Tender Morsels

by Margo Lanagan

  Besides, she was tired from all her wandering, and injured and weak from the day’s events, so for a long while’s walking she did not have the spirit to think or feel anything whatever, let alone resist following the little moon-lamp. Had it led her back over the precipice or into the depths of the marsh, she would have gone there without question, without happiness, without terror.

  But it returned her instead to her father’s house. She stood in the trees and watched it approach the broken cottage, and spill a small puddle of light at one end—the northern end—of the doorstep. The resistance to following, the fear she ought to feel, sat just the other side of her numb exhaustion.

  Near falling with tiredness, Liga walked past the folded-asleep goat and up the path. She knelt, laid her baby daughter down, dug a hole a handsbreadth deep, put the clear stone at the bottom, and pushed the earth back in. As she tamped the dirt flat, the light slithered across the step and pooled at the southern end, and she crossed the step and, grimly obedient, set to planting the ruby there.

  But when she was done, she could not bring herself to walk in through the gaping door of the cottage; it would be too much like entering the mouth of a laughing ogre, or rushing into the arms of a nightmare.

  She walked back into the wood, found a dry, grassy place, and lay down there. ‘I must name you, that creature said,’ she told the baby, untying her own dress-front. ‘Ah, it is too much for me now. I will name you in the morning.’ She put the child to the breast, where it seemed to suck all the moisture straight from Liga’s mouth, and she thought she would not sleep for thirst. But the moment she laid her head in the grass and the forest shadows, she was gone away into sleep—not hungry, not thirsty, not mourning or enraged or frightened, but as comfortable as she could be, insensible.

  She woke into a body so whole and healed, it was as if yesterday’s horrors had not happened. Her fair-skinned daughter lay asleep beside her, a glimmer of milk on her lip.

  ‘Branza,’ she whispered. ‘I will call you Branza, after all things white and clean and nourishing.’

  She stood, and picked the child up, and set off towards the cottage, putting her mind to the tasks that must await her in the ruin.

  But when she stepped into the clearing, everything was changed. The house, which had always slumped to one side as if held up only by the force of her father’s anger, sat square and solid on the grass. The torn-out windowframe had been reset in the wall, the trampled wattle shutters woven anew. The door bore none of the boot-marks and splinters she had glimpsed by the light of the moon-plum the night before; it did not gape, but was held just a little way open with a rounded knuckle of wood. At the southern end of the doorstep, a red-leafed bush grew to the height of Liga’s knees; at the northern end stood a green bush of the same size and circularity. The roof-thatch had no holes or thin places, and the chimney had lost its inclination towards the west.

  ‘What is this, Branza?’ she whispered, in fear of what she saw. This was the house her father might have made them had he had the money and the heart to fix the roof and straighten the frame—had he been, in fact, not her father, but a different man.

  She stood on the step and pushed open the door. ‘Oh, my Gracious.’

  The polished-earth floor spread out before her, unscarred, unscraped, untrod by booted feet, her little rush mats rewoven here and there on it. The marriage bed was gone, as was Liga’s truckle; now the bed was set in the wall—a fresh-made bed for a single person, she could see from here, with the curtain, of new calicut, tied back with a clean band to a proper hook in the wall. Near the head of that bed stood a cradle very like one she had once seen outside the cabinet-man’s workshop, which her mam had stopped and admired, and in that cradle new linen rested soft as a cloud, and a canopy shaded it. Slowly she approached, expecting it to fade like a dream-object before her eyes. Timidly she touched it, and gasped at how smoothly, how heavily, how soundlessly it swung. Feeling most impudent, she laid the baby Branza there, and covered her with the soft woollen blanket. Again, slowly, she walked about the room, noting the instances of repair and renewal—a fresh-carved spoon where the old one had worn almost to a stub; a new lamp for the one that those boys had knocked from the table and broken. Everything was clean, as if swept and wiped by a woman just now left the house to shake out her cloth; it was all as new and neat as a bride’s house with every gift on display.

