Maresi Red Mantle

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  Suddenly I realized where this conversation was heading. I tried to keep my voice steady and my face straight. “Well, yes. But not yet. Not for a few years.”

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed. Slowly he continued to play with my hair.

  We said goodbye shortly afterwards. I kissed him on the forehead. I had never done that before.

  When I emerged I realized that he had braided my hair into a thick, tight braid. I felt it with my hands. It was strange having my hair bound that way. I have not had it braided since… well, since that night when we bound the calm and then brought forth the storm.

  Mother raised her eyebrows in surprise when I came in, but said nothing. She set out a pot of steaming soup and bowls. Akios came in from chopping wood on the hillside, and Father put down the basket he was weaving. We sat down at the table and began eating. Then Akios looked up.

  “Your hair! You’ve braided it!”

  “It suits you,” said Mother calmly with a little cough. “Now we can see your pretty neck.”

  Father said nothing, he just looked at me with a mildly inquisitive expression in his eyes. I shrugged.

  “I am just trying it. It is tight. It pulls at my scalp.”

  “You get used to it,” said Mother. “And if it’s too heavy you can always cut a little hair off.”

  I gave the braid a chance and kept it for the whole evening. But by bedtime my temples were tense and throbbing and my head ached. I loosened the braid and listened, but no storm lashed at the cottage walls. It was a relief to have my hair free again. I took out the copper comb and realized it had been a long time since I had used it. Several dry lavender flowers fell to the floor—Jai’s gift. I picked them up and inhaled the scent deeply. They smell like the dormitory in Novice House. They smell like Sister Nar’s garden. Like home.

  I pulled the comb through my hair. It crackled and sparkled, but nothing happened. No howling storm. I gathered the hair that had fallen out and bound it into the braid I keep under my pillow. Then I undressed and crawled into bed.

  I do not have much Goddess Tongue left, but that is no matter. I do not think I will need it any more.

  Yours,

  MARESI

  Venerable Sister O,

  I no longer wear the clothes Mother gave me: the blouse, embroidered apron and grey skirt. I now dress as we do in the Abbey: in my own shirt, trousers and headscarf, which Mother washed and put away in the chest at the foot of my bed. For even if I do dress like the women here, it does not make me one of them. They have treated me differently since I started spending time with Géros, but still not as one of them. Ironically, it seems that the silver I paid for everybody’s debts has become a barrier between us. Nobody here has ever seen so much money. Few have even seen a silver coin. The idea that Maresi Enresdaughter, who used to play down by the stream as a child, suddenly has so much money is too bizarre for them to comprehend. I share a name with the girl who once played here, but as far as they are concerned we are not the same person.

  Of course they are my people, and I have missed them, and I am happy to be reunited with them. The women here are kind and friendly and clever. But all they talk about is men and farm work, marriage and housekeeping. I understand. I do not blame them in the least. Larders and looms are their domain, and they measure their worth in how well they care for their homes and children. It is not their fault that their world is so small. Neither is there anything wrong with this world.

  Yet I want more.

  I am blowing out my candle now. Goodnight, Sister O. I wish I could speak these words to you. I wish I could be with you, just for one moment, standing beside you by the outer wall, watching the moon rise over the sea.

  Your novice,

  MARESI

  Autumn

  Venerable Sister O,

  I am at a loss. I am devastated. My sister Náraes is with child, as I must have already mentioned, and some days ago we were rinsing laundry down by the stream, and I helped her up because it is becoming difficult for her to move, and I accidentally touched her belly, which is already full and firm, and an icy chill shuddered through me. The same chill as I felt in the crypt beneath Knowledge House.

  What will I do, Sister O? Where do I turn?

  Now I feel it every time Náraes is nearby. I am doing all that I can for her: helping with the children; making sure that she does not lift anything heavy; preparing food that I know to give strength to expectant mothers. I have resumed my walks around the fields and village and sometimes I bring her along, because it must do her good to get a little exercise and respite from cooking fumes and children’s screams. Jannarl is a good man and never complains about being left alone with the children after a hard day’s work.

