Tender Morsels

by Margo Lanagan

  Bruised, breathing very carefully, she made another stitch—a poor one that she must undo directly, a black thread straying out into the yellow like a spider’s leg, like a loose hair of the bear who, though wild, must be heraldic, must be better-groomed, less shaggy, than . . . than bears Liga had known.

  ‘Branza’s hand,’ she said wonderingly, slowly drawing out the errant stitch.

  She had not thought Ramstrong could be so cruel. But look at him, speaking there, glowing, his face not a whit less kind than usual. He was not cruel; he had no idea what—with that blur of words from which words darted to stab her: affection, beautiful, protect her and take the best care, feels the same towards me—what he was disassembling within her, what he was condemning her to live without. How he was embarrassing her! Because of course! Even Branza was somewhat older than he; Liga was old enough to have mothered him. How could she ever have thought it possible?

  But she had. She had thought he would remember their little time together. She had thought that in his recollection of that day at the streamside, of all those days, all those scratchings and strokings, he would somehow—but how would he ever, in this harsh world? why, everyone would laugh at him!—he would somehow overlook the years between them, would be able to see in her, to love in her again, that younger woman she had been—and still was, here inside; still was! She felt she was crying it out to him, in her slow, careful stitching. She still was that girl, the age that he was now, inside this older body. She had had a good life—nothing had broken or embittered her. He had only to accept her as that girl and she would be that girl again, full of vigour and laughter. Anders, Ousel, Bedella—they all loved her; they did not think her beyond their consideration. How could he—Why did he not—

  Still he was talking. They were thinking of wedding before next Midsummer. Midsummer. She nearly choked on the thought of the word, on the thought of the time, on the thought of herself dancing, overexcited by the touch of a man, knowing nothing, stupid as ever, turning her own head with fantasies a woman of twoscore years and more ought to be ashamed of. She sewed, slowly and unsteadily, up the bear’s cheek towards his ear. She had drunk too much dandwin that night; she had lost her senses. But that did not account for the weeks since, when, cold sober and in the clear light of the softening summer days, she had continued to hope—to expect, idiot woman!—that Davit Ramstrong intended to marry her.

  ‘That is,’ he said now, ‘if we have your blessing, if you are happy for us to proceed.’

  ‘Of course I am, Davit,’ she said, careful not to speak too coolly, or too sweetly either. ‘Of course you have my blessing. We are so much like family already, it is . . . it is wonderful that we truly will be.’ She nodded gravely across the table. It was the most she could do; she could not assemble anything like a smile onto this face of stone.

  He thanked her; his voice was uneven from the strength of his feelings, from the strength of his love for her daughter. There was a small silence then, in which everything Liga must not say seemed to clang around the room, ragged and noisy as Strap children: But I shall be your mother-in-law! You know, of course, that she is my sister as well as my daughter. But did you ever feel for me, there by the stream, or anywhere? Oh, tell me I was not mistaken, not such a great fool!

  She put the bear-pennant on the table. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will fetch us some dandwin, and we shall toast your betrothment.’

  This they did. Ramstrong’s eyes glistened a little. An actual tear fell from Liga’s, though had he tasted it—had he licked it from her cheek!—he would have known it to be a bitter one, not a tear of joy. And they sipped their wine and talked of many things, true-worldly things: children, and living arrangements, and the timing of the ceremony, and how the marriage would look to other people. He had given her her part: You are to be my wife’s mother, he had said. And, always easily directed, Liga slipped straight into what she must do, offering payment for this and for that, keeping always to the practical side of things and away from the subject of her heart, and Branza’s, and most of all, Ramstrong’s.

  They talked so long that Annie and Branza came home and found them still talking, and Liga had the exquisite pain of seeing the news broken to Annie, of seeing Branza radiant with the announcement, bending to kiss Ramstrong’s cheek as he sat there, standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders as if claiming him—but of course she was not!—from her mother, a look in her eye that of course was not triumph, but only happiness spilling over, soured and spoiled into something else only in Liga’s jaundiced eye. And of course Ramstrong did not mean by that smile, by that laugh at Annie’s teasing, to say Ha! I have escaped you, old-woman Liga! It only struck that wrong note and distorted itself because Liga’s ears, along with the rest of her, had stiffened with the nightmare she was enduring, and everything was being misshapen on its way into her.