  ‘Who has done this?’ She still spoke in a whisper. She was afraid some person would hear, and step in from outside, and say, I did, and it is mine; be off from here.

  She went to the door and looked out fearfully, but that woman—that owner, that cottage-wife—was not there, only the two jewel-bushes, the red and the green, one with a tree-sparrow in it, hopping and fidgeting. And as she stood there worrying, the house laughed, a minor squeaking rumble of its timbers, a twitch of its fabrics and a titter and click of its shutters. Laughing at her, it was, but hardly unkindly. Like a shaft of moon-plum light, it came to her, the realisation: this was hers, all hers, the work and gift of the moon-baby.

  ‘I do not deserve this!’ But she heard the words miss the mark. The forces behind these events, these gifts, had stars and seasons to move, oceans to summon, continents to lay waste. They did not take account of such small things as Liga’s deserving or Liga’s not. To them in their vastness, she must look as blameless as her baby. This was a mere blink of their eye, a grain of purest luck fallen from a winnowing of such size that it was not given her to see the sense or benefit of it. She could only marvel at her good fortune; she could only tend the child who did deserve this fresh house, this clean world, and hope that no one noticed the injured and besmutted mother, or called her out and required her to justify herself.

  Her first week in the renewed cottage was a time of such unalloyed luxury and peace that when the thought occurred to Liga that she might go into the town, she was sure her mind had been addled by her new, soft way of life. But why should she not? She frowned and went outside, and sat in the sun and tried to recall why she had stayed here in the house for so long, for she knew she had had good reason.

  Mostly, she remembered when she put her mind to it, she had been afraid of meeting those young men. Any one of them would be bad enough, but what if two came along at once, or more? Might they not follow her, and pin her up against a wall, and fondle her or worse? And who would come to her aid should she have the courage to cry out?

  That had been her main fear, but underpinning it were the habits of all the years since Mam died. We don’t need anyone, her father had often said, so often that she hardly heard the words any more. We can look after ourselves with no aid nor interference from no one. Year by year, he had grown less sociable and harsher to others until, during the last round of the seasons before he died, Liga had seen exactly three people besides themselves: a pretties-seller at whom he had shouted, like a madman, I will set the dogs on ye! although he had no dog, until the poor man had fled—Liga had only glimpsed a flash of his legs, a basket with a swatch of ribbons flapping; Lame Jans up on the road near where Liga sometimes hid on the chance that something of the world would wander by; and a hunter whom she saw, like foliage-mottle moving without benefit of wind, among the trees below Prospect Hill.

  Then, when Da had died, those women had visited, and Liga had not wanted to encounter any more such as them, with their needling eyes—and no man, either, taking care to look away, that the sight of her did not taint him or make him laugh, or whatever it was they feared.

  What was more, with the passing months her belly and then her baby had become very evident, and anyone who met her would have wanted an accounting of either of those. Liga had given up most conversation when her father started his fondling of her, and she no longer had a very great sense of what she could say, words she might use, to describe her own circumstances.

  So she mustered all these things in her mind against the flarings of curiosity that afflicted her, against the growing conviction that the town pro
mised interests and pleasantries she had missed in her solitary life at the cottage. She tried to feel reluctance—she tried to hear her father remonstrating in her mind’s ear—yet as she climbed the path to the road next morning, with Branza in a cloth on her back and some rushwork in a basket on her hip, her step was light, and her heart would not listen to her memory’s dark warnings. I can always turn and come back, she scolded herself. At the first sign of trouble, I can hurry right back here.

  Everything was as it should be on the road, with the wheel-ruts and the hoofclefts gleaming with the night’s rainshowers, the oak with the cut branches that looked like a popeyed old scawcraw, and the scattering of wildflowers either side. Slowly, Liga walked towards the town. If I ever see your face there, her father had said. If I ever hear of you turning up there . . . He had seemed to be talking of quite another girl, someone saucy and brave. Liga had been offended that he did not recognise how meek and obedient she mostly was.

