Spruce, Queen of Serpents

Fiction - by M. M. De Voe

AUTHOR’S NOTE: If quirky, authentic folk tales are up your alley, you might enjoy my new translation of one of the more famous stories from Lithuania. Lithuanian folk tales are weird. They are dark. They twist and turn, and when you think they’re over, they’ve got another angle, another lesson, another brutal cautionary note. This story is long: Lithuanian midsummer days lasted all night, and so did the fireside storytelling. “Eglė, Žalčių Karalienė (Eglė the Queen of Serpents)” is one of the three best known tales in Lithuania. There is no definitive version since Lithuania had no written language for centuries: the first book printed in the Lithuanian language was an early catechism—in 1547.

Way back when Catholicism was new to Lithuania, there was a large family that farmed the land and fished in a cove near the Baltic Sea. Near their modest and crowded home, the seawater pooled in a large, sheltered bay that nearly touched the roots of the evergreen forest with hardly any sand or soil between them. In that time, long ago, the older people complained about the heat. Terrible hot days, they would say, unnaturally hot, and unnaturally frequent. The heat was so oppressive the year Spruce was born that her mother named her for the tree that shaded the room where she gave birth. In the nineteen years following, the heat grew no less, but Spruce grew to enjoy her unusual name—all of her sisters and brothers were named for saints. What had saints ever done to relieve the oppressive summer heat? Whereas her namesakes gave unquestioning shelter to the farmer and the fisherman, old crone and schoolgirl alike.

One day, to defy the oppressive heat, Spruce and her sisters swam in the chilly waters of the Baltic. Spruce, as always, had leaped into the water long before her more cautious older siblings, so she was also the first to find herself too cold to feel her feet. As she climbed shivering and naked out of the sea, Spruce was dismayed to see a snake’s black tail poking out of the white blouse she had left on a boulder to warm in the sun. She delayed by noisily pulling on her skirt, but the snake did not move. She slapped at the surface of the stone until her palm was red, clucked her tongue near the creature’s hidden head, and gently prodded at the shirt with a stick. This made the snake move, but it twisted and coiled itself in and through the wrist and arm holes so that when Spruce finally picked up the blouse to simply shake it out, the clever snake had most of its body nestled into and weighing down the pouf of her sleeve. No matter what she did to try to oust it, the long, thin snake tangled itself deeper into the linen—she thought maybe it was even clinging by its sharp little fangs.

Spruce stared down at the bundle, debating. She wasn’t afraid of being bitten; she was afraid her sisters would notice the snake and make her take it home. Any grass snake— žaltys —in Lithuania was lucky.

What can I say, things were different back before lawsuits, cellphones and bulldozers. Now sit still, listen and learn.

As the avatar of the sun goddess, a snake would bring luck, warmth and fertility to the home. Every wealthy family kept a lucky žaltys as a valued guest in those days; and Spruce’s family had been down on their luck lately. But because she found it, the responsibility of tending to the snake would fall on her. The last thing Spruce wanted was yet another creature reliant on her, begging for food and making messes. She had no desire to spend her precious few carefree moments in capturing frogs and feeding them to a pet. Poor little frogs. Spruce liked frogs. Especially the tiny ones that burst out of fresh puddles and wet grass clumps as if the god of rain had left the funny creatures there as a sort of lopsided apology for ruining picnics and weddings.

She shook the blouse harder, taking care not to harm the snake—she wasn’t brave enough to defy the old gods outright. Her sisters would be done with their swim soon. They would certainly make a fuss if they saw this creature, shouting fate and destiny and forcing her to care for it. No. She already had so many chores; she couldn’t possibly add another, even if it did please the Goddess of the Sun.

The thought gave her pause. The sun was so strong today—if the Goddess was watching and saw her slighting her personal avatar... Or, worse yet, if the Goddess had taken the form of this snake to challenge her or test her? Oh, this could be bad. Spruce had to get rid of this snake, and fast.

“Get out. Get away,” she hissed at the snake’s silhouette through her sleeve. The snake’s head poked out of the narrow cuff. In the direct sunlight, the yellow scales banding its neck and underbelly gleamed and the rest of its dark body shone a vivified green like the shadowy fern undergrowth of the oldest forest when the sun’s rays finally penetrate to the floor. The eyes were intelligent, as all snake eyes are—perhaps because they never seem to close, or perhaps because they see the lifeblood of things instead of the false external appearances that tend to sway human emotions. In any event, this žaltys understood Spruce’s intentions perfectly.

“I will not leave,” it replied with a human voice. Spruce nearly dropped the whole bundle. Her sisters’ heads still bobbed in the deep water in the middle of the cove. Too far to call over. No telling what they would have done, either. The snake spoke lazily, with great smugness, “Not leaving unless you grant me a favor.”

Okay. The voice was male. It wasn’t the Goddess, just a servant. This was good.

“Yes, sure, anything,” Spruce whispered. “What do you want?”

The snake’s tongue flicked lazily out, tasting the threads of the linen blouse. “You’re going to have to marry me.”

“You? That’s… Is that even possible?”

But—one, two, three, go! —there wasn’t time to think. Spruce’s three older sisters were swimming in her direction fast as they could, in a race to get to their clothes. She had to get rid of this snake. “Yes. Sure. Whatever you want. Just get out of my things and be gone already!”