  It was misshapen all along! she thought, grief-stricken, remembering so many sweet smiles of Branza’s to Ramstrong that had been to her own mind only daughterly, so many fond glances of his towards Branza that Liga had taken for fatherly, or shyly bear-like, so many instances of Branza’s urging that they go to the Ramstrongs’ house, which Liga had taken for solicitude towards the motherless children. Now all these came clear, as steps towards this betrothal, where before they had been pleasant gestures somewhat to one side of Liga’s own hopeful purposings.

  But had she been utterly wrong? Could she have misread his bear-eyes, his bear-gestures, his bear-paw against her cheek, his green breath? She longed to know for certain; she yearned for him to tell her—but only that he had loved her, and only in company with his still loving her, loving her now, and wanting to wed her. She did not want to hear him say, Oh, yes, Liga, I did, I loved you dearly. But that was in the past. It faded as soon as I saw you step aged from that other world, no longer the young mam I fell for.

  She would not ask him. She could not stand his saying no, the misery of it. And if it were yes, she could not endure his embarrassment, to have once loved the woman who was now to be his mother-in-law. She must keep smiling, this quiet, retiring smile that seemed to have fixed itself to her face so that no one would bother her for her opinion, her reaction. She must think, now and always, of Branza, and of Branza’s happiness—had not her main care, however misdirected, always been for her daughters’ happiness?—and keep smiling, with her wise lips closed upon that aching question.

  The day before the wedding of Davit Ramstrong to Branza Cotting, the bride’s sister Urdda, seventeen summers now, rode her own bay mare from Rockerly. A fine figure she cut, coming up St Olafred’s main street on the splendid, sweating animal, in dark Rockerly riding garb and a hat from which two black silk ribbons flowed out behind her. She was not yet quite so awe-inspiring in the gravity of her bearing as Miss Dance, but she drew the eye nonetheless with her straight posture, her gaze bright-inquisitive as ever, the smile tweaking her lips and lighting her face.

  That evening, the Cotting women and Lady Annie had their supper at Ramstrong’s house. Urdda had let it be known that she had brought a gift for Branza that she wanted them all to see, and after the meal and the clearing-away of it, Liga and Urdda joined Lady Annie and Ramstrong in the sitting room, to wait for Branza to come down from putting the children to bed.

  Urdda could not keep still.

  ‘Stop rustling, you, in your fancy silks,’ Lady Annie said, laughing across at her. ‘You cannot hurry them babs.’

  ‘Indeed, no,’ said Ramstrong from the window. ‘Bedella will want the full song cycle tonight, with Branza here, and guests, and the wedding tomorrow. She will take some settling.’

  ‘Tell me more about your lessons, though, Urdda-girl,’ said Annie. ‘What is that fearsome Rockerly witch learning you in the way of transmoggerfercations?’

  ‘Oh, so much I hardly know where to start telling it! This, that I’ve made Branza—why, it’s just like one of those broidery samples Mam made us do—you remember, Mam?—before we moved on to real l
inens and dresses. ’Tis a piece of busywork Miss Dance gave me, to practise directing my energies without doing harm to anyone.’

  ‘And is that lady satisfied with it?’ said Liga. ‘I would hate to think you were shaming me with your broidery. My, the tussles we had over those samplers, Urdda! I remember your first one—it was all blood-spots and tears. Much like my own first efforts, only with more anger brought to the task, I think.’ She smiled, and fondly, at the memory of her daughter’s rages.

  ‘Miss Dance thinks this is very fine,’ said Urdda, pinking slightly. She had it in her hand now, a small satin drawstring bag containing some smooth, stonelike thing.

  ‘Show us!’ hissed Annie. ‘Before she comes down!’

  ‘I shall not.’ Urdda closed her hand around the bag. ‘It is for Branza, and no one should see it before she does.’

  Down the stairs through the house, which was all opened to catch any movement that could be had of the stifling air, Branza’s singing floated, like a spell itself, like ribbons of gentle sorcery looping and floating.

