Sourdough and Other Stories

by Angela Slatter

  I whispered to her that I remembered my promise and I would see that Olwen was taken care of, that she had a home and someone who loved her.

  ***

  The grave was not deep for the ground had begun to harden with the oncoming cold. A mound reared up over Dowsabel’s body. I did not think she would have appreciated lying with Olwen’s father, once more all unwilling. It was late afternoon by the time I’d dug over a piece of earth in the garden where she would lie with the blossoms she’d so adored, all the things she’d taken such time and effort to nurture. When the weather changed and the flowers bloomed, she would be content. I had no words to give, no faith to suggest comfort.

  I held Olwen and felt the weight of her gaze on my face. My tears dripped into her mouth. I could see her tiny lips moving, her tongue exploring the salty bitterness. She was too young to know why I cried; she was too young to know that the soul had been stripped out of her home.

  I had made my promise to Dowsabel to look after her daughter. My kind have our own rituals, more effective than pouring water over a baby’s head.

  Upstairs in Dowsabel’s empty room, I placed Olwen on the bed and took a knife of bone and iron from my pocket and sliced my thumb, just a small cut. Blood welled and I pushed the digit into the baby’s mouth. She suckled as if it were a teat filled with milk. This was the best protection I could give her.

  ‘Blood of magic, blood of my heart, bless this child.’

  A gasp interrupted. Gideon stood at the door, staring.

  The look on his face, the fear in his eyes. I knew all he saw now was a crone, a witch, something he hated. He saw his parents and brother dying in front of him and he divined my hand in the whole sordid tale. The woman who’d murdered his family, then warmed his bed, who’d deceived him—it didn’t matter that I did truly love him. It didn’t matter. He looked as though a hole had been punched through him.

  The window was open behind me to let in fresh air. I could not take Olwen, could not flee and hold her at the same time—and all I could think of was to run. He would not hurt her. She would be safe. I hoped she would be safe.

  I flung myself from the casement, and swung onto the trellis that clung to the front of the manor; roses covered its struts. Thorns pierced my palms, sliced my torso and thighs. I let go when the pain got too much and fell. My ankle protested at the impact, but in seconds I was running, engraved with scratches and embossed with bruises, aching but whole, and haring across the fields as fast as I could. The sun dropped swiftly and once I was among the trees only my peculiar eyesight kept me from falling over roots and debris.

  Gideon would go to the town council. He would summon the priest and the constable and they would plot how to murder me. In the morning they would come with dogs. They would not hunt me at night, for fear that if confronted in my element they would all be lost. The battered copy of Murcianus’ Magica my mother once carried cautioned ‘Hunt not a witch in darkness’.

  They would be huddled inside, planning and praying. Would they expect me to run? I had not last time. Surely no one would think me fool enough to stay again. There was one place I might be able to hide, if only for the few hours I needed. I had managed to stuff my knife in the pocket of my dress, even more miraculously I had managed to not stab myself as I fell. I would need it.

  I stumbled as the woods broke abruptly to display a crossroads, a gibbet and three gallowscrows swinging in the gentle breeze.

  ***

  The hut looked the same.

  It looked safe.

  I circled it twice, making sure no one else had taken up residence. There are places where my kind may find rest, where supplies are kept, where we might prepare for a task. Word of them is passed one woman to another.

  Signs and sigils were scratched into the door and its frame; they helped render it less obvious to those who did not know it was there—they made the eye slide away. If you knew what you were looking for, though, if you knew where and how to look you might find refuge. If they came with dogs I was not sure the wards would keep the beasts at bay; might confuse them, yes, but for how long? Every hour I stayed risked more and more; I had to be well gone before morning.

  All the things I needed would be inside. All the ingredients I thought I’d never use again. All the ingredients but the one I had to bring myself.

  Hacking off a man’s limb, even when he was dead, was not easily done.

  I chose the freshest of the gallowscrows and set about taking his left hand. The sinister, the best one for my purpose. He was still hanging and it was difficult to hold him still enough to do what was needed, but ultimately I managed it, weeping all the while.

  Now I waited outside the hut, putting off the moment. Night held me close, draped itself around me like a second skin, but nonetheless I was scared, listening hard for any sound. I held my breath and pushed open the door.

  Empty and cold, the dust was undisturbed and covered any trace that I’d ever been here before. But there was Wynne’s book, her copy of Magica, abandoned all those months ago and open at the very page she had required then and I required now. I pulled jars from the shelves, placed the hand on the uneven table, found a pair of leather gloves, thin with age, and fat-yellow candles in a wooden box that smelled like long-gone spices.

  I worked quickly but carefully, uncertain that I could make it effective. My haste scared me, but I had no choice. While I waited for the thing to set, even though I was spent, I turned my attention to one last potion. My final defence; I pulled the gallowberries from my pocket.

