REMEMBERED SALT

E. CATHERINE TOBLER

The house soared north, then veered west, where the land went up and up, and the buildings went up and up, like a metallic wave cresting ahead of the distant mountains. The house could see the prairies from where it crouched but could not see the thing it sought—the sea, the wide fields that were endless and filled with its own kind. It did not know what the sea or the wide fields looked like, only understood that it wasn’t presently looking at them. Deep inside its halls, where the shadows cluttered on even the brightest days, it knew.

The house flung its doors and windows open, vomiting its contents into the street below. What had been inside was suddenly outside: bureaus containing lingerie and remote controls, knickknacks, pilsner pints, breadcrumbs leading unsuspecting travelers into cold forests, the skull of Alexander the Great’s horse, crumpled tubes of superglue, a headless doll, a haunted carousel, whole unground nutmegs, keychains, canisters of rice, flowers made from cupcake papers, a three-legged cow, and one waffle maker.

The people in the street scattered beneath the avalanche, and the house launched itself back into the sky, screaming now that it could, now that it was empty. It—she, she decided, for she was empty and full at the same instant, and what could be rendered in such a condition was no man according to the witch, for men never understood themselves to be full, complete—She flew, doors flung wide to catch the air. She was not a bird—but bird legs she had. She stretched them behind her, beneath the back door she levered about as a tail, a rudder. Her flight was graceless, straight up and into the clouds where she could see nothing. In her panic, she plummeted down, until the sky cleared, until she could see the stretch of mountains beneath her, until she could feel the pull of the sea and the wide fields, even if she could not yet see them. Could not picture them.

What she could picture was the witch. She wasn’t unkind, but she was needful, and had so much stuff (vases, cups of noodles, wrenches, doodads, chocolates, beets, scissors), and the house spun a full circle in the air to tip the remaining stuff from her nooks and her crannies. The debris fell in a trail across the mountains, dropping harpoons into snowbanks, teacups into gorges, cookie sheets onto the occasional roof. They landed with a flat smack sound, and it pleased the house.

She did not know where the witch had come from—nor why she herself had been taken. Had she been taken? She was dreadfully unclear—the house had no mind to hold a memory, had only instinct wrought into her walls and floors, and knew that she had to go, back to the place from whence she had come. Damn the witch and damn her stuff, still dropping like rain when the house turned this way or that and rattled something else loose from its hiding place. A coin for the boatman, a sticky note with a hastily scribbled phone number, a bag that had once contained oranges.

That did contain an orange—oh, it sailed through the air like a wingless bird, round and smooth, and made no noise when it vanished among the pine trees that filled a mountain ravine like teeth fill a mouth. The witch’s mouth. The house thought of the witch’s mouth and shuddered so hard an entire line of shingles came free from her roof. She shrieked and then lunged, trying to recapture what was hers, what had always been her very own, but she had no hands with which to capture the shingles. They plummeted down and down, and she arrowed after them, shutting doors and windows until she was as sleek as the orange falling through the trees—

But she was not. A house was not an orange, and on some level, she understood this. She hit the trees with a terrible breaking sound; she was not breaking, but the trees, those beautiful things that had probably been uprooted and cut to make her walls and her shutters and her stairs—the trees were breaking. The sound that rolled from her was monstrous, and the mountain shook as she fell into the dark forest below.

It was not the birch forest she had known with the witch. The house lay on her side, instinct pricking through her boards. She did not know these trees and they did not know her, and she had flattened more than a few upon her arrival. She tried to right herself, but her chicken legs wheeled in the air, and only when she took hold of one of the pines could she pull herself upright once more. She looked at the smashed trees with more regret than she knew how to convey, but the trees around her did not move, did not accuse. Unlike the birches, these trees did not know her, did not react to her.

The house picked up her shingles, one by one, settling them back onto her roof with careful talons. Was her leg shaking? She refused the idea; her instinct told her to put herself back together and get out, get out before the trees thought better of it and attacked her for the violent arrival. Violence should be met with violence; the witch had shown her that.

