Travelling here, a black notebook was nearly the only thing I had brought with me. In it were written my own stories and also what the Silent Wind had whispered to me in dreams. Also visions the Plants had sung and resonated to me in the jungle. Somewhere between the pages was also a story that one night, after deep work with the Sacred San Pedro cactus — that same Medicine we’d drink from small clay cups at our Sacred Marriage ceremony at Mount Shasta’s foot — had been told to me by Mušītu with her presence. Because that was how she did it — with her being, without telling she told whole lives.

This notebook was sacred and frightening simultaneously, many tellings dwelt there, including those about which I had said — I’m afraid they’ll come true. The night before the ceremony the black, jungle-moisture-swollen and northern-frost-broken notebook stood right there on the modest wooden bedside table in our Tahoe lake inn room. And one of the stories, written white on black, red on black, golden on black, was like this.

It was cold, very cold was that morning when two children set off into the forest — a girl from the eastern edge and a boy from the western, though neither of them knew the other was going too. It wasn’t quite as if the children didn’t know each other. The girl had noticed the fair-haired boy who was lively and, to be honest — a rascal too, drawn to various forbidden things and places, yet before mother and other people the boy was practically an angel, nothing to add or take away. The boy had also vaguely noticed the girl — she was about five summers older than him, always stood a little apart and often the boy saw the girl sitting and humming on a mossy stone by the river.

Before this tale runs its course, it is essential to know that in that land every child at birth received as a gift from their own people a small cloth — it was made of soft velvet and embroidered throughout with golden-thread stars. The little cloth smelled of an infinite sky and deep forest simultaneously — of everything that existed before the child’s arrival and will exist after the human child’s departure. Keep it close, the people always said. And most children did so.

The boy’s little shawl was beautiful and until now, being among the village people, he had tried to keep the little shawl close, though he often forgot it. And now, just now, walking in the forest on the western path, at some spot he came to a brook and gazed long at his own reflection. The small cloth began to seem childish and even slightly shameful to the boy — someone as beautiful as him had no need for such a trifle. The boy seemingly carelessly left the cloth lying on a branch that leaned over the little stream’s puddle. One, two and the water carried it away. The boy nearly breathed a sigh of relief, because the cloth had reminded him of what he really was — a small human child who still had to grow up. He was already big — surely the stream’s water showed that clearly?

The girl kept the cloth close to her heart, perhaps even too closely and carefully. Her own heart under the weight of the embroidered stars could barely breathe. But it was safer that way. It was safer.

The children went into the forest, because the same time had come for them as for others from their village. The time when fire had to be brought home. Those who had walked the path and returned told that in the forest’s very middle, between the bog’s puddles, sulphur lay and will-o’-the-wisp glowed. The children had to carefully collect this and bring it home, so that the villagers could continue making small sticks from aspen wood, with which to kindle fire in the hearth. Not long before setting out, misfortune struck both children’s homes — first the boy’s mother died, then the girl’s. Before dying, the boy’s mother called him to her bedside and said: “You are my golden boy. Never forget that. Be well-behaved and share your gold with others. Never let anyone see your naughtiness.” And then she died. The girl’s mother only quietly whispered: “Take care of your brothers and sisters” — and breathed her last.

And so they went, each from their own side, both remembering what the elders had said about the path, and also getting lost in the soft, moss-soaked forest hillocks, wading sometimes between firs and pines, sometimes straying into a birch grove or jumping over some brook or circling around a forest lake. From time to time it seemed that from somewhere far away some song could be heard, a low hum interrupted by a screeching sharp sound. The children, walking each on their own path, stopped and listened — whether it was some unusual bird’s song or the rustle of winds coming from distant lands. The song seemed saturated with something that in a flash made shivers run through the bones, and at the same time it enticed and enticed.

And suddenly, there, where according to the people’s tales the great bog should have begun, on the very edge of the forest, the most eternal-seeming forest, at the very edge, rose a small house. From a distance it appeared to be an ordinary hunter’s hut, but as they approached both children’s eyes widened in astonishment — a sweet smell wafted from the house, nearly nauseating, just like the song the children had heard humming in the air. The house walls were gleaming made from sweet marzipan. The roof was spun from sugar. The windows shone warm gold like honeyed candy roosters. And in the doorway stood a woman, her dress birch-bark colour, hair ash-coloured, skin night-black. The woman was frightening and kind, unkind and warm. She stood there the way doors stand themselves — as a space between what will follow.

Both children looked now at the woman, now at each other, now at the house. For a brief moment the girl in the house’s walls, in the sugar swirls and marzipan tendrils, thought she could see some small hands’ fingers, here and there a lock of hair or a heel. She shuddered and told herself: “It just seemed that way to me.”

And finally both children stepped over the threshold and — click! — the door closed behind them.

