Tender Morsels

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘He says Awmblow,’ says the first.

  ‘She may’ve married,’ pointed out the second. ‘Even witches marry, you know.’

  ‘She may,’ I said, ‘though she were not exactly the marrying type, if I recall her right.’

  ‘Well, if it is her, she is widdered now. She lives by herself out by Gypsy Siding somewhere,’ said the first hag.

  ‘Yes,’ said the second. ‘Find the muddiest spot upcreek of the willows and strike east up the hill from there.’

  ‘Aye,’ laughed the other. ‘You will smell her, and her preparations.’

  I followed their directions, and indeed there were a right mire a little way along from the willows, and there were also whisper-ribbons hanging out the trees’ summer leafage, and crotch-stones if you looked for them, and these told me someone were practising mudwifery hereabouts.

  ‘Annie!’ I struck up through the trees. ‘Annie Bywell that was Awmblow! I of come to visit you—your old friend.’

  She came to the door—was it a door? Was more like the mouth of a weasel-hole. Gawd knew I would not like to go in there to look—or to sniff any deeper, blimey.

  Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Of course I must have been almost as old as she, but Gracious the Lady knew my years had treated me better than hers had. She had bugger-all teeth left, and so her face had shrunk into itself that I remembered as so full and handsome—how jealous I’d been of her strong jaw! And now I had the stronger.

  ‘You rekkernise me?’ I said, and I struck a pose, the kind of lackerdee-day thing that makes the ladies think I am a good sort, to get amusement out of my stature instead of embarrassment.

  ‘Ach.’ She shows off her teeth, such as they are. ‘Collaby Dought the Short-stump, and no less. Behind and under all that hair like a fall of snow.’

  ‘This is what twoscore years will do to a man, Annie.’ I gathered my beard forward and stroked the full length of it. ‘But you were short as me once, I remember. Do you remember that, Annie-Belle?’

  ‘I do well,’ she said, and clacked her tongue or her gums or her throat or Gawd-help-me. ‘Things were desprit back in them days.’

  ‘You were desprit,’ I said. ‘You would jump on anything that moved, and a few things that didn’t.’

  ‘I weren’t desprit. I were bored. Bored, bored. Bored of coalscuttles and thin porridge and cat-soup and chilblings and blankets made of paper. A bit of pokelee-thumpelee were something to sparkle up my day.’ She sucks on some bit of mouth—a toothache, maybe. ‘And yours too, I recall.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I say, although ‘sparkle’ is not the word. I was mad in love with this oul witch when she were young and a looker, the way a man always is, they say, with the first one as lets him have at her hind end. It was nothing to her, of course. She grew up out of me—she just grew past me and there were other, bigger beggars for her to fry, including the biggest of all. ‘Do you hear from God-man Shakestick lately?’

  ‘No, he likely finds it difficult to send word to me from where he is burning, much I’m sure as he’d like to.’

  ‘He died?’ The very thought made me cheerful. Well I remembered the sting of that stick of his, and the bruises rising. ‘That’s a blessing, then.’

  ‘Except I had him paying by the end, so my livelihood took a beating. Still, change from my bottom. What you wanting, Collaby? I’m guessing it’s not a leg-over unless you of fallen on very hard times. Although, as I remember, you were of a decent size down there, anyway.’ Her laugh was all rattles and wheezes, like one of them bear-flags flapping on a wall. ‘Could of hired yourself out and made a fortune by now, a certain class of lady. But you hadn’t no sense of enterprise ever, did you, my duck? Just a moper-around and “poor me, poor me”. Take a seat out here and I will bring you a drink. Tea or dandwin?’

  ‘Make it tea,’ I said. ‘I can’t abide dandwin.’

  And I sat and swang my legs and sulked awhile that she had seen me so quickly, that she knew me so well and all that story of me, because it were her story too.

  ‘So what piece of poor luck have you fell on, stumpet?’ Annie put down two cups between us.

  ‘It is too dull to go into,’ I said. ‘But some thief from Middle Millet have took my moneys for a ride, all I had, and I’ve no way to make it back, having burnt some bridges to get it in the first place.’

