Match Girl

In the alleyways of Roskilde, Denmark, something at once ancient and childlike lurks.

This was going to be great fun.

Magnhild crouched behind the trash bin, match bundle in hand. The man with the newspaper paused at the mouth of the alley and squinted. He was a Swede�" his hair was too light to be from Danmark, his face too delicate. Magnhild didn’t like speaking Swedish, but she figured he wouldn’t mind the accent. 

She lit a match and contorted her face into a pitiful grimace. The man took notice of this immediately; his face softened and he took a step into the alleyway. “Pardon me, girl,” he said softly. “Do you need help?”

Magnhild blew out the match and he squinted into the shadows, lost. She scampered deeper into the alley, finding a spot between two old crates that smelled of stale rye, and lit another match.

The man removed his glasses, stepping further into the glow of Magnhild’s match. “Little one?”

Magnhild blew out this match, too, and moved to the top of a barrel at the far end of the alleyway. She lit one more match, and the man caught up with her. When he was a meter or so away, she summoned her sorriest of big-eyed pouts and whimpered, “Help me.”

The man’s eyes went wide and Magnhild blew out the match.

They didn’t find his body until two days later, when the owner of the nearby kro went out to toss a bag of rotting cod and nearly tripped over the charred forearm. 

The little girl appeared in midwinter�" appeared right when the snow hadn’t yet begun to stick and instead formed a dirty gray-brown slush on the roads. She was little and dark-haired, ramrod-thin and blue-faced. She pried open one of the rye crates in Magnhild’s alley and crawled inside.

Magnhild herself watched this from her perch, upside-down on the eavestrough of the dry-goods store that formed one wall of the alley. For a day or so she waited for the little girl to leave, but she stayed, curled over herself in the rye crate.

When Magnhild was sure that this girl would not leave, she leapt down from her position and went silently to the cluster of crates. Inside one the little girl sat, her bonnet drooping sadly over her fair hair. She looked up, startled, clutching a bundle of fabric to her chest. 

Magnhild backed away into the safety of the shadows and lit a match. The girl in the crate did not move, but watched the flame flicker and die with narrow eyes.

This was not what happened usually. Magnhild clambered to the top of a cod barrel and perched there. When she lit another match, the girl in the crate continued to watch.

Vexed, Magnhild stubbed out this match and went to the crates again, where she lit one more. The girl in the rye crate said something in a language Magnhild did not understand. It sounded like there was not a single vowel in the sentence.

“I don’t understand,” Magnhild said in Danish. She knew Swedish and Norwegian well enough, and German and Faroese to an extent�" the product of centuries in the alleys of Roskilde�" but for once she was caught off guard. 

The girl in the crate glowered at her. She pulled what looked like a tattered feed sack around herself and clung to her bundle.

Magnhild went back to the crates, crouching low on all fours. The girl said something again and pushed herself up against the wall of the crate. Magnhild produced another match and lit it, and the girl scowled at her and held herself tighter.

Interest piqued, Magnhild sat in front of the crate’s maw and watched the girl. She was a curious little creature�" as physically pathetic as Magnhild herself, but her narrow dark eyes were fiery. And she didn’t answer the call of the matches, which Magnhild would be lying if she said did not irritate her. 

After several minutes of silence, the girl in the crate said something else in her strange, swish-y language. There were not this many consonants in Danish. Magnhild narrowed her eyes at the stranger and put her burnt-out match in her mouth.

The little girl’s eyes went wide and her mouth twisted wryly. Magnhild spat out the match and lit another one. At this the girl sat forward, loosening her grip on herself. She rooted in her bundle for a moment or so before producing a pathetic taper, the translucent wax frozen in drips down the sides. 

Magnhild watched as the little girl leaned forward and set the wick against the lit match. The candle sputtered indignantly for a moment but caught easily, and the girl quickly drew it back.

With narrowed eyes Magnhild watched the child cup a hand around the candle; it cast a warm glow over her gaunt face, her blue lips. She touched her own hair�" hair that hadn’t been combed since Margrete was queen�" and a clump fell out in her hand. She tossed it to the ground.

The girl’s forehead puckered, like she was thinking. She wrapped her blue fingers around the taper. “I am… new.”

She said this in gratingly accented Danish, but Danish nonetheless. Magnhild tilted her head like she was trying to see the other girl more clearly.

“I don’t�"” The girl struggled for words. “Talk a lot.” Her face contorted in concentration. “Duński.” Then she said some more things in her odd vowelless language.

Magnhild watched her wrestle for a moment before saying, “Danish. Dansk.”

The girl paused, wary. “Danish. I don’t talk�" Danish.”

The candle was dripping sticky colorless wax on the bottom of the rye crate. Magnhild decided that if the crate caught fire, she would go back to the drainpipe.

It began to snow.

Even when Magnhild thought it was sure the girl would leave, she stayed in her crate. Sometimes she came back with rye bread or surströmming in a can, and she would leave some out after she retreated into her crate at night. Magnhild always played with the leftovers, threw chunks of surströmming so they stuck to the walls of the alleyway and tore up the bread to toss at the turtle-doves. The girl never seemed to mind, though. Sometimes she even said what Magnhild had began to understand as hello, but really sounded more like she was trying to shush her. 

The girl found Magnhild upside-down on the eavestrough one night. “Good trick.” Her Danish was getting better.

Magnhild nodded at her. She wished the girl would leave so that she could play again. It had been too long since she’d had some good unclean fun.

