Hunger
by Michelle Sagara
Rosdan Press, 2011
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
SMASHWORDS EDITION: 978-1-927094-22-8
Copyright 2011 by Michelle Sagara
All rights reserved
Cover design by Anneli West, Four Corners Communication
ghost: photoshop brush by obsidiandawn.com
“Hunger” Copyright 1993 by Michelle Sagara. First appeared in Christmas Ghosts, ed. Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg.
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Novels by Michelle Sagara
The Book of the Sundered
Into the Dark Lands
Children of the Blood
Lady of Mercy
Chains of Darkness, Chains of Light
Chronicles of Elantra
Cast in Shadow
Cast in Courtlight
Cast in Secret
Cast in Fury
Cast in Silence
Cast in Chaos
Cast in Ruin
Cast in Peril
The Queen of the Dead
Silence*
Touch**
Grave**
*Forthcoming in 2012
**Forthcoming
Table of Contents
Introduction
Hunger
Other Stories by the Author
Introduction
This story owes a large debt to one of my oldest friends. I personally love Christmas, even though it’s mired in commercialism and its own specific type of family angst. My earliest memories of the season are of my mother helping us to make construction paper chain links—large ones—one for each day leading up to Christmas. We made a ritual of cutting a link each night in December before we went to sleep, and so many of our wishes and daydreams were tied up in what Santa Claus would bring.
But in university, I discovered that this sentimental attachment, shared by so many of my friends in their own idiosyncratic ways, wasn't universal. The heart of this story is taken from one of them, and it was a reminder—to me—that it’s a season of plenty only for those of us who don't worry about the little things.
Like, say, starvation. But it added a layer of melancholy to the season that has never quite left me, and also a certain sense of gratitude, when I watch my own children in the safety and security of our present.
* * *
I read this story twice in Calgary, just before my oldest son was born. I was visibly very pregnant at the time, but well enough to travel, and I went—with Tanya Huff—to a Calgary convention. Part of the Canada Council funding that offset the cost of our travel came from the library readings we did outside of the convention. Because I was reading with Tanya—this really does sound like a theme in the early years—I had taken this story with me. It was simple, it was the right length, and it was definitively not clever.
I think this makes me sound humorless, in hindsight, but I’ll live with that. At the convention, however, one woman literally fled the reading in tears. I assume that something in the story triggered something, because I don’t think it’s the story itself, but I never found her to apologize.
However, it was, once again, written for a Christmas anthology. I miss writing for those, sometimes, because right or wrong, there is so much tied up in family memories of Christmas; in hopes, dreams, disappointment and a sense of the season from all angles: the naive child’s, the anxious adult’s, the parents who want Christmas to maintain some of the magic and mystery that we ourselves remember.
It is interesting to reread this now, though. The mention of technology dates the story, even if no actual dates are present. I even considered changing those, but resisted because if I did that, I would never stop.
Hunger
I used to hate Christmas more than any other time of the year.
Not because of the commercialism. Hell, with my VCR and my laser disk player and my stereo sound system and car and you name it, I’m just as much a consumer as anyone else. And I didn’t hate the hypocrisy of it, at least not in the later years, because I understood it. I didn’t hate the religious overtones, and I’m not a religious man; I didn’t hate the idiotic television specials or the hype or the gathering of the family.
I hated Christmas because every Christmas after my fifth year, I saw her.
Let me tell you about her, really briefly; it’ll make the rest of it all make sense. Well, at least I hope it will.
* * *
When I was five, I went travelling with my parents. We had three weeks at Christmas—and three weeks, at least to a five year old, are forever. My dad didn’t like snow much, and he especially didn’t like to shovel it, so when we chose a place to travel, we went south. Fifty years ago and more, South America wasn’t a really civilized place; hell, in many places it’s pretty primitive now. But it had warm weather, and it had lots of people fussing over my dad, which made him happy; it had good food, and Christmas was still celebrated.
Of course, it wasn’t Christmas like here, and there wasn’t any tree, and there certainly wasn’t much in the way of presents—I got more than anyone else—but it was happy enough, until she came to the window of the dining room. The place we stayed, it was a big house—a friend of my dad’s owned it, but I don’t remember him well. It had lots of servants and lots of land, and huge rooms. I ran about in it for days; I thought I could get lost.
Well, I saw her at the windows of the house while we were eating. She was thin and scrawny, with sun-darkened skin and these wide, night eyes that seemed to open up forever. Her fingers were bony; I remember that because she lifted her hand and touched the glass as if she wanted to reach through it. I called out to her, but she was gone, and I grabbed my mother’s hand and dragged her from the table to the window.
“It’s nothing,” my mother said, and drew me back. But I knew better.
“She’s hungry,” I said. “It’s Christmas.” As if those two words meant something, meant anything. I didn’t understand the glance that my mother gave my father, but he shook his head: No.
