“We should hire ourselves out,” Bożena suggested at Matka Lasu’s table while drowning her bread in her lentil and apple soup.  Scooping the sopping bread onto her spoon, she ate it and smacked her lips.  “This is superb!” she raved, saturating another bite size chunk of bread.

 “Hire ourselves out?”  Tranoc scoffed from the wingback, since my teacher and Bożena were on the only kitchen chairs and I was on the only stool.  “What!  Your two jobs don’t keep you busy enough?”  He sipped his soup.

 “No wait!”  My teacher nudged the air with her palms.  “Bożena could be onto something here.  We could call ourselves Bewitching Construction, and our motto could be ‘We’ll enchant you with our work’.”

 “I like it!  We’d be itinerant builders roaming the countryside!”  Bożena, warming   to the yarn, laid her bread on the table and leaned forward on her elbows.  “We’d go north in the summer and south in the winter, and we’d build palaces for the poor!”

 “And furniture to fill them!” As reflexive as a sneeze, my words barged noisily into the room. 

 “But if we do all that building we’ll fell all the trees,” Tranoc pointed out with mock regret.  “And we’d need just about all the stones in the woods to pave all the roads to all those castles.”  He got up, refilled his bowl and stroked Bożena’s shoulder on the way back to his chair.  “Sorry Bożena.  It’s not a good idea.”

Pressing the back of her hand to her brow, the young woman simulated desolation.  “Alas!  The devastation!”  She wiped a make-believe tear.  “I’m imprisoned in the renting library and at school teaching all those children to read!” 
            
Matka Lasu and I patted both her hands and, controlling our mirth, whispered comforting words. 
           
 “No, it’s not all right!” Bożena protested.  “When, oh when will I get to do a job that gives me actual pleasure?”  Then, remembering, she glanced at her watch.  “Oh!  I have to go!”  She launched herself up from her chair.  “I’m sorry to leave the dishes for you, but if I don’t go right now I’ll be late!”  She pecked each of our cheeks and raced up the steps.  “I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” she yelled then slammed the door.
           
“I just love that woman!” my teacher grinned, lifting her bowl to drink the last of her broth.  I laughed, reliving Bewitching Construction.
           
“Can you imagine her doing any other kind of work?”  Shaking my head, I mopped the last of my soup with the heel of the crusty bread.  “Somehow I don’t see her giving up books to take up a hammer or saw.” 
           
“Whatever else she does, Bożena will teach.”  Tranoc crossed the few steps from the wingback to the table and sat in the young woman’s chair.  My teacher’s gaze fixed on something beyond her walls, beyond the moment we inhabited.
           
“Yes, she’ll always teach, whatever else she does.  And after we’ve survived the long cruel groping through the dark, she will have rescued her beloved books too. 
“And, speaking of work, Judy’s house won’t build itself.”  Back with us, her violet eyes had returned to their normal cinnamon brown.
           
That afternoon we laid the floor in the pantry where the shelves would eventually be and, still in the pantry, the ladder to the root cellar.  The shelves down there were already in place, and Tranoc explained that it was easier to build them before the ladder took up space.  We got a start on the floor in the living room too but stopped just before we had to cut the boards to accommodate the pipes for the sink.  The light had grown dim, and Tranoc, who’d never had to cut floorboards for plumbing, preferred to wait for morning’s sun.
           
The next day he measured and measured again.  He marked the wood and measured one last time.  Then, holding his breath, he cut the circle in the wood and slipped the panel over the pipe.  The fit was just right, and we all exhaled.  But we didn’t celebrate until the second hole was cut.  He laid the two boards that did not need to be cut then on the third one he measured again.  Again he cut.  We held our breath again.  Again the hole slipped neatly over the pipe.  And again the board fit snugly with its uncut mate.  Tranoc let out a yelp and smacked the floor.
           
“I did it!  By Matka Ziemia I did it!”  He kissed my cheek then Matka Lasu’s.  I’m so good!”
           
