Arcane II by Nathan Shumate (Editor) Page B

was so thick and warm that it made her sleepy immediately, even though she tasted salt on her lips and bitterness between her teeth.
    Of course Grandfather Grigory would feel sick. He had drunk no brew to begin with. It was more than important to have three cups a day to be able to stay inside the house, which always shook and spun in the hurricane’s arms. While Grandmother and the house had agreed that no furniture should dance to the hurricane’s spins and twirls, the people inside felt the spinning. This was why Grandfather Grigory’s arms and legs crittered on the chair like wild beasts.
    Tatyana took the eels from Grandfather Grigory’s hand, which reminded her of raw wood, and hopped to the kitchen, where she flopped the eels with a loud, greasy slap on the table and picked a cup for her grandfather. It was old and wooden, the surface slippery from the moisture of all the drinks it had been filled with. She filled the cup with the brew, turning the ladle like Grandmother did, three times clock-wise and then three times backwards.
    Back at the fire place, Grandmother danced for Grandfather Grigory. She danced like the spider danced on its web, like the shadows did on the wall in front of the fireplace, like the bits and pieces in the cauldron did when Grandmother made borsch, like her crow did when Grandmother let it fly inside the house.
    “Good girl, Tatyana,” Grandmother said and took the cup. Grandmother looked like a crow. A cinnamon hand with skin polished to a metal sheen extended from the darkness that was her skirts and her sleeves.
    “Now, go to bed.”
    It was an order and Tatyana had to obey.
    She closed the door and the wood laughed with the voices of her grandparents. The stairs tried to laugh with small, sharp creeks to cheer Tatyana, for she felt as if she was locked in the pantry with no candle light. Isolated and abandoned.
    Grandfather Grigory changed everything. Grandmother had never sent her to bed so early. She did not dance and she did not laugh. At least not with her. For that, she did not like Grandfather Grigory. She decided that she would never like him at all.
    In her room, the house had left a new book. It was thick and old, the size of a brick from the fireplace, wearing a skin of dust. She opened the pages, but there were no pictures. Grigory had changed everything indeed. Tatyana huffed, not sure whether she would like it here anymore.
    Now she only had the hurricane.
    Tatyana sat on the bed and tapped on the window three times, just like Grandmother did on everything so that things would go her way. The glass shivered in what Tatyana could understand was a scold.
    The hurricane never stopped. Now it spun darkness and clouds like threads on a spindle, black as the night, and silver as the lightning that criss-crossed the sky. She waited, not sure what she wanted to happen. No, she knew she was bored and restless. She wanted something to play with. Something new, something secret. Something that even Grandmother, the witch in the hut with four chicken legs that was the heart of the hurricane, did not know.
    Then the secret happened. The glass tapped three times at her again. It could not have been normal. Hurricanes didn’t tap on windows. No, they could tap, but Tatyana knew that never did unless it was for someone special. What else could it be? So Tatyana slept with a smile on her face that night.
    In the morning, Tatyana was happier. Grandfather Grigory had gone and Grandmother was bent over her cauldron, making borsch of eels, red meat and shriveled pig skins that smelled like the sea to Tatyana.
     
    ***
     
    In the years that followed, Tatyana met Grandfather Grigory over and over again. And every time he was different. Every visit a new test to her patience, a new hour stolen of Grandmother’s attention, a new challenge to hold her breath and appear as the good girl Grandmother loved, but no matter how quiet Tatyana was, Grandmother loved Grandfather Grigory more.
    Tatyana