Web of sorrows
Issue ten: fiction by CL Sidell
We’re delighted to bring you this small tale, a reimagining of one of the less well-known pieces collected and published by the Grimm brothers. The Grimm tale, Das Totenhemdchen (The shroud) is an example of tale type ATU769 The death of a child. It is just one example of many similar tales in which a mother’s excessive grief is curtailed after a visit from their child’s ghost.
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She suppresses her bubbling hysteria as the walnut coffins are lowered into the worm-nurtured earth: two little coffins, for two little bodies.
Heads bow. Eyes leak. Sugared words are sprinkled like confetti, grief-stricken goodbyes scribbled on pastel paper butterflies tossed (in lieu of dirt) onto the graves. As she watches them spiral-drift into the twin rectangular maws, denial’s potent potion pours down her parched throat: there’s no surrendering her beloved girls to anyone’s hereafter. (These fresh-filled plots are empty.) Time scatters. (The hourglass shattered.)
Their once happy, sun-spilled home falls through reality’s cracks, transforms into an abandoned shack of shadow and malachite moss.
Where are my girls?
Where are they hiding?
Spider silk thickens across archways. Dust bunnies fatten under unused chairs. How can she wake from this unending nightmare?
She tries various methods: pin-pricking her thigh, burning her tongue with the candle’s flame, squeezing her rose-rimmed eyes until colors star-burst behind them.
Nothing will lift this cursed veil. Their laughter remains elusive; she can’t quite catch their nimble shadows darting around corners or up and down the stairs.
Slow down, my darlings; Mommy can’t keep up!
By nightfall, she’s bone-weary and heel-sore. (Every curtain lifted; every cupboard checked.) She languishes on the fairy-garden rug between their empty mattresses, plagued with insomniac fever. Clutches the hems of their bed skirts. Fixates on the space beyond the open doorway. Waits for her darlings to appear.
As moonbeams stream through the room, curious noises stir. Scratching on floorboards. Knockings on glass. Her eyes widen when a fine mist blooms and she sees that they are here! Dimpled smiles, bouncing blonde locks, weightless slippered feet gliding over the threshold.
My girls, I’ve missed you so!
Dressed in their favorite springtime dresses (the ones they wore when—), they stand side by side without speaking. Withdraw shimmering sheets of paper from side pockets. Fold them deftly into butterflies—like the stars, too many to count. Angular wings of transparent pinks and purples and blues. When they’re released into the air, the ethereal sparks transform into black rocks that fall heavily, heavily, oh-so-heavily, on her heaving chest.
Oof. Oof. Oof.
Bands of pain constrict her breath. Fire pinwheels along her spine. An explosion in the dark. And finally (f-i-n-a-l-l-y) she accepts the utter, heartrending truth.
As she shakes through her keening, the girls’ luminescent forms contort: four extra limbs knife through vanishing fabric; their eyes increase by six, bright orbs deepening from turquoise to onyx. Fair hair shortening and greying, multiplying, obscuring skin. Body parts both narrowing and bulging.
They’re gone! They’re gone! My darlings are gone!
She continues to wail as the arachnids bend, drop, scuttle off: scratching floorboards, knocking against glass as they scurry back to their shadows.
Alone once again, she crawls when she can, lifts the sash to the howling without and lets the wind carry her tears through fields, across lakes.
My darlings, my girls.
She peels back the months, layer by layer, and relives the accident. The wagon hurtling off the bridge. Her girls’ broken bodies sucked beneath the fast-moving waters. This cruel chimera–a rusted blade–she swallows: her girls have no earthbound alibi. They are not elsewhere, skipping through life beyond her line of sight. Her girls have forever departed.
She directs her gaze to the silent sky.
A native Floridian, CL Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. She holds a master of arts in both English and library & information science, moderates two creative writing groups, and has reviewed books for the Florida Library Youth Program. When she’s not busy working, she’s usually looking for ways to spoil her pets or stopping traffic to rescue animals. She dreams of traveling the world and hopes to someday revisit New Zealand.
Beautiful 😍