Chapter Twenty Eyes of Wool #2
Kensa woke to an empty space beside her.
Isolde was gone. The cottage rustled with movement.
It told her she was not alone and it warned her that someone had taken the body.
Was this the Bucka’s work? Ankles wobbling stiltishly, she rose to where sound lengthened like twine.
There was a mid-morning stillness to the hour, as though the day had not yet decided what to do with itself.
Hesitant sunshine pounded a headache into Kensa’s skull, which throbbed in time with her steps into the kitchen.
That strange noise increased: an orange peeled too close to the ear, a knuckle clicking inside a glove, a tail bending inwards to slap itself.
One copper-coloured feather fell from nowhere and onto her sleeve.
A second, third, fourth feather, paved her way forwards.
The kitchen was heaped with them and, at first, Kensa could not understand why.
Among them were gem-stone colours, like garnets, only these pooled into runny puddles and the smell—
It was blood.
A hunched figure sat, legs splayed, on the floor.
It wore a familiar nightdress, wet and red.
Around it were chickens, dead, necks snapped and open, as though their mouths had been widened and moved further down their bodies: Death in another form.
Through a matted lump of hair, Kensa saw stained teeth, as Isolde – for it was her – pressed raw poultry to her cracked and scaling lips.
‘You’re back,’ said Kensa.
A high chord rang between Kensa’s ears. Where there should have been relief and happiness was confusion.
Because the chickens were dead, somehow.
Behind it was that lip-smacking and bone-sucking and blood-drinking slurp, with feathers between teeth and a wish-bone promise, broken and chewed and swallowed down.
‘You ate them,’ said Kensa, with a catch in her throat.
She should make breakfast. They could talk.
It would be fine. Of course, Isolde would be hungry upon waking up.
How remiss of her not to plan ahead. This was a small price to pay for having her back.
Wasn’t it? Only, Kensa’s clucking companions were now in pieces and her own hands were shaking and she was going to be sick and, and, and …
‘You’re here now, as it should be,’ continued Kensa. ‘Don’t be angry with me, I had to do it, I couldn’t manage without you.’ A hundred excuses, offered quickly, to intercept the chastisement that never came. ‘Isolde?’
Quiet, the eating stopped. Two cloudy orbs lifted to meet Kensa’s.
These were not Isolde’s eyes. Kensa jolted backwards and banged her side against the table.
Her fingers twitched. She wanted to snatch the carcass, as though she could save it.
Perform another ritual, summon everything back to life, to her.
God, all the chickens were dead.
Hesitantly, from the kitchen’s far corner, came a faint and questioning, Cluck?
Kensa twisted to her right. Isolde saw it first.
The wise woman bolted from her seat upon the stone floor and sprang towards the last surviving hen.
She was impossibly fast, her speed nothing she had ever previously possessed.
Like an animal, like a predator. Kensa shrieked and the bird sprang up, into her arms. Its thumb-sized heart beat against the young woman’s chest as she held it tight.
Isolde’s head swung wildly towards them and, without a second thought, Kensa ran.
Her dress, Isolde’s dress, was too long for her frame and dragged at her toes.
Behind her, Isolde’s bare soles slapped the floor as a chase began.
Kensa bolted to the stairs. Each step sang her footfalls – and there was another pair behind her.
When she reached the landing, cracked nails swiped at her ankles.
Even with Isolde’s quick pace, Kensa was younger and she had something she loved in her arms. She made it to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
A bang signalled Isolde’s weight upon the other side.
Bizarrely, she did not turn the handle, though Kensa grasped it in anticipation.
Instead, the enraged wise woman hammered and scratched at the wood, as a rabid beast might.
It was all right, it would be all right.
Soon, the other woman would remember herself. Wouldn’t she?
Kensa dropped the chicken and dragged her bed, lengthways, as a barrier.
When at last the door’s mechanism gave out, it only opened an inch.
It was that slim crack which Isolde attempted to stuff herself through.
A rolling eye and dirty fingers, clawing outwards.
A blackened tongue, licking the paint along the doorframe.
Cluck, said the chicken, once more.
‘Yes,’ agreed Kensa grimly.
This was not – could not be – Isolde. It had her body, yes, though not much else.
Tentatively, the chicken approached Kensa.
She buried her face in its quivering feathers.
The safest place was below the window, where she slumped, as far from the door as she could get.
Her mind spun with a thousand questions.
Had she made a mistake? Perhaps it would take time for the wise woman to settle.
Yes, that was it. Kensa need only be patient.
After all, what a shock it would be to find oneself alive again, like being born, only the wrong way round.
These comforting thoughts carried her through the next hour.
‘I’ve got you,’ whispered Kensa, over and over, to the soft body nestled against her own.
Eventually, Isolde sought out a new distraction. With an inhuman gait, she shuffled away, leaving Kensa and the chicken in peace.
Occasional crashes came from downstairs.
It was strangely reassuring. If she could hear Isolde, then she knew where the woman was.
Could she get out? Unlikely, if she could not remember how to open a door.
Exhaustion made Kensa’s limbs clumsy. She stripped off the grimy clothes she had worn for the ritual and put on her own: a tatty sage smock which had once been her mother’s.