“And humble too.”  My teacher’s mouth curled to a smirk, her brown eyes gone turquoise with mischievous joy.  Grabbing his face in both her hands, she kissed him on the mouth then on both cheeks.  “The rest will be easy compared with that.  Judy and I can do it for a while, if you think we can handle it.”  She winked.  “Why don’t you go make a tree or a rock?” 

She jerked her head and held her hand up for silence.  Our laughter stopped as if she’d blown out a lamp.  “Bożena’s coming, and a young man has come with her, but they need Piegi and your cart.”  She went to the door and let out a shrill whistle, and in moments the deer was at her side.  She hugged his neck then harnessed him to Tranoc’s little cart. 
“Go with Tranoc,” she instructed.  “Find Bożena and the man.”   

I didn’t hear their rumbling over our din, but my teacher knew they were coming.  Once again she lifted her hand for quiet, and I laid my hammer down.   We’d installed half the floor, and I twitched to show Bożena how much we had already accomplished.  I ran to the door and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the cargo they had brought.
Resting on an angle, it was narcissus white, and it looked positively enormous.  Grunting and straining, their veins cording at their necks, Tranoc and the man who had come with Bożena heaved the thing to the ground.  Then, folded in half, they gasped for air.

“My sink!  You brought my sink!  Oh thank you so much!”  I threw my arms around Bożena and the mystery man.  “But how did you get it to the woods?”  
       
“They drove it in their truck,” Tranoc butted in.  Remembering the dust and the sickening smell of my father’s ugly black pick-up truck, I didn’t ask about theirs. 
 
“And what about me?  I don’t get a hug?” Tranoc grinned.  I threw my arms around his waist and pressed my face to his chest then stood back to admire my treasure. 

A little smaller than a meter front-to-back and side-to-side and about a meter tall, the thing looked as heavy as a full-grown boar.  It was about two-thirds of a meter deep with a hole in the center of its angular bowl. The steel legs of the sink were so pathetically thin that it looked like a four-legged bird.  And I thought it was the most magnificent invention that I had ever laid eyes upon.

When I’d examined it from every possible angle and had fondled it top to bottom, I remembered my manners and held out my hand.  “I’m Judy,” I announced to Bożena’s companion.  Pole bean thin and a hand span taller than she, he had her heart shaped face and her cow-wheat yellow hair, and his feminine beauty unsettled me.  But his hands were work-roughened, and his grip was sure and strong, and his smile showed a chipped right front tooth.

“And I’m Bogdan, Bożena’s brother,” he crooned with a voice as dark and as smooth as molasses.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.  My sister raves about you.”  He turned to my teacher.  “And you’re Matka Lasu?”  She nodded and shook his hand. 

“Thank you for helping.  That thing looks heavy.”  She eyed it up and down and, circling it, kept her distance like a wary cat.

“It’s little enough to do for the people who have been so very good to Bożena.”  My teacher held up her hand.

“She’s been kind to us too.”  She gestured to her pants.  “As you can see, she’s shared her flair for fashion with us.”  Both Bożena and my teacher were in royal blue pants and long sleeve shirts as white as paraffin.  

“Well this monster won’t walk itself into the house.”  Tranoc slapped the sink.  “I guess we’d better get to it.”  He shook his arms and then bent to get a grip.  I stayed his hand.
           
“Bożena, thank you for this.”  I swiped a renegade tear.
           
“We just picked it out and drove it here.  They’re the ones who paid for it.”  Her smile widened to a grin.  “But I did bring a present.”  She bent over the cart and, clanging metal on metal, she rummaged through unidentifiable pieces.  Tranoc and Bogdan pulled the mystery fragments out and laid them all on the ground.  She found the prize she had sought.  “Close your eyes,” she commanded.  I clamped them shut and Matka Lasu blindfolded me with her hands.  I heard her brother grunt and something heavy hit the ground.  “We’re ready, you can look.”  I opened my eyes to an iron cauldron half the size of the sink.
           