  She rounded the bend, and there at Marta’s Font was stooped to drink who else but Jans’s mother. Liga was about to retreat into cover, then turn and run back home, when the woman heard her step and straightened, dashing water-drops from her chin. ‘Liga!’ she laughed. ‘What luck to meet you. How are you keeping, and your little one?’

  ‘Ah . . . we are well, thank you.’ Liga searched the woman’s face for unkindness, for smugness, for disapproval.

  ‘Is that her there? Let me see the lovely!’

  ‘Oh.’ Liga turned around doubtfully as the woman approached.

  Jans’s mother barely touched Branza’s cloth to lift it from the baby’s face. ‘Aaah, look at that! Curled up sweet as a chick in the egg, aren’t you, little Branza? She’s the image of you, Liga; it is like you have guv birth to yourself. I remember you from a babby in Agnata’s arms, sleeping just so.’

  ‘How—’ But looking the woman full in the face, Liga felt the oddness of asking her, How do you know my babby’s name? ‘How . . . is Jans?’ she asked instead, in a frayed voice.

  ‘Jans is well, and Stella, too, and all my grandchildren. She has another on the way at midsummer, you know, and she says to me she thinks it’s another pair, if you can believe that!’ Birds carolled in the forest as if echoing the woman’s laughter. ‘She’s drowning in children, that woman, making up for all my missings. I’m a happy old grumma, I am.’

  ‘It’s good to hear,’ said Liga—because it was good, if very puzzling. Stella? Could she mean Merchant Oliver’s Stella, that beauty? How had she married Lame Jans? And when? They had not been wed when Da died, so how had she managed to drown in children in those few months? Liga had only just had time to bring forth the one she carried.

  Jans’s mother took cheerful leave of her, and Liga, wanting to seem purposeful, set off as if she intended to continue along the road. And then, so occupied was she with going over and over their conversation and looking at all corners of its senselessness that she kept up the briskness of her walking without thinking about it, and before she knew it, she was at the outskirts of St Olafred’s.

  But they were not quite the outskirts as she knew them. Farrower’s pig farm was here, but it was pin-neat, with all the fences fixed right, and it was not Farrower and his sneering daughters moving about there, but strangers, of rosy complexion, their hair a light brown. Neatly clothed they were, if poorly, with nothing unhemmed or holed. One of the girls, too far away to call out, raised an arm in greeting, and Liga nodded, and the girl turned back to her work.

  And then, look at the town itself. It was like a grandmother’s teeth, half the houses missing. She took a few steps in through the gate, to look at the first one gone from its row. That was that Jinny Salter’s house; Jinny, who had said to her one time, Don’t put yourself near me, poacher’s girl. I don’t mix with your like. And had flounced away, and her flouncing friends with her, leaving Liga alone and hot with puzzled shame. She stood now and touched with her toe the edge of the grassy rectangle, nicely mown and with a seat there for taking the sun, that lay in place of Salters’ house.

  She took a little courage from this and walked on, still fearing to meet those lads. Bring that little purse to me, they crowed in her memory, and Look, she loves it. She can bare keep her cries in, of lust and loving it. She moved Branza around to her front—for the baby’s protection or for her own, she did not know which.

  But the town was much quieter than she remembered from coming here on market days with Mam, and later with Da before he turned bad. There were more of those pink-faced, brown-haired people that had been at Farrower’s. They shook their rugs out their windows or stepped out of their doors and greeted her, and she thought, Who used to live there? Did I ever know? And it came clear to her gradually that these families, these pleasant strangers, had come to replace all the people of the town who were unfamiliar, or whom she had not liked.