  ‘Is always about coin,’ she said, ‘isn’t it? ’At’s what the sun and the moon is there to remind us, with their roundness and their flatness.’ This had a worn sound, like words she dragged out for one customer after another.

  ‘Exactly, so dull. Every day coming up and going down, like someone’s fortunes. Like someone’s bottom above a laundry-girl, so reg’lar.’

  She woke up and laughed at that.

  ‘All I can hope,’ I went on, ‘is that my fortune will wax again. Ack-sherly, I was thinking you could help me in that.’

  ‘Ah, here it comes, Collaby’s scheme.’ She arranged her lips for listening.

  ‘I have never forgot that day at haytime, after we had done romping, you and me, and you performed that thing to my forehead and I seen—you remember, I told you all about it?’

  ‘You told me and told me! Jumpin alongside me like a flea in a hotpan.’

  ‘And you said you could get me there, to that place, if you just had but a little more powers, and I could probably stay there, or at least come and go as I pleased.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘So I am wondering, did you come by them powers? Did they grow as you grew? So that now that would be possible?’

  ‘No, they did not. Especially they did not if you have throwed away all your money and are expecting actual sorcery for no cost. I am not such a Gormless Gussie as that.’

  ‘You are not,’ I agreed, ‘but I thought you had some kind of a heart.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all heart, where is not whiskers,’ she says, very dry. ‘But a woman must think to her own welfares. What do I get out of your proposition? A headache and half my bits and bobs used up—and you gone? But I have had you gone for most of my life, at no particular cost. You are going to have to plague me something dreadfully to make that a factor to decide me. Which, seeing you were never that offensive—to me at least, even if you made of yourself a pig and a pain to others—I am not thinking you’re capable of it. I reckon I could still best you if it came to an out-in-out battle. There’s other things I can resort to, even if these old strings should give out.’ Or wires, she might have called those scrawny muscles, standing out from her sticks of arms.

  She looked down at me. I tried to see in that saggy bag of face the little strumpet that bounced on me that day in the hay when I was in heaven, when it all was new and life turned to fey-tales for a moment. Certainly she did not look on me so superior then. We were eye to eye, snuck away together from the God-man’s toil and picnickery. That were years before she were sucked in by his power and purse.

  ‘Have you done such, then, for people as do have money?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ she said.

  ‘You dint look me in the eye to say that, Annie. I don’t believe you have.’

  Now she looked, though—all put out, too. I were going in the right direction.

  ‘Why can I not be in the nature of an experiment?’ I said.

  ‘And you would be, too, it has been so long since I done anything proper, and never have I gone so big as that.’

  ‘And you don’t reckon you could?’

  ‘I don’t—Well, I . . . You see, Collaby, experiments is not what is done, this field of endeavour. The misadventures might end up too serious.’

  ‘More serious than being sought by murderers that a man owes money to?’

  She looked at me sidelong. ‘To be sure,’ she says. ‘The worst could come of that is your murder, is it not? Which would all happen in this world, no? Whereas twixting worlds, sending someone across to his own heaven, well . . .’

  I waited on her. ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Well, it’s not
as if you’re askin for a poultice made up, or a love potion. I don’t even have all the preparations I would need. We are talking about a visit to High Oaks Cross when the market is on.’

  ‘It needn’t be done today. Sooner is better, but I can wait if I know you are putting something together for me.’

  ‘That is big of you. Right gen’rous. How ’bout if I am still out of pocket, though? Some of the items I would need is quite expensive.’

  ‘Point me at them, Annie, and I will obtain them for you. Or the pocket to pay for them. Such lesser amounts is no bother to me.’

  ‘Oh, so your fingers is light and little, is it?’ All eyebrows, she peered around her cup at them.

  ‘And the next man, you can charge him a fine price, and get all your costs back and some over.’

  She mouthed out her lips awhile, like a girt catfish’s, right down to some of the moustachios.

  ‘I will leave it with ye, shall I?’ I said soberly. ‘I know you have the power; it is just the will you must summon.’

  ‘Oh, must I?’ She mumbled her mouth and moved her ragged dress on her knees. ‘Must I just.’