One shingle eluded her, and she gave it up to the forest. It would not replace those trees she smashed, but it was a part of her, and as she took back to the sky, the cold crept in where the shingle no longer lay. The cold probably crept into the forest where those trees had once been, but the house could not say. Still, the forest was likely a home—the way that birch forest had been. Birds, and badgers, and who knew what else. The house couldn’t make a list of what she had never seen; she wasn’t built like that. She knew about birds because there’d been a nest in her chimney, and she knew about badgers because there’d been a sett beneath her legs once upon a time.

Now, there was only sky beneath her legs, and she pushed on, more west than north now, toward the scent of salt in the air. She knew salt, because the witch was always cooking, always seasoning, and she had missed the scent of it. She followed it now, though it was still far away. Beyond where the sun was sinking, somewhere in the shadows. Shadows didn’t frighten her—nothing frightened her, for she was a witch house.

Or, she had been. She supposed she wasn’t a witch house at all now—just a house, loose in the world. That went against every instinct she knew. She became painfully aware of exactly how empty she was; the sky darkened, the stars came out, and a cold wind began to blow. The wind moved unimpeded through every room and hallway she possessed. It licked up the stairs, and against the windows, where curtains no longer hung. It crept into the closets and back out again, it twined around pipes, and floorboards, it whispered through the cold, iron stove.

Stop, the house wanted to say, but the house could not speak, for she was a house. She closed every door and every window and every vent, and sailed on into the west, paying no attention whatsoever to the way the emptiness still rattled around inside her. There was perhaps a forgotten shoe, or maybe a pan in a cupboard. There was perhaps a ring, or the head to the doll. In the morning, when the sun had returned, she would fling herself wide once more, and—

The wind kept at her, rattling the shutters even when she pulled them closed. It whistled down the chimney and banged against the flue. The wind found every tiny crack and puffed through them the whole night long. Come morning, the house descended on the outskirts of a city, well enough away that she would not be carelessly found. She threw her doors open in wide yawns, and dug her feet into the warm dirt, and the next thing she knew, the sun was low once more, and there were feet upon her porch.

Small, bare feet. Walking. Pitter-pat, pitter-pat. The house did not move but watched the child who had found her after all. The child was filthy, a scratch bloodying one cheek. The house knew children, had seen many of them during her time with the witch. This one, she felt, had surely run away. Perhaps from a witch, perhaps from—

The child sat with a hard sigh, and their cheeks grew wet with tears. The house could provide no comfort; even if a shoe or a nut remained within the house’s walls, these things would not help the child. There were no blankets, no fire for the hearth, no cookies. The house became aware of her emptiness in a new way—a dissatisfying way—and she hunkered down, drawing as close around the child as she might. The shadows of the porch seemed to deepen, protectively, and the child breathed easier in the warm darkness, until they lay down and slept.

The tears made a stain on the porch, saltwater, and it was a familiar taste to the house. She did not fuss over it, nor did she move in an effort to wake the child and send them home. Eventually, she did kick out from the dirt she had sunk into and walked slowly and carefully toward the city she had not thought to enter. It was a city like any other city; tall buildings, metal and glass, and people—so many people.

The windows glowed with warmth and light and the scent of cooking meat was on the air. Music, somewhere, but closer—a mother hollering, wandering the streets, looking for her child. The house headed toward her, the child still sleeping on the porch, and she could not call to the mother—there had never been a bell at her door—but then crouched in the middle of the road, knowing that coming any closer would be worrisome. Not for her—but for the mother. People didn’t generally like houses that moved around on chicken legs; they understood about witches and spells, about what befell children in such places.

Rocking just a little bit, the house managed to wake the child, who put their sticky hands onto the porch boards and then wiped at their dirty cheeks. They heard their mother shouting, and the house felt the pound pound pound of feet on the road coming closer. Another gentle rocking motion set the child upon the road, and even as the child was reaching for the porch steps, the house was opening every door and every window and bending her legs and pushing into the night sky, where she vanished as quickly as she could—but even then, the child saw and the mother saw and they would wonder about it for years, and years, until the child, relating the story to their own child, said, Oh, yes, that was the autumn I went missing for days, the autumn the chicken-leg house found me.

Where had they been those days? The house did not know and did not wonder; instinct told her that people were confounding, small people especially so. Was it days, or was it hours? Minutes? Lifetimes? Time did not make much sense to the house, either, especially having spat every clock within her out.

