Among the Thorns by Veronica Schanoes
My rating: 4/5 cats
They made my father dance in thorns before they killed him.
I used to think that this was a metaphor, that they beat him with thorny vines, perhaps. But I was wrong about that.
They made him dance.
this free tor short is based on the grimm’s tale The Jew in the Thorns, which is itself a tricky little story: the servant of a rich man is screwed over by his master, leaves, meets a magical dwarf who takes his money but gives him three wishes, and he uses those wishes to torture, rob, and kill a jew. sleep tight, kids!
it’s hard to find the moral center in a story like that.
this adaptation is told from the perspective of itte, the daughter of the murdered man. she was seven when yakov died; when he had been compelled by a magical fiddle to dance in a thorn patch until he begged for mercy and offered the fiddler all his money to be released. after lodging a complaint against the fiddler for this robbery, he was hanged when the fiddler employed one of his other wish-granted powers – the more useful one where No mortal can resist his requests.
now, why this dude went through all that fiddling and thorn-dancing spectacle when he could have just requested yakov give him all his money is a mystery, but it probably has to do with 1) this is just how fairy tales roll, and 2) this story takes place in an anti-semitic world, so i suppose it was a real hoot to make the jew dance in the thorns.
even before her father’s death, itte is exposed to the cruelty of the christian villagers: her doll is broken by another girl, and she hears the stories that are told of her people:
They say that in their year 1462, in the village of Pinn, several of us bought the child of a farmer and tortured it to death. They also say that in their 1267, in Pforzheim, an old woman sold her granddaughter to us, and we tortured her to death and threw her body into the River Enz.
Who are these people who trade away their children for gold?
My parents would not have given away me or any of my brothers for all the gold in Hesse. Are gentiles so depraved that at last, they cannot love even their own children?
and knowing the cruelty of the world, and the impossibility of obtaining justice for her father’s death, itte knows what she has to do.
I put my hands over his and stared into his eyes intently. If my father could not bring justice to those who slandered him, I would. “I will kill them,” I told my uncle. My voice was steady and I was quite sincere.
“I will surround that town with death. I will wrap death around their hearts, and I will rip them apart.
“I will kill them all. Every one.”
so she waits. and she grows ten years stronger, older, wiser before she is visited one night by the matronit, a deity who promises to help her with her vengeance-project in exchange for itte’s worship and the observance of the old rituals. not well-versed in my kabbalistic theosophy, i did a little internet exploration on the matronit; this daughter-goddess who embodies both motherhood and bloodlust, and it’s a little murky, but also fascinating stuff. itte and the matronit-shekinah go through some spiritual back-and-forth haggling, but eventually reach an understanding, and then it’s ON!
and it’s wonderful. it perfectly balances cruelty with compassion, and the decision itte ultimately makes just bleeds with this heartbreaking resignation. it’s totally fair and not a capitulation, but the compromise has thorns of its own, and it ends up being a real stunner of a story. score one more for tor!
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/am…
