Trecora

In a dark and heavy part of the wood outside of Kentwend, a woman—younger than she seemed—named Trecora lived in a small, sturdy, mildering cottage. She had no family and no friends, but a small trade in adornments for the hair of courtiers and royals and brides.

To make her adornments, she started with a long bundle of cut hair, which she then braided, looped, and weaved until she had a disc of such astonishing fancywork as to inspire awe at its intricacy and perfection. Then, she hunted an animal, killed it, and after supper, skinned it, furred it, and tanned the skin until she had a disc of brown leather as soft and supple as a lover’s cheek. She sewed the hair work to the leather, sewed a bit of ribbon to the disc, wrapped it in cloth, placed it in a box, and shuffled over to a shelf near her open hearth where she laid the box in the darkness of an upcast shadow, in the seclusion of a rafter corner, with its kindred boxes.

There, the boxes waited until Trecora took them all carefully down, nestled them into a sack, and hefted it over her shoulder. Out of the tiny, musty cabin she would go, closing the door behind her. Into the oppressive wood, the ravens calling to her as she went, Trecaw! Trecaw! Down the slick path that sometimes became so little of a path that only Trecora could have known which way it led.

She slipped into Kentwend unnoticed, wound through the streets past the bizarre, into the one spot where a stooped, tattered woman least belonged and where the streets were airy and bright, the people picking their brightly-clad way among it, arm-in-arm. She knocked at doors, called out at open windows, making her way through the guttered roadways and alleys. And when she was all sold out, she went back past the bizarre—which was now just debris, limp pennants, and a sullen wind—to the part of town a tattered woman most belonged. There, she had supper, knocked on windows, and called at open doorways for “Hair! Money for hair! I buy pretty hair!”

Sometimes the guards would do business with her for the criminals’ hair. Sometimes mothers would sell their daughter’s long locks. Sometimes a desperate woman would allow her to slice off as much as the deal was for. It didn’t really matter how pretty the hair was. Trecora could make something pretty out of it, for someone else to lace the elegant bauble into her own bouffant.

One night, as Trecora turned from her work with a sack full of hair, she felt uneasy. As she picked her way among the deep dark of the wood, she heard the crack of a twig behind her. She walked faster. As she watched for the moon to show between the intertwined branches high above, she heard a rustle in the leaves. She walked even faster. As she neared her cottage, she heard a breath in her ear, felt it lift the lanugo on her cheek. She ran, the bag bouncing against her back. She stumbled into the cottage. She slammed the door behind her, and threw the board down to bolster it.

She stood facing the door, gasping for breath, when there came a tap-tap-tap. Someone was knocking at her door. She called, “Who is it?” but was answered with only a rat-ta-tat-tat. “Who is it?” she called again. And now the knock grew harder, a thunk-thunk-a-thunk. “I say,” she positively screamed. “Who is at my door?”

The answer came back high and thin, from a man of the same description. “I have hair,” muted by the door and a rumble of gathering thunder. Trecora set down her bag of hair and unwound her money pouch from her waist, lifted the board, opened the door, and sniffed at a lank man in dirty shirt sleeves and a lopsided felt hat with a bundle over his shoulder. Trecora moved to find a candle and light the hearth, leaving the door open to the man. Only when the fire was crackling and light was dancing between the shadows did Trecora turn to see the bundle the man had set down.

“She’s me wife,” he said.

“You mean that old thing?” Trecora pointed unceremoniously with a piece of kindling. It was not a wife; it was a body.

“Will you buy her hair?” he said.

“Couldn’t you have cut it off yourself?” Trecora shuddered.

“Didn’t think of it,” he said.

“Alright, then. I’ll give ye three pfennig. [REAL PRICE] The hair dies, you know, too.”

Then Trecora went to a trunk beside her bed mat, leaving the man to look after his wife. Trecora opened the trunk and brought out her hunting knife. It glinted in the firelight, the edge thin with daily sharpening. She handled it deftly, walked over to the body on her floor with the former husband standing over it, and gathered the woman’s golden [COPPERY? CHESTNUT? AUBURN? EBONY?] hair into a rope and grasped it with her left hand. With her right, she drew back the hunting knife and swung it forward. The blade struck the hair and stopped with a resounding clang!. The reverberation of the metal flew up Trecora’s arm and rattled her teeth.

