Baubles From Bones: Issue 8
​Available for purchase:
Physical
Digital
Subscribe

How to Survive a New England Folktale

Jackson Eflin
2800 words

The first mistake you will make is saying you own this miserable land, two donkey-cart days west of the New Haven Colony, and that will make you assume you are in control. Neither of these are true.

1. Once you have accepted that you and the land are in a relationship, you can treat it kindly, and when it does not always do the same, remember that you put down roots without giving it the choice to love you back, so be forgiving.

The second mistake you will make is assuming you are alone out here. Bad news, there is a Witch. Good news is, The Witch has her own stuff going on, and probably won’t make a meal out of your family if you’re a good enough neighbor.

1. If you want to ensure The Witch suffers you to live, announce yourself. Put a box of food and a note indicating your desire to meet somewhere noticeable on the edge of the field where it becomes the dense and scrag-bare forest.
2. Her arrival will be preceded by three days of grim omens. You will break something precious “on accident” during these three days. You will catch your son talking to a wood-frog during these three days. Your wife will pour milk from the jug and discover it has turned to blood during these three days. Understand that Witches love theatrics and that tolerating a day or two without milk is a necessary evil.
3. Make sure you have something nice ready to share with The Witch. Apple butter is a good choice—it makes in a big pot and you can afford to part with a jar of it. It’s probably best for the children to be away, so they don’t offend her on accident. Send them to the barn for the day and make sure they keep the baby quiet.
   1. The Witch will be sinister at you. Be pleasantly shaken, but do not cower—find a good balance like you would for a panicked horse. Offer her the apple butter and explain that you were cast out for being rude to a priest. She will like both of these things.
      1. If she tells you, under no uncertain terms, to get off of her land, then it is only polite that you do so. Hopefully, the apple butter and your good manners have convinced her to give you a week or two to pack up and leave, and double check that you have completed Step 1, above.
         1. If you discover the next desolate bit of hardscrabble you adopt also has a Witch, return to Step 2, above.
      2. If she allows you to stay, she will take the jar of that apple butter and ask for another one at Christmas. You will feel a weary resignation because it means in December you’re going to have to deal with ominous shapes in the fireplace and the goats talking to you, and Christmas was already going to be a bad time because you don’t believe in insulation (you’re very sure that if you suffer just a little more, all your sins will be absolved) but honestly one bad Christmas is a far better deal than your family getting ergot poisoning and going mad and dying one by one, so you agree.

It will be a bad crop this season--you will have to go to town asking for crumbs and kernels, and “We need them, please, there’s a witch” really won’t make you popular, so you’re going to have to pour the last of your meager savings into it.

You will need a jar for the Christmas apple butter.

1. Around now is when you realize the clay-like soil you’d been trying to plant in has somehow become loamy, which is good, except it means you cannot easily make a jar from the soil of your own lands and you’ll have to use the one you were keeping the hard-begged corn in. If the mice get into that this winter you may as well lay down in the snow and not get up.
   1. Take your bible out of its nice box and use that for the seeds.
      1. Just do it. The Bible’s fine, the mice won’t eat it, and you can’t eat prayer.
2. The Witch will return gift for gift by leaving a plump deer tied up to your front doorpost by the neck, slamming against the walls and braying its lungs out.
   1. Merry Christmas.

The soil will stay good in the spring. Plant a lot and sell some ears to the town that expelled you. You will not make much money. But you will make some, and you can buy a few tools and supplies.

1. Don’t forget to give some corn to The Witch. She could probably grow her own corn, but things taste better when gifted by someone sensibly afraid of you.

It will go on like this for a dozen seasons. Every once in a while, without regard for the calendar, The Witch will give terrifying gifts like a fully grown tree bearing strange green fruits (you do not know what a banana is), a bountiful catch of fresh fish arranged in the shape of some rude anatomy (your daughter will be insufficiently aghast), an unusually heavy blanket for the baby (who is taking her first steps about now), and a black hen.

1. You will not be able to discern anything disquieting about that hen, which will disquiet you.

Once you have begun to contemplate the possibility of breathing out, your son will invent Puberty. Unfortunately the only single women you know are either from the village where everyone hates you, your daughter, or The Witch next door of indeterminate age.

