The Juniper Tree

1

It was a long time ago. It must have been two thousand years ago, maybe even more. Back then nobody was sorry, nobody was mad. Everybody got along back then. Everybody was happy and everybody had everything they wanted, before I was born.

THERE WAS A COUPLE who lived on a cliff by the sea. The house was known as White Quill on account of its color and they called the cliff the Beak. You couldn’t see the house from the road. The woods around the house closed it off from the rest of the world and you had to drive through the woods down a long winding driveway paved with gravel before you came out between the trees and saw the old house tall against the sky. Behind the house a green lawn led to the Beak. The Beak fell straight down to where the waves’ foamy mouths licked and gnawed the grimy stones. You know how greedy the sea can get.

On top of the Beak stood the Juniper Tree.

The Juniper Tree lived there before the man and his wife. It lived there before the house. The Juniper Tree grew up in the wind all bent up and twisted as though the tree was trying to look out the water and behind at the woods and back around at itself at the same time. The wind came off the sea and breathed into the branches of the Juniper Tree, and the branches whispered and muttered and talked it over with the wind, finding out what went on in the world beyond the Beak, behind the sea and past the woods that ran up and down the seashore ever since the ice melted and grumbled into the North a million years ago.

The man who lived in the house was strong, and his wife was beautiful. They were young and good-looking and rich in things and land. They had everything anybody could have wanted. They should have been satisfied, and he was, but she wasn’t. She wanted more. She had to have a child.

Out in the yard, out in the dark, the wind whispered to the Juniper Tree, and the woman listened in.

She leaned out of the window into the night. She opened her arms. The wind caught in her hair and kissed her hands. Her fingers cleaved the wind like wings.

In the room behind her the man came out of the bath. He was big and hearty, with a bushy beard and golden hair curling over his head. He was rubbing a towel in his hair and singing to himself. The light in the room went out and he stopped singing.

Deep in the room near the window, the woman held herself quite still. She was slim and tiny with dark hair, and moved quick like a bird. She wrapped herself in a cape made out of black feathers, so the man couldn’t see her. From out of the darkness she whispered:

‘King Bear!’

‘Sparrow-witch?’

‘King Bear! Bjorn the King of Bears!’

‘Ariela?’

‘Bjorn. Bjorn! Bjorn…’ It was like she was singing it in that voice of hers.

He came deeper into the room, groping with his arms, but he couldn’t find her if she didn’t want to be found. Then she stepped in front of the window where the wind from the Juniper Tree breathed all around her, the air billowing with the scent of her and she opened up the feather cape and welcomed him inside.

And the man felt his heart ache because he loved her so much. He wrapped her in his arms.

‘Ah, little witch.’

Outside, the Juniper Tree stopped its whispers long enough to hear the moan of the witch when she said,

‘Yes, Bjorn, I love you, I love you, I love you, my king…’

But the nights came and went and they still didn’t have any children. It only made her want one all the more.

One gray frosty dawn the man found his wife sitting out on the stone beneath the Juniper Tree. She was looking out to sea and sighing, naked in her shift.

The man brought her feather cape and covered her.

‘You’ll catch your death,’ he said.

But she shook her head.

‘Still not sure?’ he asked.

She turned her head about and stared at him. Her eyes were like glass beads and her nose like a beak. She reached down under her shift and brought her hand up to his nose. There was blood on her fingertips.

‘I thought he came at last,’ she said. ‘But I was only late.’

He kissed her hand. ‘We’ll have a child one day. We’ll have a beautiful child.’

She twisted her head away so he wouldn’t see the tears that burned in her little black eyes.

‘Cast me aside, King Bear.’

‘Ariela!’

‘I mean it. You must divorce me. You need a child. Or else who will gain all your treasures?’

‘Your child. Our child.’

‘When I was a very little girl, I wanted to have a younger brother, to dress and look after. I prayed to my Mother, Give me one! But he never came.’

‘Ari, don’t…’

‘Go to your work, Bjorn. Go about your business, now, please go.’

The tone in her voice broke the man’s heart. He didn’t know what to do. He looked up to the old Juniper Tree and shook his head. At last he turned and trudged off. He left the house and traveled to his business far away.