She looked down at her hunting knife, twisted and mangled, and cried out, “What have you done to me? What trickery is this?” She dropped the knife and probed the woman’s hair for metal, for stone, for signs of alchemy.

But the man looked unmoved, and blamed the hunting knife’s weakness. “You told me three pfennigs for her hair,” he said.

Trecora went back to the trunk and retrieved her axe. It flashed at Trecora, its head bulky at the top and curved into a mere sliver where it winked at her. She wielded it lightly, walked back to the body and the rope of hair, and grasped the hair in her left hand. With her right, she slung the axe onto her shoulder and flung it forward. The blade slammed into the hair and rebounded with a loud twang!. The force threw Trecora’s arm out to the side and she nearly lost grip of the axe, now shattered at the head and cracked from top to bottom of the handle.

Trecora looked from what remained of the axe, to the rope of hair, to the man. “Three pfennig,” he said.

“What a lame axe,” he said.

Trecora dropped the axeless handle, turned, and shuffled past the trunk, to her knees, where she blindly reached a hand under the edge of her bed mat. Her hand emerged with a dagger, polished to a shine and orange in the firelight. She studied it with something between adoration and suspicion, and handled it with a soft touch. She walked back to the body and the rope of hair, and grasped the hair in her left hand. With her right, she poised the dagger above the hair and slashed it downward in one swift movement. The small blade sang as it cut through the hair, throwing a spark and echoing through the room, Zing!. The rope of golden hair hung limp and heavy in Trecora’s left hand.

Trecora stared at the rope of hair hung over the palm of her hand, dubious and afraid. But she was not left in her reverie for long, as the man stepped forward with his own palm turned up. “Three pfennig,” he said. Trecora went to the nail beside the door where her money pouch was hung, fished out three pfennig, and slapped it into the man’s hand, to quiet him.

“And take her with you,” she said to send him on his way.

The widower lifted his supposed wife and slung her over his shoulder with a great grunt, then went out the door—where he had to duck to clear his head—into the dark wood and the pouring rain.

Trecora sat down on a three-legged stool beside the hearth and braided the hair together, a ritual to keep the hair neat until she would need it. But the hair burnt slightly under her fingers—as if heat were coming from it—and the memory of its obstinacy seared her inner eye, so that when she was done making the cord, she flung it aside onto a cluttered table top and went to bed.

In the morning, she readied herself to go out fishing, but as she slung the front door open to the green morning air which filtered down through the thick canopy, she saw that her money pouch was not hanging on its nail. She dropped her net and pole [ACCURATE FOR THE TIME?] and looked first down at the floor. It had not fallen there. Then she ran to her bag of hair and looked inside, pushing aside all the bundles of hair. It was not there. Then she looked over the table top, underneath her stool, on the mantel, but she already knew where it had gone. It was in the man’s slimy fingers, a whole night’s walk away. And the body? She hated to wonder if she would stumble upon it out in the woods, somewhere close to the cottage.

She cast a sullen glance at the hair, glowing golden in the dim of infused daylight, and left to go fishing.

Many days later, Trecora had woven all of the hair from her bag into hair adornments; her best work, so far. She had eaten of the earth and made her leather discs, had attached the ribbons and boxed the pieces up. The pale, pine boxes sat looking down at her from the shadowy corner in the rafters, insisting it was time to go to Kentwend, once again. But Trecora had no money. She knew that she would sell today would not be enough to buy new ribbons, to replace the cow she had lost last winter, to buy her supper. To purchase a new axe and hunting knife. And she would need the axe to plane wood for new boxes, to cut more wood for her fire. She would need the hunting knife once the river froze and emptied of fish. She had made a new money pouch, but it hung limp and empty beside the door.

And the golden rope still watched her, waiting, imploring.

The body’s hair had been extremely long, and the hair it produced was sleek and smooth and almost shimmering; an enchanting shade of golden yellow. It would fetch a higher price than her other adornments. So Trecora sighed, gathered the hair from the table where it had sat for all the moons of summer, untouched, and sat down with it in her lap.