1. Weigh your options with your wife. How much does she object to asking if The Witch has any eligible bachelorettes in her coven. Make sure to shoo the children out of the house for this conversation or they will all be very excited about having a witch in the family.
   1. You will not realize they’re at an age where they’re listening at windows.
      1. Oops.
2. You will be very busy around this time getting a new well dug. Send your eldest daughter out into the woods to discuss prospects. She needs friends anyway.
3. When she comes back her face will be flushed and she will be wearing a new shawl the color of a January sunrise. “She said it matches the way my eyes will look when I go blind later in life,” your daughter will explain, and that The Witch “can ask around.”

That black hen isn’t staring at you more than it ought. Chickens are just like that.

1. Stop worrying.

Your wife’s knee is acting up, which means there’s going to be bad weather. Realize you haven’t adequately protected the seedlings. Get up early, and catch your daughter coming in quietly one morning. You will ask her where she’s gone and she will say “Oh, you know, Father. Just to the river to gather herbs.”

1. You will only realize a day or two later that none of those herbs grow by the river.
   1. They will not feature in your soup the next day.
      1. This will disquiet you.

Your son will announce that he has been having dreams where beautiful maidens dance with him in a moonlit glade, during which voles and owls and creeping toads announce their marriageable qualities at length. You will ask him what some of them are and, lout that he is, he admits he wasn’t listening very carefully.

1. Start making him recite what he dreamed the moment he wakes up. Your house will have a great deal of argument over who he should pick.
   1. If you decide to favor your wife’s opinion that he should go with the redheaded girl who is very good at sewing, your son will never forgive you.
   2. If you decide to favor your elder daughter’s opinion that he should marry the blonde maiden who is the child of pirates, your wife will eventually forgive you.
2. Whoever you pick, do it quick, because The Witch seems to be growing increasingly bored of matchmaking your son with human women. New prospects include:
   1. A merwoman (qualities, according to voles: singing, hair care, toxicology)
   2. A woman made of foxes (qualities, according to voles: biblical literacy, childcare, invented gunpowder)
   3. A young man who is quite eligible (qualities, according to voles: animal husbandry, dancing, woodlore, hunting, bricklaying) except as your wife points out, their marriage would be an abomination in the eyes of the LORD.
3. This makes the buccaneeress seem less extreme by comparison, and all is settled.
4. Now that you have chosen a wife for your son, your eldest daughter will offer to go to the woods to inform The Witch. Point out that the well is dug and you could easily go. Your daughter will already be out the door.

Realize that your eldest daughter is going to be a witch, if you haven’t already done so. This cannot be avoided, only processed emotionally.

1. There are worse career paths.

You’ve started being too casual about the rich black earth that smells like a good long sleep when you dig your hands into it, and it has begun claying.

1. Dig long divots in the ground and put the stalks of corn, the tomato cuttings, the skins of the strange fruit, ashes from the fire, and an old blood-stained cotton dress that your wife is finally ready to part with into the furrows, then cover them up again.
2. Wait.

Your son’s future bride, and her family, will unexpectedly arrive one day in September. Welcome them graciously even though they are wanted alive or dead by three different kings.

1. Your son will make an absolute fool of himself in front of her the first time they actually meet. This will be, for him, the greatest catastrophe of his life. Tell him about how you met your wife. He will gasp, then start giggling, muttering “FOUR flights of stairs?” over and over. Join in giggling with him. You will both be blue in the face.
2. Your son will win her over by weaving her a crown of flowers in the middle of the night, the colors beautifully blended even though there was no moon. You will wonder if he was very lucky, or if your eldest daughter has learned more than she has let on.
   1. Some questions are best left for after the wedding.
3. The family of the bride will not have a proper dowry at the moment. The Scourge of Portugal will promise to raid the English until they do.
   1. If you mention that you are Englishmen, they will raid any gold or jewels in your house as a “joke.” You do not have much and this will leave your house feeling bare, dingy, and wanting for the taste of butter.
   2. If you do not mention that you are Englishmen, two generations later the necklace they give as a wedding present, that passes down daughter to daughter will be identified as belonging to Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau, and someone will steal it back to sell in Germany and one of your great-grand children will die in the process.