  ‘You worked it so close in your youth, Annie,’ I said. ‘Are you not itching to use the fullness of what you hold inside of you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looks down into the forest. ‘I have itched, I suppose.’

  ‘You see?’

  ‘But there was no living in it. There is a living in the herbs, you see, and in reading hands.’

  ‘Is it in my hand?’ I laughed, holding it out. ‘Look there and see if you’re going to do it.’

  She eyed my palm, but did not touch it. She read it quick as a kestrel reads a hillside, and looked away. ‘Dought,’ she said, and her voice had lost all its front and bravery, ‘it looks good for you. Right up to the end, it looks good.’

  ‘Right up to anyone’s end is good!’ I laughed. ‘Nobody wants to end, whether their life were good or ill.’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty that wanted to go before time took ’em. They come to me for the wherewithal.’

  ‘Well, anyway.’ I swigged the last of the tea and jumped off the bench. ‘You think, Annie, how the thing might be accomplished, and I will be your white rabbit. I will come back tomorrow.’

  She looked down at me. Everyone had grown into giants around me, all the orphans I used to be equal with. Here she was, sitting, and me standing, and she must still lower her eyes, when I used to poke her looking almost straight into them.

  ‘There might be many you can promise this to,’ I said. ‘You might make your fortune sending people to the place of their dreams. Come, Annie’—I stepped towards her, pulling out my last card, which with women is always His Majesty of Hearts—‘for the sake of times at St Onion’s. Poor-house rubbish together, we were. ’Tis a binding that never unravels.’

  ‘There are dangers, Dought. You cannot imagine. I am not sure of them all myself.’

  ‘Mebbe not. Get it wrong with me, that you may right it with others, and become a rich woman in a house on the hill.’

  Still she regarded me, all uncertainty. If I’d looked more pleading, my eyes would have fell right out my head onto the dirt there.

  ‘Leave me think,’ she said. ‘You nuisance, coming here with your Onion’s-talk. Why should I want to recall all that?’

  ‘It’s what we’re made on, Annie. We cannot deny.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ll go on.’ I patted her grey-clothed knee. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Next day. I’ve a batch to mix tomorrow and don’t want disturbing.’ She said this to the forest wall over my head.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, and I was gone, leaving her thoughts, I was sure, bubbling like broth over a cookfire.

  ‘There was a woman said I ought never to do this,’ Annie said. ‘I met her at High Oaks Cross when I were deeper in the telling game. Come all the way from Rockerly, she did. Miss Fancy-pants.’

  We were by a stream, because running water was required. The air was ripe with the things she had laid out, which were all grey and dusty, except the fresh mother-in-law ear, which were green-grey and hairy. She were not done yet. She were busy with the bits as she went on.

  ‘I said to her, Why is it guv me, then, if I’m not to use it? But she says, Ooh, not all as has wombs is good for mothering. And coming from Onion’s, I took her point; some o’ those old besoms, you wouldn’t wish ’em on the Devil as an enemy, leave alone a mam. A little fire, Collaby, is what we’re needing now.’ She tossed me a tinderbox. ‘When it is going, await my word to put these on.’ And she prodded at a bundle of sticks with dried buds falling off and through them.

  Well, the magic-making went on such a long time, I were on the point of complaining. Remember, she is doing you a favour, Collaby, I told myself any number of times. I’d had to flit away in the night when the men of my main creditor, Ashbert, caught me up at Osgood’s inn, so I was all twitchy. The whole world seemed in pursuit of me, and all I wanted was an end to the fleeing.

  ‘And now,’ Annie would say. She would glance at the sky as if she were wishing away rain. ‘Everything that is bitter.’ And this plant and that powder would go up in an awful stink, and I would have to breathe the smoke of that. Or, ‘A spot o’ signage is in order now,’ and she would sit me down and draw her mysteries on my brow, which I was hopeful would bring on glimpses such as I had enjoyed at haying that time, but no, it was just rasp, rasp, rasp, and her hand this time smelt of that distinct repulsiveness women have when they are past childering, overlaid with this herb and that mineral dust. ‘And now for the mershon,’ she would say, and then make me go down and dunk myself three times in the freezing stream while she stood and muttered her stuff on the bank.