It burned her fingers to touch it, but she unbraided it and divided it into a hundred strands. It felt like needles pricked at her fingertips, but she wove them together in a new pattern, one which flowed from her mind, brand-new. Her hands ached with the heat and weight of the hair, but the pattern came together in a complicated web of intertwining braids and weavings. Hours later, her eyes aching, the room darkening, and her hands red and blistered, she set the finished work into its box. She had meant to salve and wrap her hands and eat, but instead she passed out on the floor.

In the morning, she woke hungry and sore. Her skull and bones were bruised from her fall, her muscles knotted from her night on the ground, and her hands throbbing with burns and lacerations. There, beside her on the floor, the most beautiful hair adornment lay hanging out of the fallen box. It was amazing. It was shining. She must have it. It was impossible not to reach out and touch it…

Now, it didn’t burn, but felt cool to the touch. Trecora went to a cracked piece of glass, where she did up her long, sparrow-brown hair in the barely reflection, and gathered it into a giant coil of braid. At the center of the coil, she tied in the golden disc and turned to admire it. Right away, Trecora felt a cool blossom into her scalp, relieving the bruising and the ache. Then she felt the cool tickle down her neck, releasing the knots and lifting her head higher. Then she felt the cool tingle out into her chest and her limbs, down to her hands, where the stinging pain ebbed away, leaving only smooth, silken skin where only moments before had been cuts and blisters in between the calluses and scars.

She was not hungry. She was no longer tired. She thought she might be taller. She carefully undid her own coil of hair, and deftly divided it into many braids, which she looped around the adornment. When she was done, her head was many coils and loops of sparrow-brown hair leading the eye from Trecora’s young face and clear eyes back up and around and around and to the center, where the golden disc shone, supported and honored.

Trecora cleaned herself, cleaned her clothes, and put all the boxes, except the empty box for the gold disc, into her sack. Then she saddled it over her slender, strong shoulder and strode out the door.

After her long hike through the wood, Trecora walked into town, still not hungry or thirsty, with a smile on her face, her lips parted over white, healthy teeth which she kept sliding her tongue across, disbelieving and excited. But as she encountered person after person on the road into the heart of town, her smile faded and her step heavied. Everyone was downcast, their eyes on the ground, their shoulders slumped. The affluent wore black. She found a proclamation nailed to a tree. The youngest princess was dead.

“What happened?” she asked at the closest shop.

“She was taken from the castle and her body left on the border with Gunnvor. Northern people, you know. They cut off her hair.”

Trecora’s hand went up to her hair as a panic seized her heart. She fled the town.

In another few days, she traveled, not to Kentwend, but to a much further city, Niska, to do her business. As she readied herself for the journey, she turned to the meager looking glass which by now she had polished to an almost-shine and adjusted to a new height. She admired her straight, slender shoulders, her ruddy cheeks stretched over high cheek bones, her glistening eyes. She turned to the side to look back at her mass of brown braids woven with the golden hairpiece, and to make adjustments. There were just a few strands out of place, and as she deftly swept and secured them into place, she noticed that she could no longer differentiate between the gold and the nut brown. She must have looped them together, with the passing days. That must be it, she told herself, and despite the security of her own workmanship, and frowned at the beautified face.

The journey would take days, maybe even a week, so she carried her linens in a roll on her back, her food and utensils with her goods in the back, and her empty money pouch under her dress. The cloak that had always dragged behind her lifted off the ground and swept at her calves with the rhythm of her gait. Her white under-tunic pulled at the chest buttons. She no longer muttered to the birds; she sang with them, a polite, happy hum. The fruit of the trees and the roots of the plants were Trecora’s dinner, her drink was from the bubbling brooks. Her pillow was the moss, her compass the sun, her bath the dew.

After two days, a nightingale landed on a stick across her path.

“Dear bird, why are you not sleeping? It is noonday, after all.”

Trecora made to pass, but the bird called out to her, “Trecora, Trecora, Agatha. Your destiny goes as follows: Fortune and love straight away, but your true self is straight behind. Ahead the way of justice, behind the way of mercy. Turn back!” Trecora cocked a finely-drawn eyebrow at the bird, and when it looked he had nothing more to say, she ducked under the stick and the bird flew off.

After two more days, an owl landed on a branch reaching into her path.

