Chapter Twenty-three The Hag #2
Elowen was alert, on guard outside the hag’s door, her back propped against the parlour wall and legs tucked inwards.
Blankets cocooned her, pale features owlish amid the heavy wool.
Jack snored rhythmically on the rag-rug beside the hearth, his face aglow with roaming embers.
He looked young when he slept. He was young.
It was easy to forget. To see him now was to see his maturity gone, along with his persistent frown and brow forever knitted in an I-told-you-so or you-need-to-listen or for-goodness’-sake-Kensa or the other phrases (ones she would never admit) that Kensa spied upon his forehead and read too much into.
After scraping what she could from the pantry – hard bread, old cheese and a winter-softened apple – Kensa sat beside her sister, knees splayed out.
‘It’s your turn to sleep.’ She chewed as she talked. ‘I’ll keep watch.’
Elowen nodded and leaned sideways, until her head was on her older sibling’s shoulder. It was as natural as breathing. A strange knot loosened in Kensa’s chest, one she had held fast to ever since her sister had been born. Strange, how quickly she could relinquish it.
A question had been rolling around Kensa’s mind for too long and she voiced it now, quietly.
‘How long have you had the Sight?’ Few could see into the future.
It was a rare gift and an unwanted curse, claimed Isolde, who mentioned it on occasion, as though arming Kensa for this moment.
At her questions, the Bad Books shifted slightly on their shelves.
‘That’s how you knew about the tunnel to the mine, isn’t it?
’ Onions, bone charms and seaweed on a line could predict large events, in a vague way, yet nothing as accurate and troubling as the Sight.
Elowen tensed. Her lips parted with a small, wet sound. ‘Since that morning on the beach.’ There was only one morning and it was with the Morgawr. ‘As I saw her die, I heard a voice and there was a change in me. As though I’d eaten enchanted fruit or split my finger on a spindle.’
‘You read too much,’ said Kensa.
Elowen hummed a non-committal response. ‘After that, I began to sicken.’ Long nights with a heaving chest, weakness and peculiar rashes, there one day, gone the next.
Kensa had seen her sister fail and suffer and fret against her illness, though she had never thought any reason behind it bar poor luck or attention-seeking.
‘Unwanted visions found me, memories passed down from another. I came to know what I should not and, try as I might, could not forget it. When I tried to tell our mother, she wouldn’t hear it.
You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? How she only ever wants to hear the good and not the bad. ’
Elowen unfurled one arm and Kensa was permitted entry into blanketed warmth. With some adjustment, the pair tucked their feet together and sat shoulder to shoulder, encased in wool and each other.
‘Ma wasn’t always like that,’ said Kensa. ‘Only after my father died did she get distant. She never wanted to see trouble, would rather be ignorant and unquerying. If she pretended it was enough, then it would be.’ Quiet, but for Jack’s snores and the fire’s reply to them. ‘Are you angry with her?’
‘No, I’m not.’ A pause. ‘Yes, I am.’ Elowen rolled her head sideways and Kensa sensed a hardening around her, an internal wall she kept high and would let few climb. ‘I understand it, though, which makes it easier. Besides, if she hadn’t been that way, you wouldn’t be your way.’
‘And what way’s that?’
‘Stubborn, naming the truth when you see it, eager to face everything first and beat the others to it.’ Elowen took a deep breath. ‘I could never keep up with you.’
In the silence that followed, Kensa offered, rather charitably, she thought, ‘Well, I’m not as clever as you.’
Elowen laughed softly. ‘There’s nought else to do when you’re ill but read.
’ There were always books around her, ones Miss Latham loaned her, which only increased Kensa’s resentment.
Their teacher adored her, and who wouldn’t?
It made sense now. Why she chose dusty tomes over people, why she was so guarded and did not speak her mind, lest another’s slip through and reveal a destiny.
Kensa puffed out her cheeks. ‘Do you know what will happen to us?’
‘No and I do not think I would want to,’ said Elowen.
‘Only in a particular moment do I learn how it will unfold, as though another hand is guiding mine and telling me what to do.’ Her lips were pursed in thought.
‘I think if the Sight did not attack my body, it would attack my mind,’ she confessed, glancing to the Bad Books. ‘I think I can accept that.’
Another question dogged Kensa and she threw it clumsily onto their tangled legs, if only to be rid of it. ‘Why don’t you hate me? After what I’ve done, I thought … ’
‘I did, at times.’ Elowen sniffled and wiped her nose on Kensa’s shoulder. ‘You were determined to do everything alone and I saw how lonely it made you. I don’t think you realised that it made me lonely too.’
