In “Silenced,” a woman follows a delicious lead in hope of breaking a curse

“Silenced” was a finalist for the 2024 Colorado Book Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy.

Abony lifted the gingerbread square to her mouth and took a bite.

It was somehow both a cookie and a candy, melting and crumbling in her mouth in a slow surfeit of flavor—spice, sugar, butter. But she got no further than that before she was suffused with the most glorious sensation, tingling from her scalp to the back of her neck and down to her fingertips and toes. Without volition, she felt herself smiling—no, grinning, her mouth stretching and her belly filling with the urge to laugh from sheer excitement.

Christmas! Christmas was in her mouth and in the back of her throat and all through her. Christmas morning when she’d wake up and look over to the other bed to see Darnell still asleep, his thumb in his mouth and his cheeks all puffed out around it, and she’d whisper, “Darnell, wake up, wake up, it’s Christmas!” and his eyes would pop open and he’d be grinning at her from around his thumb before he was even awake.

They’d be out of bed, then, running light as they could on bare feet, Abony holding up her nightgown, to peek over the banister and see the tree in the living room below, the lights already on, even though Daddy always turned the tree off before he went to bed. Santa had turned them back on, no other explanation. And sure enough there were packages there that hadn’t been there the night before, piles of packages, some in Star Wars paper—“Those are yours, Darnell,” Abony whispered to him, pointing through the railings, and he wriggled delightedly beside her—and some in a beautiful shiny red paper with gold flowers all over it that had to be Abony’s because red was her favorite color in the whole world.

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Darnell would want to creep downstairs to look at the presents—“I just want to feel them, Abby, I just want to see if there’s a landspeeder set in there, come on, please!”—but Abony knew they shouldn’t do that, even though she was eyeing those red boxes herself, could see that at least one looked like it could be a Barbie doll, maybe the Barbie she’d asked for, who was Black and had straightened hair down past her waist like a White girl but still was beautiful. No, they had to creep back down the hall and push Mommy and Daddy’s door open just a crack, very quietly, so as not to wake them up, but still just open the door and look in because what if maybe they were awake already and then they could all go downstairs?

And at first when she’d look in—making Darnell stay behind her because he couldn’t be quiet enough—she’d think they were still asleep, but then Daddy would shift and turn over and yawn and say something like, “Hmmm, I thought I heard something out there, like little elf feet on the stairs, think I might need to go check it out.” And then she and Darnell would start giggling and not be able to stop and they’d rush into the room and jump on the bed and shriek to Mommy and Daddy to wake up and come downstairs and see because Santa came and it was Christmas!

Abony swallowed. The flavors receded and Christmas slipped away, but gently, like a tide going out. She remembered standing by the tree ripping back the paper from a tiny package, the very last package, and glancing over at her mother in disbelief. Could it be, really? Mommy had said she wasn’t old enough yet. But inside the box were three pairs of starter earrings—gold studs, gold hoops, and a pair glinting with little diamond chips—and Mommy was smiling over the rim of her coffee cup. 

Her mother had been dead for five years now, but when Abony put the remainder of the gingerbread tile in her mouth she could smell her mother’s perfume and feel the nubbly softness of her mother’s bathrobe against her cheek. Then she swallowed again and her mom was gone.

“So,” the salesgirl asked, “what do you think?”

“It was delicious,” Abony said. “You really make these yourself?”

“I do a little bit of everything,” the girl said, “although I’m only just getting into the kitchen. My mother owns this place.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Ebonie, by the way—that’s with an ‘i’ and an ‘e’ at the end, my mom’s idea of a fancy spelling.”

Abony burst out laughing and slipped her hand into the girl’s. “Your mom and my mom had the same idea, sweetie,” she said. “I’m Abony—with an ‘A’ at the beginning.”

“Silenced”

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Ebonie’s eyes lit up with delight, but then she dropped them to where she held Abony’s hand and her smile faded. “It’s nice to meet you, Abony,” she said carefully. “But, umm, you said you wanted to see my mom, didn’t you? I’ll go get her for you.”

