The Woman Who Inherited Thursday Twice

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Maja inherited the palace from a woman who had mistaken her for spring.

It was an understandable mistake. She had been standing beside some flowers, wearing the only dress she owned that hadn’t disappointed her.

The palace stood in a forest at the end of a river. Its previous owner had planted a few ornaments around the windows. Over the years they had become ambitious. Now stone flowers crowded the bedrooms, and the staircase grew another banister whenever it rained.

There were eyes in the walls.

The estate agent said they were decorative.

One followed him all the way to his car.

Maja moved in on a Thursday with a suitcase and six pears. By Friday the pears had become small white birds. She opened the kitchen window and watched her breakfast fly into the trees.

After that she bought eggs.

Beyond the palace, a bridge crossed the river high above a waterfall. Nobody remembered building it. Nobody remembered the people who used it, either. Maja sometimes watched a man walk halfway across, stop, and search his pockets.

She understood him. She had once gone into a marriage that way.

Each morning she sat beside the palace while little branches grew from her hair. At first she cut them off. Then a bird made a nest above her left ear, and she felt it would be rude to continue.

The bird had three eggs and a husband who was seldom home.

They got along.

In November a letter arrived from the woman who had left her the palace.

I hope you are enjoying the place, it said. There should be a watering can under the sink. Please do not water the eyes. I did that once and lost most of February.

Maja wrote back asking where the woman was living now.

The reply took a month.

Inside a pear.

Maja went down to the village and bought every pear in the shop. She arranged them on the table and waited.

It seemed a terrible thing to eat your benefactor.

By evening she was hungry. She made toast and carried it outside. Mist had gathered under the bridge. The man was there again, searching his pockets.

“What have you lost?” she called.

He looked relieved.

“Thursday.”

She thought about the suitcase upstairs, the six white birds, all those rooms she had never entered.

“I might have it,” she said.

For the first time, he came all the way across.

They sat beside the river until dark. There was only one piece of toast, but he wasn’t hungry.

He had eaten years ago.