“Happily,” said Žaltys. “See you around.”

By the time her sisters had snatched their own blouses from low branches and were hiking up their skirts, chorusing insults about how slow their youngest sister was, how disappointing that she hadn’t stayed in the water, there was not a shadow of the serpent left on the shoreline of the large cove. The laughter of the four girls was riotous throughout the evergreens as they wended their way home, and the birds and other creatures fell still, likely wondering what caused such cacophony; why one of the four girlish voices was pitched so terribly high.

Three days later, a grass snake appeared near her hands as she was pulling weeds among the cabbages. Spruce fled into the house in dread. Her mother clasped her around the shoulders and asked what the trouble was. Spruce might have confessed everything, but her mother’s breath caught, and her eyes widened as she looked out over her daughter’s shoulder at the small yard.

There were snakes everywhere. Thousands of them. They blanketed the fenced-in yard and still more of them slithered over the fence, a moving wall of slick green muscle, their yellow bellies flashing amid the darkness like subtle waves in starlight. Snakes were twisted in among the branches of the giant spruce tree in the yard and they writhed over the plow. In the distant barn, the horses and cows were making sounds like human screams. Snakes were crawling up the posts and over the clean laundry where it hung to dry. Any second they would swarm the house.

Spruce’s father came running from the fields, her brothers and sisters had also converged upon the house, none of them with their usual composure. Her brothers all clutched scythes and the middle one even brandished his in a threatening manner, until the snake horde hissed at him with one voice and made him drop it. Even her stoic old father was wild-eyed and tearing at his long white beard and talking about torches and building terrible, impossible walls of fire. There was simply no time. The sea of serpents was almost at the front door.

But the dark wave stopped short of the door, leaving a sundial of untouched dirt at the threshold of the house.

“It is time!” the voices hissed in unison. Human voices, sibilant. “We have been sent to repossess our queen!”

Spruce’s father dipped deep into his native courage. “I do not know of whom you speak. What queen?”

“The one who was promised. Release her.”

“We shelter no snakes here. Describe your queen.”

The snakes roiled and coiled and hissed. “She is not one of us. She is the one with the loudest laugh,” they said as one.

Spruce’s mother was a quick-thinking woman. She grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged his ear close to her lips. “Send the goose,” she said.

“We will give you the queen,” her husband said, as chills ran down Spruce’s arms. “But you are frightening us. Wait outside the gate while we prepare her.”

The snakes retreated. The spruce tree’s branches greened again, and the laundry flapped in the breeze as if it were clean. Spruce’s father told his children to capture the fattest goose. This, they instantly did. One of Spruce’s sisters even tied her linen handkerchief to the goose’s neck. Spruce’s brothers, all stalwart young men, escorted the goose to the gate where the snakes carried the bird away like a little gray boat with a white sail across waves and waves of dark green and flashes of yellow, deep into the evergreen forest in the direction of the sea.

Three days later, they were back. The mass of snakes approached more quickly now, like a rushing wave rather than a slow tide. They stopped again the length of a sleeping woman from the front door. In one impatient voice, they said “You have made a mistake. She was not the queen that was promised. Restore to us our promised queen.”

Again, Spruce’s father spoke in a strong voice. “We are sorry. We don’t know who you mean. Our goose is the one with the loudest laugh. Please, just describe your queen and we will hand her over.”

“She is the one with the lightest locks. The one with the swollen curves, soft and gentle.”

Spruce’s mother again pulled her husband’s ear close. “The sheep.”

The brothers and sisters fell into motion and the fattest ewe was draped in white linen and sent past the gate where the snakes were waiting.

Three days later, when the snakes returned, they were hissing and roiling and angry. “You stupid people. You sent the wrong bride again. Our Queen is the one you neglect and ignore. She is patient and kind; feeds everyone and asks for nothing. Our master and lord is the King of the Snakes and he will have this one and no other. He will appreciate her and love her as none of you do. He will shower her with jewels, give her beautiful music to enjoy, entertain her with stories and poems and song. She will not work a day in her life, but only sit by his side in companionable conversation, sharing in his laughter and joy. Send the proper bride.”

“Here,” Spruce’s mother deduces. “Take her.” She untied the knot holding the milk cow to her post and tossed the end of the rope into the body of snakes.

“Thank you,” hissed the snakes.

As their white cow with its swollen udder slowly chewed its cud, hundreds of satisfied snakes swarmed up her legs until the faithful cow was belly-deep in serpents and was carried off, still placidly chewing, by a moving hill of them. The family turned away, one by one and returned, stricken, to their chores. Spruce stayed the longest, watching until the beloved cow was nothing but a series of white flashes amid the trunks of the evergreens in the forest.

She was beginning to wonder if she shouldn’t keep her promise.

Three days later the enraged snakes returned, demanding the bride who had pledged herself to their lord and master by the seashore. The Goddess of the Sun had ordained this union! The repeated deceits were a slight the Goddess would not overlook: the family’s farm would be plagued by drought for five years and when the rains finally came they would wash away any remaining seeds instead of nurturing them. The family would be baked into poverty, they had no right to deny her chosen creatures their rightful Queen. To prove the bride’s worth, the serpents had brought with them a splendid throne, wrought in the finest gold and inlaid with delicate gems. Shading her eyes from its vibrant sparkle, Spruce made up her mind. She announced that she was willing to protect the family from this plague of snakes. She would go away to become the bride of the King of Serpents. She would be Spruce, Queen of Snakes, if only they would remember her fondly and with respect once she was gone.

