Ash and Glory
Now a bit of ash and glory.
—“Sepulchral Inscription”, Jorge Luis Borges
Rache thought of herself as a blackbird. Her little sister Fennie was a goldfinch, bright of color and voice. Rache had dark hair and eyes and, she believed, a darker mind and darker thoughts.
When Rache was little and Fennie even littler, Fennie almost died. She lay in her cradle, her forehead hot to Rache’s touch. Fennie’s mother bathed her forehead and temples with water. Rache’s mother held an infusion of willow bark to Fennie’s lips and stroked her throat to make her swallow. Rache could stay, if she was quiet.
There was a fire in the fireplace. Rache wondered why they had a fire. It was summer and Fennie was burning up. But Rache sometimes saw things that other people did not. Perhaps the fire was only there for her.
The flames, she suddenly realized, were exactly the color of Fennie’s hair. She was surprised to see a large piece of parchment on the fire, just beginning to burn at the edge. At the top Rache saw two words in large black letters. Although only five, Rache could read and write her own name, “Rachel Rikardsdottir,” so she recognized the second of the big black words. The first she didn’t know, but it began with an “F,” and she knew the sound of that letter was the beginning of Fennie’s name. She pulled the paper from the fire and splashed water on the flame.
Rache’s mother, looking intently at Fennie, called, “She’s sweating!” Fennie’s mother looked up with hope. The fever broke. By the next morning Fennie was cool to the touch, hungry, and laughing.
#
Rache hid the paper she had pulled from the fire in the bottom of her clothes press. After she learned to read better, she saw that the name at the top was “Fenix Rikardsdottir.” There was more writing, but Rache couldn’t read it. It had the look of a legal document—a contract or a deed. She longed to show it to some of the King’s scholars, but knew that she must keep it secret.
#
Rache’s father Rikard was king of Konigsrike. Rache’s mother Karla had been Rikard’s first wife. After she gave him a girl child, he put her aside to marry the beautiful young Frida, daughter of the king of the land to the east. Karla and Rikard parted willingly and Karla and Frida became good friends.
Frida, too, gave Rikard a girl child. Rikard could not put her aside without offending the king of the Eastmark. Rache began to hear rumors that Rikard no longer shared Frida’s bed. She was only a little girl, and the servants presumed that she didn’t understand their gossip. They were right, but she grew older and didn’t forget, even when she was old enough to have some idea what it meant for a man and woman to share a bed. Rache saw for herself that Rikard did not spend his nights with Queen Frida, and that Frida did not get another child.
#
Rache’s mother, no longer Rikard’s Queen, was honored as the Witch-Queen of Konigsrike. She laughed at the title, saying that “Chief Botanist” would be more accurate. She knew more herblore than any other. She took Rache and Fennie to the meadows and forests to gather herbs.
One day they were gathering Queen Anne’s Lace in a meadow. Rache’s mother wouldn’t tell the girls how it was used. Fennie spied more near the stream at the edge of the meadow. These plants near the stream had dark blue berries. When Rache’s mother saw where Fennie was, she ran to her.
“Be careful, Fennie. That’s poisonous.”
“But you said Queen Annes’s Lace was harmless,” Fennie protested.
“Mostly it is. That is not Queen Anne’s Lace. It’s hemlock. It’s poison.”
“How can you tell the difference?” Rache asked.
“Hemlock is pied. You see the purple blotches on the stem?” her mother answered. “That’s how the plant says ‘Don’t eat me.’”
“Even the berries?” Fennie asked.
“Especially the berries,” Rache’s mother answered.
“But why does it make berries if they can’t be eaten?”
“See the birds?” Rache’s mother answered.
Indeed, songbirds happily ate the berries.
“The berries are for the birds, not for us. The birds are full of poison, but they’re unharmed, because they help the pied flower spread its seed.”
#
Rache learned the habit, necessary to princesses, of listening at doors. Her mother knew she did it and even, without quite saying so, encouraged her. Rache overheard a conversation between her mother, the Witch-Queen, and Rikard.
Rache’s mother said, “Rikard, you are making a terrible error.”
Short-tempered and violent though he was, Rikard would hear such words from Karla. “What error?”
“You want a son and heir.”
“Two queens have given me only daughters.”
“So you get bastard daughters on the palace maids.”
He glared.
“It will not solve your problem. Their children are bastards and not heirs. If you get a bastard son and pronounce him your heir, the Eastmark will be angry. They gave you a queen to put a grandson on your throne.”
