Tender Morsels (37 page)

Miss Dance turned at the window, but the other side of her was no less focused and terrifying. ‘I would have you tell me, Widow Bywell,
exactly
how you achieved that first perforation, if you please.’

‘Puss!’

‘Show me the puss, Ousel,’ whispered Urdda, and put out her hand. Doubtfully he placed the wooden cat in it.

‘It were a long time ago,’ murmured Lady Annie, ‘to go remembering everything.’

‘Nevertheless, I must have all the details, if I am to undo this mess you have made. Here, this will take some time.’ From the saddlebag she had left in a chair by the bedchamber door, she fetched writing kitment and a small canister, which she handed to Urdda. ‘Would you brew up three goodly pinches of this to a wine-cup of water for me? Don’t fear,’ she added at Lady Annie’s gasp. ‘There is no power in it—it is only to keep me alert, for I have had no sleep, and I’ve much to do today. I can trust you, can I not, to give me a full account of your activities in this matter without my using potions or powders on you?’

‘Indeed you can,’ the mudwife said humbly.

‘Then we will begin.’ Miss Dance sat at the table by the window and began unpacking the kitment.

Urdda took the canister, swept up Ousel and his cat, and withdrew.

Anders was on the stairs. ‘Who is that lady?’ he whispered as soon as the door was closed.

‘That is a wise-woman, and a very powerful one, I am hoping,’ said Urdda. ‘Come, we must make her her special tea so that she can continue to be wise.’

‘She has a fine mare,’ said the boy, words he had borrowed from Mister Deeth.

‘Oh,’ said Urdda, beaming at him as he followed her down, ‘she has a fine
everything
!’

‘You would not think it so exhausting, would you,’ I says to Wife Ramstrong, ‘to sit in a carriage all day and watch the country pass?’

‘Oh, there were a hill-climb or two,’ she said. She looked as fresh as if just woken.
I’ve two babs and am cooking up a third
, she’d laughed to me earlier.
This is like a resting-cure to me
. ‘And a spot of clambering around the muddy parts. And just the excitement, of strangers and strange places—that tires a person, two days of it.’

‘All that way,’ I said, looking out at the streets of St Olafred’s, which shone with drizzle and lamplight in the dusk, ‘for how long a conversation? And now the woman is right here anyway. We might have just summoned her with a message on paper.’

‘Oh, that would not have compared with the sight of you in your predicament.’

‘’Tis true,’ I glummed, ‘I am an inspiring object.’

‘You are.’ She laughed kindly.

The goodwife came with me to my father’s house, and saw me in, and told my mam and da the gist of what had happened, the good woman. When she were gone, though, there was no disguising the looks of my family as they inspected my beastishness.

‘I thought she would magic it all off of you,’ says my brother Millwheel.

‘I am hoping indeed that she will,’ I says, testy in my own disappointment, which I had not really felt until then, so strong had been my faith in Miss Dance from the effect of her personality. ‘But it is not a simple thing.’

‘Why, what’s she up to, that witch? Did she want money off you? Is that it?’

‘Hush, Mill,’ says Mam, but Mill went on expecting an answer.

‘She is finding out the story in its entirety,’ I told him. ‘Ramstrong is in it, and Teasel Wurledge, and the widder, and she have to speak to each to get the fixings.’

‘Just like a woman—all gab and no go.’ Mill yawned noisily. He’s enjoyed my being gone, I realised, and now he is cross with me for returning. He might be rather glad were I never released from this fur and these skins, leaving him the eldest able son, lording it over Hamble and the others.

‘Are you hungry, Bullock?’ says Mam, covering her own feelings with kindness.

‘No,’ says I. ‘I will only wash and sleep, I think. I et well these two days courtesy the widow, Mam, don’t you worry. And that Wife Ramstrong, she looked after me near as good as you would of.’

I would have gone and kissed her had I not been worried she’d shrink from me, from my furry face. It was good to see her littleness, and my da’s blustery look, and my lounging brothers. Home is home, no?—whatever layabouts you live with, whatever tempers and timidities. I was glad to glimpse them, and glad to go to my own bed among them, with the right smell and the right hollows holding me, and no more carriage-noise rumbling through my head. I tried not to think beyond that, but only to rest and be hopeful.

‘Well, this is as close as we can be without drowning,’ said Lady Annie beside the swift-running stream. ‘But it were summer then, and the water were just idling down the middle there. That messiest willow there, the one most hung about with offerings and wish-cloths—we were in the stones below that.’

Miss Dance, clearer-eyed from her night’s sleep, stood, hands on hips, and surveyed the wide stream. ‘Very well,’ she said, and examined the bank around her as if hunting out a good flat stone to skim. ‘It would be best if you all stood quite well back from the bank,’ she said absently.

‘You have no herbage?’ said the widow. ‘Shouldn’t we build a fire?’

Miss Dance returned from a distant place in her mind to raise her eyebrows and then—wonders!—to laugh. ‘Oh, you are a wicked woman, mudwife,’ she said.

‘Why is she wicked?’ said Urdda.

Miss Dance shook her head. ‘Using matter for such matters. No wonder the key-joint cracked. No wonder the times have slid out of place.’

