Chapter Five Ris
chapter five
ris
Biba lies in our bed, clutching her old wooden doll Dodi as she returns to sleep.
She’s getting too old for childish things, but it’s her father’s handiwork and she won’t let it out of her sight.
I understand; he didn’t leave her much. It’s an ugly thing, roughly carved with baffling features, with scraps of gold thread I held back to give it hair.
When she was little, she loved to say, ‘sunshine hair’ as she stroked it and then patted her own dark strands and declare ‘midnight hair’.
I miss those days when she was smaller, her words softer.
Mine were softer then, too – before the grief and rage had begun to devour me.
I head out of the door and the wind whips up my cloak, tugging at the ends as if to dissuade me from going.
From the stoop, I gingerly pick up the otter-cat corpse by its tail.
I’ve been swithering on what to do with it, but I can’t leave it here, a horrific reminder of what happened.
I could bury it, but the idea of it rotting slowly on my land makes me shudder.
I imagine the decay seeping in, infecting everything.
Infecting everything even more, I think.
The sheep bleat pathetically in the field, and I can’t deny it any longer: there’s something wrong with them.
I’ve tried changing their diets, isolating the sick, but always the wool continues to thin.
The batches are smaller and of poorer quality, requiring more hours and creative ways to weave the fine gold thread and garments, which are our bread and butter.
‘What will you do with it?’ Biba asks.
It takes me a moment to come back to myself, to the dank blight of the otter-cat held by the tips of my fingers, to my daughter’s words. She has pushed the door ajar.
‘Give it back to the earth,’ I say.
‘Why?’ Her face is open, her eyes wide.
I hate the why game. It carries on forever, until my answers are either satisfactory or I tire, her questions left unanswered.
‘All living things must be respected. We come from the ground and return to it.’
‘But what about the Tree of Life?’
All I can think about is how disgusting the corpse feels in my hand.
‘Our souls live on and pass through there.’
‘Where do we end up?’
I shrug. ‘That is a question for the Temple of Aistra.’
‘The otter-cat was warm,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘It hadn’t gone into the Tree yet.’
I smell the death in the house and think; my sweet girl did this. What else can she do?
‘I’ll be back later. Sleep now.’
I shut the door harder than I need to and don’t look back.
I take the long path down by the shore, holding the corpse far enough that it won’t stain me, close enough that it will blend into my outline if someone spots me across the Spring Isle.
Why did this happen on the night I’m to showcase my new dress?
I know I sound like a petulant child, but I’ve been working on it for months and they’re all expecting it.
In Alev, we’re in each other’s pockets – secrets are a luxury.
There was no hiding my pregnancy with Biba.
She’s carrying high, Larkin. That means a girl.
My husband had chided: ‘Low for a boy, and right in the middle for whatever they feel like being.’
That had been seven years ago. After our dreams of adventure had been halted; his temporarily, mine forever.
The sky clears, revealing the mist-coated shoreline of the Winter Isle in the distance as I squish my way across the sand dunes.
The tide is frustratingly low, and I have to wade out across the pebbles and shells to reach the water.
I toss the dead otter-cat into the ocean and say a silent prayer for its passing.
The Temple Sisters will ease the otter-cat’s spirit into the Tree of Life.
Do they feel a disturbance in nature? I bite my lip and try not think of it.
Surely they can’t trace anything back to us.
The waters spit out the corpse several times before the waves finally bear it out of sight.
I wash my hands in the surf and unsteadily clamber back up the hill to the dirt path towards the tavern.
I turn to look back at the sea and cringe to see I crushed some bluebells on my ascent.
Years to regrow, destroyed in a moment. Aistra, what a mess we make of our land.
It’s only when I make it to Alev and the lamplight of Vullis’s inn that I notice the bloodstains on my dress.
Not large – you’d have to squint to see them.
I doubt anyone will notice, but I will know that it’s not the crimson dye of the linen.
No one can ever know what Biba did, but I’ll think on it whenever I wear this dress.