Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych by Joanna Ruocco Read Free Book Online Page A

woodcutter's daughter went into the forest. She found an ax in a stump. The metal of the ax was dark and there were hairs on the metal, white hairs that were the length of a man's hairs or the hairs on an animal. The woodcutter's daughter pulled the ax from the stump. She used the blade of the ax to cut the hairs on her head. She held the ax steady and rubbed her hairs back and forth on the blade until the hairs broke. The blade cut into the back of her head as she cut the hairs that grew in the back of her head. Blood ran down her neck. Blood ran down her shoulders. Blood ran down from her neck and across both her shoulders. Her dress became dark. She took off her dress. She put her dress on the stump. She took a shirt from a dark bush with red thorns. The red thorns had pulled white threads from the shirt. Beneath the brown leaves on the path, she saw trousers the color of leaves. She put on the trousers. She walked through the forest. She entered a town. The town had a baker. It had a butcher. It had a farmer. It had a man who boiled bones and a man who sold worsted cloth from a wagon and a man who removed what thickened beneath the tongues of chickens and horses. It had a blacksmith and a vicar and a rich man who owned a mill on the water, but the town did not have a woodcutter. The people of the town smiled when the woodcutter's daughter took the dark ax down from her shoulder.

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    The orchard is altogether changed. Where are the apples, the soft, rotten apples? The orchard is not brown. It is hard and gray. The walls are hard and gray. They drip. They are stone. The trees are stone. The trees have grown together. The faces in the knots of the trees are gray. Every face has an open mouth. The mouths are filled with fluid. The fluid drips down the walls. The pigs press around. They dig in the orchard. They grunt. They squeal. They move against me. They push with wet faces, hard, wet faces. The teeth are inside the faces, behind the thick skin of the faces. They have white hairs on their faces. White hairs cluster around their eyes. They press against me. They dirty the dress. They smear dung on the dress. I can't breathe with them against me. I can't breathe. They are squealing. It is coming from the crib. It is coming from the carpet. The pigs are digging through the carpet. There is earth beneath the carpet. The pigs put their noses in the earth. They open their mouths. They eat the earth. They eat the tubers in the earth, the white roots in the earth, the tapered root that comes from the earth. They dig deeper than the dogs. They dig a deep hole in the nursery. I wait for her to come into the nursery, to hook her fingers on the edge of the hole and climb up into the nursery. I would sever her neck with the housekeeper's shovel but I have only the covers of books.

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    You can see into the orchard from the tower. You can see into the orchard from the forest. On one side of the orchard, tower. On the other side, forest. I saw through the bushes in the forest, lights in the tower, shapes in the orchard. The house lit the orchard. It made shadows in the orchard. I sat in the bushes. She held the bough of the tree with her hands and her knees. She clung to the bough. She kicked her feet. She swung down. She dangled. Her face was red and wet. The spots on her face were red and wet. She lifted her knees as she dangled then she let her knees drop. She dropped to the earth. She lay in the apples. The Master lay in the apples. He pulled himself through the apples with his elbows. He slid through the apples. She pulled herself with her heels through the apples. She slid beneath the Master. He jerked against her. He jerked against her. He lifted her shoulders and her head fell back. The hairs on her head hung down to the apples. The crown of her head hung down to the apples. Her head hit the apples. She jerked up and down. Her head hit the apples. The brown skins of the apples clung to her neck. They clung to her