It was serviceable enough and left her feet clear of bulky skirts.
On a belt at her waist she secured the bone-handled knife and its sheath.
Next, she scrubbed her face, armpits and groin with a damp cloth from her washbasin. It would have to do.
‘You need to go,’ she said to the chicken regretfully.
Her selfish desires told her to keep it, to shut the bird in her room and seek comfort in it later.
But she doubted Isolde would be kept out by a lock for long and couldn’t face another dead chicken on her hands.
Kensa pushed her palms to her eyes, then quietly as she could, unlatched her window and opened it wide.
It was a reasonable drop to the ground. She pressed a kiss to the chicken’s neck, leaned out the window and let go.
Thankfully, the hen softened its fall with ample flaps and landed gracelessly into the garden below.
To cover the bird’s escape, Kensa pulled her bed away from the door and thumped her feet on the landing.
Hopefully, the bird would be sensible enough to hide itself.
If it had evaded Fox for long enough, surely it could stay clear of Isolde?
At least, until she recovered herself. As for wherever the vixen was, Kensa hoped she had fled to her own safety and hadn’t succumbed to the chickens’ fate.
Nothing stirred. In fact, the cottage was eerily silent.
Cautiously, Kensa crept downstairs. There she found Isolde, hunched and rocking in her usual chair.
From her ragged mouth came a hum, then a yell, followed by a chuckle, then nothing.
Silence, unmoving, as though she were dead again.
For the longest time, she did not twitch.
Until her eyes began to roll and settled, at last, on Kensa.
The fire had long since gone out and the room was cold.
Isolde did not seem to feel it. Her bare soles tapped the floor, almost playfully.
‘You’re filthy,’ said Kensa, risking a step forwards. ‘Why don’t we get you a bath?’
She was given no reply, bar the tap, tap, tap Isolde’s toenails made on the flagstones.
It was a long process to clear the fireplace and light it once again.
The heaped ashes beneath the grate carried the Bucka’s peculiar scent.
Kensa was quick to sweep them up and chuck them beyond the front step.
As tired as she was, it was good to work; it stopped her thinking.
She unhooked the tub from the back wall and set it beside the hearth.
Fetched water from the garden well – quickly and with the door closed lest Isolde venture out – and then heated it.
After a long and laborious effort, there was a reasonable depth within the tub and she began the process of negotiating Isolde into it.
One foot in, knee bent, the next following.
At first, the wise woman resisted, drenching them both.
Eventually, as Kensa’s disgust grew, she began to settle and allowed her nightdress to be removed.
It clung to the filth on her body. Odd patches discoloured her skin, which no scrubbing could remove.
This wasn’t dirt. It was decay. And the smell.
Kensa held her breath whenever she drew too close to it.
You bury those smells, she realised. You can’t bathe them.
Lifting a jug, she rinsed Isolde’s hair and lathered it with soap.
‘See now, that’s better?’ It came out. Large clumps, matted grey and silver, stuck to Kensa’s wrists and formed circling islands on the bath’s surface.
The water began to turn a strange colour: brownish-red with clotted lumps and hair and shit.
A warbling sound rose in Isolde’s throat, akin to a song, only flat and monotone.
Kensa leaned in, across that foul water, to listen:
‘ … you’ll fail, tit-sucking whore, can’t do it, housemaid for you, what will your mother say, Jack’ll hate you, first means nothing, first means alone, you’ll always be alone, Mr Skewes was right, you’ve ruined it, never should have taken it, father’s daughter, useless cunt—’
Kensa whipped her head back and met Isolde’s eyes, those limpid-white eyes, and saw a wild grin beneath them.
‘Let’s – let’s get you dry, shall we?’
It was another difficult process to coax Isolde from the tub and rub her down.
The wet-cloth came away filthy. How could she be dirtier now than she’d been prior to washing?
Kensa was brittle and dry as tinder. This was not what she had envisioned.
It took several tries to push a loose smock over Isolde’s head.
Shoes were unacceptable, communicated not through words, no, for she much preferred using her teeth.
Kensa narrowly avoided losing a finger. And, when left alone for two minutes to allow Kensa to strip the soiled bedding, Isolde began to eat live bees from the windowsill, popping them in her mouth like cherries.
‘You should rest,’ said Kensa forcefully.
Isolde continued to mumble, repeating what Kensa had said to herself in low moments. She had never told anyone about the doubts she fed, about her growing insecurities. How could Isolde have known? It scared her more than the balding and the shitting and the inane giggling.
‘You should have run away, little bitch—’
‘Isolde,’ said Kensa quietly.
Slowly, the wise woman eased back onto the clean sheets, squirming.
She did not respond to her name. Whatever inhabited Isolde’s body was not the wise woman, it was something other.
Kensa was sure of it. Although she had no knack for the Old Ways, she heard them, that ancient power spearing the land and telling her that her mentor was truly gone.
For once, she listened.
Kensa fled to the kitchen and kept a closed door between herself and the rotten, broken creature she and the Bucka had brought into being.
What had she done? She could not think, would not think.
For now, there was chicken blood to clean off the floor and the walls and her dress, again, filthy with horror she could not wash out.