The girl went into the crate, spoke to herself in her own language for a moment, then reapproached Magnhild with a candle. “I can�" can I have the stick? The fire-stick?”

She wanted a match. Magnhild didn’t leave her spot on the drainpipe, but she extracted a match from her bundle and tossed it down to the girl, who caught it. Magnhild thought she would leave, but she stayed. They watched each other.

“I am Beatrycze,” the girl said finally. That was an uncomfortable name for Magnhild to pronounce, but she tried anyway.

“Beatri�" Beatri-shay?”

“Beatrycze. Polska.” 

“Beate,” Magnhild said, because that was the name in Danish. “Dansk.”

Beatrycze’s mouth quirked. She struck the matchstick against the cinderblock wall and lit her candle, then started toward the crate again.

“Magnhild,” Magnhild said, and Beatrycze stopped, turned. She went back to where Magnhild hung from the drainpipe. 

“Magnhild,” Beatrycze said. It was hard for her to say, too.

It was odd hearing her name spoken aloud. After almost five centuries, she sometimes even forgot it herself.

Beatrycze went back to her crate. She pushed out a half-eaten can of surströmming. Magnhild hopped down from the eavestrough and pushed it back in.

Beatrycze made a fire one night, with her own bundle of matches. Magnhild went down beside her and watched the flames. 

“Watch,” Magnhild told her. This was a delightful game she often played with herself�" even before Beatrycze arrived. She gathered a handful of matches and stuck them in the flames, where they caught with a fwomp. The fire licked at her hands, and Beatrycze made a horrified noise and slapped Magnhild’s wrist. The matches sputtered out in the grey slush on the ground.

“Oy!” Magnhild said, indignant. “Doesn’t hurt.” She showed Beatrycze her raw fingers for proof, but the other girl cringed away.

“Put in the ice,” she urged. “Will feel better.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Magnhild insisted. She didn’t understand�" Magnhild hadn’t felt pain for centuries. The cold numbed her fingers even before that. 

Beatrycze watched her warily for the remainder of the night.

One evening, when Magnhild was hanging from her spot on the drainpipe when she realized that Beatrycze had not returned to her crate. 

She looked down. Her friend�" Magnhild had begun to think of Beatrycze as her friend, a thought she hadn’t had in centuries�" was not even in the alleyway. She figured she’d take advantage of the absence, and went to the mouth of the alley with her matches ready.

There was a man with dark hair near the alley’s entrance. He held a briefcase and a squat cylindrical hat, and she watched him as he crossed the pavement with leisure. 

As he passed the alleyway, she caught his eye. The man peered into the alley, his dark narrow gaze trained on Magnhild’s face. 

Her hands moved to light the match, but her eyes caught on something in his face, and she couldn’t do it. For the first time since the fourteenth century, she couldn’t light the match.

If she could, Magnhild would have blushed. She tore her gaze away from the dark man and scampered back into the alleyway.

Beatrycze did not appear at all that night. She returned in the morning, though�" right as the sun was beginning to rise. Her face was flushed, her hair clean and untangled. Magnhild hid on the roof of the restaurant on one side and watched her.

Beatrycze scanned the alley�" presumably for Magnhild, who crouched down behind the chimney so she wouldn’t see her�" and burrowed into her rye crate. A moment later, she reemerged with her feed-sack blanket, her surströmming, her dwindling bundle of candlesticks, and she stood, looking around.

Magnhild suddenly felt very final. Not sad�" it was hard to be sad after so long�" but she thought that this might be the last time she saw Beatrycze. Her friend. Przyjaciel. That was what Beatrycze called it. It had been good, but she would be better afterwards. She could play again.

Magnhild must have slipped into her line of view, because Beatrycze called up to her. “Magnhild! I was looking.”

Cautiously Magnhild slunk to the drainpipe. “Why are you packing?”

Beatrycze hugged her bundle. “I’m going away to father.”

She said tata instead of far, which was the Danish word for father. Magnhild grit her teeth, and she felt one of the roots give way. Frustrated, she spat the tooth onto the roof. “You’re leaving forever?”

“Forever,” Beatrycze repeated. Magnhild set her jaw�" careful with the teeth this time�" and nodded silently.

They watched each other for a long while, until Beatrycze shifted her weight and looked away. “I will�"” she spoke to herself in Polish, searching for the word, “�"I will miss you.”

Magnhild’s forehead puckered. She didn’t like sadness. “I will miss you too. Przyjaciel.” The pronunciation was off, but Beatrycze smiled sadly.

They watched each other for another moment, until Magnhild went back behind the chimney so Beatrycze wouldn’t see her face contort even though her husk of a body could not produce tears.

“Good-bye,” Beatrycze called up in Danish.

“Farewell,” Magnhild said in Polish  from behind the chimney. 

It began to snow, and when Magnhild was sure she was gone, she returned to the eavestrough. She clambered down into the rye crate and sat, tracing the spilled wax with a black-blue finger. She remembered a night long, long ago�" a night she had almost forgotten�" and a crate, a flaxen blanket, the last match in the bundle sputtering out in the snow.

She was so cold. So cold. So cold it burned.

Magnhild took a match from her bundle and snapped it in half, then put the phosphoric end in her mouth. Could she taste, she expected it would be bitter. Cold-bitter. Like sadness.

She curled up in the corner of the crate�" and for the first time since the fourteenth century, Magnhild slept.