The tasks for getting Fire were three.

The first was like this. Every morning the woman made the children stand before a huge mirror — oh what a beauty it was, with a finely leaf-carved frame, around which carved deer and bears leaped. For the girl and boy — both of them — looking in the mirror, they had to distinguish the real from the illusory. And tell what they see in themselves in what appeared as the reflection.

Both children looked in the mirror, yet it possessed great cunning — it showed what dwelt in the house itself, its walls and beams, all the sweet nothings and beads made from candy wrappers. Both children looked in the mirror as best they could — searching for where their own reflection was. The boy grew bored searching himself in the mirror and he began to see sweets and the will-o’-the-wisps glowing in the house window. “How beautiful, how beautiful I am,” the boy said to the emptiness.

But something made the girl uneasy. Perhaps it was hunger, because the elders in her home had warned her: in the forest’s middle, from no one who looks like a human but may not be human, do not take food. Therefore the girl survived only on berries that she could gather at the edge of the fence beyond the little house. Carefully sealed in the star-embroidered cloth, she each day pretended to lick the sugary house walls and nibble a small sweet that had been placed on the table in the room’s middle. And so the girl looked in the mirror and could not see herself and also the room seemed to her only a room. Unable to solve the mirror’s riddle and why the boy seemed to see himself in the mirror but she couldn’t — one night, while the old woman slept, the girl crept to the mirror and showed it also a living tree root and a handful of berries she had gathered at the forest edge. What a surprise! — even now the mirror remained silent. The crooked root the girl held in her hands was on this side, yet it was not at all visible in the mirror’s shimmer. The mirror seemed to show nothing that was real and came from a place outside the little house. “I remember who I am, I remember who I am,” every evening, having crept into the house’s corner to rest, the girl whispered to herself.

The second was like this. Every evening before bedtime the old woman placed the children before the hearth and made them listen to one verse from an endlessly long song. Waking in the morning, the children had to remember this verse. This was that same sorrowful, nauseous, beautiful and enticing song the children had heard while treading along the forest paths.

In the morning both children had to sing. The boy sang the song impeccably. The girl looked at the small child and marvelled how beautifully he could repeat the woman’s singing note for note. As the boy hummed, his face lit up just like the candy-rooster window panes, the song from him sounded sweet and something in the girl made her forget about the low, hollow undercurrent that flowed beneath the song’s sugar rivers and twisted roll curves.

The girl could not at all remember the singing and the sound broke from her crooked or dissolved on the lips ripped by the forest cold. In despair she pressed the star-cloth to her throat at night and something else came — not the woman’s song but some more ancient one, one the girl didn’t know she could sing.

And the third was like this. Each night while the children slept, the woman hid some item in the house — a bone, a coin or a key — and they had to find it before the fire in the hearth burned to ash. The boy searched for a while and then — thud! — sat down. He told the woman that he had searched here and there, and the girl must have moved the thing being searched for somewhere. The girl tried and searched for both of them — because she pitied the small boy, he seemed so frail and helpless. But the hidden thing somehow wouldn’t come to hand.

One morning the girl entered the house from the forest and tried to warm herself. The children were not allowed to go close to the fire, therefore she wound her hands in the star cloth. The palms warmed and — look! — after a little while in the house’s corner the girl saw glowing a small key. Then a black glass splinter and a red ball of thread. She placed them all on the table before the woman and, when asked whether it was the small boy who had found the things — the girl only shook her head, so that you couldn’t really tell — yes or no. The girl didn’t want to lie, but she was afraid for the small boy and what could happen to him if he didn’t bring Fire from the house.

After each task the old woman gave the child a crumb of sulphur extract and small aspen sticks. From these the children could make tiny matches. The woman seemed not to distinguish whether the task was done correctly — the reward was the same. The correct and the incorrect shimmered in the air, but it could only be sensed. The woman’s silence seemed strange to the girl, but she didn’t think too much about it, because it meant that soon, very soon, both of them — boy and girl — could go home.

Poor boy! While the girl dreamed of the way home, he couldn’t wait to light the small sticks. Every evening, while the girl was already asleep, he twirled one match, lit it and held it to the mirror — how beautifully they shone! Lighting the first little flame, he began to see himself in the reflection again — large, powerful and bright. In the second he saw beings standing around him who admired his beauty. In the third — well, you can imagine yourself what he saw there, because the mirror knew what the boy most longed to see there.

The girl put her matches away one by one. It didn’t seem reasonable to her to play with the mirror. She wanted to bring fire home.