  ***

  I knew Gideon’s house; the judge’s house where I’d dripped poison into the well. I knew there was an orphanage, too, and I would have gone straight there but for an instinct that made me climb a tall tree in the garden of Gideon’s home and watch the windows. I was quickly rewarded. Olwen was there, wrapped in sombre grey blankets as if they were trying to leech the joy out of her. Gideon’s older sister carried the baby around, fed her, all the while her face set with nothing more than duty. No sign of affection, not even a flicker. This was cold charity.

  I waited. I waited until the candles and lanterns had been snuffed, until I could detect no movement inside their fine abode, until I thought them asleep. I stood at the back door and lit all the fingers on the hanged man’s hand.

  The lock was easy, giving up under a simple spell and a breath of holly-ash that I blew into the aperture. I was careful as I moved through the corridors, the place where my sins had taken root. I traversed its rooms like a ghost, looking for the child I’d left behind, trying to honour the promise I’d made and already broken once.

  She was in a bedroom at the top of the stairs. I entered quickly and closed the door behind me. She whimpered in her sleep, but the witchery of my candle kept her from waking. I set the hand on a chest of drawers and picked her up, warming her with the heat of my body and folding the blankets around her more tightly. What kindness would she find here? Would they keep her? Raise her as a servant? She deserved better. She deserved freedom. She deserved to know joy.

  ‘Hush,’ I whispered and she subsided into a deeper rest.

  I reached out to pick up the hand and watched as the flames on top of the finger-candles fluttered. The door to the room had opened.

  Once again, Gideon stood in a doorway, cutting off my escape. The light made his face look hollow, his eyes black and empty. Either he had not slept and so escaped the effects of my spell, or he was one of those who were proof against such things. Or perhaps the sense of me reached into his sleep and woke him. But there was no love there, no tenderness.

  ‘You,’ he spat and it felt like a slap in the face from one who’d said my name so sweetly. But this was what I had feared; this was what I had expected. Why was I surprised? ‘Witch.’

  I nodded. I put Olwen back in her crib and faced him once more.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You killed my parents, my brother.’

  ‘And your father took my mother from me.’
>
  ‘Another witch.’ How he hated us! Me. How he hated me.

  ‘And no harm to anyone.’

  ‘Witch!’ And I knew there would be no reasoning with him. His hatred and fear were burning inside him, feeding on one another. I glided toward him, slowly as a snake charms a bird. He did not move away, although I know he wanted to; he wanted to fall back beneath my advance but that would have been openly cowardly and weak. It made me smile, just barely. I stood close, so close. He neither flinched, nor softened.

  ‘You won’t escape this time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I will.’

  ‘I’ll follow you.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied softly.

  ‘I’ll see you hanged,’ he swore.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I soothed. ‘I’m sorry, my love, truly sorry.’

  I had slipped my gloved hand into the pocket of my skirt and unstoppered the small vial there. It tipped and the greasy fluid poured onto the glove. I reached up and touched his face. Determined not to falter, he felt too late the oily damp of the unguent. A small silver-grey smear was left behind, not much, but enough. His eyes widened and I spoke one word.

  ‘Canis.’

  There was nothing more from him, no last words of affection or loathing. He dropped to all fours and there were horrible moments while his bones cracked and reshaped, his skeleton reformed and a thick golden fur broke out all over his body. The grunts of pain he made became whimpers. He sat on his hind legs and looked up at me with amber eyes, no longer himself. Gideon as he was had gone, memory replaced by that of an animal, no recollections of love or hate, merely a loyalty he could neither understand nor question. I peeled off my gloves and ran my hands through his thick pelt. Soft and warm and comforting. He whimpered again and licked at my palms.

  ‘Fenric,’ I said. I could never call him Gideon again. He was remade and renamed. I rose and scooped up Olwen once more and bound her to my chest. I collected the glory hand and then clicked my fingers at the beast. ‘Come.’

  We walked from the slumbering house into the darkened streets. We walked into the maw of winter.

  LITTLE RADISH

  ALL I ever wanted was the tower.

  I dreamt of it when night coloured the sky. When the sun threw gilded light over everything, I would lose myself in daydreams of the serenity of stone resting upon stone. Since I was small, the thought of it had been with me.

  There was no such structure near my home. Not even a castle. We lived so deep in the woods there were only cottages scattered here and there. Neighbours were few and far between: woodsmen; old women deserted by their families, despised and feared; brigands; folk who simply liked the peaceful lull.

  My mother loved radishes beyond reason, so it’s only proper that I should have a mania all of my own.

  I lived in quietude, but I longed for utter silence. I imagined an incomparable stillness, held in by granite, a barrier that nothing could penetrate. I desired air untroubled by the vibrations of sound, an impregnable vacuum.

  My parents did not understand. Distance grew between us. We could sit in the same room yet not speak, not touch, not even breathe in time. They gave up trying to communicate with me and I happily wrapped myself in the fabric of utter quiet. My siblings delighted in making noise, rough and tumble like puppies. I would flee to the forest to sit and eat the hush of it all.

  When I was sixteen I wandered from home. I would, I thought, find the tower—it must be there, I could not simply have imagined it. Whatever it cost me, I would find it, for that was where I belonged.