Her sisters were shocked, and her brothers were angry. Her parents were horrified. Everyone tried to dissuade her, but no one forbade it, and Spruce sensed, beneath their angry words, that they appreciated her sacrifice. She put a few things into a small lace bundle: a comb that her grandmother had given her, a change of clothes, a large hunk of cheese and a loaf of rye bread, and then she sat down on the glorious throne that the snakes had brought, and with her mother dabbing at her eyes, and her brothers shaking their fists and vowing revenge, and her sisters wailing and tearing at their hair, and her father nodding stoically, she was carried off by the wave of black snakes, deep into the evergreen forest that bore trees with her name, in the direction of the sea.

But that, of course, is not the end of the story. Marriages are beginnings, not endings.

Spruce rode on her bizarre throne, guessing at her fate. Would the serpent king kill her? Was she to be a sacrifice to the Goddess of the Sun? She rode through the forest listening for birds, but even the cuckoo, who usually had a lot to say, was silent. All she could hear was the pleased susurration of the snakes beneath her as they carried her across the dried spruce needles, certain at last they had the right bride. She could not see the forest floor in any direction—just the writhing of the snakes. Her subjects? Would she be able to command them one day? Or was Queen just an honorary title?

In any event, she hoped it was not a title that was short-lived.

The Baltic Sea glimmered through the last trees at the edge of the forest. As the snakes carried her out, she squinted at the unexpected brightness. The snakes settled her throne onto the hot beach, and slithered into invisibility, some into the gloom of the forest, some into the depths of the sea. A man was waiting for her on the shore.

He was tall and unmistakably human with dark hair and beard and wearing radiant clothing all in deep greens and trimmed in amber but before she could see more, her vision blurred from the welling up of tears in her eyes—whether from the sudden glare, the surge of relief or from a wash of understandable fear, even she did not know—and as her eyes readjusted and the man came back into focus, she saw he was smiling and the smile looked kind. Despite the thoughts racing through her mind, she decided the best thing to do would be to return the smile. So she did, though weakly, and as always whenever a smile is given, however weak, his brightened in response. Which intensified hers. And so on, until the young couple found themselves laughing.

He lifted out a hand to help her up from her seat. She noticed a large signet ring set with a red amber stone, but before accepting his hand, she quickly examined his face for ill intentions.

His eyes were a light gray speckled with yellow and had vertical pupils like a snake. She inhaled sharply when she noticed this, but accepted it, as one must accept all the faults in one’s chosen spouse. She moved on from the striking eyes and saw that his face was pleasant, his beard was dense and groomed with care, he looked strong and his posture was regal but not stiff, and he breathed in with a knowing look and out with a gentle laugh…and his scent—his scent was intoxicating—the sea, travel, flowers she had never seen, spices she had never known. She wanted to bury herself in that scent, to be enveloped by it. She took his hand and found it guided her without controlling her. With a small internal shock, she realized that she liked this man.

He introduced himself as Žilvinas Žaltys, Prince of the Grass Snakes, King of Serpents, Chosen of the Goddess of the Sun, and he informed her that his palace was within a huge bubbled city at the bottom of the sea, and she was just going to have to trust him and hold on.

In Lithuanian tradition, all of a lord’s subjects were invited to his wedding, no matter how meager their lives. It was no different with Žilvinas Žaltys. The eels came, the grass snakes, the vipers and even the lowly worms. The palace was without equal, above the water or below—with chambers that opened into chambers, large libraries and endless kitchens, rooms for jewels and rooms for books, rooms for study and rooms for gold, rooms for music and rooms for sleep. There was a cave-tower that belonged to the king’s mother, a sorceress of frightful magic who liked to spend her days drinking tea and watching fish swim past her windows. The ballroom was so cavernous that every seashell in the Baltic had to be turned into a horn to fill the room with sound. The dining room so vast that hermit crabs had to molt three times before they could bring the salt to a guest at the opposite end of the table. And there were intimate rooms as well: a lovely whispering loft where the sound of plashing waves muted all conversations from prying ears, a reading nook where candles burned without a flicker while breezes cooled your forehead as you turned the pages, a room with a large stone fireplace perfect for warming wine, with mirrors placed so expertly that the reflected light would illuminate your cards without revealing them to your opponents. To bless the union, midsummer sunlight danced to the bottom of the sea without a moment of darkness for the entire three weeks that the wedding party raged, a gift from his patron goddess. She also gave the newlyweds the promise of children. A healthy child every third year so as not to tax the young wife’s body, for as long as Spruce wished to continue.

Her husband was as generous as he had promised, and he gave Spruce a valuable wedding present as well: the gift of immortality. Spruce in turn gave him children. One every third year, as the Goddess had promised: three sons in a row, which she named for trees as she had been. Oak: for Spruce hoped her firstborn would grow up strong and reliable, with roots that tapped into the deepest parts of the human soul to give her son strength in times of trouble. Ash: for Spruce realized her second son would be even stronger than the first, and finally Birch, who was delicate, pale and small, though healthy, and seemed to be destined to become the great artist of the family. Then three years later, she gave birth to a daughter and named the trembling baby Aspen, after the fragile and lovely tree with its fluttering leaves.