I’d never seen a new iron pot before and was surprised that it was stormy day gray.  Its bow shaped handle rested gracefully on its side, and three walnut size balls served as its feet.  I lifted the lid.  A small beak jutted out from two sides of the brim to accommodate steam for when the lid was in place.  There was a frying pan too, also new iron gray, also notched, also with a matching lid.  I hugged the pan.
           
“Oh thank you so much!”  I kissed Bożena and without thinking kissed her brother too.  “Now I can cook for everyone!”  I envisioned everybody laughing at my table and praising my culinary skills.

This is the best stew I’ve ever had! Matka Lasu would smack her lips and rave.

Even better than mine! Tranoc would admit shoving a forkful into his mouth then opting for a spoon to get the last tasty drop.

You’ve achieved a perfect harmony with the herbs!  The hyssop just kisses the marjoram, and the garlic flirts shamelessly with the sage.  It’s like a ballet of flavors! Bożena would praise plunging her bread into the broth.

Bożena’s right!  Her brother, Bogdan wouldgrunt his assent.  My lady, you are the Tchaikovsky of stews!

Though I had never listened to Tchaikovsky’s work, Bożena and Bogdan had.  Pani Olszanski’s students had clomped a performance of Swan Lakefor their parents.  Bożena had told us about the presentation.

“The dancing was awful, but the parents were proud.  And the music!  Oh Judy, it would just make you cry!”  She’d hummed a few bars of one tune then of another, but much had been lost in her attempt at a rendition.

Returning to the gifts and the moment at hand, I remembered that I’d never cooked a meal all by myself.  What if I ruined the music of the food with a maladroit preparation?  What if my efforts at cooking a meal fell as flat as her sketchy recital?  What if I overcooked the vegetables or added too much salt or too much garlic?   They’d be kind, I knew, and that would make the matter worse.

What an interesting flavor, Matka Lasu would choke, struggling to swallow the food.

This was a lot of work, Tranoc would try, gulping his peppermint tea.

The bread is delicious, Bożena would claim, cutting a piece from the loaf that wouldn’t rise and gingerly dipping it into her bowl.

Bogdan would nod and smile and wish we had a dog to feed.

“You already have pots?”  Bożena’s disappointment slapped the anxious daydream from my mind.  “I can return them if you’d like and get you something else.”   

“Oh no!  They’re wonderful! I’m just not much of a cook.”  I laid the pan near the pot and took her hand. 

“Judy, nobody is.”  Relief shone in her smile. “We all learn it over time by watching our mothers and then trying new dishes on our own. It’s all trial and error.  You’ll get the hang of it.”   

“She’s right.”  Tranoc patted the small of my back.  “I know you won’t believe this, but even I made some truly inedible food at first.”  Laughter crackled from Matka Lasu’s mouth.   She clapped her hands to her lips.  “Well you wouldn’t know.” Tranoc looked downright stricken.  “That was before we met.”
           
“Oh, right.”  She visibly swallowed her mirth.  “And now that you’re here you cook all the time and the dishes you make are always perfect.”    
           
“I cook,” he claimed in a promise too feeble to climb over the barrier of truth.  He studied the sink as if waiting for the drain to speak up on his behalf.
           
“Well you don’t.”  My teacher yanked his cap down to his eyes.  “But you sure lay a wonderful floor.”  Grinning, she gestured to the sink.  “And now you and Bogdan can install that thing.”
           
“What’s this monstrous thing made of?” Tranoc wheezed as they huffed and puffed it to the house. 

“Don’t bump it!”  Matka Lasu warned just before they collided with the doorway.

“It’s cast iron with a porcelain finish,” Bożena bragged.  “We bought the most durable one we could find.”  She playfully tugged on my hair.  “Our Judy deserves something that will last.”  Once inside they put the thing down to catch their breath.

“Does durable have to weigh a ton?”

