I’d have been better off had nan not been so bookish.
But because she ran offt and married the wandering
book-seller and not settled in the village as the wife of the cobbler’s son,
the life I lead is . . . well, nan calls it interesting.
I call it a bother.
But it’s partly my fault. I’m the one who sat by the fire
and listened to nan tell her stories while the more sensible members of the
household slept or sneaked out once the moon set or earlier if the wind blew.
Nan’s hearing was never all that good, and she had one eye
clouded and milky, so when the wind blew or the light dimmed, she had trouble
counting those around the fire. Still she knew. She knew when they slept or
when they sneaked off, and always had a sharp word for them come morning.
Yet I’m the one she named Hubris. Explain me that.
Oh, but the tales. The tales nan told. Stories of
adventurers seeking their fortunes, seeking lost loves, seeking revenge.
Revenge! Those were my favorites. Because once the adventurers found their
fortunes, well, they had to cart it all home, didn’t they? The tellers of tales
never told the returns, filled with highwaymen and lavish nights at the inns
and adventurers and heroes slinking back home in rags without a penny in their
pockets. But those who sought revenge! White-hot at the moment they found it,
glorious and streaked with blood and making thrones of the skulls of their
enemies! Those are the tales that kept me ‘round the fire and often caused the
nightmares that made me roll into the fire once I did finally fall asleep.
And nan always cackled as she beat and kicked out the
flames.
“Stupid boy,” she’d say. “Last one I’d take on an adventure.
You’d be the one to fall down the hole where the goblins live, or get lost in
the enchanted forest or be imprisoned by the Dark Lord. And you’d deserve it.”
But when she learned a new tale – and you could tell when it
was fresh, for the milky eye would glow and you swear you could see the tiniest
of black pupils at its center as it roamed independent of the other – she made
sure mother shaved my head and that I’d had a good ducking in the river before
she told it, so afterwards when I rolled into the fire gripped in a nightmare
my clothes would only smoulder a bit and I’d only lose my eyebrows. Eyebrows
grew back quickly, nan said.
And she’d put on her pointy boots.
Father – as in many of the tales nan told – was dead. Died
right after I was born. Dead of disappointment, nan said, for up until then
he’d had only daughters and wot not to do with a son. And Mum worked hard
washing laundry and taking in sewing and worked us hard in the garden and in
the woods looking for berries and stealing firewood, often complaining of the
hard life she led despite being the offspring of a bookish woman such as nan.
“Books have done me a lot of good,” nan said.
“Saved you from a life of prosperity as the wife of a
cobbler, no doubt,” Mum retorted. Indeed, when knew nan’s former beau had made
his fortune and moved to the city and had stables of cobblers making shoes for
the lards and ladies there. Her own husband, the book-seller, died in a binding
accident when Mum was only six days old.
“I’m happier with books,” nan said. “Who needs money?”
“Money buys food!” Mum screamed.
“I’d like to see you wipe your bottom with money!”
That’s usually when they began throwing things at each
other. Not that we had much to throw. But Mum and nan collected rocks and
rotten turnips for such occasions, and hid them round the house.
This is when I usually left.
Usually. Because if I showed so much as a burnt eyebrow
outside the hut, my sisters, they got unpleasant
with me.
‘Baby! Oh Baby!”
Merdy typically started it, as Merdy was the one who rarely
ventured past the garden gate. Said she was tending the potatoes . Probably
eating half the crop, raw, fat as she is. She’d been the youngest until I came
along and resented my accident of birth.
“Nan says it’s always the youngest in the family who finds
her fortune, reaps her rewards, finds her prince! You came and mucked it up.
Though you’d probably like a prince, wouldn’t you, Baby?”
That was her standard speech. And as she was too fat to
leave her spot in the garden, that’s typically as far as she got into it before
I was out of the house and running down the lane, singing one of nan’s filthy
songs to drown out Molly’s voice.
I liked her the best of my sisters. Her weapons were words,
and nan’s tales always said that words could do no harm unless the victim were
a complete and utter clod and dullard who bothered to think about what was
being said by an enemy who used only words as weapons.
Some days, though, I’d run too far and –
Hagg always tripped me near the briar patch, near a fresh
pile of horse dung, or near the poison ivy. One could say I could avoid such
obstacles, but Peg cultivated both briar and ivy, and collected fresh dung by
the bucketsful and always varied the location of her traps.
I had bruises on my shins from the ash branches she used to
foul my legs.
“Stupid Baby, you smell like a horse!” And she’d croak out a
laugh.
I never saw Hagg. Only heard the voice, like a frog tired of
eating flies.
I’d have hugged her out of revenge, (Oh, revenge!) but it
never paid to linger where Hagg set her snares.
Where Hagg was mostly passive in her aggression, Jaundice
was overt, always had her hair in a severe bun and her fists balled up, and
almost always waited until I’d nearly picked all the briars out of my face or
brushed off the worst of the manure before she began beating my kidneys. And
where nan’s beatings were generally enjoyable because the dogs joined and soon
enough were tugging on opposite sides of nan’s shawl and she was batting at
them and I could dart away, laughing, Jaundice aimed to end the fight quickly
with blows that would fell a troll.
She never spoke at all – frighteningly quiet, our Jaundice.
I never knew why she hated me so, though I suspect she didn’t really need a
reason.
But even if she landed a few blows, I knew once I was past
her and my wind was back, I’d be free. Free to run and spy and laugh and throw
rocks over fences until I was hungry and I could go home unmolested.
Because nan always said the evil stepsisters – even if they
were flesh and blood – should always be happy to see the innocent return, so
they’d have chances to be evil all over again.
“Treat him poorly enough, he’ll flee. And then he’ll come
back, bringing a fortune back to us all on his return, one of these days,” nan
said. And the rest of the family believed her. Because that’s how it always
was, in the tales she told.
So one day, when I was about thirteen or fifteen – both good
ages to run away from the unpleasantness to seek one’s fortune, nan always
reminded me – I did run off.
And my life got a lot worse.
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