It was enough for her—these four—and she reflected that her family felt complete. She thanked the Goddess for her gift and felt the blessing lift from her—leaving her content and happy, if a little empty. Her children were her joy: she watched them learn from various tutors, waited for them to bring her the small problems children have. She showered them in hugs and kisses when she felt proud of their achievements, and in discipline when it was warranted. They grew fast as the trees they were named for, strong and deeply rooted in a sense of family pride. And then one day, her oldest son grew curious.

“You are our mother and the sorceress is dad’s mother, but is she also your mother? Can a mother have a mother?”

Memories crashed through her happiness like waves breaching a fortress. Had she been bewitched? Or was it simply that adult responsibilities had replaced the sadness and ache that used to live in the place called “family?” She had two parents and six siblings—three brothers, three sisters—and she sorely missed them all! Didn’t she? She certainly loved them. Her parents had done the best they could manage with so many mouths to feed. Her mother was a clever woman, full of wisdom. Her father was a stoic man, courageous and responsible. They were people she would like to see, people she would like her children to know.

Before bed, when she used to teach her children to say grateful prayers to the Goddess of the Sun for making each morning a new chance to right the wrongs of the day before, now she prefaced their prayers with reminiscences and lessons of the surface world of work. Small things: the way her older sister beat the laundry on a stone to set the bloodstains free; the way to hold your fingers to grab the right amount of sugar to flavor the apples. The savory differences between a radish and a beet - and how to spot their ripeness without unearthing the root from the soil.

Another week, another month, and the gentle ache turned into a hollow need. She asked her husband if she might visit home. His eyes darted to the left, as if seeing something —his fears? His fate?—but he acquiesced.

She could go, he told her, but she would have to accomplish three tasks before he could allow her to leave.

She agreed.

“It may take me a while to come up with the right conditions,” her husband said, gently, apologetically.

Spruce’s hands reaching to embrace him, fell to her sides. “I see,” she replied. “It’s to be like this. Very well.” And she walked out the door and down the hall, across the courtyard, and up up up into the cave-tower where his mother lived.

“He won’t let me go home,” Spruce announced.

“He’s afraid of your family,” the sorceress replied. “It’s not uncommon. He was an only child.”

“I could go alone. He doesn’t have to go.”

“Men,” the sorceress scoffed, “fear everything. They want to be in control. Just tell him to set the conditions. He doesn’t actually want to deprive you of happiness, he just doesn’t believe you’ll return voluntarily.”

“But I will!” Spruce said, “It was so boring up there! This is a palace! It’s my children’s home!”

The sorceress shrugged and poured herself some herbal tea. “It’s not me that you have to convince.”

The next day, Spruce was knocking on the door again.

“So, what are the conditions?” the sorceress said, laughing.

“Spinning a skein of silk that never ends.” Spruce spread her arms wide. “I can’t even spin a normal skein of silk! I mean, I’ve done linen and cotton, but I’m terrible at it. I have no patience. Have you ever tried spinning? It’s not easy! My oldest sister is great at it, she could sit at the wheel for hours, humming and pumping, twisting and pulling, but me? My thread was always lumpy or it would just break off. Perhaps you could teach me?”

The sorceress narrowed her eyes, appraising Spruce. “Judging from the way you pour tea, if I had a thousand years, I couldn’t teach you to spin properly. Let me think. Is there a room in the castle where you can find spiders?”

“Yes,” the Queen said without hesitation. “The wine cellar is crawling with them.”

“Good,” said the sorceress. “Bring me two hundred in a sack. For now, though let’s have our tea and hope that my son’s next tasks are not more difficult.”

The cellar was a warren of rooms, each cool and dry. There were rooms for potatoes, and rooms for onions, rooms for beets and rooms for radishes. In the farthest recesses were the rooms that held the casks of mead and wine, piled to the ceiling, barrel after barrel. Behind all these was the little door that held the room full of spiders. Spruce had opened the door only once, then slammed it shut swearing she would never open it again.

Now she held her torch before her like a weapon and pushed the door open again. In most of the cellar, the smell was yeasty, rich and thick, healthy dirt with overtones of wine or honey. The room she had opened was damp and smelled of rot and decay. As Spruce put her torch into the waiting sconce on the wall beside the door, she flinched from the smell, but took out the posy she had prepared and wrapped it around her mouth and nose with her handkerchief. She breathed deep of the bitter tang of the rue leaves and rosemary as spiders scurried up the walls and over the floor.

In the middle of the floor stood a large wooden table, its underside white with webs. The four corners of the square room were also soft with webbing. But what was disconcerting was how every shadow had the potential to move. Many shifted and crawled off as she was looking at them. She focused her mind on the task. Two hundred spiders. The first would be the hardest. It was a matter of overcoming squeamishness. At home, she had seen spiders every day. While living in luxury, she had forgotten what it felt like to find spiders in her hair upon waking. Why, when she was a girl, they had encouraged certain spiders to nest near their beds—it kept the mosquitoes and flies from biting!

