تیغ و چاقو

The Razor and the Knife

In a hut in the old forest there once lived a woman named Rocio, whom the people of the surrounding villages called a witch. She had a son and a daughter from a man she had left after he used his belt on the children.

“I may have to leave you soon,” she said to them just a few days after her son had celebrated his twelfth birthday and her daughter was two months away from turning eleven. “I saw my death last night in my dreams. I am not afraid to go to the Underground Kingdom, but I am worried you two may be too young to deal with this world on your own. So I will give you both gifts that will keep you safe in case my dream comes true.” The children exchanged a frightened glance. Their mother’s dreams always came true.

Rocio held her daughter’s hand and closed the girl’s fingers around the smooth wooden handle of a small kitchen knife.

“This blade will protect you from all harm, Luisa,” the witch said. “And it will do more. This knife cuts through the masks of men and reveals the true faces they so often try to hide.” Luisa had to hold back her tears, as she loved her mother very much, but she took the knife and hid it in the folds of her apron.

“For you, Miguel, I have a different kind of blade,” the witch said to her son, closing his fingers around the silver handle of a razor. “This will serve you as well as the kitchen knife will serve your sister. Its blade will protect you from all harm with its sharp bite, and when you grow old enough to shave, this razor will not only remove stubble from your chin, but it’ll also rid you of painful memories. Each time you use it will make your heart feel as young as a freshly shaven face. Be careful, though. Some memories we have to keep, though they cut deep. Use my gift therefore wisely, my son, and not too often.” The next day Rocio didn’t return from the part of the forest where she gathered fresh herbs each day. Only the following morning did her children learn that a nobleman had ordered his soldiers to drown her in the millpond where she’d often taken them to ask the water about the past and the future.

Knowing the children of a witch were rarely kept alive, Luisa and Miguel hastily packed what little they owned and left the hut they called home. They found a cave on the other side of the forest, a safe distance from the mill where their mother had died. It granted them shelter from the rain and the sharp teeth of the night, and the two blades gave them food and even protected them from the Pale Man when he one day roamed the forest close to their cave.

The air already smelled of snow when a farmer poaching rabbits in the forest found them. As he and his wife were unable to have children, he took them home without asking where they came from, and the childless couple loved and raised them as their own. When they grew up, Luisa became a kitchen maid and Miguel learned to be a barber, and the two blades their mother had given to them continued to feed and protect them.

Luisa and Miguel treasured their mother’s gifts all their lives and when, many years later, they passed these gifts on to their children, both the knife and the razor were still as sharp and shiny as when Rocio had first put them in her children’s hands. As they both had only daughters, the razor was passed to Miguel’s son-in-law, whose heart was dark and cruel. One day in a fit of anger he pressed the blade to his wife’s throat. The razor wouldn’t obey him and cut his hand instead, but from that day onward, instead of removing painful memories, the razor blade brought them back for the men who used it, and poisoned them with their own darkness.