  I grew miserable and bored of it, and still she came up with new trials. I began to think a beating of Ashbert’s boys would be preferable. However close to death it brought me, at least it would be quick. Certainly an end to this and a nap in a sunny place where my clothes could dry out were seeming most immediately attractive.

  ‘Ha!’ She checked the sky again and grinned at me, her face all folds of leather. ‘Look at it, Dought!’

  ‘At what?’ I grumped.

  ‘There.’ She pointed up into the flying smoke.

  It seemed to me I saw only a smudge such as is often in my eye when I have the leisure to look awhile at the sky. It took a time of squinting to the sides of it that it became a crinkle, a star-ish shape of grey pleats hanging over us, around a puncture mark.

  Now Annie was beetling about with this and with that, all excited. She sent up smokes, and some of them obscured the mark and others brought it to more darkness, until I was quite used to and bored by the horrible hovering thing, and unconvinced. I could not see how this had to do with the vision she had showed me as we lay in the hay, which had been of a world where nobody loomed or towered. Many maids there had been, my size, and men of a spirited disposition, my kind, who would join me in whatever prank or party I might devise. It had been all colour and dancing there, not this shadow growing on the air, not the cold water dripping off me and making me sniffle, not one foul smell upon the other until my nose was so dizzy it could only discern the outermost edges of the nastinesses.

  ‘Here we go, Collaby,’ she finally said, and there was that little gamester I knew, bright and naughty as ever in the stance and glancing of her. ‘I will leg you up to it.’ She linked her hands into a stirrup and bent down to me.

  ‘What? What am I to do?’ I put my hand on her shoulder and my foot in the stirrup, suddenly all boredom gone and my knees locking with fright.

  ‘Go on up to it. Your world is waiting, what I drew on you.’

  ‘Up there?’ She had hoisted me, and the thing was over me like a lowered bum, like a lowered cloud ready to release its storm. Oh, it was no ordinary cloud; I could feel the concentration of it, its compressed lightnings all unable to burst out.

  ‘Push into it!’ she cried. ‘Dig! Quick
, afore my skirt catches in the fire!’

  I joined my hands as a God-man prayeth, and pushed the point of them up into the grey. ‘’Tis quite hard, Annie; it does not feel inclined to yield.’

  ‘It will yield, it will yield. Just you push, just you force it. It is yours, I tell you, on the other side.’

  What a substance it was, particularly when my fingertips broke through. Nasty washes of sensation passed down me; Annie felt them too, I could tell by her shaking. ‘Cawn, Dought, my toes are crisping here.’ And she straightened further. Her head was against the edge of the phantasm, all misty there. She had forced my arms through into cold, cold! Cold water had broken out the bottom of the world above and was dropping and soaking me.

  ‘Blemme, woman, you are putting me through into an ocean, to drown there!’

  ‘’Tis not salt,’ she said, smacking her lips. ‘It is lake or pond or stream or summut.’

  ‘Some fish is brushing me, aak!’

  But she forced me up with my feet, and I was so stiff with fear that I did not think to bend my knees. My head went through; it felt as if all my hair and beard were tearing out on the way. All the forest sounds turned to the gloomp and glop of bubbles through water, and the push of it. Light, there was light up there! And a great plant—not a fish, a broad plant with leaves flat as eel-tails—trailed overhead of me in the stream-current, in the frothing mud.

  Two strong pushes and Annie had skinned me alive, but I was through. My feet could kick and they kicked upward, with stars swimming all around me in the ribbons of eel-weed.

  Up I gasped, through to the glorious air, and there I was, being cradled on the water-top and spun under the trees, the bank empty of Annie back there, but the trees the same, the sky.

  Best get out of here, I thought, before I hit that rocky, rushy part downstream, and bang my magical brains out.

  So I whumped and galumped my way to the bank. It were all pretty steepish there, but I gripped up handfuls of the grasses and dandlin-daisies and pulled myself out, and some of the daisies out the ground, but there was plenty more, no?