THREE WEEKS LATER it snowed and the witch went out in the night in her bare feet, naked under her nightdress. She carried an apple and a paring knife in a stone bowl. She set the bowl in the snow before the Juniper Tree, took the apple and started paring the red skin from the white flesh, the way it had to be. The knife slipped and bit into the mound at the bottom of her thumb. Her blood dripped on the snow. She set the apple down beside it. She licked blood from her thumb and squatted over the bowl.

She sat listening to the snow drifting down on her hair, and staring at her red blood on the white snow.

‘Give me a child,’ she said. ‘Dammi un bambino rovente com’ il sangue e puro come la neve.’

Give me a child as hot as blood and as pure as snow.

And the witch slipped off her nightdress and embraced the Juniper Tree. The branches caught her forearms and scratched her pale bare skin, leaving little trails of blood. It liked scratching her. You could tell.

She looked up into the old tree, and asked it, Please…

‘Per piacere. Dammilo?’

Please, give me one?

But the branches of the tree didn’t budge. A bird in the tree looked down on the witch and shook its head.

‘Dammilo!’

More birds came. They filled the branches and peered out from under darkness.

‘Dammi un bambino rovente com’ il sangue e puro come la neve. Mi Dio! Give me a child as hot as blood and pure as snow – and I will give you anything! Anything you ask!’

The wind climbed off the sea. The snow swirled round the yard. The branches of the Juniper Tree shook and all the birds took flight.

The little witch arched back her head. Her bright red mouth hung open. Her black eyes squeezed shut. Her white teeth bit together.

Her nails, long and sharp like a witch’s nails should be, dug into the bark.

The birds scattered in the night sky, screeching and croaking. It seemed like they were warning her. Or maybe they were afraid of her and of what she might do next.

The witch went stiff and the breath caught in her throat and she fell under the old tree. She lay there a long time, turning a little and whimpering. At last she got up. She pulled her nightdress out of the snow and slipped it back on, shivering when the snowflakes melted against her skin. She put the paring knife and the apple and the curls of apple peel into the stone bowl and went back inside.

She made it upstairs and toweled the snow off her hair in the bathroom, in the dark. Only it wasn’t all dark because when the snow comes down like that, there’s always some light around. There was enough for a witch to see.

She walked into the bedroom as quiet as could be. She slid into bed alongside her husband. She curled up against his back and let her fingers creep around his chest, light as feathers, not waking him. She listened to his breathing and soon her breath came and went just like his and she was sleeping too.

She was smiling in her sleep.

2

Dad never knew how I started. He never knew what my Mother did.

A COUPLE OF WEEKS went by after the little witch pared the apple and embraced the Tree. White Quill stood quiet in the night, and the wind moaned low in the Juniper Tree.

A shadow crossed over the tree. It was the shadow of a dog, padding across the Beak.

The dog crouched down. It was all white except for the eyes and the ears and they were red. It stared at the house. All the lights were off except in the great-room where the Christmas tree lights twinkled through the glass terrace doors.

The white dog growled.

But lights shone from headlights in the woods. A black car drove up the drive and its tires crunched the gravel and stopped. And the dog slunk off into the woods.

Bjorn switched off the motor and stumbled out of his car. It was a long sleek luxury car, brand new, and it cost a lot. He loved that car. He had a party hat on his head, and he was mumbling ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ in the back of his throat like a saw cutting the heart out of a tree.

He staggered around the house onto the terrace, and swept the glass doors open with both arms.

‘Ariela? Ariela! Hey-ho, I’m late!’

He turned the lights on. The light flooded the stone terrace and shone out onto the Juniper Tree on the Beak.

King Bear stood still as stone.

His wife lay under the Christmas tree. Her black dress was flung up high above her knees. There was blood on her naked thighs. Her legs looked nasty pushed apart like that.

Bjorn tore off the party hat. He knelt and tugged down the dress. ‘Ari,’ he said, ‘Sparrow-witch,’ but she didn’t answer and she didn’t stir.

He scooped her up in his arms.

‘You’re so light, there’s nothing to you but air.’

He carried her upstairs.

Through the bedroom window, the stars glinted on the stone bowl with the paring-knife. The man didn’t turn the light on. He