They didn’t have doorbells in that huge, old house; they had something that you banged instead, hard. So I knew it was her at the door when I heard that grand brass gong start to hum. I slipped out from under my mother and ran towards the door. Because I knew she was hungry, you see, and it was Christmas, and of course we would feed her.
The servants didn’t see it that way, of course. Neither did our host. To them, she was just another one of the countless beggars that came at inopportune moments. And I even understand it, sometimes—you don’t see me giving away all my hard-earned money to every little street urchin with a hand held out.
But whether I understand it or not doesn’t matter. Because I feel it with a five year old’s shock and anger, after all these years. They drove her away. I didn’t understand what she was saying, of course, because I didn’t know any Spanish back then. But I know now, because I learned enough to try to speak to her later.
I’m hungry. Please. I’m hungry. Like a prayer or a litany. She had a thin, raspy voice; she coughed once or twice although it wasn’t cold. I could see her ribs. I could see the manservant shove her, hard, from the open door. Well, I was five and I wasn’t too smart then, so I picked up the nearest thing and started hitting him with it and hollering a lot. It was an umbrella, and a five
year old can’t damage more than pride.
And I just kept shouting, “It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas!” until my mother came to take me away. My father was furious. The host was embarrassed, and made a show of remonstrating the servants, who were only doing their job.
I went back to the table like a mutinous prisoner, and I was stubborn enough that I didn’t eat a thing. Not that night, anyway. My mother was angry at my father, that much I remember. Dinner kind of lost its momentum that night because of the tantrum of one half-spoiled boy.
And Christmas lost its magic for that boy.
* * *
Maybe it wouldn’t have, had she stayed away. Maybe the toys and the food and the lights on the trees would have sucked him right back into family comfort. Maybe Santa’s lap and Santa’s ear would have encouraged him to feel the exact same way he always had. I’ll never know. Because in the winter of my sixth year, tucked under the covers and dreaming of Santa, I heard her tapping at my windows.
Back then, I had my own small room on the second storey of our house, and when I heard the tapping at the window, well, I thought it was monsters or something. I gathered my blankets around me like a shield, yanked ‘em off the bed, and then trundled, slowly, over to the window.
And I saw her standing there, with her gaunt, darkened cheeks and her wide, wide eyes. She was rapping the glass with her thin, bony fingers and she said the same words over and over again. I think I screamed, because I could see the northern stars blinking right through her, and I knew what that meant, back then.
My mother came first—she always did, moving like a quiet shadow. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her, pointing—and my mother looked at our reflection in my window and shook her head softly. You were having a nightmare, she said. Go back to sleep.
But it’s her, I said. It’s her, can’t you see her? She’s dead, mom, and she’s hungry. I don’t want her to eat me.
She’s not here, she’s not dead. Hush. My mother held me in her arms as if she were a strong, old cradle. And I cried. Because over my mother’s whispers, I could hear the voice of the hungry girl.
* * *
It didn’t stop there, of course. Sometime in my teenage years, I stopped being afraid that she would eat me. Instead, I started being afraid I was mad, so I never talked about the dead, starving peasant, and my mom and dad were just as happy to let the matter drop. But she came every Christmas midnight, and stayed for a full twelve days, lingering at the window, begging me to feed her. I even left the table once and threw open the door, but all I got was snow and a gust of wind. She didn’t come into the warmth.
She was there every year. Every day. She was there from the minute I went to college to the minute I graduated. She was there when I finally left home, found my wife, and settled down. It wasn’t my parents she haunted, although they wouldn’t feed her. It was me. I even railed against the injustice of it all—I was the only person who’d even cared about her that night—but hunger knows no reason, and she came to me.
* * *
I have three children—little Joy, Alexander, David. Well, I guess they aren’t that little anymore; fact is, they’re old enough now that they don’t mind being called little. I consider it a miracle that they survived their teenage years—I don’t know why God invented teenagers.
But Melissa and I, we had four children. You see that black and white photo in the corner there? That baby was my last child, my little girl. She didn’t see three. It’s funny, you know. They talk a lot about a mother’s grief and a mother’s loss, but Melissa said her good-byes maybe a year or two after Mary died, and me—well, I guess I still haven’t. It’s because I never saw her as a teenager. It’s because I can’t remember the sleepless nights and the crying and the throwing up.
I just remember the way she used to come and help me work, with her big, serious eyes and her quiet, serious nod. She’d spread the newspapers from here to the kitchen, same as she saw me do with my drafting plans. I had more time with her than I had with the older kids—maybe I made more time—and I used to sit with her on weekends when Melissa did her work. Mary’d sleep in my lap. Draw imaginary faces on my cheek.
I remember what she looked like in the hospital.
But I’m losing the story, about Christmas. Let me get back to it.