“Dear bird, why are you not sleeping? It is noonday, after all.”

Trecora kept walking, but the bird called out to her, “Trecora, Agatha, Agatha. Your destiny goes as follows: Fortune and love straight away, but your true self is straight behind. Ahead the way of justice, behind the way of mercy. Turn back!” Trecora paused to listen to the bird, and when it looked he had nothing more to say, she continued on and the bird flew off.

A day later, Trecora was started to see a vulture in the center of the path, its beady eyes trained on her approach. She stopped and said nothing.

“You have nothing to say?” the vulture sneered.

“I do not,” she replied.

“Well then, do you know what I should say?”

Trecora answered a snipped, “I believe so.”

The vulture choked out his message: “Agatha, Agatha, Agatha. Your destiny goes as follows: Fortune and love straight away, but your true self is straight behind. Ahead the way of justice, behind the way of mercy. Turn back!”

Trecora stood, gazing into the vulture’s black, fathomless eyes just as he gazed into hers, while he sputtered and coughed to a stop. She asked, “What is it that you called me?” “Your name.” “My name is Trecora.” “Is it?” The vulture seemed not to assign any importance to a thing like that, and made a flurry of starting up his great, messy wings and bobbing off into the sky one pump at a time.

From there, the forest thickened, the tree branches tangling together overhead so that Trecora could rarely see the sun. Brambles tugged at Trecora’s dress and the sounds of hooting, howling, croaking, and nearby shuffling increased so that Trecora could no longer tell when she was in danger or just in the invisible presence of a salamander or a squirrel. Trecora knew that tomorrow she would reach Niska.

Three hours into the thicket, a small, soft, brown vole, one that could fit comfortably in Trecora’s fair hand, limped out onto a log directly in front of Trecora and stopped. It curled into a ball, nursing a lame leg. Then it looked up at Trecora and its eyes softened. Trecora reached out a hand and with a “Let’s see, little one,” gently took the lame leg in the tips of her fingers. A cool rushed from Trecora’s head down her body and into the fingertips. The vole’s eyes widened with shock, but then it relaxed completely, almost until it was asleep on the log. In a moment, it had shaken free of Trecora and stood back up. The vole nodded once and then skittered off, balanced and symmetrical.

Three hours later, a swift, pointed, red fox flitted into a small clearing as Trecora approached. It stopped suddenly, as if it had been pulled back by a collar, and convulsed in the clearing. For a minute, it gasped until its ribs rattled, and then the noise stopped and the fox writhed about in silence, its head bobbing and its chest heaving. Trecora stepped forward, unsure, but the fox looked to her and with its large eyes, beckoned her to help. She reached out a hand and with a “Let’s see,” gently wrapped her fingers around its neck. A cool rushed from Trecora’s head down her body and into her fingers. The fox jumped and bristled, but then it relaxed completely, going limp as a rag while a lump roiled in its esophagus, pushing out and up until, like a snake under a blanket, the fox’s mouth opened to release a small, soft, brown vole. The vole screeched as it ran off, and the fox stood. The fox turned to Trecora, bowed down on its front knees, and was off with a playful bound into the brush.

One hour later, just as the sun was sinking over the far-away Kentwend, Trecora turned a corner in the tunnel of brush and roiled branches, and saw a man on the trail, just a shadow in the dimmed twilight. He was tall and slender, leaning into the pack on his back. He did not notice Trecora, but when he suddenly staggered forward, Trecora gasped. Then she watched as he tripped and staggered forward again, then lost his footing completely and fell forward onto his knees. With his arm, he reached out forward on the road, but then he went limp, and crashed face-first into the turf. Trecora screamed and rushed to the man’s side, where his face had settled turned to the right, the eyes wide and rolling. Trecora kneeled beside him, but at one glance of the face, she recoiled. For here lay the same man who had tricked her and stolen her money, the same man who had probably murdered the princess for three pfennig.

In a soft, deflating whisper, the man breathed, “Help.”

Trecora straightened on her knees, and spit at him, “Where is your wife?”