She bit her lower lip and started scooping spiders into the sack she had brought. She wasn’t counting, so much as pragmatically netting them, much like a fisherman might collect eels or schools of fish. She figured five to ten spiders with every scoop and some got away or crawled up her arms whenever she opened the mouth of the sack, so after twenty scoops, she thought maybe, maybe, that might be enough. But what if it wasn’t? She scooped another twenty just in case and tied the mouth of the sack tightly. She hoped that the spiders couldn’t eat their way out – did spiders gnaw at linen? Did they gnaw at all? She took her torch and closed the door tightly behind herself and carried the horrifically light sack up to her chamber and hung it near her bed.

But then she couldn’t close her eyes. She was afraid of the nightmares she was sure would come. So she didn’t sleep. Instead she stared at the sack all night, remembering the spiders of her childhood.

The sorceress was pleased with the numbers in the sack and told her what to do. Spruce invited the king to the tower where he kept his armory and bade him close his eyes. He smiled as he did and when his eyes were closed, she inverted the sack out the window. “Look now, dearest!” she exclaimed, and his eyes flew open to see the endless filaments of silk flowing like moonlight down to the dark sand below.

“Impressive,” Žilvinas said to her, sweeping an arm around her waist. “But do you really want to go back to a place where spiders crawled in your hair at night?”

Spruce thought about the disturbing tickle of spiders in her hair and almost reconsidered, but then she remembered her mother’s easy way of dealing with daily troubles by telling her that it made the joys taste all the sweeter.

“I do,” Spruce replied. “You could join me.”

“My place is here,” her husband said and pulled her into a kiss. The bag fell to the ground, and if a leftover spider or two escaped, he didn’t notice. “You can go home as soon as you wear down that pair of shoes.” And he pointed up to a shelf on the wall next to the gauntlets where a pair of iron shoes had been gathering dust for years.

Spruce wriggled free from his embrace. “You’re awful.”

He laughed. She pulled on the shoes. They were hard and uncomfortable and cut into her feet, but she had endured spiders; she could certainly withstand a little pain.

But Spruce had overestimated how unhappy she would be when her feet constantly ached. All this time she had been living without care and had forgotten what it felt like to have blisters, to be sore at the end of the day. She grew snappish; her sore feet gave her headaches. No matter how she wrapped her feet, the shoes still hurt. She considered abandoning the trip; after all, on the farm there was a lot of walking to do. The silk shoes which were so pretty on the smooth tiled floors and thick rugs of the undersea palace would be hopeless for walking across a muddy orchard with her brothers or for standing in the loamy garden to talk to her mother and sisters while they weeded. A week went by and Spruce was no closer to wearing out the shoes, so she returned to the sorceress to see what she could learn.

“Of course,” the older woman laughed, “he probably thought of it on the spot. Wearing hot shoes was a punishment his father used to dole out to humans. Snakes think it very funny that humans have feet. In any event, the easiest thing to do is gently warm the metal. It will go very quickly then.”

Spruce went to the King’s blacksmith and was told it was easy—he would soften the shoes for her in exchange for a bowl of soup. When Spruce saw how hungry the man was, she asked around and discovered that all the servants were wanting. A few conversations with the housekeeper and Spruce had set the household right. There was no need for the anyone to starve. If they were happier, they would serve better. Soon the embarrassment of the laden table was replaced by real joy in eating. The children were brighter at the table, and the King himself felt the shift was a positive one. Too much food was nearly as bad as not enough food. Spruce walked lighter as she felt her worth around the castle. Now servants noticed her. She wondered if she actually wanted to return to the home where no one had ever valued her opinions, but then she remembered the dances when the harvest was ready, and the way it felt to fly in the arms of her brothers when the music was high and the polkas fast, and she taught these steps to her children, and in no time her iron shoes were worn through and she dropped them with a happy clank on the large trestle table in her husband’s study.

He was impressed. “I guess I’ll have to let you go soon,” he told her as she stood there, grinning. “But first, one final task.”

“Anything, my dear,” she said, tousling his hair in her fingers.

“You’ve got to bake me a cake,” he said.

She clapped her hands together. “Absolutely. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

“But I’m taking away all the bowls and spoons and tins,” he said. “Bake me a cake using only a sieve.”

“You’re mad,” she said. “But I’ll do it.”

She left the room a little nervous because once this final ordeal had been solved, she would be free to go home. She was plagued with worries. Would they remember her? Would they still love her? Had they ever? Would she even be happy in a place where you had to slave day and night just to get enough to eat? She used some flat seaweed to line the sieve and made a thick paste with honey and flour. She added the new spices she had discovered in the castle’s kitchens: ginger and nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. The dough was so thick that it stood on its own, and Spruce covered the entire mound with almond slices — and added two raisins for eyes so the cake looked like a hedgehog—the mortal enemy of all small snakes.

“I take your point,” Žilvinas said while eating the gingerbread creature. “You can go for a month, is that enough time?”

“That’s plenty, if I can bring the kids,” Spruce said. The four children looked up from the warm cake, hopefully. Their father nodded.

“Yes, but Spruce, be careful,” he said. “I worry that they might not let you return.”

“It’s not their choice,” Spruce said. “This is home now.”

