Paraska at the crossroads

A literary legend written for Ask the Signs. The witches are fictional and nothing in the story predicts a future.

Oksana had two good roads in front of her and could not choose either. Paraska told her that in forty years nobody at those crossroads had chosen the wrong road.

In Konotop they said the witches there read cards better than anyone, and Paraska read them standing up, because she lived where nobody sits: at the crossroads outside town, where the road to the mill crosses the old highway. Her cottage stood right beside a stone cross and a signpost whose two arms pointed, one to town and one to the forest. Paraska wore mismatched boots, one red and one green, because she held that every leg has a right to its own opinion.

She collected buttons. Travelers had been losing them at those crossroads for centuries, and she sewed them onto her coat until the coat grew so heavy that in winter it jingled with every step. She said every button was somebody's story: the one from a uniform belonged to someone coming home, the one from a child's coat to someone going to school for the first time. In Konotop they also whispered that it was Paraska who turned the signpost around every spring, so that the arrow to town pointed at the forest. She never admitted it. She never denied it either.

Oksana came to her in April with a loaf of bread in a cloth, because in Konotop it was not done to go to a witch empty-handed. She was a baker, the best in the district, and she had two good roads in front of her, which is sometimes harder than one bad one. Her aunt, who ran the bakery by the market square, wanted to hand it over to her. And a friend from childhood, who had gone to the big city, proposed that they open their own bakery there together, with a window onto the street and a board chalked by hand.

"Both are good," said Oksana, standing under the signpost, because Paraska never invited anyone inside when the weather was fine. "And I have not been able to choose for two months. In the morning I think I will stay. In the evening I think I will go. At night I do not sleep. My aunt is waiting, a friend has already found me a room, and the bakery here has offered me the counter. Both are good. That is exactly the problem."

The first was the Two of Swords: a blindfolded woman sitting by the water, arms crossed on her chest, a sword in each hand. "That is you," said Paraska without ceremony. "You have blindfolded yourself so as not to see what you want. You hold both swords at once so as not to drop either. And there you sit, because if you do not move you cannot disappoint anyone. Very comfortable. And very tiring." Oksana wanted to protest and did not protest, which was itself an answer.

The second card was the Chariot: a driver in armor standing in a chariot pulled by two sphinxes, one black and one white, looking in different directions. "Look, he has no reins," said Paraska, tapping the card with a finger. "He drives, though the sphinxes want to go two ways. He drives because he knows where to. Will is the reins." The third was the Fool: a young traveler with a bundle on a stick and a white rose in his hand, walking cheerfully toward the edge of a cliff, a small dog jumping at his feet. "And this is anyone who ever set out. He does not know what awaits him. He goes anyway. People call him a fool, and he is simply the only one in the whole deck who is on the road."

Then Paraska straightened up and tapped the heel of her red boot against the stone. "Do you know how many years I have stood here? Forty. And do you know how many people at these crossroads chose the wrong road? Not one. They chose different ones. Some to town, some to the forest, some turned back. The only ones who chose the wrong road were those who stood here until winter. It is cold here, child, and nothing grows here except my buttons." Oksana laughed in spite of herself, for the first time in two months.

Paraska gave her a task. She was to walk a hundred steps along the road to town and a hundred along the road to the mill, and think about nothing while doing it, only listen. To her breathing, to her feet, to what she was humming. Oksana went. On the mill road she thought about her aunt, about warm ovens, about the morning customers who had known her since childhood, and she walked calmly, evenly, as if coming home. On the town road, for the first twenty steps she was afraid, and then, without noticing when, she began humming a song she and her friend had sung when they were ten.

When she came back to the signpost, Paraska did not ask which road. She asked only what Oksana had been humming. Oksana blushed and told her. Paraska nodded and said nothing more, because nothing more was needed. "But my aunt," Oksana began, and Paraska raised one hand. "Your aunt will cry, and then she will write to you. The humming was the answer. You have been humming the city for a week."

In Konotop they say Oksana left that summer. That her aunt cried, and then gave her a jar of sourdough starter and wrote out all her recipes on a sheet of paper, including the one for poppy-seed roll that she had never shown anybody. That the bakery in the big city has a board chalked by hand and bread that tastes like the bread from the Konotop market, and that people come for it from the other end of the city. They also say that when her aunt retired, the bakery by the market passed to her apprentice, to whom Oksana sends a letter with new ideas every month.

Paraska still stands at the crossroads, in one red boot and one green, and every spring somebody turns the signpost around. When someone comes to her who cannot choose, she says what she said to Oksana: "There are no wrong roads for someone who walks carefully. There is only standing still, and that is a choice with no scenery." Then she taps her boot on the stone and waits for them to take the first step.

There are no wrong roads for someone who walks carefully. Standing still is also a choice.

Cards from this story

Her whisper for today

A decision becomes wrong at the moment you stop halfway, not before.

Whispers are lines to carry, not forecasts. They say nothing about other people, money or health.

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