Mary died when I was thirty-five. Died in the spring, in a hospital thirty miles north of here. I couldn’t believe anything could grow after she died. I hated the sight of all that green. Took it as an insult. Cosmic indifference. Come winter, everything was darker, which suited me best.
We went to Mary’s grave—at least I did—once a week or more. Took flowers, little things. Near Christmas, I took a wreath, because she liked to play with them. I’ve heard all about how people think graveyards are a waste of space and greenery, and maybe they’re right. But I know that having that site, where little Mary rested in the earth, was a boon. I’d come to it weekly like a pilgrim to a shrine, making these little offerings. Talking to her like a crazy person. You don’t know what it’s like, to lose a child. I hope you never know it.
That Christmas, when I was thirty-six, my regular little visitor came, as usual, at midnight. I wasn’t in bed then; Melissa and I were wrapping our presents, late as always, both of us crying and trying not to look at the fireplace, where Mary’s little stocking wasn’t. Family things like this, they’re hard. But sometimes you have to cry or go mad. Melissa’s pretty good; she’d rather see me cry than go mad. Most of the time, anyway.
She knew when I heard it, of course. I went stiff and lifted my head, swiveled to look out the window. Melissa couldn’t ever see the little ghost, but after she decided I wasn’t completely crazy, and that she wasn’t going to leave me if the worst thing about me was that I saw ghosts on Christmas, she did her best to be understanding.
The little nameless girl stared right through me, with her wide, hungry eyes. Her lips moved over the same words that she spoke every year. Not for the first time, I wondered when she’d died, and whether it was from starvation. Not for the first time, I wondered where.
But for the first time ever, I wondered if any parent had ever gone to mourn her passing or her death, the way I had with my little Mary. And for the first time, the little ghost girl stopped her endless litany and smiled at me. Smiled, translucent and desperate, standing inches above the untouched snow.
I knew what I had to do, then. Wondered why I was so stupid I couldn’t have thought of it before.
* * *
Melissa and I had the worst fight of our marriage on Christmas day.
“Can’t you just leave it until next year?” She’d shouted, her eyes red, but her tears held in check. “This is the first Christmas we’ve had to spend without—without Mary. It’s the most important time for you to be with the rest of your family.”
“‘Lissa,” I said, because I knew she was right, but I knew I was right too. “I’ve got to do this. That little ghost—”
She snorted, which was about as close to open criticism as she’d come.
“That little girl died somewhere, and I don’t think her parents ever found her. She’s lost, she’s hungry, and she might even be trying to reach them, if they’re still alive. Think about how you’d feel. How I’d feel. I have to go.”
“Next year,” she said, but her voice was softer. “Just wait until next year. Please.”
* * *
It took me two days to find a flight down south, which meant drawing money out of the savings account. Two days notice isn’t usually enough to get any kind of decent charter. I thought we’d have another blow over that one, but Melissa was silent in a mutinous way.
I thought she’d refuse to take me to the airport, but in the end, she and the kids piled into a car, and I had to explain to my three living children why I was leaving them to go chasing after a ghost they couldn’t see. Only Alexander remembers it now; the others were just a little too young or a little too distracted.
When I got ont
o the plane, I heard the tapping on glass that always came for each of the twelve days of Christmas. The window was a tiny oval plastic pane, and the clouds were streaking past at hundreds of miles per hour, but the little hungry girl was there, with her wide eyes and her voiceless plea. This time I nodded and watched her face against the background of columned clouds and sunlight.
* * *
Well, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I followed her. From the moment we landed, she appeared, floating on air in the arrivals lounge. Thin, scrawny and openly ravenous, she followed me with her eyes, and I followed her with my legs. I didn’t bring much in the way of luggage because I thought it’d be best to travel light, so I zipped right out of the airport on her trail.
She walked beside my car, tapping against the smoked glass, begging for food. It was hard to say who was leading who, because I knew where I was going, or at least I thought I did. In retrospect, it was lucky I had her with me, because everything had changed in the years between my five year old and thirty-six year old selves. The great old manor house that haunted my inner eye was still there—but it wasn’t a house anymore, it was a small hotel, and at that one that had seen better days. There was a paved road leading up to its doors, which showed that the place had had money once, and I took the bend slowly, keeping an eye on my little companion.
After I got out of the car, explained what I wanted to four different people in two different languages, and checked into a small room, I found the little girl waiting for me by the window in the dining room. There were two other elderly couples in the dining room, so it was quiet, almost austere.
That’s where I first saw you, I thought. And I stood up, pushed my chair back, and walked out through the front doors. It didn’t surprise me when I found her on the porch, ringing her hands dramatically and begging for food. She didn’t need to be dramatic; her arms were almost skeletal, her eyes, sunken disks in the paleness of ghostly skin.
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