Spruce filled cases with fine clothes and lovely toys and books to bring back to her family, and Žilvinas taught them a spell that would summon him to return for them. They would need his magic to survive the trip through the waters of the Baltic. He grew so intense as he cautioned them not to tell anyone the words of the spell that Aspen started to cry in fear.

“What if you die while we are away?” she whispered, hands covering her eyes.

Žilvinas tried to lighten the mood.

“Here’s a special bit of magic,” he said to his daughter, “Call out my name at the shore. If I live, the waves will foam white, and if I’m dead, the waves will foam red as blood.”

“Don’t scare her,” Spruce said. “He didn’t mean it, silly,” she added to Aspen whose crying had stopped but only because her eyes had gone wide, “On the surface, the waves always have white foam. He’s just teasing.”

Before they departed, Žilvinas took Spruce aside one last time. “In all seriousness,” he said, “I have a bad feeling about this trip.” He held her so tight it upset her.

While her ribs creaked within his embrace, Spruce made eye contact with his mother, who stood just a few feet away. The sorceress shrugged as if to say, “Still just a boy, really.” It reminded her of the time that she’d run sobbing to his mother because he couldn’t understand how hard it was to care for three children when they were all being unreasonable at once. The sorceress had taught her a spell for emergencies, but Spruce had never had to use it. Just knowing it was enough.

The farm looked smaller than she remembered. Dirtier. Louder. All the animals constantly made background noise: the geese, the goats, the chickens. There was a heavy stink of sweet rot in the air, from the vegetable garden freshly fertilized. There was the bright wash of sunlight on the dead walls of the house. The dog leaped on her like an old friend and sniffed at her children like strangers. Where was the milky-white cow? Oh right.

After the initial rounds of delighted hugs, the many questions that they had stored up like snow on a slanted rooftop slid onto her all at once; and when her answers were exhausted, her mother and sisters vanished into the kitchen to scrounge up a festive meal. Spruce expected quite the supper to welcome her family, and she wasn’t disappointed.

“He’s a king, that’s why,” she overheard Oak tell one of her brothers. Her stomach dropped and twisted as she glided closer to the conversation.

Ash agreed, “He can’t just drop everything to come to a farm.”

“And anyway, on land he usually has to be in snake-form,” Birch added, needlessly. That child would never learn what was to be told and what was to be withheld.

“But how do you live under the sea?” her oldest brother pressed the young men. “What do you eat? How do you breathe?”

Spruce saw the happy sparkle in her youngest son’s eye, as he leaned back prepared to wow them with the greatest story they had ever heard, and she managed to interrupt just in time. “Oh, there you all are! You guys should teach the boys handball. They don’t even know the rules! I keep them playing chess and cards most of the time when they’re not studying. Give them some fresh air. Put some color in their cheeks.”

The clamor to have her sons on their team made her smile. It was good that she had brought them to the surface. Kids should know their blood relatives—if only to know what to beware of.

In the kitchen her mother and sisters had plucked a chicken and Aspen had been put to work sweeping the feathers and gore from the hard-packed dirt. “It’s fun,” she told her mother when Spruce complained. “It’s like in the stories where princesses are always working before they get pretty.” Her sisters exchanged a sour look then, and Spruce had to ask them about their marriage prospects to get them chatting again. Her eldest sister still looked like she had sucked a finger soaked in lye.

“I’m finally set to marry the miller’s son,” the third one said with a little huff. “The miller’s wife is trying to make father pay extra because you ran off. It just isn’t done, you know. You ruined it for all of us, even the boys.”

“I know,” Spruce replied with her palms up in surrender, “but at least I’m not here. I mean, you’ll all have much better chances with me out of the way.”

“She’s not wrong,” the middle sister groused. “That yellow hair. I don’t know how it stays golden.”

“Three kids, it will go gray soon enough,” Spruce rebutted and to her relief they all laughed warmly, but Spruce didn’t miss Aspen tilting her head and looking at her aunts and her grandmother. Spruce wrapped both arms around herself, as if that could hide how much finer her embroidered traveling dress was than the hearty woolens that her mother and sisters wore beneath their stained work aprons. Could she leave them jewels to sell? Would they accept? She had packed a different dress for herself and her daughter for every week plus Sundays—forgetting that in her home, two dresses were enough to last a year.

By the fourth day, nerves were fraying all around. Spruce’s mother roasted a fresh bird for every meal, even though Spruce begged they eat like family. “I miss your dumplings and the simple soup and the kugelis,” she pleaded. This was true, but also, she knew her father could afford to lose flour and potatoes far better than an unexpected duck, a goose, a few chickens, and a string of quail.

“But you are our guests,” her mother insisted, wiping the blood of the duck on her apron and tossing the feathers into the bucket. Her eyes lost focus. “The fog was especially thick in August and four woodpeckers are sharing the spruce now—it is likely to be a bitterly cold winter. Our quilts can use refreshing.”

“Feathers are all fine and good, but you need to keep the birds for their eggs, mother,” Spruce said.

“Don’t tell me how to run my household, you fine young thing,” her mother replied. Spruce wasn’t sure if she was joking, but there wasn’t time to ask her. She heard a distant scream. Her son, Birch. She dropped the paring knife onto the table with the carrot she was peeling and ran outside to listen.