“You could drag it across the sub-floor,” I suggested on my way out to follow Bożena and my teacher.  The three of us toted in the pump then fetched the pot and the pan and the pieces of the sink.  Nothing seemed inordinately heavy to me, and if Bogdan hadn’t also struggled with the sink, I would have wondered why Tranoc had made such a fuss.

After a break the men lifted it again and wrestled it into place.   They stuck a pipe into the little one peeking from the hole and screwed a crooked tube to it that Bożena called a trap.  They affixed the pipe from the drain to the trap, turned around, and declared the sink installed.  We women cheered and Tranoc, obeying his theatrical instincts, bent himself in half to bow from the waist.  With his cap he swept the finished part of the floor.  Clutching his cap to his heart with his right hand and blowing kisses with the left, he picked up the phantom bouquets we tossed and graciously offered some to Bogdan. 

“Why does the sink have a trap?” I asked once the cheers had subsided.

“The crook in the pipe traps a little water so gas can’t back up into the house.” Bożena’s brother explained, still grinning with pleasure over a job well done.  Or maybe he still glowed with the joy of the applause.  “If the gas came in, your whole house would stink.  And it could be dangerous too.”  I thought of Jochen, the boy I had thought I loved when I was a child of seven.  I’d admired his skill with mechanical things, as all the neighbors had.  He knew how things worked, and so did Bogdan, and for that I respected them both.  But I liked Bożena’s brother more than Jochen Bruner.  Bogdan, at least, was courteous.

Getting in each other’s way, we put the rest of it together with bolts and wrenches and wise cracks.  And when we were finished the pipes were tight and the drain board stood on its own two feet, the other end bolted to the sink.  The pump had been fitted through the hole in the drain board and tightened to its incoming pipe.  Everybody stepped back, allowing me the honor of testing the contraption for leaks. 

I pulled in three deep breaths and shook my arms.  Then, demanding silence, I approached the pump and, crossing my fingers, thrust its arm up and down.  At first only air came out.  Then a pole of clear water flowed into the sink.  No liquid shone on the incoming pipe and not a single drop pimpled the drainpipe.  It was done!  My first and only kitchen sink had been installed!  And everything had worked perfectly.

Nudging me aside with a swing of her hip, Bożena had to try.  Again water flowed only where it belonged.  Bogdan elbowed his sister and had a go, giving way when my teacher touched his hand.  Tranoc, the last, put the stopper in the drain, testing something no one else had thought of.  The water held.  We all cheered.  Then silent, we listened to the gurgling when, with a histrionic gesture, Tranoc pulled the plug and laid it on the drain board.

“Well done!” my teacher praised.  “We all deserve a good lunch!  Oh no!  Piegi!  We forgot about Piegi!”  The merriment glistening in her turquoise eyes instantly blanched to worried gray.

I tried to remind you, but you wouldn’t hear, Heidi objected from my pocket.

We rushed from the house and discovered the deer placidly snacking on the new buds of an elm.  Cuddling his neck and clucking and cooing, we women freed him from his harness. 

“There’s our Piegi,” Tranoc murmured, patting deer’s hind end. “What a patient buck you are!  Let’s go get you an apple.  You’ve worked very hard today.”

After we’d eaten at Matka Lasu’s house, Piegi got his apple as well as a pear and a bowl of leftover borscht.  He looked positively pregnant when he’d finished it all, and we laughed when he waddled away.  “He’ll want a nice nap,” Bogdan commented.  “I need one too after such a good meal.”  He took my teacher’s hand.  “Thank you again for all you’ve done for my sister. For all of us, really.”

Matka Lasu kissed his cheek.  “Come back to see us any time.”        

“I have to go.”  Sighing, Bożena checked her watch.  “Enjoy your new house!”  She kissed both my cheeks.  “I’ll be back when I can.”   She hugged my teacher and Tranoc and began to walk away.  Then realizing her brother was still with us, she stopped and looked at her watch again.  Slapping Tranoc on the back, Bogdan shook his hand.  I figured that was as close as he could come to hugging another man.  “Please hurry, Bogdan! I’m already late!”   He pecked my teacher and me and hurried to his sister, turning once to wave before the woods swallowed them.

