Before she could find any, he was holding her hand again as he led her back to the croft. She liked holding his hands. they were big and warm and as soft as a lamb's ear, even now when muck covered the palms.
They weren't home but a few minutes when he lifted Ma into his arms, wrapped in the coarse bed sheet and carried her outside.
"Where you taking Ma?"
He pointing to the milking stool with his toe. "Sit ye there till I get back," he told her.
Then went the sister-sized bundle, too, off in his arms. Maggie sat with the hound outside the cottage like he told her. It was tough, though, to sit on the milking stool for so long. She hated sitting, doing nothing. Good thing he came back soon enough.
"Where's Ma?" she asked him. "Where's the sister?"
"We'll go to them now," he said, but he wouldn't look at her. Instead, he brushed at his breeks where some mud had collected and closed his eyes as though he was tired. Maybe he was if he was going to keep walking back and forth to the moor. Sure enough, off they went again back to where two mounds of dirt like black molasses buns sat on the moor. She liked molasses buns, especially the way Ma made them with oatmeal freckled over the top, but there was something wrong with thinking about these piles of dirt the same way.
Still, she sprinkled the freckles of daisy petals atop like Da told her to because they were Ma's favorite. When the fog wet her lashes, she pretended the tiny globes of water that blurred into burns so close to her eyes, were drops of faerie water, ready to change her green eyes to silver. Da's lashes were wet too. And his cheeks. She wondered what he pretended.
She felt his arms wrap around her in a great squeeze that nearly squirted the air out her nose.
"Yer Ma's gone to peace," he told her. "Gone to God, lass, where she won't suffer no more."
How grand for Ma that she wouldn't have to cough no more all the time. He hadn't said anything about the sister, and his voice sounded as if it had a hard time coming up through his throat, but still, Maggie was sure things would be back to normal now that the belly was gone and Ma wouldn't cough no more.
Still, it was odd that he sighed so sadly when he gave one last look over his shoulder at the mounds.
When they got home, she ran to see if Ma was awake, but her bed was empty, and Ma gone, like he'd said. Still, Maggie could swear she heard her whispering everywhere she moved: next to the linen chest, beside the mattress, underneath the table. Everywhere. She sounded impatient, like she sometimes did when she wanted Maggie to come close instead of dawdling. Maggie liked to dawdle, but this time it wasn't fun. No matter how much Ma whispered, Maggie couldn't find where the voice came from; she couldn't make it to Ma.
She finally went to where Da was dropping bowls onto the table.
"Where Ma?"
"I told ye, lass, she's gone. Now come get yer supper."
She crawled up next to him on her chair and scooped up her spoon At least she didn't have to answer Ma now because it was mealtime; a wee lass should never talk with her mouth full. Still, he seemed so sad, so quiet with Ma gone, that she wanted to help him somehow, tell him Ma needed the peace.
Looking up from her bowl of watered mutton stew, she peered into his eyes and told him, "I glad Ma gone."
He made a choking sound that started her belly squirming again.
"Careful, Maggie," he said. "A good lass doesn't speak ill of the dead."
Dead? What was dead? Did dead mean Ma? Poor Ma. Now she wouldn't moan anymore, but did that also mean she hadn't gone to get better? Had Maggie just made things worse; would Ma's voice go away now, too?
Oh no. She'd really done it now. Da pushed back his chair and ran like a beetle over to the fireplace. He turned to the hearth where he was lit with bits of yellow light that Maggie knew came from the burning peat he'd collected three nights ago. He looked like he was trying hard to stand up, and he never looked as though he would fall even when he played with her in the meadow, chasing her and chasing her till he said he had to sit or fall down. His legs were good strong things that could chase her for hours but he never had to sit. He never fell down.
Not now. Now he looked as though he was about to fall. He kept running his fingers through the bush of hound's-fur hair, shook his head as he looked into the fire.
"Not good to speak ill," he mumbled. "Not good."
Ah, so that was it. Maggie wasn't a good lass; how could she be, for she'd talked, and Ma would get ill for it. Da said, ill.
Speak.
Ill.
Dead.
All tied up together like knots in an apron. What if he got swollen up and sick like Ma? What if his voice got left behind, too, all for the troubles of ill-speak?