  ‘At last!’ Annie roused herself as Branza came into the sitting room. ‘We are near gone mad with guessing what is in that bag of Urdda’s.’

  Davit patted the back of the guest chair. ‘Here, my love, best you have the seat of honour, I think.’

  ‘Is this gift not for the both of us, Urdda?’ Branza crossed the room and sat.

  ‘Oh, no. I’ve a wedding gift you both shall have tomorrow. This one is just Branza’s—but I wanted all to see it, so you can know what I am capable of now.’

  ‘This will lift the hairs off our heads.’ Annie sat forward, perching on the edge of her armchair with her gaze fixed on the bag.

  But Urdda did not give it over straight away. Holding it tightly, she leaned towards her sister. ‘Do you remember, Branza,’ she said very low, ‘a dream that you had maybe two months ago, about your wolf?’

  ‘Yes!’ The word jolted out. ‘However did you know of that?’ For though the dream had been extraordinarily vivid and the warmth and wistfulness of it had lingered several days, she had spoken of it to no one, not even Davit.

  Urdda chuckled. ‘I know of it because I made it, sister. I engineered that you would have it, for the purposes of my gift.’

  ‘Can you do such? How powerful you are!’

  Lady Annie nodded in satisfaction.

  Warily, Branza accepted the bag from Urdda. She was not at all sure she wanted to feel again what she had felt from that dream.

  But there was Davit, kneeling beside her. What harm could come to her while he was there? What could spoil the fact that they were to be married tomorrow, that she was to be loved and protected by Davit for the rest of her life?

  She pulled open the bag’s soft mouth. ‘This purse itself is a beautiful thing,’ she murmured. ‘Like all things from Rockerly town—including my sister!’ She glanced again at Urdda’s radiant face before shaking out onto her hand an oval silver locket, on a chain. Urdda reached across and turned it over, and Branza gasped, for into the front was set a lozenge of polished cannel coal, on which was mounted a fine mother-of-pearl likeness of a wolf’s head.

  ‘Oh, it is exactly him!’ Branza breathed. ‘Who made this, that knew him so well? Did you make him yourself, by magic?’

  ‘’Tis a Rockerly man; he carves all kinds of animal likenesses. I gave him a description. Like this one, I said to him, for he had a wolf there in talc-stone, only with the head higher, and an altogether more cheerful aspect to him. Hasn’t he done well?’

  ‘Oh, beautifully, Urdda. Look at him, Mam! Isn’t it exactly Wolf? Lovely!’ And tears came to Branza’s eyes at his loveliness—almost she saw his fur moving in the wind on Hallow Top—and she put a hand to her heart to calm herself.

  ‘It is a fine piece of carving,’ said Liga. ‘And set off just so by that black.’

  Urdda watched Branza admire him for a while. ‘That is not all,’ she whispered.

  ‘It is not?’ Branza looked up, frightened. Davit laid his hand on the arm of her chair at the tone in her voice.

  ‘Open it, open it!’ Lady Annie whispered excitedly. ‘For a locket must hold something, must it not?’

  ‘Must it?’ Branza examined the locket’s catch. ‘What is in there? What have you put? Should I look now? Should I open it?’

  ‘You should, so that I can watch you. And so that everyone can see.’

  Branza laughed softly at her sister’s proud smile, at her bright eyes familiar from earliest memory, even with the maturity of their extra year since last she had seen them, even framed by the face refined by that year, by the glossy, pinned-up hair sophisticated by life in that other town. How could Urdda be so familiar, yet such a stranger? How could she be such a foreigner, riding into town on her fine mare, yet still be the little sister of Branza’s childhood, fretting and pouting and talk-talk-talking?

  ‘Come on, Branza,’ said Annie. ‘I am growing older every minute; I should not like to die and miss this!’

  Her fingers unsteady, Branza pressed the catch and opened the lovely thing.

  The dream rushed out, changing, cooling, colouring everything. They were gone—Branza’s family, Annie, Davit, the furniture and the room, incorporated into and become forest, the home forest. Speech became bird-exclamations and the creakings of branches in the wind. The arbour framed her, the rose-vine clambering over, choked with pale blooms and buds. The cottage was behind her; she did not need to look there to know it was restored, fresh-whitewashed, with the two bushes by the door in bloom, laden with their fullest red, their whitest white flowers, with not a bruise or ragged petal among them.