That afternoon Tranoc hung the front door while my teacher and I laid the rest of the floor.  Then, just before twilight, with the fairies’ help, Matka Lasu and I applied the first coat of varnish.  Again I had a sense that I had done that task before, or something very much like it.  And again the strange nostalgia evaporated the moment I took a breath.

Unable to do more until the floors had dried, the next day we tilled two garden plots, one for me and one the same size for the beasts, and the day after that I planted them, Matka Lasu and Tranoc having insisted that I sow all the seeds alone.   They were right.  Biting into the first tomato I had grown entirely on my own was a sensual, even sacred, experience, both for the tomato and for me.  Warm and soft and red with desire, she yielded her tangy-sweet juice to my tongue the moment my teeth touched her skin.  Surrendering her perfect ripeness to me, a sacrifice given with pleasure, even joy, she filled me with all the passion of summer, all the power of the leonine sun.  I’ve eaten many tomatoes in my life, but none before or since has matched her flavor, none has embodied the total bliss of life as that first one I’d raised on my own.  But I’m getting ahead of my story.       

On the third day we applied another coat of varnish and another coat two days after that.  And, once the floors were dry, we threw open the windows to enjoy the unusual early June warmth while we assembled the living room shelves. 

Again the fairies brought the planks, and again I had the feeling that I’d handled new-cut lumber before.  I wanted some quiet to locate the breath of recollection nearly sighing just beyond my recognition every time I smelled the light sweet scent of wood.  But there was no quiet moment, and I had no time to think.  We had forty-eight planks, five uprights, and two long boards to convert into a set of magic shelves.  Tranoc was a measuring maniac, rushing around with his meter stick checking and marking and checking again, not allowing anyone to drive in a nail until he had checked a third time.  Nonetheless, the din of at least a dozen hammers set the birds and my musing into flight.

When we’d worried the unit the short distance to the wall, careful not to scar the new varnish on the floor, and had screwed it to the wall and to the floor, I wondered how I’d ever fill it up.  I laugh at that now, since, like everyone else, I would like to have more storage space.  But at the time all I had to put on the shelves were my lechebnik, my beloved book of shadows; a gold and silver scale; a fist-size piece of rose quartz; a bowl of multicolored shells; an emerald; a fan of quills; and a poem Bożena had written.  I arranged and rearranged those precious seven items until Tranoc and my teacher needed help.

The mantel, a log about three meters long, flattened on the top and notched on the bottom to fit over the protruding stones, was as heavy and unwieldy as the iron bars the neighbors put up to make the prison fence around my parents’ house.  But, once we fixed it into place with wasp mortar, we were done.  The house had been built.  There was nothing left to do but to bless it and somehow furnish it.  A familiar rumbling groaned across the forest floor.

“Where’s our anarkhara!” Małgorzata chimed, her little bell voice barely able to triumph over the complaints of the cart.  Assuming that she was addressing Matka Lasu, I waited for my teacher to answer.  When she didn’t, I still hesitated for a moment before I understood that I was the wise woman the fairy was calling with such glee.   “Is anybody hungry?”  Her giggling jingled through the open door and windows.  Tranoc, Matka Lasu, the fairies, and I raced through the door to greet her.  “I brought you a picnic!” she bragged, gesticulating from a teetering blue mound in the cart.  Pulling it all, Piegi the prankster, lunged forward, jolting her off the pile.  She dipped and then flew and, in retaliation, buzzed around his head and tickled his ear.  Bronisława, Czarownica and Rościsław followed, their low ursine grunts warning Dobiesława when she tumbled too close to the wheels. 

“You’re just in time for the blessing of the house!” Matka Lasu announced to the fairy and the bears.  “And then we’ll have lunch.”  She winked at Małgorzata.  “What did you bring us to eat?”  The fairy clapped her hands.
 