She didn't think she could stand having Da go away too, or become another voice in the corners that she couldn't find. It was hard enough trying to hear the words Ma made in the corners, bad enough there was no body to find. But for Da to go too?
She wanted him to make her squeal with pig bites to the belly, for that's how she got the hole there, he said. From a pig bite her Ma had sewn up when she was a bairn but ten days old.
Maybe if she kept her lips pressed together so no ill-speak could get out, maybe that way the way things that used to be would be again. Every night for days and days she wished for it with her stomach, deep, deep down underneath where her pig bite was. She wished so hard that the bite started to get sore.
It got sore and stayed sore all the time. Straight through the cold that comes with the frost, her belly ached and as the leaves fell from the trees it got more sore and her chest felt tight, all closed up and blanketed with yucky stuff that came up when she coughed.
She waited and waited for Da to tell her it was ok to talk, but all he did was grumble about her not talking, about her lying in bed and coughing until finally he said, "Ye're to have a new ma, Maggie."
He beamed at her as if his words could make her belly stop hurting. "A new ma. And she can help ye, lass. Make ye smile again."
The words made her belly hurt more, and when she cried because she wanted it to stop, he said, "Ach, don't cry, lass," and wrestled with the fire.
"She can't replace yer real Ma, I ken, God how I ken, but a lass needs more than an old dog to tend her, and I ken naught of frills."
She started to cough more. Shivers ran across her skin. It was Ma's sickness, she knew it; it felt like the hound's tongue licking from her toes to her hair, probably because it was tired of having hairs pulled out of its ears. No big belly, though, and she figured it had something to do with the sickness running out her nose instead of swelling up her pig bite.
She wanted to ask Ma about it. But Da had said she was dead. Because of the ill-speak. And Maggie found it awfully strange that although Ma's body was no longer in the cottage, her voice continued to find its way into the oddest of places: beneath the table, coming from the dirt when Maggie played there, in the corners when she ran to them to escape the sound of that familiar and heavy brogue.
Perhaps that was what dead was, being a voice with no body. A voice that had to come through dirt, out of corners, and suffer being ignored. And because of all this, she was afraid to speak back to Ma, petrified she'd get a devilling for killing her, for ignoring her voice. A devilling that, even though it came down to words, could hurt as surely as a switch to her bum.
She felt hot all the time. And she shouldn't be hot, for Da said November made the air cold. She shouldn't be hot when he lit a fire first thing in the morning and got up in the middle of the night to feed it.
She was so hot he took to putting cool cloths on her forehead and telling her, "It'll be alright, lass. It'll be alright. Just ye hold on."
But it wouldn't be alright. Maggie knew she was bad. She had killed Ma—her ill-speak had killed Ma—and now, because she held it in, it attacked her belly.
Maybe it would be better to let go, better for Da, better for the new ma that was coming.
Maggie closed her eyes and waited for the ill-speak to take her.<
br />
...........
To read more : Throwing Clay Shadows
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Did you love Pray for reign? Then you should read Throwing Clay Shadows by Thea Atkinson!
Throwing Clays Shadows is a 2012 B.R.A.G. MedallionTM Honoree
Because you like your historical novels just a bit dark.
It's 1807 on the Scottish Isle of Eigg. Four-year old Maggie believes she has killed her mother by saying bad things and now she won't say a word. She's worried if she says anything else, she'll kill her da too.
The trouble is, the consumption that really took her ma, has marked Maggie too. It forces Da to marry Janet so Maggie can have a woman to look after her.
It gets harder for her to stay silent, though, because Janet tries to get Maggie to talk. She's not sure she can hold out when this new ma reveals secrets that make her squirm, that make her feel like Da is doing things he shouldn't be.
It seems there's more to worry about than a few words. If she can just understand what Ma's ghost is telling her from the corners, Maggie will be able to face her fears and find her voice and true power. The question is: will that power be enough to bind the family together even against the darkest secrets?
THROWING CLAY SHADOWS is a different kind of literary novel that hints at psychics and ghosts in a world of Scottish highlanders romance. If you enjoy all flavors of women's fiction with a touch of the historical fantasy, this one might captivate you.
Read more at Thea Atkinson’s site.
Pray for Reign (an Anne Boleyn novel) Page 30
