond ring on his finger. It came from her collarbone, years ago. It is the diamond that the witch sent.

  Do you know how diamonds are made? he says to his wife.

  They come from the earth, she says. She is not a stupid woman.

  Bury coal deep within the earth. Heat it until it’s its own small sun. Squeeze it until there’s not a single breath left and then freeze it, he says.

  The youngest son is listening. He has sewn the rough yellow stone that Mina gave him into the collar of his shirt. He touches the fabric and thinks of how she’s changed. Her skin is smoother now. Her jawline plumper. Just last night she asked him for a dress made of the sea. He shook his head sadly and said it was impossible.

  In your version, the girl is dying. The man carries her over the threshold of their new house. He bought the house with money from her diamonds. He says he bought it for her, so that they can build a life together, but she can barely walk and the house is situated on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The driveway winds back and forth. She pushes against his chest. Her wrists are willow thin
. She feels his arms around her like vines. They are choking her. She imagines herself in the jungle, wrapped in the arms of a tree, with a boa constrictor watching, waiting for her to wake up.

  He goes out and comes back. He wakes her up at night, or he doesn’t. There are the twin pricks of the needle in her arms, her toes, the veins behind her knees, and of him pushing himself into her, breaking her sparrow hips. She feels them both like lightning. She stares at the cracks on the ceiling. Makes maps out of them. Finds a crack that leads all the way to the wall and follows it to the Arctic Circle, to anywhere she can be free. And every day he’s prying the stones from her skin, leaving her empty. She’s trapped inside her body and there’s no one there to tell. She tries to move her lips and the language that comes out isn’t hers.

  She puts her hand in his hair and tries to pull back his head. He thinks it’s affectionate. He kisses the diamond below her belly button before he cuts. Outside, the sea makes sounds like a baby. In it, she hears someone drowning.

  It doesn’t take long to realize that the diamonds have dried up, the same way ice cubes melt in warm water.

  They move Little Mina to a cave above the sea—much like the house in your story. They call for the witch and her scalpel, so that she can cut the diamonds when they grow. They lock her away with Little Mina for the time being. Perhaps, years ago, the witch did something horrible. Perhaps the witch accidentally killed the princes’ baby sister when an experiment went wrong. When a single candle exploded with the life force of an army and blew apart the west wing of the castle, the wing where the nursery was. Perhaps that’s why she lived in a sky-roof house in the middle of nowhere with only a garden gnome for company when she could have been living in luxury. What I’m saying is, the witch had it coming.