I jerked up, bile rising so quickly in my throat that I nearly retched.
Papa was standing in the threshold, still wearing his robe. His swollen stomach had gone flat again, loose and empty skin flapping as he strode toward me and said, “Why isn’t there any food in the sitting room?”
My mind supplied the words I’m sorry, but my mouth could not speak them. I only stared at him, heart pounding.
“Well? What is it, Marlinchen? You look as dumb as a struck dog. There is more than enough food in the icebox—I checked last night myself when I went downstairs to have another chicken. The men could not possibly have eaten it all. Could they? Most are docile like lambs. But you can see my belly is empty again, and I’m so hungry I’ve forgotten the taste of dumplings and kvass. Those rats in my mind are nibbling away at my memory. I need to eat again. I need to eat.”
I looked up into Papa’s brown eyes, the same weak tea color as my own, and upturned slightly at the corners, just like mine were. I looked at the slope of his long nose, as long as mine or longer, and his mouth opening like a black pit, a hole, under the bramble of his beard. Something to fall into.
“I’m hungry too, Papa,” I said. “I need to eat.”
He made a derisive sound and scowled. “And can you not feed yourself once I’ve eaten first? You’re twenty-three years old, a woman now, certainly capable enough.”
“Have I been spoiled?” I asked him. My cheeks were burning hot. “Am I a woman because I was ruined? Was I a girl before? When will I be spoiled enough that you have to turn me into a bird and be rid of me?”
Papa’s eyes snapped at me like a fox’s jaws. “Why are you talking to me in riddles? Speak plainly, or do not speak at all.”
“I’m only speaking the way you taught me to. Girls become women and then women become birds; that’s all true. You and your codex both told me so.” I rose to my feet, stomach lurching like a drink about to spill. “I don’t want any of it anymore. I want to be a girl again, before I knew the taste of my mother’s meat.”
He laughed then, my father, showing all of his half-rotted teeth. “If I could, I would make you one, Marlinchen. You were better for me when you were small-breasted and silent. But transformations don’t work like that; magic doesn’t work like that. You cannot make a flower unbloom.” Papa took me by the collar of my dress and pulled me toward him, until we were so close that I could count every blue hair of his beard, bristly and sharp. “Get down to the kitchen. And you might as well make Dr. Bakay breakfast too.”
Something broke apart inside me and I was filled with the tiny sharp bits of it. Papa hurled me away from him and I fell to the ground, my hair parting in two wild curtains over my face.
I did not look up again until I heard Papa slam through the door and clatter down the stairs, wood groaning under his weight. I stared at my split knuckle again, glistening like a ruby ring. To weep should be easy, but though I tried, the tears would not come.
I stood up, stumbling a bit, my knees humming with nascent bruises. A conversation leaked through the crack in the door, words floating from Dr. Bakay’s mouth up the stairs and into my ears. Papa’s brisk voice followed. They sounded like two conquering chieftains, arguing over how best to divide their spoils.
I knew, then, without even a quiver of doubt—perhaps it was my witch’s instinct rearing—that the next time I heard any footsteps on the stairs, they would be coming for me, a double-headed dragon breathing cold fire. I had thought that Papa had done his worst already. But his anger was insatiable and depthless too. There was always more of me that he could nibble at and gnaw, until he was sucking the marrow right from my bones.
I gathered up my tattered dress in my fists and hurtled out of my bedroom, down the steps, and into the foyer, where the midmorning sunlight made everything gleam like the inside of a snuffbox, gold and hard and close.
Papa and Dr. Bakay were in the sitting room, and when they saw me their eyes narrowed in perfect unison.
They both started toward me, but I was nearer and faster. I burst through the front door and into the garden, cool air stealing into my lungs. An eyeless raven winged past me, scattering black feathers. I waved it off and crashed through the wheat grass, toward the juniper tree.
When I reached it I dropped to my hurting knees and began to claw up the dirt. I was as manic and feral as a mangy dog, soil caulking under my nails. Finally I closed my fingers around Mama’s compact, shaking with both terror and relief.