“Does it matter, if they are all girls?”
“Ask yourself this, Rikard,” she answered. “Why do the gods give you no sons?”
“Why don’t you just tell me, old scold?”
“Frigg is angry with you.”
“What have I done to anger the goddess?”
“Don’t pretend to be stupid, Rikard. Frigg is the goddess of hearth and home and marriage.”
“You think if I share my bed with Frida, the gods will give me a son?”
“What have you to lose?”
“My head? I hardly think Frida will welcome me back to her bed.”
“If you are willing, I will talk to her.”
#
Some months passed. Rache saw Queen Frida’s belly grow, until the day the baby was to come. After the shouting stopped, the King visited the Queen. Rache and Fennie listened.
“It’s a son, at last,” they heard her say, her voice flat.
“A dead son! Can’t you do anything right?” he shouted.
“Fool! You think I wanted this?”
“Could you not have taken greater care?”
“Rikard, you know whose fault this is, really?”
He was silent.
In a deadly, fey voice, she said “The fault is yours. Your seed is weak. You may be King, but you are no man.”
Rache and Fennie looked at each other, aghast. What was the Queen thinking? They heard a loud thump. The King stormed out. The girls ran into the Queen’s chamber. She was lying on the floor as if dead, blood running from a blow to her head.
She was not dead. Rache’s mother nursed her. Not to health. The injury to her head had taken her words. Never again would she speak or write.
#
A week later, a blackbird and a goldfinch appeared in Cook’s game basket. They were unwounded, but their necks had been wrung. Like everyone who wanted to live, Cook was eager to please the King. There was a nursery rhyme about birds baked in a pie, ending with the words “Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?” and he took it as inspiration.
Cook cleaned the birds and baked them in a game pie, served to the King alone for his supper. His server told him it was a sixpence pie, like the song.
Later that night, the king became ill. The Witch Queen could do nothing. It started with stomach pain and ended before morning when the King ceased to breathe.
#
Rache heard Fennie sing, in a light voice that somehow broke her heart with its sadness.
“Sing a song of sixpence.
A flower that is pied,
Two little songbirds,
Baked in a pie.”
In that same deadly, fey voice her mother had used, Fennie said, “I did it, Rache. Now you know.”
Rache couldn’t answer.
Fennie continued, “You know that a murdered father must be avenged. A geas is laid upon the child of a murdered king to kill the murderer.”
“Killing my sister would be worse. I love you! I never loved my father.”
“You must. It is not murder, but justice. Send me ahead of you. I will speak of your courage and kindness and honesty before the Valkyr. They will honor you.”
Fennie left Rache alone.
Rache went to her room. From her clothes press, she retrieved the parchment and threw it on her fire.
Rache saw Fennie with her mother as in a vision. Fennie began to burn, bowels singed by hidden fire. She groaned and in her pain called upon her sister, her own mother, and the Witch Queen. The flame and pain increased, then died away. Her body fell away to white ash.
Silent, Frida gathered the ash. She compressed it in her hands and molded it into a small white ball, like an egg.
#
With Rache and Rache’s mother, Frida went to the meadow where Queen Anne’s Lace and hemlock grew. Together they planted the ash-ball in the soil near the stream.
A sapling grew from it. A year later it was four feet tall. Frida pulled it from the ground and split the stem from the top. There was a hollow and something like a slender length of pith inside. With infinite care, Frida eased this out of the hollow. Carefully, she laid it at the edge of the stream, just touching the water.
At the first drink it rustled and grew limp. At the next drink it grew invisible. Frida and Rache cried in dismay and groped in the stream for it. The Witch Queen laughed at them and pointed across the stream.
There stood Fennie, naked and laughing.
Afterword
This story began when I read “Inscripción sepulchral [Para mi bisabuelo, el colonel Isidoro Suárez]”, by Jorge Luis Borges. The final line is
Ahora es un poco de ceniza y de gloria.
I thought that the finest epitaph I had ever read. It gave me the character Fenix, who is, of course, a phoenix. The story itself is a reimagining of the myth of Althaea and Meleager. I stole some parts of the story and even a few of the words from Stephanie McCarter’s translation of “Althaea and Meleager” Ovid’s Metamorphoses: 8:6, and also “Paul’s Wife” by Robert Frost.
The cover image is a phase portrait of f(z):
A phase portrait is a visualization of a complex function introduced by Elias Wegert in Visual Complex Functions: An Introduction with Phase Portraits.
Great story, I enjoyed it immensely.