‘We’re together now,’ said Kensa, though it was weak-sounding to her own ears. There was a pause as the eldest opened her mouth to speak and thought better of it.
Elowen asked, ‘What is it?’
Kensa cleared her throat. ‘Are we going to talk about you lying to our mother and visiting Merrin in secret for months and not telling anyone?’
‘No.’
‘All right.’
‘I wanted to have a person who was solely mine, who I did not have to share with anyone,’ admitted Elowen finally, ‘the same way you and Jack are.’
Kensa’s teeth clacked together. ‘We’re not—’
A thump shook the door on its hinges, the one which Kensa and Elowen sat beside.
The pair jumped, Elowen squeaked. Through a small knot in the wood, Kensa heard ragged breaths and an exhale that passed – stinking – through a minuscule gap.
Kensa thumped back, as hard as she could, and the hag cackled in response.
‘Go on upstairs, I’ll take over,’ said Kensa.
Elowen was sent to the vacant bed and Kensa took her place at Isolde’s door.
Her ears listened for the hag’s movements, while her eyes fixed on Jack’s shoulders.
Traced his chest as it rose and fell, followed his back and the gradual slope downwards to— Well, she looked at him a lot.
Until she feared he might guess, somehow, the thoughts she nursed in her unseen spaces.
A wise woman could not marry, she had been told.
No midwife could deliver babies when she was having her own.
The village – Portscatho – was to be her family.
Its residents would be bonded to her, as she was to them, partner and child and brother and father combined.
Unbidden, heathen notions danced through her mind.
Had not Isolde entertained herself with a man come May Day?
She had not been a wife, yet she’d done what wives do and no one spoke against her.
A thousand scenarios danced through Kensa’s head, as many ribbons as on a maypole.
Perhaps her mother’s advice was right when it came to lovers and dalliances.
Jack. What would it be like? What would he be like?
Strong, she guessed. Firm, yet gentle. Focused, the way he was with every task he set himself.
Surely it would be the same if he set himself to her?
Kensa held the blankets tight against her lap.
She remained seated. Poised at the door, thighs clamped together.
Kept her thoughts as thoughts alone, barred from intention and action, though sweet enough for now.
Elowen did not sleep long and when she woke, it was with a noisy impetus that pulled everyone awake with her.
‘They’ll want a body, Kensa,’ she said loudly.
‘For the funeral, they’ll want to bury a body.
’ Jack made a low, sleepy grunt that had Kensa’s mouth go dry, while Elowen continued, ‘I was winner two years running for the village scarecrow competition.’
‘Of course you were,’ said Kensa, talking over her. ‘Why does that—’
‘I can make a scarecrow and we’ll wrap it with cloth! No one will know there’s nothing in it and then we can figure out what to do about Isolde after the service.’
‘Or bury me,’ grumbled Jack, ‘then I could get some sleep.’
Kensa’s throat tightened. ‘Please don’t say that.’
He had grace enough to nod and mumble an apology. Despite his careless words, a small thrill found her: Jack wasn’t a morning person, she’d never have known if not for this. Now the information was hers to keep, to revisit whenever she wanted.
Under Elowen’s direction, Jack and Kensa collected whatever items they could find.
Stones from the garden – brushed pink in the morning light – and swaddled with cloth.
A heavy pot, its bottom burned to uselessness – Kensa’s own mistake, which she was now grateful for – and other miscellaneous items from Isolde’s fertility box were roped together and slowly bound into a human form.
Even with their frenzied activity, no one left the hag’s door unattended, lest foul activity be heard.
‘It’s too heavy,’ said Jack.
‘Bodies get heavier after death,’ said Kensa, who had learned as much these months past. ‘Or they feel heavier, anyway.’
‘It’s the limpness that concerns me.’ Elowen clicked her tongue as she surveyed their work. ‘Jack, you’ll need to carry her out. No one will know the body’s not real if you’re the one holding it. Are you strong enough?’
Jack gave her a long look. ‘Yes.’
‘Try it now and—’
‘I’ll be strong enough,’ said Jack.
Kensa’s laugh startled them, though it was short-lived. When her chest deflated she had a jagged piece within it, a strange dread she breathed around. It had gone unnoticed until now and appeared only when she remembered what it was to be lighter, to find humour in odd places.