Read by Jasmine Raymond
My mother warned me. If you ever see them, she said, you must cross yourself to make them disappear. They will steal your voice if you don’t.
The fear of coming face to face with a Kalikandjaro and losing my voice made my heart beat in my throat. My thoughts trembled during the twelve coldest nights of the year leading to Christmas. I placed my hands above the crackling fire in our fireplace and reminded myself that I lived in a safe, warm world. I had to look after my baby sister when my parents were busy or away. When she fell asleep in her cot, her rosy face lost in dreams as sweet and soft as candy floss, I envied her bliss. I couldn’t move in the house without seeing their shadows on the living room curtains, without hearing their hooves on the stone kitchen floor or their high-pitched voices in the creak of kitchen cupboards opening and closing.
*
My mother went into town every day that week, to buy groceries and make preparations for the Christmas table. Alone, I had to face the thought of them with just my hands as protection, my hands which would make the sign of the cross, forehead-heart-shoulder-shoulder. I counted the hours and minutes my mother was away. When she returned, her plait undone, her skirt creased and her shoes muddy, she said we should block the chimney with thorns, to keep them from entering our house. She burned olive leaves and sprinkled blessed water in all corners of the house, she put the sign of the cross above doors and windows, added salt to the fire.
“If there are any still around, they’ll disappear after this,” she assured me. She then swept the floor and dusted the cabinet with the six gold-rimmed shot glasses, all neatly lined up on the crochet placemat. When my father got back from the fields with a scowl as dark as his hair, she stopped, served his food, smiled.
My father chewed his meat, sucked on the bones, turned to me.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, while I stood in the doorway, watching the dough balls sizzle in the frying pan. “Why are you frying those again?” he asked my mother, “to keep the Kalikandjari away? You’re losing your mind, woman,” and he roared with laughter as he threw a syrup-steeped dough ball up in the air. “Here, catch!” he said, looking at me, “And grow up.”
Over the next few days my mother cooked and baked, cracked walnuts, crushed almonds, mixed flour and butter, rosewater and icing sugar. On the day she prepared the mix for the white kourapiedes, my sister wanted to stand on a chair and watch the activity on the kitchen table. She placed her little palms in the bowl of icing sugar, toppled it over and made such a cloud of sweet dust everywhere that my mother’s face, hair, chest, turned a ghostly white. She just laughed and shook it off. My sister licked her fingers, managed to get down from the chair, sat on the floor and pulled at the hem of my mother’s dress. She giggled, said a few of her own-language words. It was then that my mother dropped the thimble. I saw it roll on the floor before it came to a stop in front of my feet.
“Mum,” I said, “what’s your thimble doing here? Shall I put it away?” When I picked it up I noticed it was wet inside, wet with a syrupy fluid.
My mother laughed again. “I’m using it to measure out small quantities of rosewater … for the tiny cookies I’m baking for your sister.” The smell of hot oil and butter filled the air, I laughed with her. There was nothing to be afraid of, absolutely nothing. I wrote my name in the sugar dust spilled on the table, licked my finger. My mother was smiling at me and the world was right, for now.
*
The cold night skies were a kind of blue, a kind of black, the colours were scratched by the sharp, leafless branches of trees silhouetted against the dark.
“Good night,” my mother whispered and I pretended to be asleep. I knew what was coming. The glasses in the cabinet would soon start shaking and my night voice would ask “Can you hear them?”
I’d reply yes.
The voice would ask “Can you see them?”
I’d say yes.
“Then cross yourself,” the voice would say, and I’d say no, a little longer, I want to see them a little longer and then the small, skinny, black figures would dance hand in hand around my bed, their hooves making a trotting sound.
On the night of the discovery they were holding up a dress made of lace, a wedding dress which had been worn, was muddy at the edges. They were jumping around, squealing, and a scream started to tear my throat apart, my heart was bursting with everything that was happening around me. My mother came in, her hair all loose and pitch black around her face, wavy on her back, and she joined their circle without a word. They undressed her with their black hands, they watched her step into her wedding dress, they buttoned it up at the back, and a tiny hand held hers and I retched.
The sickly sweet taste of the dough balls and the kourapiedes was travelling up to my throat, and the night voice was saying “Cross yourself and make them disappear,” and my hands trembled. “A little longer,” I said, “a little longer.”
And I realised that the woman in the soiled wedding dress had been feeding them, taming them, bringing them a little closer, a little closer, every night.
(c) Nora Nadjarian, 2022
Nora Nadjarian is an Armenian-Cypriot poet and writer. Commended or placed in numerous competitions, her work was included in anthologies such as Europa 28 (Comma Press, 2020). Her short fiction has appeared in Sand Journal, FRiGG, MoonPark Review, Lunate and placed in the Reflex Fiction flash competition (2021).
Jasmine Raymond is an actress born and raised in London. Whilst training at ArtsEd she co-founded theatre company ‘Fancy Another?’ raising money for the Alzheimer’s society with their play Shaping Dust. Since graduating she has appeared in award-winning comedy Ted Lasso, ITV’s The Larkins, and recently performed in The Women at The White Bear’s shorts festival.
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