The scream came again; her youngest son was terrified. It sounded like it was behind the woodshed. Her bare feet sank in the mud and slowed her, his screams did not lessen.

The woodshed was made in the old style with raw planks and a thatch roof to match the main house, but the wood hadn’t been sealed with pitch against the wind or the rain, and for a heartbeat, Spruce considered peeking through the slats to try to see what was going on unobserved, but a third scream from her youngest son made her speed around the corner instead, skirts hiked up to her knees so she could move faster.

Her three brothers stood over Birch with the whip they used to make the oxen move. It was knotted at the end and Spruce knew from childhood games that ended in tears how painful it could be to be hit with that tip even once and in play. When Birch saw her, he broke down utterly and sank to his face in the grass, sobbing in relief.

The expressions on her brothers’ faces showed a once-familiar determination that had no room in it for play or pretend.

There were clean linen sheets and towels scattered all across the lawn in a crooked line still connected to one of the poles. Her older sons Oak and Ash stood straighter; Ash angrily eyeing an axe left leaning against the side of the woodshed, just out of his reach. All three sons were tied at their ankles to the other laundry pole with three long ropes.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded and grabbed at the whip in her oldest brother’s hand. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow and his forearms were slick with sweat. He shook her off as though she was still ten years old.

“The men are having a family discussion,” her middle brother laughed while she plagued the elder with slaps and kicks that he ignored. None of her brothers had grown more handsome with age, and the belly the middle one had added only made him look like he’d swallowed a barrel. His nose was red, and his small eyes were leaking ugly glee. “Run along little sister, there’s nothing for you here.”

“Leave my boys alone! Are you hurt? Have they been hurting you?”

Oak held his left arm cradled in his right. A long bloody stripe emerged from both sides of a ragged white cloth on his thigh, now steeped in red, and he clearly favored the other leg. His untucked shirt was torn from hemline to neck to provide the makeshift bandage and dangled open at his chest. All three of the boys’ vests were in a pile on the grass and all three of their shirts were bloodstained. All three of her boys had pressed their lips together and weren’t speaking. Even Birch, whose face was now covered in dirty streaks and who had tears streaming down his face and filthy neck, wouldn’t breathe a word of accusation, no matter how she pleaded for them to trust her.

Their uncles smirked, and the youngest of them picked up the axe near its heavy head and smacked the handle on his palm like a stick. The sound set chills running down her back. She gripped her shirt the same frantic, helpless way she had gripped her doll way back when: the youngest of her brothers had been chased down and strung up like this by his older brothers, she remembered being stuck into a haystack feet down and forced to watch them “train him” to “act like a soldier” or “be a man” while the older two acted like despots or animals. Clearly, he had been changed. And now… She looked down at Birch who was hugging his own knees and crying so hard that snot seeped out of his nose and oozed onto the grass in long oily threads.

She pitied him and acknowledged the quiet man he would become. She loved them all equally, her children, but she also saw their futures diverge. The older two boys would be better at facing down the world. The youngest one would be the best at changing it. Her daughter? She would float along, a cork on the sea, withstanding whatever storms the world had to offer, enjoying the drama of it all.

She untied her sons while her brothers watched and smirked. Not a word was spoken by anyone.

The next four days were full of awkward moments. Her sons would fall silent whenever she came upon them whispering with their uncles. There were many occurrences where Oak or Ash would vanish and return with haunted eyes or unexplained bruises. But they wouldn’t divulge a word of what was going on. Meanwhile, whenever Spruce came upon Aspen, the girl broke into a guilty smile and hid her hands behind her back. Birch avoided her altogether. To distract herself, Spruce swept the house, doing petty chores out of boredom and physical memory, but mostly managed to get in the way of the family’s routine.

Each night at dinner, Spruce’s brothers sang songs and told irreverent stories and her sisters laughed and teased and her mother and father sat at either end of the laden table and repeated, over and over, just how delighted they all were to have her home.

A month was too long. Nine days into their stay, she was certain that they were all hiding something. She assumed it was jealousy: of the lavish gifts and fine clothes, of her shy and misguided efforts at housework and chores around the farm, of her children’s clear eyes, healthy skin, perfect posture. There were secrets in the shadows, contorting the laughter and the familiar jocularity at the table. There were narrowed gazes that darted to the side whenever Spruce became aware of them.

What the family was actually hiding was the slaughter on the shores of the sea on the fifth day of her visit. It had felt such a gift to their beloved sister, beloved daughter, beautiful grandchildren, to kill the snake that kept them apart, but each day that passed brought another sign that Spruce and her children sincerely loved their father, their husband, the king. Each nightfall meant one day closer to Spruce discovering their crime.

It had been so easy in the end: when her brothers were unable to torture the summoning spell from her sons, they got their sisters to bribe the magic words from Aspen. She gave them willingly in exchange for a hazelnut and a kiss on the head.

Spruce’s brothers stood on the beach, recited the spell, and a sleek and graceful serpent bubbled up from the depths on the white foam waves. Three scythes made an easy end to his life. The king didn’t cry out. He didn’t change form. He didn’t even fight back. It was a respectable show of courage, and when the Baltic had washed away even the smallest pieces of his noble body and the beach was at last entirely free of stains, with wave-smoothed sand as far as the eye could see, Spruce’s brothers walked knee-deep into the salt water and cleansed their scythes of blood, then dried and polished the dull metal with their clothing, all the while somberly discussing the composed way this otherwise utterly contemptible snake had faced his death. He met their eyes, and knowing who they were, he accepted their decision. He was dignified. He was noble. It was distressing.

