There was once a girl who didn’t speak. She wasn’t so little anymore; she would soon come up to her mother’s shoulders, but she never breathed a word, not of human language anyway. She was clever enough; anyone who had seen the glint in her eyes knew that. And no one could think her dumb, because she made the most wonderful woodland noises. And she clearly wasn’t deaf, as she could mimic the rush of the wind over the field, and the humming of the grasses. And yet, she didn’t speak. She just sat all day on the ledge that ran round the family’s mud-brick stove, smiling. When she was asked to do something, she would do it quickly and neatly, but when she was asked a question, she said not a word in reply.
Illustrations by Gabriella Makhult / Móra Press
When a storm was brewing, she would sigh in the voice of the slender, young saplings, and when the sun combed through the crops with his fingers, she would hum like insects dancing in the heat.
She mimicked the babbling of water in the brooks, the whoosh of wind in the treetops, the tap-tap of the woodpecker and the harsh chatter of the magpie, but the noises of the forests and the fields were all that anyone heard from her. No human word ever left her lips.
For a time, the girl’s brother tried to teach her to speak. He would crouch down beside her, forming words. He said ‘cart,’ and she mimicked wheels creaking and mud squelching. He said ‘scythe,’ and she wept softly like wheat-ears sliced from their stalks. Reluctant to distress her further, the boy left his sister to sit by the stove in peace. But her father and mother were worried. How would she get a husband when she grew up?
She was pretty enough, anyone could see that. Her hair fell in nut-brown curls, twisting like the rings in a tree trunk. Her eyes were as dark as sleeping water, but deep in them glinted a point of light like when a star peeks into a well. And her lips? Her lips were as sweet and pink as a split wild cherry.
Her poor mother’s heart ached whenever she looked at the girl. What use would all that beauty be to her if she couldn’t find a partner? What man would choose a girl who chattered like a magpie, but never spoke a human word? Her father felt a rush of shame when the villagers talked about his daughter. She was beautiful, yes, but she hadn’t learned a single word from her parents, though for thirteen years now they had used both soft words and scolding on her.
One day, the girl’s mother was working outside, snapping suckers off the grapevine so its tendrils wouldn’t climb up onto the roof and loosen the tiles. When she got to the top of the ladder, however, she saw that a feathery owl had settled on the roof of the house. Climbing quickly down again, she called in through the door to her daughter,
“Get a broom and shoo away that owl before it nests in the chimney.”
The girl fetched a broom and shooed away the feathery owl, then she and her mother went back into the house.
In the evening they were sitting around the table eating bread, when the girl’s father looked out into the garden. And there was the owl, flitting about on the veranda!
He said to his daughter, “Sweet daughter of mine, get a broom and shoo away that feathery owl before it nests in the chimney!”
The girl fetched the broom, went out and shooed away the owl.
But when they were drinking milk from their mugs in the morning, and the girl’s brother looked out of the window, there was the owl for a third time, sitting in the mulberry tree.
As he set off for the fields, the boy told his sister, “Sweet sister of mine, go out and get the broom, and shoo away that feathery owl before it nests in the chimney!”
And that’s what the girl did. She went out, got the broom and lifted it up to shoo away the owl once more.
But then the owl spoke to her.
“Don’t chase me away. I know that you are the girl who doesn’t speak. I know that you have a good heart, and I’ve listened to the beautiful woodland sounds you make. Put down that broom and come with me!”
The girl shook her head. She couldn’t go with the owl.
But the owl asked her again.
“Put the broom back in the corner,” it said, “and come with me to the spring in the woods.”
The girl shook her head again, her hair flying round her head, then she flapped her hands at the owl and pointed it far away from the house. But the owl only flew up in the air, then came back down again.
It asked her a third time.
“Woodland sister of mind, come with me to the blue spring, and fetch fresh water for your mother and your father and your brother. They’ll be glad of it, you’ll see, when they get back in the evening.”
Well, thought the girl, what harm could it do to fetch water from the blue spring in the woods? So, she picked up the bucket, and set off after the owl.
Anna Bentley was born and educated in Britain. While doing her teacher training at Oxford, she met her Hungarian husband and, consequently, the Hungarian language. She taught English before moving to Budapest where she has lived since 2000. Pushkin Children’s Press (UK) published Anna’s translation of Ervin Lázár's children's classic Arnica, the Duck Princess in 2019. In the same year, her translation of Anna Menyhért’s Women's Literary Tradition and Twentieth-Century Hungarian Women Writers, was published by Brill. She is currently working on Zoltán Halasi’s Road to the Empty Sky.
HLO HU
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