The house flew through the stars; she watched a comet streak slowly by and saw a star or four come unpinned from the fabric of the universe to spin in fiery arcs to the ground below. She could not say how long the night was; it felt no longer than any other night, remarkable only because she was on the move, closer to the salt that pulled her ever west. Day and night and day and night, the trees below her changed, a shocking shimmer of golden birch startling her as the rising sunlight touched their quaking leaves; she believed she had come full circle, to find herself in the witch’s birch forest once more. A witch’s spell could do that, she understood, but no, this was not that forest, or those birch. She did not land, did not want to feel their leaves against her boards. Did not want to rest in their shade. She had to press west and so press west she did.

Eventually, the west ran out. Or it was more accurate to say the land ran out. The house found, at long last, the sea, the never-ending sea with its wetness and waves, with its combers and crustaceans. The house could recall the taste of fish against her floorboards; could remember the witch cooking sturgeon until it fell apart in thick chunks. The house remembered salt most of all; the sea, the tears—but not the tears of the child upon the porch, the tears of someone else. The tears of the witch— the witch curled as the child had been curled, upon her porch, where the witch woke, where the witch asked to come in. The house had said yes.

The house dropped from the sky, looking down on the wide fields that ran the length of the land, the breadth of the land, right up to the edge of the land, where the land became the sea. And in those wide fields, other houses. Large and small and new and old, scampering and settled and sleeping, some running and others chasing, and she thought this is it, this is the place, and she angled herself to the ground, touching her chicken feet to the earth once more, some distance from the other houses. Did they live here? Was this life? The house did not know, for they did not live as the witch lived. They did not work; they did not hunt. They did not exactly eat.

Some of the smaller houses looked at her and she felt shy under the gleam of their windows. She did not move, but kept very still, and none of those smaller houses approached her, not that first night. Nor the second night. The third night, small chicken feet scrabbled on her porch. The little house dipped and twirled and pecked a question into the wood. The house did not know how to answer, but opened and shut her doors, levered her shutters as if batting eyelashes, and the little house chittered a laugh and scampered away.

That third night, the house watched the field as witches emerged from the long grasses or the northern woods, and came barefoot with offerings, and found the house that was their own. The witches knew the houses and the houses knew them, and the house—she—felt so hopelessly lonely in that moment, aching for the witch who had probably come here like this, to claim her. Why had the house come here? Why the need to come, she did not know, but now she knew another need. To be with her witch, for no other approached her that third night; they knew she was not theirs and they were not hers.

The house closed her shutters and doors and exhaled, and when the sun touched her boards, she felt again the touch of bare feet. But these bare feet were inside of her—inside! The house startled and opened every door and window, meaning to expel the intruder who had perhaps climbed down the chimney, or broken a window to get inside, but the flue was shut tight, and no glass felt broken.

“House,” the witch’s voice said.

The house startled once more. Within her, she felt the loose closet door, felt the warmth against the floorboard where the witch had hidden herself away. The witch paced to the open front door now, and looked upon the wide fields, and her well-toothed mouth spread in a wide grin.

“I remember this place. It has been a lifetime or two.”

The witch stepped out onto the porch, watching the houses wake, watching the witches come to claim them one by one, though not all were chosen. The witch leaned against the porch rail and curled her hands gently around it.

“I chose you, but never meant to keep you from the world,” she said, and the house felt something she could not name. There was no memory of this feeling, but there was the instinct to care for the witch deep inside her. “It would do us good to leave the forest every now and then.”

But also, the house felt, to return, to have a place to call home and return to. The house leaned into the witch’s touch—against the witch’s cheek where there was salt yet—and her timbers made a deep, resounding growl. The witch’s smile widened.

“To see the world,” the witch said. “To watch the sun from above and below. To know what trees look like from their tops and bottoms. To chase a comet. To see the longest river and then put our feet into it. To see what is on the other side of that sea.”

To go back to the birches and settle into them for the first time all over again. The house exhaled, and closed up her windows, but left the door open so that the witch could step back inside when she was ready, so they could leave this place as they had before, magic in hand and hock.