The Graveyard Willow

Beyond the graveyard fence a willow leans over black water, and from its branch hangs a swing. By day the board is dry. At night the shadows thicken, and the tree bows under a weight no one can see. The board darkens, swells - the way a mother's breasts grow heavy at the sound of a stranger's child crying. A drop. Another. They smell of milk and of the silt from the bottom. All the wet runs down into the earth, under the roots, and on to the river.

That is why the water under the willow is warm even in frost. It drinks the same thing the board drinks. And waits for the one who will come. And whoever stands by the willow when little flames in eggshells float up the river against the current - that one is in for something worse than death. The leaves sink and drift downstream - but the candles go against it, stubbornly, as if something beneath the surface were pulling them. That is no memorial rite.

Those are the ones who were never named, never christened, never carried alive across the threshold. They have no home. Only a hunger for a warm hand that will answer to a single word. Woe to that hand. To name is to call back. Solomiia knew the warning - the old women whispered it over the bathwater of every unchristened child. But the linen for her dead aunt had to be in the house by morning.

The night stood unnaturally still, not a cricket, not a dog, as if everything alive had shrunk small and was holding its breath. Passing the willow she saw it: the little flames were going upstream, evenly, as if carried on palms beneath the water. The swing was wet. Five small prints showed black on the board. Water ran from the rope and the board and dripped onto the ground - in time with her heart.

She wanted to run, but could not move from the spot. The board stirred, as if someone small had sat down, but the little legs could not reach the ground and jerked in the empty air. The rope creaked thinly, like a child's teeth grinding in the night. From the wet wood came a whisper, from the very heartwood: Push me, mama. Just once.

The candles on the water turned their flames toward her all at once. They all wanted to hear the same word she had held behind her teeth for three years, afraid to open her mouth. Her child had died before the christening. The name - the one Solomiia had made up herself at night, whispering it into her pillow - no one had ever heard. In the village no one spoke of the death, as if silence could wipe away memory itself.

The word "mama" from the wet wood split open a wound she had kept stitched shut, alive, for three years. One candle broke away and drifted right up to the bank. The little flame tilted, as if it were listening. From the water came the smell of hot wax and milk - warm, as if fresh from breasts that still ached. Her hand reached out by itself and pushed the board. The swing swayed - and came back on its own, without help; something far heavier than air was rocking on it.

After the second push the board sagged lower. After the third, wet prints were left on Solomiia's fingers - small, cold, pressed the way a child presses when it is afraid of falling. From behind the willow came an answer, no longer one voice but a dozen small, hoarse ones, as if every throat were choked with earth: - Me too. Me too, mama. Swing me too.

Out of the darkness ran old Yaroslava, shouting the way people shout at a cow that has already lifted its hoof over a pit: Don't name them, Solomiia! The one you name is the one you take! But Solomiia's lips were already moving. One name broke free before she knew it herself. The water went still in an instant. All the flames but one vanished one after another, as if someone's wet palm were closing over each in turn. The last one drifted right up to her shoe on the bank.

Solomiia, not knowing why, bent down and took the shell with its candle in her hand - warm, as if straight from the stove. A moment later she was running, not looking back - because to look back would have meant seeing whose uneven wet footprints, five little toes in each, were falling in beside her own. In her hand she clutched the eggshell, and its warmth crept up her arm like the warmth of living skin beginning to breathe. The door opened by itself.

On the table lay a child's little shirt - the one that had sat orphaned for three years at the bottom of the chest under a vow of silence. Now it was soaked through, and outside the window a rope was creaking, though the graveyard lay a verst away. The creaking did not stop. Under the window a candle in an eggshell already stood - right on the ground, no hand, no stand, and the flame burned steady, as in a closed room without wind. A second appeared. A third.

She understood too late: by speaking one name she had opened the road to all who had heard it - no matter whose children they had been. They did not knock; they were too small for knocking. They only laid their wet little fingers on the glass, waiting for a hand from the other side. She squeezed her eyes shut - and when she opened them, it was already greying toward dawn. Only wet streaks were left on the pane.

Later, by the willow, they found the ropes cut through; the board was gone, and the grass beneath it was scorched in circles, as if someone had traced fire over it all night. In Solomiia's house, under the roof beam, hung that same board - dark, wet.

The swollen rope bent the beam under an invisible weight. Milk dripped from the board, and eggshells floated in the puddle. And out of the darkness under the ceiling, quiet and patient, came the question: Mama. Are you going to swing us all?