“We have potato pierogi and bread and a salad with basil and horseradish dressing.”  As she spoke she grasped the ample blue throw, flying toward us to fling it from the top of the cart.  With the help of the fairies, she spread it on the ground.  “We even have raisin nut salad for dessert!”  She flitted over the transparent cobalt blue bowls nesting like fat complacent roosting hens in the bulges of yet another throw.  My stomach grumbled to be fed, but as hungry as I was, I was curious to learn what still lay hidden in the cart. 

“What’s in here?”   I hefted a bowl with one hand and lifted the corner of cloth with the other.  Matka Lasu slapped my hand before I got a chance to peek.

“Blessing first then food and then we’ll deal with all of this.”  Grinning she turned her attention to the fairy.  “You brought the censer?”  Małgorzata nodded.  “And the salt and the sage and the lavender?”  The fairy produced them all.  “Good.”  My teacher gave the salt to me.  “It’s your house.  The job of cleansing it is yours”
 
Sprinkling a few granules of salt with each step, I walked counterclockwise around the outside of the house.  Matka Lasu followed me and Tranoc followed her, the fairies and bears close behind.  I knew I should say something special, poetic.  But all I could pluck from the pit of my mind was a simple declarative spell. 

By the power of the Maidens and the Mothers and the Crones,
by the power of each of the four winds,
I cleanse this house to be a safe and happy home. 
When I clap this cleansing spell begins. 

We clapped our hands three times as I repeated the spell, and three times we circled the house.   Then we paraded through the door and, walking counter-clockwise, we cleansed both the rooms three times.  The building glowed as if the sun had scrubbed it clean.  “As I say it, so it is,” I commanded before we went back out to do the sanctifying blessing.

“So it is,” they all repeated as we’d so often done to seal Matka Lasu’s conjuring.

Tranoc lit a broken bit of charcoal and blew until a corner of it glowed and then went gray.  Then he set it in the censer and handed it to me.  I added a smidgen of lavender and a tiny pinch of sage.  “It’s your house you’re blessing!”  He added more herbs.  “Use enough to get the job done.”  A geyser of smoke erupted from the herbs.  I waved the airy stream toward the house.  He swept his hat from his head in congratulation.  “Now say something special,” he suggested. 
         
 Swallowing hard, unable to find an appropriate blessing to say, I sang the Zorya song. 

Three little Zorya:
                                    Morning star
                                    Evening star
                                    Star of deepest night
Little sisters of the light.

                        Three little Zorya:
                        Pretty maids
                        Dance the sky,
                        Loving morning’s birth,
                        Cherishing their darling earth.

                        Three little Zorya:
                        Their small hands
                        Chain the dog
                        Of calamity,
                        Just as joy chains tragedy.

In moments the others had picked up the old song, tears shimmering in my teacher’s eyes, whether for nostalgia for when I was small or for memories of Anna I was not sure.  For years I hadn’t thought about Anna or Marlena, the baby she had birthed while staying with us, and I absently wondered what their lives had become.  Then aware that I was singing without thinking of the words, I asked the woman and her baby to step aside and promised I would search for them in the magic bowl once the blessing of the house was complete.  To refocus my mind and to make the song a blessing I added a second verse.
  
                        Joy chases tragedy
                        From my house,
                        From my life,
                        From my special grove
                        Far away from all I love.

                        I live in harmony
                        With the earth
                        With the sky,
                        Striving to do right
                        In this house both day and night.
                       
My home is always safe.
                        Its white shield
                        Like a dome
                        Glimmers without sound—
                        Protection gleams all around.

Humming while learning the lyrics I’d made up, the others circled the house clockwise.  By the second time around Matka Lasu had the words, and by the third time a chorus had joined in.  Once again we went inside and, circling three times, we blessed the two rooms of the house.  When we’d finished once again I said the sealing words. “As I say it, so it is.” 