His eyes went wider, positively bulging out of his head, and his gaze found Trecora’s face. “You!” he stammered, so faint it was hardly said. Then his eyebrows narrowed at her, curious and dubious. “But there is some trickery here, I can see it!” It was all that he had left in him to say, and it would have been confusing, too, to see the little, bent woman you had recently robbed, seven days from her home, and suddenly beautified and poised and healthy and clean. And with hair the color of chocolate taffy pulled evenly with banana taffy. Half-blonde, half-brunette.

His body relaxed into stillness and silence, except for a breath that rattled in his mouth and drooled down his sallow cheek. Trecora lifted a slender, fair hand in front of her, and considered it. Then she looked back at the man, looked up and down his crooked, fallen body. And there, over his left shoulder so that it had was hidden mostly under his chest, was a thin, pointy, red fox, the puffy tail and two hind legs askew. Trecora stood up, and yanked at the pack on the man’s back. With a few tugs, it came loose from his shoulder with his moan. Trecora took the bag and proceeded down the darkening road.

The next morning, the sun dawned over Niska and then filtered down through the thick canopy onto Trecora’s heavy eyelids, her smooth visage, her full lips. She stirred, then rose and revived herself at a nearby stream. Then she found a clearing off the road and emptied out the man’s back, rummaged through his things. It wasn’t much, but there was some money, some food, and, folded at the bottom, the finely spun dress of the princess with a pair of beaded slippers. Trecora shuddered, and then she considered her options. Selling her hair adornments in a frock this fancy was sure to mean good business. Great business. So she stripped of her peasant’s frock and slid the soft, embroidered piece over her old petticoat. It fit snug, clinging to Trecora’s shapeliness. With the lace and the ruffles and the fine smoothness of the fabric, it would also fetch a nice price; no doubt why the man had it. So Trecora rolled her rough, brown gown with her scuffed, sensible boots and stuffed them into her own bag, then slipped on the dainty shoes and continued on.

As Trecora broke out of the woods which bordered Niska, the morning sun shone on the folds of her pretty dress, glimmered on the crystals on her slippers, and illuminated the shining gold of her finely braided, blonde hair. Trecora stepped lightly down the road, until a carriage passed her and then stopped just ahead. A footman bounced out and approached her. He studied her beauty and grace, and asked if she might need a ride into the town. She accepted, and found herself chatted merrily by a Duchess and her daughter, as the rolled over the ground all the way to the courtier’s quarters. Trecora dismissed herself and her curiously rough, brown sack, and set out to sell her adornments.

The royals and courtiers were thrilled. They had only ever seen adornments like these imported from trendier Kentwend, and just look at the charming young lady who was peddling them! After Trecora had filled her pocket to bursting with pfennigs and other coins, she sought out the market. There, she used all that she had earned, plus the money from the man’s bag, and bought a large, elegant purse. Then she transferred all that she had into it, but found that the old dress and boots would not fit. So, she left them in an alley with the old bag, and continued on.

By night fall, the shoes were pinching her feet, the petticoat riding up in the silky dress, and Trecora had nowhere to go. She wandered near the castle, and the duchess’s carriage again passed her by, then stopped to release the footman. She took her seat across from the duchess and her daughter, and gazed in wonder at their elaborate gowns, so wide, so adorned, so stifling and wonderful. There was a ball at the Count’s, with a play, and wouldn’t she come with them?

Trecora refused to dance at the ball, since she had no idea how to, until a young, visiting prince refused to be put off. Then she found it easy to mimic those around her, swept up into the night. Everyone admired her beauty, her posture, and the amazing intricacy of her woven hair. The prince, himself, was amused by her, and decided he must have her. Before the last waltz played, he led her out to a balcony and asked her to marry him. “But sire!” she said. “You don’t even know my name!”

“Which is?” he asked.

“Agatha,” she said, and then wondered why she had said it.

That night, she found herself—the betrothed of the prince—a guest of the Count. In the wee hours of the morning she slipped out of the princess’s dress and rubbed at a building headache behind her eyebrows. She pulled at the ribbons that held her hair in place, and unfastened them. Then she let down her hair, one braid at a time, and unbraided them into a long, flowing mass of crinkly, golden hair. Where? What? Her hands searched frantically through it for the adornment. She could see it, everywhere, the flaxen color on every strand of her brown, but the piece itself was no longer there. And yet it was everywhere, to the very roots in her scalp.