She began with the wood, laying it out in careful, painstaking order. She’d studied the shape she needed to make for weeks in a book stolen from a client’s library. Now that she was confronted with the task, she found that it came easier than it should have: twig to branch, little jointed pieces fitting easily into their places. She secured them with carefully shaped little pads of clay, and when she was finished, it all held together somehow. The last piece had hung from its tree like a hollowed gourd, but it was undeniably skull-shaped. A separate piece, utterly symmetrical and perfectly formed, fit into place as a hinged jaw. There were two empty eye sockets like beetle-bored holes; she dropped one marble into each, and it seemed as if the skull was staring back at her, waiting.
The true fever of it took her then. In clay she formed flawless organs, one at a time, perfectly veined, and laid them in their places within the wooden skeleton: lungs packed up beneath the ribs, then liver and spleen, roped intestines, every part that she knew by name and by instinct. The heart she left for the last of the organs, gingerly unwrapping the chamber-fruit and sliding it into its place beneath the breastbone. She rolled out what felt like ten thousand ropes of clay of every size to be veins and arteries, and she began to connect each one to the next.
“Roots,” she said, after a time, not even looking up. “I need roots. The plants from Calla’s window box. Can you bring them here?”
She heard Sorcha leave, then voices across the hall, heavy steps back as Sorcha returned with the entire window box and dropped it with a thump against the floor. Moments later, an answering thump-thump-thump came from Madame Henrique’s rooms below, and Josina paused her work, remembering the scratching tread of the troll beneath the bridge.
It was Calla’s voice that snapped her back to the present, her wife, and Josina looked up as she entered. Calla was already in her nightgown—or perhaps had never gotten out of it—and she drifted into the room like some sort of vision, sharp-eyed and present in a way she hadn’t been for some time.
“What on earth is this?” Calla asked, stopping short to survey the absolute mess that Josina had somehow managed to limit mostly to the tarpaulin. Now there was soil spilling across the floor from the planter box; Josina couldn’t bring herself to care.
“The roots, Sorcha, the roots,” she said, her hands already rolling out slabs, knife cutting the careful shapes of muscles. “Knock the dirt off and rinse them.”
She didn’t look up to wait for a nod; just heard Sorcha move to do as she’d been told.
“What are you doing, Josina?” Calla asked again, coming closer, peered down at the work on the tarpaulin, the delicate skeleton made of wood. “Is that...”
The words trailed into silence. Josina could feel the moment that Calla realized exactly what the piece was becoming.
Josina finally stopped. She looked up at her beautiful wife, the light of all her days. She felt as tender and raw as the day she’d proposed. Just as it had been then, Calla’s face had gone pale, her hands covered her mouth, her eyes were overflowing with tears. It had been happiness that time; now, Josina could not say exactly what Calla might be feeling.
“It’ll be a strange child,” Josina said, gently. She braced her hands against her knees; the maimed one felt as if it was on fire, the wound soiled by grit and clay, but she didn’t allow herself to favor it. She couldn’t have Calla fussing over her, not now. “It won’t be like us. It won’t be the precious one that we lost. But it will be ours.”
She didn’t move to begin her work again, even though Sorcha was returning with whole plants, wet white roots dangling from clenched fists. Josina had been too frightened of giving her wife false hope, but now even with the child lying half-formed before her, she would stop, if Calla told her to.
Calla stared at the little clay-packed skeleton on the floor, wiped her eyes, sniffled, and leaned down to kiss Josina.
She said, “How can I help?”
The roots were laid as nerves, a single long taproot sliding down the knobby hollowed branch of the spine, the thin slabs of muscle arranged carefully in their places, then there was more clay smoothed on top of that, until the sculpture on the floor was the flawless image of a baby. It was the most intricate, delicate work that Josina had ever done.
“Is it finished?” Calla whispered, as if the stillness of the room was something sanctified.
“Nearly,” Sorcha said, gently, and held out the fine little silver scissors from her birthing kit, the one she used to cut umbilical cords when babies were ready to be untethered.
Josina took them and unwound the bandage from her hand, supposing that the wound could probably not be made worse. She wiped the area clean with a wet rag that Sorcha offered, then prodded it with the closed tip of the scissors until fresh blood welled up. She held her hand over the clay baby’s mouth and let the blood drip inside.
Calla’s voice cracked on a sob when she said, “Oh, Josina,” staring down at the place where Josina’s finger used to be. She took the scissors when they were offered, though, and cut a little slit in her own finger, letting her blood fall just as Josina had done.
“That’s all,” Josina said, letting herself slump against Calla’s side, both of them huddled together on the floor. She felt as if the room was spinning, very slowly; she supposed she ought to clean up and lie down, but they were nearly done. She looked to Sorcha again. “You said you knew the way to finish it.”
Sorcha nodded. “A craftsman of the fair folk could do it,” she said, “but so can I. I’m a midwife, I’ve breathed life into many a child before. This won’t even be the first one made out of clay, though it is the finest. I could perhaps refer some of my childless clients to you.” She dropped to her knees, but she hesitated. “You’re certain? Both of you?”
Calla nodded, eager now, and Josina said, “If you would. Please.”
Sorcha leaned over and pressed a long breath between the little sculpted lips. There was an odd sound, like a bellows sucking in air, as if the force of Sorcha’s breath had blown the solid clay lungs hollow, and the baby’s chest rose.
Sorcha sat back, her normally stoic expression cracking with a smile.
The baby took another hitching breath on his own, and another, and his pale blue-tinged flesh flushed pink. Then he opened his little mouth wider and wailed with a voice bigger than his body.
Calla let out a sob, leaning immediately forward to snatch the baby up, holding him against her chest, crying and rocking and shushing him all at once.
Josina wrapped her arms around them both, weeping into Calla’s shoulder, releasing finally all of the apprehension and fear of the day in an overwhelming rush.
Perhaps one day, their son would hear the faerie music, cross the Bough Bridge to the place of his origin, and never be seen again. But now, today, he was theirs to keep.
© Copyright 2019 Mackenzie Kincaid
Mackenzie Kincaid - [BCS281 S02] - Across the Bough Bridge (html) Page 3
