Besides, the girl was busy rewriting the story:
Once upon a time, there was a princess under a spell. A wicked spell. Cast by a wicked witch. The witch had magic that should not have been hers, while the princess was denied the honor of beauty. In order to break the spell, the witch’s magic needed to be stolen away. The princess broke the spell. She reached into the complicated folds of the witch’s throat and squeezed.
The girl felt the old woman’s magic (neither good nor bad but unwieldy, with consequences) surge into her open, astonished mouth.
9.
The police arrived and scratched their heads, wondering where to begin. The paramedic told them what he knew, though he did not say how he came into that knowledge. Better to be vague, he thought. They began to mark the places where the body lay scattered in the damp, brown grass. The paramedic was worried about the ravens that gathered in greater numbers on every branch, on every park bench, on every sign. But they did not make for the meat. In fact, they had stopped calling altogether. They watched silently: a gathering, black-coated crowd.
The girl speaking in tongues was coaxed onto a gurney and examined. Her eyes, dilated and wild, circled the sky while her mouth continued to make words that were not words.
“All right, sweetheart,” the paramedic said. “In we go.” But the girl sat up, her long brown hair falling into her face. She grabbed the paramedic’s uniform and looked directly into his face.
“Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” she said.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he began, but she shook her head.
“Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” she insisted.
The paramedic ignored this, and with a one, two, three and a heave, he and his coworkers inserted the gurney into the open maw of the ambulance. He patted the back, and the driver took the girl away. The ravens watched her go.
The paramedic walked to his bag and was reaching for it when he noticed a large, shocking green grasshopper on his hand.
“Hello,” he said to the grasshopper, bringing his hand to his face. The grasshopper did not move, but stared at him with its iridescent eyes, its long legs gently wiping its mouth.
“Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” said the grasshopper.
“That seems to be a popular song these days,” the paramedic said, and then stopped. Because the song wasn’t just coming from his hand. It came from the grass, then the tree, then the tangled forest tumbling down to the river. Then it was everywhere.
10.
The stepmother leaned her expanding bulk against the door. She knocked the back of her head against the teak veneer, which she had ordered herself and had polished to a high gloss. Outside, inside, or perhaps in her head, the girls’ voices went from accusation to song to accusation again.
“You,” they said, their voices sharp as scalpels.
“Tzzz, tzzz,” they sang, their voices an insistent whir.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she shouted. “This isn’t how the story goes.” Her hand itched. Except it wasn’t her hand. Ronia Drake’s hand itched. But that couldn’t be right. Ronia Drake was dead. The stepmother watched it happen in a slick of water, and water can’t lie. The old woman told her so. And a dead woman can’t itch.
And yet the hand did itch, and it was driving her mad. That and the constant drone of the girls outside the door. She rubbed Ronia Drake’s hand on the lump of her belly. The child inside did not move. It never did. And it did not sing. She rubbed harder, trying to block out the itch, trying to block out the sound that whirred in the tile, in the air, in her bones. As she rubbed her belly grew. Her buttons popped off and cracked the far window with a sharp ping. Her knees buckled under the weight, and she crashed to the ground.
She looked at the hand. Ronia Drake’s hand. A thing she did not expect. (Unwieldy. With consequences.) It had to go.
With great effort, she grasped the edge of the sink and lifted herself up. She threw open the door to the medicine cabinet, cracking the mirrored surface against the wall. Grabbing her husband’s razor, she hacked at the skin that bordered Ronia Drake’s ugly hand with her own pale and creamy skin. It wasn’t enough, of course. How could it be?
“More,” she said to the razor. “Be more, goddamnit.”
And the razor was more. First it was a butcher knife. Then a machete. Then a scimitar. The blade was so sharp it glinted and sang in the air.
“Tzzz,” sang the blade.
“Shut up,” commanded the stepmother. “Just cut.” And it cut. The skin cut quietly. The bone sliced with a short, quick snap, and Ronia Drake’s hand fell softly to the ground with a thud.
As the stepmother reached for a towel to stop the bleeding, the glossy surface of the door split apart and the air sang. Grasshoppers, electric green and delicate and utterly wild, swarmed into the bathroom. They covered the shower curtain, inundated the sink, blanketed the toilet. They blocked out the light, crawled into her mouth, stopped up her nose, crowded onto her eyes. And they were beautiful. The stepmother thought, You look just like Alice. Then she thought, No, perhaps it’s Anna. But before she could decide, darkness thundered all around her and she was lost.
11.
The paramedic shaded his eyes, even though it was overcast. One cloud, dark, thick, and undulating, approached quickly over the tops of the empty trees. The cops stopped scratching their heads and looked up at the sky.
“What the hell is that sound?” one of them asked.
The cloud moved faster and faster. When it arrived, the paramedic saw that it wasn’t dark at all. It was green. Deep green, like