Before Abony could say anything, Ebonie had released her hand, set the tray down on the nearest table, and ducked back through the door in the back of the store.

“Don’t leave,” she said over her shoulder. “Please? She’ll be right out.”

Abony looked around and realized that she was the last person in the store. She wondered fleetingly whether she’d lost time when she’d eaten that gingerbread square, but a glance at her watch reassured her that it was just 6 p.m. Outside, the street was deserted; this really was a block that turned into a ghost town once the business day was over. Abony looked down at the tray of cookie tiles and apple slices. She didn’t feel a compulsive urge to eat another. She just felt happier than she’d felt in months, as though the memories the gingerbread had triggered had lifted the tangle of the curse off her for a moment and it was only now settling back into place. Whatever magic was at work in The Gingerbread House, it felt good. Abony could practically hear Maia scoffing at her: So, you taste something yummy that makes you remember being a little girl and that makes it automatically ‘good magic’? 

The door to the back opened again and a woman stepped out, with Ebonie on her heels. Abony couldn’t tell if Ebonie was herding her mother into the store or hiding behind her; it might have been both. The other woman was close to Abony’s own age, in her mid-forties, lean in that way that suggested she’d never worried for a moment of her life about what she put in her mouth, that as a girl she’d bemoaned her flat chest and her spindly arms and legs. She wore jeans and sneakers with a berry-colored tank top, straightened hair, and a suspicious frown. As soon as she saw Abony, she stopped in the doorway and folded her arms over her chest, leaving Ebonie to peer over her shoulder.

“Mom?”

“Ssh. You were right, Ebonie. Stop pressing on me.” The woman stepped all the way into the shop. “Go lock the front door, change the sign. Then I need you to go on in back and get the dishwasher going.”

“But—”

The woman swung round to give her daughter what Abony could only assume was a ferocious look. “Nuh-uh, girl. Do not press on this. You were right and you did good. But this isn’t something you can practice on, you understand me? This is way beyond that. You do as I say.”

Ebonie’s shoulders slumped as she slipped around her mother to lock the front door. When she passed Abony on the way back, she didn’t look up, merely darted out of the room again, shutting the door behind her.

“Your daughter had just about talked me into buying some of your gingerbread tiles,” Abony said. “She’s a very good saleswoman.”

“She’s a child,” the other woman said, “and she’s still in training. She could sense your fear right off—says you were worried we tainted our food, which I’ll let pass because I can understand now why you’d be scared. Ebonie felt the curse on you when she shook your hand.”

Abony had her feet planted so she didn’t sway, though she felt the ground shift under her feet. The curse. As if it was just a fact, not a wild speculation by a couple of comic-book nerds.

She held her hand out again, her eyebrows lifted in challenge. “I’m Abony,” she said. “Ebonie and I bonded over our names.”

The woman uncrossed her arms and took Abony’s hand. 

“Chantal,” she said. “I’ll shake your hand, though I don’t need to touch you to see the curse. And I’ll sell you some gingerbread, but that’s all I can do, you understand? I can’t help you.”

“Did I ask you to help me?”

“With that thing wrapped around you?” Chantal snorted. “Why the hell else would you be here?”

“What does the curse look like?” Abony asked.

Chantal rolled her eyes. “It looks like a hedge of thorns, baby, like patent leather chains, like a spiderweb you walked into and got stuck all over. You can describe it however you like; it looks to me like a hell of a curse, a sorcerer’s curse, and nothing I’m going to mess with.”

Ann Claycomb lives with her family, including two cats and a mostly hairless dog, in Fort Collins, Colorado.  In addition to “Silenced,” she is the author of “The Mermaid’s Daughter,” a modern-day retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”  A lifelong reader of fairy tales, Ann wishes people would stop using the phrase “fairy tales can come true” as reassurance, because a great deal of what happens to women in fairy tales is frankly terrifying.