I already told you that the girl was too serious. And the boy too frivolous. But he had shining eyes and he could smile so that for a moment the heart seemed as if it were the most important thing he had ever encountered. The girl brought him from the forest roots and berries. Yet the boy chewed them and scrunching tossed them into the space behind the stove. The girl tried to show the boy that the mirror lied to both of them. Meanwhile the boy only smiled his sunshine smile and nodded his head in a way that simultaneously meant everything and meant nothing.

The day came when all three tasks were fulfilled — they had looked in the mirror, sung the song and found the most hidden things in the house. It was time to go. The woman still hesitated, as if thinking whether to let the children go home or detain them longer. Yet then, without much ceremony and preamble, said: “Go on, I’m already sick of your human smell!”

Something here was not right, thought the girl. Something seemed not fully done, but above everything this was a joyful day — and the girl prepared for the journey.

The girl carefully counted her aspen wood matches. She had been very attentive and careful. After counting she went to look for the boy. The lad was by the mirror. He had been crouching there for quite a long time.

The girl leapt up and with joy went into the forest, bringing back a whole handful of blue-black berries. The boy carefully took them and tucked them away in the coat’s fold — only then did the girl notice for the first time where his cloth had gone.

Having given away the berries, the girl went for her matches. She had been so careful with them. Had kept, counted them. But they were not there. When she looked more carefully — from the lad’s waistcoat pocket stuck out far too many aspen wood splinters.

In the girl quietly stirred joy — the boy wanted to go with her together, he was thinking of her strength, about both of them deserving to strengthen themselves before the journey. Just then from the corner of her eye she saw the boy wink at the grand mirror, but he was already rising to go. Ah, no! Oh yes! And she awkwardly scraped one small seed from the marzipan pomegranate that stood, sugared, in the house wall. Put it in her mouth. And swallowed.

Suddenly the world began to spin! The floor moved without moving. Her heart became something far away, something that belonged to someone she was not sure had ever existed. The mirror in a flash began to catch her gaze and showed a face that was almost hers, and the house was so warm and the lights were shimmering and shimmering.

The boy took her hand. He led her through doors she hadn’t noticed, along a path that went in the wrong direction, to a place where the earth was soft, cold and smelled of grey algae, and her boots slowly began to sink. There the heels, there the ankles, there the knees. The boy stood silently, having stepped onto the sharp edge of some stump.

In the very last moment, before the bog’s slough began to swallow the girl’s heart, her hand, she herself not quite, groped in the coat’s pocket for the star-cloth pressed to her heart. With the last strength the girl pressed it to her face — and inhaled — and exhaled — and sky, deep forest, and herself.

Just then from the house came and moved toward the children the ancient woman. She walked across the soft earth without sinking, as those do who belong to the forest. She glanced at the girl with her dark eyes, that seemed simultaneously to see and not see, looking inside and beyond.

The woman turned and slowly drifted back to the house. As those do who belong to the forest. She did not look at the boy.

Geese flew in from the horizon’s edge, white and in great numbers. And landed by the water’s edge.

The girl watched the arrivals and stretched out her hand.

The boy looked at her hand. He looked at the geese. He turned and walked back into the forest.

The girl called him once. She called a second time.

From the very middle of the forest in reply sounded a cry — low, warm and nauseating at once — as had always been the case in this forest since before all beginnings. After a moment another voice joined it — groping yet very certain — a boy’s voice, still young and shrill.

The geese were about to take off and she went with them.

Poor boy! — people think. And then think no more, because the forest is very old and knows its business, and the woman in the forest’s house neither loves nor hates him, and the mirror will show him what the mirror shows, for as long as he wants to look.

On the other shore the earth was solid, the trees stretched high and the geese landed. The birds showed how to build a house and how to get fire from the sulphur that thickened on this side of the bog’s edge. They taught how to distinguish which aspen splinters to use for burning right now and which to save for another, true moment.

The girl’s house was always warm. She learned to make more aspen splinters than she could ever use — those she gave to the village’s people, to those who once in the cradle had given her the dark velvet cloth embroidered with golden stars. And to those who dangerously approached the bog’s edge, and to those who went into the forest’s middle for Fire, she taught them to sing their own song that would outsing the eternal-forest sulphur song. And spoke about how deeply one must keep the small velvet cloth — only now she knew that the heart must also be allowed to breathe all the smells that came from forests, meadows and high mountains.

Sometimes in the evenings she could still hear how across the waters a cry sounded — now two voices were singing, the old and the new, finding the same note. Sometimes she listened. Then she put more wood on the fire and listened no more.

When some frozen traveller came from the forest’s depths and searched for a path to cross the bog, she sent geese to them.

They say she still dwells there. And the fire in her house has never gone out.

I woke up. And today was the day when, pronouncing the marriage vow, my tongue would tangle. Instead of saying “I will cradle your children”, I would say “I will lay them in the black earth.”

© ININ NINI | all rights reserved | THE BLOOD OF THE BIRCH