‘Well, I weren’t to know,’ said the widow.

‘Had you asked, I would have been pleased to tell you,’ said Miss Dance, ‘rather than have you cause such damages. Back,’ she said, and pushed her strong slender hands at the little group around her.

They stood back in a row: Todda and Ramstrong, each with a son in their arms; and the widow beside Urdda, her expression a strange cross between alert and offended.

‘How will she do it, then,’ Urdda whispered to her, ‘without all your preparations?’

‘The way it ought be done, I persoom. I’ve no idea.’

Miss Dance stood very still and straight, facing the water, seeming deep in thought. After a time, Anders whispered to Ramstrong and was reassured that soon something would happen, but the rest of them watched motionless, trying to listen through waking-forest sounds and the stream’s rushing, and to see through the predawn dimness to that other place, to that sunny place or that snowy.

Urdda sensed it begin, just in front of Miss Dance. There was nothing to see, but—just as when Urdda herself had pushed through the cave wall into the twitten—a strong, sharp smell obtruded of something catching fire, fur or moss or rotten wood or feathers. And everything loosened and swarmed. Now Urdda could not see clearly what was stream-shine and what air-shiver, at the forwardest reach of Miss Dance’s arms.

The sorceress spoke, but Urdda could not hear the words. She went to the waterside, where she could read Miss Dance’s lips without impeding her work.

‘Time is
racing
by in there,’ said the woman. ‘This will take strong intervention. Can I maintain any kind of form, I wonder, as well as realign the times?’

Miss Dance watched the movement of things Urdda could not see—although she thought she could almost—
almost
—sense them, in the movement of the air near the woman, in the fine skin near the corners of her eyes and mouth.

Then Miss Dance pushed her hands into the instability so that they became unstable also, like hands viewed through misted window glass. She commenced whispering, and she continued to whisper,
with a fixed look and with tremendous tension accumulating in her frame. The shape of her skull began to show through the flesh of her face, as if a strong wind were pressing on it. The stink of sorcery built steadily; they would all soon catch fire with it, Urdda thought.

Whispering, whispering, Miss Dance took the slowest forward step imaginable. Her face blurred, and the front of her body smoked darkly.

The wolf woke Branza, touching his cold nose to hers.

‘What is it, my beauty?’

He whined very slightly.

She sat up and swung her feet to the cold floor, and he made way for her and stood watching, stepping from paw to paw.

‘Ah, the impatience!’

She went to the door and opened it. The cold autumn air flowed in. The wolf ran out, paused, then looked back for her.

‘But the sun is barely up!’ Not even the very tips of the highest trees were yet sparkling. The shadowy wolf loped away a few paces, back a few paces, and whined again.

‘Truly? Wait, then, while I make myself seemly.’ She returned to her bedside and there quickly dressed, and combed out her pale hair. Liga slept on behind her curtain, breathing steady and warm.

‘Where are we going?’ Branza said to the wolf, closing the door behind her. She followed him under the lightening sky into the forest, replaiting her hair as she went. ‘What have you heard or smelt or sensed in your bones, wild lad?’

The wolf kept on very intent and steady. He did not come back for her, but sometimes he waited while she caught him up. ‘Where now, beautiful? Around the rise, eh? Very well.’

Through the forest towards the heath wolf and woman passed, in the first quiet of the morning, while all the birds stirred and questioned in their nests and roosts. The branchwork above and around them was black with the night’s rain, and the remaining unfallen leaves lit the canopy yellow and rust before opening it
up to the twig-laced sky. Branza loved all seasons, and each one’s creatures and weathers and actions, whether of blossoming or rot, of flaring or fading colour. She could not be happier than she was now, following her friend—almost her child, she had found him so young, and attended him so long—through the trees on his animal mission.

He paused again and did not run out onto Hallow Top as he usually did. Branza came up beside him, and stood silently there. Out in the pre-dawn, in the rabbit-nibbled grass there, something shone, and the wolf gazed at and was stilled by it, and did not want to approach.

‘What is it?’ Branza stepped out of the forest’s cover and walked forward slowly.

A silver pail shone there, like a milk-pail, only there had never been a milk-pail so new and bright, mirroring everything around it. Some tool’s handle, also silver, leaned inside it against its rim, and in the grass nearby—was it an insect-swarm, a cloud’s shadow? No, it moved too sprightly. Something
danced
there, teasing Branza’s eye.

She crouched a short distance from the pail, focused hard on the movement. She was almost sure that it was a shadowy cat. But was it a tiny kitten, leaping and darting at its whim, or an older cat, more sinuous and sly?

She stood again; the cat-thing did not retreat. Inside the silver pail leaned a silver trowel, the most inviting thing. Its handle would exactly fit Branza’s hand. And the shadow-cat pawed the ground, drew the same circle with its undulations, patted the ground again.

‘Oh, this is where . . .’ Branza glanced around at the forest frowning over her, at a fallen standing stone slumbering on the hilltop. This was where they had first met second-Bear, she and Urdda. This was where Bear had torn that nasty manlet to pieces and eaten him.