Witches will attend the wedding. They will give the newlyweds frightful gifts, like a sword for the bride, and a musket graven with mythical animals for the groom, and books that are not the bible for them to share.

1. At this the babe you had when you first came out into this strange and desolate land, now old enough to argue, will learn that some women can read, and immediately demand to learn. You will think that this wedding is enough excitement for one day.
   1. Your eldest daughter will teach her to read no matter what you do.
2. Your house is getting quite full, so you and your son will build a separate house for the two of them at the other edge of the field, so they can work that side while you work this. Your youngest will demand a house of her own, but at least this you can mollify by pointing out that she already sleeps in the barn with the goats half the time.
   1. If you accept that your son is moving out and is ready to be a man, he will still be a frequent warmth at your table.
   2. If you try to make him stay, he will vanish into the night and you will never see him again.

Where you planted all the husks and brown vines in the autumn, strong and hardy crops will spring up in the year to come. You breathe a sigh of relief, thinking things will calm down.

Oh no! Your daughter wants to be married now.

1. She will come home crying one day when she learns the bricklayer has run off with the fox woman. She will be inconsolable for two weeks.
2. Go out to speak to The Witch on her behalf. This is the first time you will have gone to The Witch’s house. It is made of stone, like a castle, but squat against the ground, like the worrying lump on your wife’s back, and is deep, deep in the woods, where the trees are old and the rocks seem unusually jagged, as if the house was thrown here from a great height and broke the earth when it landed. But there will be a fire going.
3. When you knock on the door and explain what has happened, The Witch will cackle. Do not be rude to her even though she finds this all funny—every witch remembers what it was like to be young, and this is how she copes with the mortifying shame of once being someone who felt like that.
   1. She will tell you that it has been hard work finding a bride for your son, and she does not know that she has time to do the same for your daughter.
4. Begrudgingly allow your daughter to go to The Grand Sabbat with the witches to take her mind off things.
   1. When The Witch looks at you very seriously, takes your hand and says without any of her usual histrionics, “You know that she might not come back,” it is important that you say something like “I would rather know she was happy than watch her be content.” If you do not, The Witch will decide you have not grown enough as a person and send you sleepwalking in a blizzard.

Sharing your disquiet with that black hen won’t solve anything, stop trying.

When your daughter leaves for The Grand Sabbat, carrying a broom and a few jars of salves she made herself, the house will feel very empty, with your youngest sleeping in the goat barn. There’s just you, your wife, and a few little comforts around your house.

1. Sit by the fire, or under the awning by the front door if it’s nice weather. Realize you moved here years ago, but this is the first time you’ve actually stopped moving. Stillness is the last child you must raise, so that it will care for you in your old age.
2. Someone from the village where everyone hates you will pass, in the far distance, on a horse. If you have made yourself ready, a balm of ambivalence will blossom in your chest.

Your daughter will return a week later with a different haircut and a slender book that won't give your youngest funny ideas. She swears. She also has butter, real butter.

1. Invite your son and his wife to join you for a meal.
2. Suddenly the house will feel full again. When you ask, your daughter will be conspicuously silent about whether she did or did not meet any eligible bachelors at The Grand Sabbat, with a sly smile that your daughter-in-law picks up on because she has seen more of the world (you do not know about the invention of Lesbians).

Enjoy this dinner. In three more months, your son is going to announce he’s going sailing and will not return for nearly a decade, with a family twice as wide. Your daughter’s coven will undertake a grand scheme to pitch the devil off his throne, and you will speak very little of it for fear that your wife will faint. You will learn the black goat in the barn has been telling your youngest wild stories about far distant lands, none of which are true and all of which she believes. She is growing bright and strong from the loving soil here, but she’ll grow old and leave too, one day. What matters for this dinner is that you’re all together, for now, and you’ve all survived A New England Folktale.

Baubles From Bones: Issue 8
​Available for purchase:
Physical
Digital
Subscribe

Jackson Eflin

Share this!