The Springborn

SABELLA

MINERS RIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA

DECEMBER 25, 1885

I t is Christmas, a day to be merry—or at the very least, grateful for the blessings of warmth and food upon the table. With this in mind, I do my best to ignore the bony, hand’s width branches that sprang from my scalp overnight and to pretend I am an ordinary, dutiful, miner’s daughter, ready to serve a special holiday meal.

I set the metal coffee pot at Father’s place, near the glistening dome of fruitcake. A garland of pine stretches from corner to corner above me, lending the room the faintest whiff of the woods. On the narrow shelf near the washbasin, a red glass bottle holds a bouquet of holly. It is my dearest hope that my efforts will remind my father of Christmases long past, when we were a poor but happy family who loved each other.

Hope. Where that came from is as much a mystery to me as the source of my antlers. It is like a single firefly bottled up in my chest. Its light pulses, but for how long?

When I hear the clomping of Father’s boots in the bedroom above the kitchen, my heartbeat skips. The mines are closed today, so he slept hours longer than usual. I wrap my hand in a towel and take Father’s already filled plate from the wood-burning stove’s warming oven—a meal of crispy-edged fried eggs, fat sausages, freshly made biscuits, and a small boiled potato sprinkled with coarse salt. Just as Mother used to make on Christmas morning, before ceaseless sickness left her mostly bedridden. I straighten the knife and fork. Everything looks just right.

Father trudges down the wooden stairs with the grace of an ox. He is not a large man, but one broad with muscles earned through hard labor. His thin hair appears to be gray—but who can tell if it’s truly gray, or white stained by coal dust. As he grows closer, I note that he wears fresh clothes this morning—although his shirt and trousers are also shades of gray. My body stiffens with apprehension as he steps off the last stair. My antlers weigh little, but in his presence my head feels almost too heavy for my neck.

“Merry Christmas, Father,” I say with the unease of a person reaching out to pet a slumbering bear. He responds with the briefest of nods, a motion so fleeting that I might have imagined it. And then he glares at my antlers and curses.

He has not looked me in the eye in years, as if meeting my gaze might turn him to stone or doom him to perdition. But I think his heart is already a stone, a thing as black as the coal he gathers. As for perdition, he daily endures the agonies of living with a sick, shrewish wife and an antler-growing daughter—torments any devil would be glad to take credit for.

Father stomps past me. “For the love of the Almighty, could you at least try to cover the blasted things, girl?” He ignores the steaming plate of food, the perfectly set table, and the decorations. With a groan, he bends to retrieve a hand saw from inside the painted wooden cabinet. He grunts to instruct me to move to the stool in the corner, the stool I hate with a passion one ought not to waste on furniture.

A flood of disappointment extinguishes my spark of hope. The events of the day are proceeding as usual, and I was a fool to expect anything else. I lower my body onto the seat.

Rough, calloused fingers grab the back of my neck. I hold my breath. With both hands, I press my hair flat to keep it out of the way. He sets the blade at the base of one of my antlers, so close to my scalp that the coldness of the metal sends a shiver through my body. And he starts to saw. Back and forth, back and forth. The blade grunts and sighs, grunts and sighs. I inhale the dust—breathing in bits of myself that no one wants.

The antler falls to the floor. I peer down at it from the corner of my eye. It is beautiful, although I would never dare to speak such a sentiment aloud. Silvery gray and curved like a young tree limb with five short, pointed branches, its velvety surface calls out to be touched, caressed. I cannot hate it as I ought to, but neither do I feel affection for it.

Father adjusts his stance, tightens his grip, and cuts into my remaining antler. I bite my lip and bide the time until the second antler clatters against the floorboards. My head is lighter now, but Father’s mood is not. Glowering, he points to the white cotton cap I left to dry on the clothesline above the cookstove.

“Cover your head and get rid of them quick,” he says—as if I need reminding. “And then get breakfast for your mother. She has one of her headaches.” He tosses the saw onto the table with a thud, narrowly missing his plate of congealing food.

“Yes, Father.” I swallow hard, holding back tears.

He plods upstairs and leaves me alone without acknowledging my attempts to make Christmas happy. My face grows hot with frustration and indignity. Honestly, what did I expect? A miracle? The last miracle that happened here was me —a longed-for child thrust into the arms of a barren couple—and look how that has turned out. As Mother reminds me far too often, the distance between a miracle and a curse is no more than the breadth of a silken thread, and to wish for one is as good as begging for the other.

The soot-smeared kitchen walls seem to inch closer together by the second. My lungs beg for a breath of fresh air. With haste, I wind my hair into a bun. I don the cotton cap, shove my stocking-clad feet into boots, and cover my dingy calico dress with a black woolen cloak. I struggle to jam the antlers into a burlap sack. They snag on the rough fabric as if they’re resisting their fate, but I persist until they’re hidden within the bag. Finally, I tear open the door. A blast of frosty, pre-sunrise air chills my cheeks and nips at my earlobes. I welcome the honest, expected sting of it. I pull the hood of the cloak over my head and step outside.

My feet know the way without being reminded. I slip between the houses and climb the steep, stony bank that slopes behind the residences. Once I reach the top, I take the path my feet have worn into the ground with these daily ventures. When I was younger and played with the neighbor children, we called this brushy patch of land haunted, favoring the forest on the other end of town. The belief seems to have stood the test of time, which has been to my advantage. I have been charged by Father to be invisible. To be less noticeable than a specter.