  But nothing helps, and our walks around the village leave me not only exhausted but chilled to the bone. Náraes does not seem to notice anything is wrong. She is grateful and happy, if a little pale around the cheeks. She often takes the opportunity to lecture me, repeating that I must ensure that my life does not turn out like hers.

  One evening she came to our house and asked Father and Akios to excuse us for a moment.

  “Women’s things,” she said, and then they could not leave quickly enough.

  Mother helped to deliver both Maressa and Dúlan, so now Náraes had come to ask for advice about this pregnancy. I was knitting myself a pair of winter socks, reusing the yarn that Mother had unravelled from a tattered old pair of Father’s. Throughout Mother and Náraes’s conversation I felt the chill emanating from my sister, and I did not know what to say or do.

  Mother fussed over Náraes, giving her the best seat by the hearth and sitting on a stool to massage her swollen feet.

  “How’s your strength holding out?”

  “Well, mostly. I no longer feel nauseous, and can keep food down. Maresi is feeding me all sorts of fortifying things.” She smiled at me, but all I could feel was that icy chill deep in my bones. “I was just wondering if you could check that everything’s how it should be. I have a sort of pain in my chest when I go to bed at night. Might that be dangerous? It never happened with the other two.”

  Mother lowered Náraes’s foot from her knee, rose and stood before her. She placed her hands on her belly. At once she became completely still. Her expression softened and she looked into her daughter’s eyes.

  “It’s a boy. Without a doubt.” She moved her hands expertly and firmly over Náraes’s swollen belly. “Here’s the head, and here’s the bottom. Does he kick upwards?”

  “Oh yes.” Náraes laughed. “Sometimes I can hardly sleep.”

  “There’ll be less of that as he grows and it gets a little cramped in there.” Mother’s voice was gentle and calm, just as I remember from childhood. “The pain in your chest is nothing to worry about. I’ll get you a tea from Tauer, the one he gave me when I was pregnant with… when I was last pregnant.”

  She was thinking of Anner, and both Náraes and I knew it.

  It made me feel very alone to be excluded from their conversation. They share something, an experience that I have never had nor ever will. And I felt alone because I knew something that they did not.

  “Are you scared?” I asked Náraes.

  “No. I was the first time, but now I know that no matter how awful the birth is, I can handle it.” She leant back against the mortared wall and sighed. “I worry about the baby, of course.”

  “No point in worrying about something you can do nothing about,” Mother said, and gave me a sharp look.

  “I can make you a tea,” I said. “Chamomile and perrak, that should help the heartburn.”

  “Probably best she goes to Tauer anyway,” Mother cut me off. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  We locked eyes, and the look she gave me told me that she knew. She knew, and I knew, and neither of us could say anything. A little later, Náraes got up and waddled home. Mother and I were left sitting in the dusk-lit cottage, with the fire crackling in the hearth and our handicrafts sitting
untouched in our laps. I wanted to ask if she could also feel the mark of death on Náraes, and what we should do about it, if there was anything she could do about it. I wanted to hear words of solace.

  Yet I did not know where to begin, and I could not be sure whether she realized that I knew too.

  But Sister O, this means that my mother shares my ability to feel the presence of the Crone, or hear her whispers—what does this mean? I did not believe that the Crone was here, Sister O. I believed she was present only on our island. I should have known better—after all, it was here that I first saw her door.

  Is there anything I can do, Sister O? I wish somebody could cast some light on the whole thing. I have opened the door to death’s realm. I wish for the power to keep it closed as well.

  I have started talking to the Crone again. I do not hear her whispers, but I whisper to her instead. I whisper with every step I take along the paths around the village. I whisper as I pull weeds from my herb garden. I whisper in Grey Lady’s ear as I give her hay and water. I whisper as I fetch water from the stream, as I weave fabric with Mother, as I rub soothing salve into Father’s knee.