  She walked forth expectantly, happily. She knew he was approaching even before she glimpsed his bounding back, the flash of an ear, out there in the forest.

  He leaped from the cover towards her. She knew the stride and rhythm of his every mood, and could tell he was overjoyed. His coat rippled around him, white with grey smoke through it; his face laughed, from ears to pink tongue-tip, the pupils of his eyes pinpricks in perfect-rimmed discs of sky blue.

  When he reached her, he stood and laid his forepaws on Branza’s shoulders. His weight pressed through their pads and claw-tips. He smiled into Branza’s face, and breathed warm and licked her.

  She held him as she had held him in the dream, grass damp and stones sharp against her bare feet and her arms full of his warmth, his ribs, his heartbeat and his spine; her ears full of his voice and breath.

  My beauty! she said to him. My friend through those long days, those years! She held him tightly, digging her fingers deep in his neck-fur and hearing his squeal-growl against her ear. He had been all the consolation she had had: his beauty and simplicity, the constancy of his presence by her side, to reach to and to touch. In her first months here, how she had missed him! Just the memory of that old aching misery made her weep into his beautiful mane. It was dream-weeping, the purest form, springing straight from stirred emotions to pour copiously out into the bright fur. They were dream-tears, invisible; they wet nothing and assuaged nothing.

  Then the tears were over, and Wolf was gone from her arms. He sprang about her, aglow in the evening light. He danced away towards the trees, ran back to lick her hand, and then was off again, impatient, along the path the two of them knew every turn and hillock of, the path away to whatever dell or waterside, rock-form or high meadow Branza would choose today.

  With the last glimpse of Wolf’s pointed ears, the forest began to flicker and spill. As Branza watched, it transformed itself most logically and wondrously into chair-leg and mantelpiece, room-corner and windowframe, shoes and skirt-drapes and Lady Annie’s walking stick, thumping with the mudwife’s delight on the hearthrug.

  ‘My dear! My girl!’ Annie sprang up and flung her arms around Urdda. ‘Such wonders! Such . . .’ Pride in Urdda prevented her from speaking more, and she buried a tearful face in Urdda’s shoulder.

  Urdda smiled out of the embrace at her sister, not wanting to miss
a moment of Branza’s reaction. ‘Whenever you open it, you will have that dream,’ she said. ‘Whenever you want to, you can see him for that little while, and hold him.’

  ‘Oh, Urdda.’

  Branza bowed her head. The open locket was lined with black velvet, and several white wolf-hairs were held into the back piece with fine white silk thread. The thought of Urdda bent over the locket-back, knotting that thread, fixing the dream to make a gift for her sister—With a shaking finger-tip Branza stroked Wolf’s hairs, which felt as real as ever, as ordinary.

  Davit touched her arm, consoling, reassuring—whatever it was that she required in whatever state her emotions had put her. Yes, she thought, calming herself, Wolf is gone. All that world is gone, the way childhoods go, the way everyone’s childhood goes. But then there is womanhood, is there not? And wifehood awaits me tomorrow, and for some there is witch-hood and widowhood, and other states I do not know of.

  Slowly Branza closed the locket. The mother-of-pearl Wolf was almost more than she could stand to look at, so static and carven when she had just felt his pulse, his breath. That dream Wolf, the life in him, the absolutely convincing impression of life—well, she did not know whether she could ever open the locket again. It wrenched her heart to have seen him, though she loved him. It pained her to think of herself in the times when he had been her only companion, when Urdda had gone and it was only herself and Mam and the dream-world around them. No Davit! No children! Only that strange, bland town! She could hardly imagine it now. How poor she had been, and how empty her life!

  She enclosed the locket in her hand; it was too powerful a gift—a piece of her soul handed to her, dressed in the kindest, keenest part of her sister’s feelings. Still unable to speak, she lifted it by its silver chain and put it over her head. There, now it rested against her chest; she need not see it and grieve over it. She tucked it into her bodice, where it lay private and no one would ask about it.