But Spruce knew nothing of this. She loved her family and felt only that there was something uncomfortable and newly embarrassing in their increasingly feisty and earthy jokes. She missed Žilvinas. Missed being in control of her own home. Missed the comforts of the undersea palace. Missed the old sorceress—the hours they would spend staring at the fish or musing aloud at how quickly the kids had grown and what intriguing new talents or unnerving characteristics they were showing, comparing these to various talents and characteristics their father had shown as a boy. It was a pleasant business, carefree—and Spruce realized that in her family home everyone was still trying to raise her. It was like returning a rose to a pot it had outgrown. The best you could hope for is that a cutting might thrive; the original plant will die indeed.

Once Spruce had named the problem, the only solution was to leave.

Fourteen days had passed, and the boys were beginning to show signs of respect for their brutal uncles, while Aspen lorded over her amused aunts and grandmother in the kitchen, imagining (as children do) that she was cleverly manipulating the women into giving up their favorite needlepoint pillows, ribbons, and one particular sewing thimble, coercing them into baking endless treats: the honey cakes and cookies, apple breads, and gooseberry tarts the women would gladly have made regardless. Aunts will always flatter little girls by pretending reluctance.

Spruce announced her early departure to general dismay. The swallows dipped lower than usual. The treetops drooped. Even the woodpeckers hammered out a warning.

While her parents and siblings frowned and exchanged guilty glances, the children packed their clothes with great reluctance. Except for Aspen’s reticule, all the bags were lighter than they had been on arrival. Spruce’s mother handed her a bundle with various breads and cheeses and hard sausage that the family could ill afford to give away—particularly if the woodpeckers portended truth, as they always did.

Spruce and her children said goodbye at the gate, and Spruce fondly remembered the crazy ride in the golden throne that had carried her away from her home the first time. Now they would walk and be glad of the walking. It would be fine to see afternoon light pouring through the evergreens. She and the kids would sing songs of gratitude to the Goddess of the Sun, and perhaps she would bless the remainder of their journey.

But they forgot to sing the songs, for Aspen spent the whole walk weeping for her aunts and grandmother. The boys, too, seemed uncharacteristically quiet.

“Why the low moods?” Spruce asked, “Her, I understand; she’s been spoiled with gifts, but you? My brothers—”

“They treated us like men,” Ash said, flatly. For a while there was no sound except Aspen’s quiet hiccups and their footsteps on the forest floor.

The shift from forest to beach took the children by surprise. The transition is sudden and glorious when the sun sparkles off the vast water of the sea after the dim and silent woods.

“Let me! Let me!” Aspen shouted, and she ran to the edge of the water. “Daddy! We’re home!”

Spruce smiled and quietly said the summoning spell.

Instantly the waves began to roil and scroll backwards and inside out in twisted geysers and broken eddies. It made Spruce nervous and she grasped Oak’s arm. When the waves foamed deep maroon, Aspen screamed and Ash said under his breath, “I knew it.”

Oak nodded and sent a piercing glare at his brother. Spruce stood rooted in the sand, feeling her will to live ebb away with the blood-red foam.

“You did this,” she said to her children with a hard edge to her voice. “You betrayed him.”

“Not me,” said Oak. “When our uncles demanded the words of the spell, I stood strong and I didn’t say a word even though the tears ran down my face with every blow.”

“Not me either,” said Ash. “I took their beatings and didn’t even cry.”

“I cried,” said Birch, “but you were there, mama, you saw that I said nothing to them! Not one word!”

But little Aspen had dropped her bloated bag on the hard, wet sand and was staring down at her blistered palms.

“I was afraid, mama,” she whispered. “I was afraid they would hate me if I didn’t tell. I never thought they’d hurt us.”

“Family is the deepest hurt but also the deepest joy.” The voice was unexpected and came from the depths of the sea. It was Žilvinas, the last sweet echo of his soul. As the sun sank into the purple water, his voice came again: one last gift of magic from his beloved patron goddess. “I forgive you, my daughter, my joy, and I will always love you all. I am glad you knew me. Remember me well.”

Her husband’s voice broke Spruce’s heart. The warm Sun Goddess abandoned them for the night. In her place, the sentinel Moon looked coldly down at them. Indifferent.

Spruce remembered the spell the sorceress had taught her long, long ago, that she had never used.

She whispered the enchantment. It turned her timid daughter into a quaking aspen tree. The world would always know her cowardice, even as she grew more beautiful each year. It turned her youngest son into a colorful birch, her strongest sons into an ash and an oak, and when it was all done, she herself transformed into a faithful spruce tree that would live forever.

Names have power; the sorceress taught her so.

They’re all still there on the shores of the Baltic Sea. An aspen, a spruce tree, an ash, a birch, and an oak, five in a row, right on the edge of the forest where the white sand meets the trees. You should visit one day. It’s just up the beach from the Hill of Witches. The Hill of Witches? It’s a wonderful hike in Juodkrantė. You should see that too while you’re in Lithuania, but only if you have the time.

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