“So it is,” my guests repeated.  Then we went outside to watch.  A fan of golden spirit plumes spread above the roof, their tips striped in rainbow colors—the purple closest to the house, the red the uppermost hue.  Waiting to see what would happen next, we stared at it in awe until the colors and the feathers had melted and the house had absorbed them.

“Good!  Let’s eat!”   The trance broken, Tranoc gestured to the bowls weighting down the corners of the throw.  Acting as lids, small piles of dishes in the same cobalt blue were stacked atop the bowls.  I’d never seen the dishes or the bowls before and thought they were a beautiful color.  “Do you like them?”  He gave me a plate to examine.  I nodded, lifting it to the light so I could see the dark blue forest through it.

“We thought you would.”  Matka Lasu grinned and scrunched up her shoulders.

Tranoc’s titter betrayed a tasty secret.  “They’re yours.”  My mouth fell open.  I wanted to thank them but couldn’t find a voice any bigger than a squeak.  I threw my arms around his neck and then around hers.  “Enough!” he guffawed.  “I’m much too hungry for this!”  But he squeezed me back and kissed me on the head.  “Enjoy, Funny Bunny!” he whispered to my hair.

He loaded his plate and dipped one of his pierogi into the horseradish dressing.   The others ate too but, though I filled my plate, I was so enamored of the beauty of the colors on the blue that I couldn’t get a morsel to my lips. 

“Eat, Kochanie,” Matka Lasu garbled around the bread and the salad in her mouth.  “The flatware’s yours too, so you might as well use it.”  The utensil in my hand had become more than a fork.  It was a thing of beauty, cleverly designed, ingeniously bright, its silvery glint brilliantly shining in the sun.  I pierced some shredded cabbage and dandelion greens and stuffed them into my mouth, and somehow the food’s taste was more intense for having come into contact with my fork.  I marveled at how shrewdly my knife balanced in my hand, how astutely it cut the food, how smoothly it spread the thick dressing on my bread.  So focused was I on admiring my tools that I ate entirely too much.  My belly hurt.  I didn’t care.  I felt like a czarina!  All my dishes matched, and my flatware was new.  I sat back against a tree and rubbed my aching stomach, still admiring the knife and fork resting on my plate.

“Well, the rest of this stuff won’t take itself to the house!” Matka Lasu observed as she scraped and stacked the plates.  “We’ll wash these later.”  The fairies nodded.  To a fanfare Tranoc played on a make-believe trumpet, Małgorzata and Ludmiła, the fairy matriarch, swept the cover from the bumps in the cart.  Allowing me only a cursory glimpse of the goods that the throw had secreted, Matka Lasu and Tranoc and Bronisława and her clan whisked the furniture into the house.  Even Czarownica’s cub took a table.  In minutes all the furniture was in place and I could take the time I wanted to appreciate it all.

Since I could not remember having worked with the fairies, everything I saw was new to me.  I gasped at the beautiful wingback chairs.  I touched the ottoman as if it were a sacred artifact.  The graceful table that stood between the wingback chairs was so lovely I couldn’t believe it was mine.  I grinned at the yellow kitchen table and chairs as if the color were some sort of joke.  Yet I could not understand why the brilliance of the paint struck me as comical.  An expansive sleigh bed stretched across the second room as smugly as an overfed cat.  And a maple chest of drawers stood shyly in the corner.  Everything was as I had seen it in my trance just before my Woman Ritual.  And yet the place wasn’t home. 

I was used to tables that had burn marks and scratches and cushions that were shiny with use, pieces that had family stories to tell.  Though the furnishings were lovely and elegant, I preferred the cluttered shabbiness of Matka Lasu’s house.  I hadn’t realized how long I had stood silently until I noticed everybody’s eager expectation.

“It’s all so incredibly beautiful!” I sighed fingering the footboard of the bed.  My teacher hugged me.

“But it’s not home.”  She’d understood and had forgiven my ungrateful disillusionment before I had found its name.  Tranoc rubbed my back.  Matka Lasu kissed my cheek.   “Give it time, Kochanie.  No place feels like home, until you’ve made some memories there.”