  She came to what had used to be Blackman Hogback’s house, and it was now a broad parkland, grassed and flowered, with arbours and fountains and people strolling, and an Eelsister conversing over the convent hedge with one of the rosy ladies. Timorously, Liga went across the lawn—which should be walled, should be Hogback’s mansion, guarded by Hogback’s servants. A climbing rose clung to a lattice, bursting with pink and white blossoms, and she sniffed a flower and she felt the smooth petals between her fingers and she watched a bee fill its pannier-baskets with pollen, and everything was real, scented and textured as it ought to be—thorned, too; she might easily prick her finger to bleeding with that thorn if she wanted to prove how real.

  She walked on, up to the market square. There she exchanged some of her rush-matting for a length of lawny cloth just the right softness, she thought, for the making of some garment for Branza. She traded more for a little smoke-meat, and two figs in syrup, and a tiny package of violet-sugar, for the colour and scent as much as for the usefulness. Market stalls she had once been afraid to approach for their bluff or noisy sellers were now fronted by these calm, kind-faced, brown-haired people, who were ready to explain their wares to her if she asked, but refrained from pressing her too insistently to buy.

  She walked about some more, and when Branza grew fretful she sat in the sunshine in the grassy place where the Fox family’s house had once stood, and fed her. Sukie Taylor, whom Liga remembered playing with once or twice in their childhoods, came up then, and sat by Liga and cooed and admired Branza’s health and beauty.

  ‘That is a fine piece of broidery about your cuffs there, Sukie,’ ventured Liga, when Sukie’s chatter ran out.

  ‘You like it? It is my mother’s work,’ said Sukie carelessly. ‘I can sew a seam all right, but for finework I always have Mam take it over. She tries to teach me, but I can never settle to the finicky parts.’

  ‘I should love to sew such stuff,’ murmured Liga, touching the tiny flowers’ knotted centres.

  ‘You should ask my mam—she despairs of ever teaching Nettie and me!’ laughed Sukie.

  ‘In return for . . . some rushwork, maybe? Maybe she would think to teach me?’ This felt most audacious, emerging from Liga, but no stranger than most of what had already happened that day.

  ‘I would think she would pay you, almost, to have someone to teach! I would think she would walk out past Marta’s Font and find your house and sit upon your doorstep, needle at the ready, for you to show your face! You should come up now—she is marketing today—and offer your interest.’

  ‘I saw her there, but I have never really spoken to her, so—’

  ‘I shall take you—when Branza has had her sup. Look at her, little Miss Sleepy-cheeks. She is surely the prettiest bab I have ever seen, you lucky girl.’

  Lucky indeed Liga felt, walking home that day with figs and sugar and good smoke-meat in her basket, and her first lesson with Mistress Taylor set for next afternoon. It was all very different from the noise and bustle and nastiness she had expected to weather in the town; it was very odd to have conjured a headful of terrors and carried them into St Olafred’s,
only to discover them all to be unfounded.

  She held her baby close against her breast as she walked along. ‘How lovely, Branza! Such a different place! How long can it last, do you think? Is it to be ours for ever?’

  Several weeks later, Liga woke, went out in the early dawn while Branza slept, and admitted, as she stood in the first sun, with the dew chilling her feet, that this feeling low in her belly, these washes of illness she had been putting down to the shocks of the changed world, this distaste for smoky air and for pan-fats—she had had them often enough, and she knew what came of them: babies. She was carrying another baby.

  She had woken in this place feeling so well, and had been so intent on exploring and adjusting; she had assumed—it had not occurred to her to think otherwise—that the moon-baby’s bringing her here had erased not only the boys who had insulted her so, and their houses and their families with them, but also the insult itself, the very event. She had certainly put it out of her mind, and if she did think of it, it seemed distant, and unattached to emotions of any particular strength, as if it had happened to some other girl she barely knew and did not care greatly about.

  But no, it had happened to her, and here was the consequence, growing inside her: a child of one of those boys—she might never know which—or perhaps some monstrous amalgamation of them all, some terrible mongrel. It might come out and look at her and laugh; it might speak straight away in one of their rough voices, and say the things that they had said. She stood in a slant of weak sunshine and rubbed her arms hard against the cold.