  She is not yours to take, I whisper. She is not yours. She is not yours.

  MARESI

  Venerable Sister O,

  I need to write to you urgently, as if you could receive this letter straight away and write back to me, despite the fact that I have not heard from the Abbey at all. You must not have received my letters yet. I miss you and your good advice more than ever. Oh why must I be so far away from you all?

  Náraes came to see us yesterday evening. She is as big as a house now and walks slowly. As soon as she sat next to me on the bench, I felt it.

  The icy chill was gone.

  It took me a few heartbeats to understand what this meant.

  The Crone had taken what she wanted.

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “What’s the matter, Maresi?” Náraes laid her hand on my arm in concern.

  I shook my head and tried to think of something to say. “Oh, everything is so difficult,” I said.

  “You’re thinking of your school.” Náraes leant back against the wall with a groan.

  I swallowed. She had given me a way out, and I took it. “Everyone is happy and this harvest looks to be the best in many years, but my days are filled with work. I have to contribute—I cannot let Mother and Father keep me, a grown woman. Especially not now that… Well, now that I must start from nothing. I have no energy left for the school.”

  Náraes sat quietly awhile. We were surrounded by the murmurs of the early-autumn evening: crickets, mosquitoes, the cackle of hens. Mother bred a hen last spring and now we have seven hens and a rooster. The air was crisp.

  “Sometimes I feel like one of those beautiful horses that belong to the nádor,” she said thoughtfully. “A proud animal: wild and free. Born to run through fields with fluttering mane and thundering hooves.” She shut her eyes. “But I’m harnessed to a donkey cart. Forced to trudge and haul while I dream of galloping free.” She sighed, her eyes still closed.

  The worst part of it is that I am relieved—relieved, Sister O!

  I feared it was Náraes who was going to die. I cannot lose another sister. I refuse to.

  This morning Mother and I were standing on either side of the large washtub, stirring its contents. Father and Akios were out in the turnip field and Mother had decided it was time to wash our bedclothes. It was a chilly morning. Mist hung over the fields, and lay thickly in the dell where the stream flows. We had built a fire in the central yard and our neighbours were passing to and fro, busy with their own tasks. The mist dampened all sounds, making it feel as though Mother and I were alone in the world and everyone else were merely phantoms.

  I needed to talk to Mother about the things I had felt. I cut a piece of soap into the washing water and looked up at her through the steam rising from the pot.

  “Náraes’s baby is dead.”

  Mother’s hands, holding the washing paddle in a tight grip, came to a halt. She stopped stirring the pot and sighed deeply. She gave a barely perceptible nod.

  “We both knew this would happen.”

  “You knew?”

  “Didn’t you? I thought that was the sort of thing you learnt in that abbey of yours. To master life and death, that’s what they taught you. I thought you knew everything.”

  “Why are you so hostile, Mother? What ill have I caused you?” I dropped the soap into the pot and swallowed to force back the tears. “You become curt and cross at every mention of the Abbey. You act as though it were my fault that you sent me there!”

  Mother dropped the washing paddle onto the ground and clasped her hands beneath her apron.

  “When you returned to me, Maresi, I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d lost you for ever. Every day without you was torment. I didn’t know if you had come to harm, if you were even alive. You were just a little girl when we sent you away—how could you survive all alone? I’ve lain awake night after night with daggers in my flesh thinking: how could I send my own daughter away? It may have been the right thing to do, but I regretted it immediately, and ever since. Nothing can have been worth all that pain.”

  Mother had never spoken about this before. Never uttered a single word about it. I thought she was glad that I had gone. Or if not glad, at least relieved. It meant one less mouth to feed.