The icy wind gusts harder. My eyes water as I shimmy through a gap between two leafless bushes. The sun has started to rise, but its pinkish-orange rays do nothing to warm the landscape. Today, I choose to head to the hidden meadow where, many years ago, Mother first taught me to bury my “disgraces.” There have been plenty of places I’ve taken the antlers for disposal since: a glade farther up the hillside, the river when it’s running fast, the dirt-walled cellar of a long- abandoned cabin near the mountaintop—to name but a few. But in unpleasant weather, I favor the places closest to town. So Mother’s meadow it shall be.

The rusty shovel stands where I left it yesterday, propped against the trunk of a wild cherry tree. I take it up and look for a spot to dig. Soon, I choose a place on the western edge of the meadow. Hands wrapped around the shovel’s handle, I try to thrust its point through the snow and dirt, but it’s no use. True winter has arrived, solidifying the earth with her wrathful breath. I’d sooner be able to puncture stone with a hat pin. There will be no more burying until the spring thaw. Which means more walking in the cold, a full half-mile to the next closest disposal place, an abandoned mine shaft.

I trudge uphill and down, winding my way through a maze of bare trees, fallen branches, and ancient boulders. Snow works its way into a hole in my boot, where it melts and dampens my stocking. The relentless wind causes my teeth to chatter.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

The rotting wooden frame around the mine opening creaks as if to say hello. A few boards have fallen since my last visit. One by one, I toss them aside, making the hole just large enough to admit the antlers. My stomach grumbles as I work, urging me to hurry home to the pot of oatmeal I left simmering. Perhaps, as a Christmas treat, I’ll have a slice of fruitcake with my breakfast. It’s unlikely that either of my parents will notice such an indulgence—or would bother to scold me for it. That would require discourse beyond the ordinary “sit,” “fetch,” “cook,” or “mend” commands they’re used to flinging in my direction.

I dump the antlers into the hole, wad the sack in my hands, and turn toward home.

On Christmas night, my thoughts are almost as dark as my little bedroom off the kitchen. I perch on the edge of my thin mattress and, with long strokes, I brush out my hair. I remember my eleventh birthday, when I came trembling to the breakfast table with antlers sticking out of my head for the first time. How my parents’ mouths gaped open as they stared. How Father swore and Mother wept as if I had died.

Ever since, I’ve wondered why my parents had not anticipated such an occurrence. If an old woman gives you a mysterious basket, and said basket contains the baby you’ve been wishing for, you might well expect the child to be unusual in some way.

And yet the antlers broke them.

When the antlers came, they broke us all.

They brought on Mother’s daily headaches. The big city doctor she visited prescribed special medicine, remedies that stank of alcohol and only made her headaches and moods worse. The doctor’s monthly bills consumed most of Father’s meager pay. Debts piled up; Father turned sour and then bitter. I had been his delight, but the growth of my odd appendages purged all affection from him, like dysentery of the soul from which he would never recover.

I tried to imagine what excuse he gave for my absence from sewing circles and church services, but I never dared to ask. Whatever tale he told was dire enough to prevent friends, neighbors, and busybodies from stopping by with pots of soup or offers of aid.

Ever frantic, Mother knitted strangely shaped caps and sewed wide bonnets until every drawer and cupboard burst with them. The day soon came when even her cleverest handiwork was no longer sufficient to cover the antlers. For as I grew, their size kept in proportion to the size of my wide-spread hands. Finally, Father obtained a hand saw from the company store. He wielded the tool like a weapon of salvation, and I sobbed with fear as he cut off the things which were me yet somehow not me.

His victory was short-lived. The antlers returned; they always do. Their growth during daylight is slow, but after nightfall, they inch upward and outward like the branches of an enchanted tree, painlessly but persistently—whether I sleep or remain awake. (This I know because I once thought I might thwart them by avoiding sleep. Alas, my experiment resulted in nothing but exhaustion—and the usual antlers. At the time, I was equal parts disappointed and fascinated.)

And so, every morning, futile though it is, Father saws them off with neither apology nor sympathy.

The day Mother realized the antlers could not be defeated, she took to her bed. There she continues to spend most of her time, leaving me to perform all of the household duties. She drowses the day away while I endure endless cycles of cooking and cleaning, baking and washing. In my rare free hours, I find consolation in reading the four books we own, grateful that Mother took the time to teach me to read and write back when she believed I was an ordinary child.

One freedom remains mine: visiting the woods to do away with the sawn-off antlers. Rain or shine, they must be disposed of promptly, as if their mere presence might poison Mother worse than her sham medicine. This time out of doors keeps me sane. Indeed, I feel more at home wandering under a canopy of leaves than I do within the walls of my parents’ shabby, company-owned house.

In spite of my antlers, I know I am blessed. Most coal miners’ children suffer far more than I, forced to work endless hours underground, afflicted with lungs full of black dust and ever-hungry bellies. Yet grateful as I am, my heart dares to ask for more.

Sometimes, tucked into my narrow bed at midnight, I dare to wish for a friend. Someone to unwind the shroud of loneliness I wear. But who would befriend a girl with antlers? Who could be trusted with my secret?

Mother’s old warning never fails to echo in my mind: “The townsfolk will burn you for a witch if they find out what you are.” I believe her enough that I often fall into dreams of flames scorching my dress, my skin, and the silvery gray antlers that stand out from my head so brazenly.