  “And now I look at you and I hardly know you. You speak differently, in a way I don’t recognize. You talk of strange things: opening the door to death’s realm, a Crone and a silver door. You call another woman Mother!” She gasped for breath and coughed. “You are my own flesh, and I don’t know you!”

  She turned around and hurried into the house, leaving me alone in the yard with laundry and sorrow and tears.

  Why must everything be so difficult? Why must life be this way? Forgive the running ink. I cannot stop crying.

  I will continue writing. One day has passed.

  In the evening, after we had eaten, Mother came into my room. She stared down at the floor, avoiding my gaze. The evening sun filtering through the window illuminated the greying hair at her parting.

  “You wear the snake on your finger. Now I might not know everything you’ve learnt from books and fancy folk, but I know what the snake represents: the beginning and the end. Helping new lives into this world is the beginning. Accompanying the dying on their final journey is the end. Both are things you must learn. Or have you already learnt that on your island?”

  I shook my head but then realized that she was not looking at me.

  “No, Mother.”

  “Then come with me now to see Náraes.”

  Mother portioned out some herbs that might come in useful, and I quickly gathered them up along with a selection of the same herbs that Sister Nar used to aid Geja’s birth. Mother briefly told Father and Akios where we were going and then we walked the short stretch to Jannarl’s farmhouse. Mother uttered not a word along the way.

  Mother started by asking how Náraes was feeling, then tentatively brought the child into the conversation.

  Náraes froze. “He hasn’t kicked in a while. He’s usually so lively. I…” Suddenly she looked at her husband with increasing fear. “Jannarl, when was it you felt my stomach?”

  “Must have been yesterday, in the morning,” he said.

  He came and sat down beside Náraes. He laid his hands on her belly. They both sat still in silence. Náraes started running her hands over her belly, rubbing and pressing. She grew paler. I could not watch.

  “Eat a little honey,” said Mother. “We’ll see if that gets him moving.”

  But both she and I knew that he would never move again.

  We waited out the evening. We made no hasty decisions. Jannarl took his daughters to stay with his parents, then returned. We waited. The boy moved no more.

  We waited until morning. By that time Náraes was sure. Mother started to prepare the tea that would help to
induce birth. Náraes looked at me.

  “Maresi. Stay with me.”

  I did as she asked.

  I wished I could have left, and walked and walked and disappeared into the forest. Mother boiled water and I brewed a tea with the herbs I had brought with me. Mother quietly instructed me at every step: which herbs to use, how they brought on the contractions, and what to do next. I helped Náraes out to the privy to relieve herself. It was early morning and veils of mist covered the fields. We exchanged few words. I wanted to say something, I truly did, but I could not find the words. Sister O, what is there to say to one’s beloved sister who is bearing a dead child?

  Sometimes silence is best.

  I have witnessed birth before, when Geja was born. Yet Eostre was fighting through the pain knowing she would soon have a warm, living baby in her arms. The Mother-aspect of the Goddess was close throughout Geja’s birth. I felt her power and warm breath.

  This time not even the Crone was with us. She had already claimed what was hers. All that remained was emptiness. Náraes fought through the pain and labour, and knew that no reward awaited on the other side. I felt for her so badly I thought my heart would break.

  When the boy was born Mother washed him with warm water, so that he would not freeze. He was so still. I searched for the softest little blanket I could find, and wrapped it around him with care. Then I laid him at Náraes’s breast and she caressed his fine little nose and thin eyelids and bluish cheeks.

  I went outside and down to the stream, where the creak of the mill wheel concealed my sobs.

  Mother saw to the little body after that. She rubbed the boy with oils and wrapped him up properly, and then Jannarl brought a basket and laid him inside, on a bed of dried grass. I covered him with late-summer flowers before the lid was lowered.

  Mother stayed with Náraes all day to make sure she had not suffered any injury or complications during the birth. I returned in the evening and prepared food for them: boiled eggs and porridge. Náraes sat at the table, quiet and pale, and ate.