  ***

  I spent four days lost before I stumbled into a clearing. A cottage sat, like a creature waiting for something to come; perhaps it wanted prey, perhaps company. Hunger and thirst propelled me and I fell against the door with a cry, crumpling to the stoop.

  An old woman peered down at me. A walking stick held her upright. She wore a dress that had once been the colour of dark leaves but had been washed back to a faded green, a cap, and an apron stained with yellows and reds. Her glasses were smudged and she wrinkled her nose to move them back into position on her face.

  ‘Who are you?’ she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again, the melodious timbre restored. ‘Sorry. Who are you?’

  ‘Rapunzel,’ I replied. She smiled.

  ‘Is your mother the one who’s nuts about radishes?’

  I nodded wearily.

  ‘Come in. I’m Sybille.’

  She fed me thick, buttery cheese with stodgy bread and gave me tea to drink. When I had finished wolfing it all down, we spoke.

  ‘So, what are you looking for, little radish girl?’

  ‘A tower. The tower. The one I’ve dreamt of my whole life.’

  ‘None of them around here,’ she answered.

  ‘Then I’ll keep walking until I find one.’

  ‘Stubborn.’

  She sighed and got to her feet. A bookcase leaned haphazardly against one of the walls; she shuffled over, grabbed a thin tome from the warped shelves.

  ‘There used to be one. Don’t know if it’s still there. Some years ago it became invisible after a nasty business with a king not paying his due to a wise woman.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,’ she hedged, pointing her finger at me. ‘Any road, there is a tower for the taking. As you seem determined, you may as well have it.’

  ‘How do I find it if I can’t see it?’

  ‘Hold your horses, missy. Always in a hurry, young women.’ She clucked her tongue, opened the book, and flicked through it, running a finger down each page and muttering ‘nope’ as she reached the bottom. After a time she gave an ‘ah ha’.

  ‘You’ll need the key, of course,’ she said and plucked one, ungainly and slightly rusty, from the back of the ragged book. ‘Now, walk north for three hours and when you bump into something you can’t see, then you’re there.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Say this: “tower fair you seem not there, take pity on this girl and your glory now unfurl”. That should do the trick.’

  ‘And if I should want it invisible again?’ I asked and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘Then—and make sure you’re inside first or you’ll have to mess about making it visible again so you can find it—say: “tower clear and tower bright, fold yourself back into night”.’ She rolled a lump of bread and cheese in a cloth and handed it to me. ‘I’ll come see you sometime.’

  She pulled two small, carved stones from her pocket and held them out.

  ‘If you need anything, send the cat or the raven. Blow on them and say “bid your mistress come to me”. Sometimes you might just want the cat for companionship, so blow and say “malkin black or malkin white, bring thy company to my sight”. He’ll sit around for as long as you want. To send him back try “malkin black or malkin white, get thy company from my sight”.

  ‘I’m not a witch,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a woman, aren’t you?’

  I had to agree. I gave thanks and was on my way. She watched until I disappeared into the trees and, I suspect, for a long while after that.

  ***

  I found the tower. Literally I walked into it.

  The spell took a few moments to work, as if the words were thinking about whether or not they would do as bid; or maybe it was the edifice, so used to being unseen, that was unwilling to obey immediately. Soon enough the air shimmered as if a heat haze had strolled past; a grey shadow-shape formed, wavered, and finally solidified.

  It was exactly as it had been in my dreams: beautiful dark grey stone, flecked with quartz that caught the sun and threw it back at the watcher. The door at its base was huge and banded with iron. A keyhole stared at me like a curious eye. I fitted the key Sybille had given me into the lock and it turned with only a small protest.

  The bottom floor was a storeroom-cum-kitchen: bags of grain still lay there, holes nibbled in their corners by happy mice; jars of wine sat on shelves; and, amazingly eno
ugh, a family of chickens perched comfortably on a pile of fabric grown green with age. The floor was liberally sprinkled with years’ worth of chicken droppings. Gingerly, I picked my way across the midden and started up the stairs.

  These were cold, hard, barely worn—the tower must have been relatively young when Sybille hid it from the king. The next floor held the library. Books ran around the walls like sentinels on guard; I had never seen so many. The cobwebs would have to go, of course. The spiders would not be happy, nor would the mice, but so be it.

  The top floor held a four-poster bed, a vanity, a polished mirror the price of which would have fed my family for a year, a garderobe, and, at each of the four compass points, a window through which light and air flowed in a continuous stream. Sunlight shone through the wheeling motes of dust and danced happily on my new home.

  I surveyed my kingdom and was overwhelmed by a housewifely urge. Cleaning began and, before the sun went down, I had a serviceable bedroom.

  Over the next few days I cleared the chickens out and set them up in the lean-to coop they had abandoned some time ago. Buckets of water from the well eventually washed away the layer of fertiliser. I planted some of the seeds from the storeroom. Carrots, corn and all manner of green things made an appearance with relative speed.

  I brought the cat out after the first day. He was a strapping black and white mongrel and I called him Malkin, well, because it was easier than giving him another name. I didn’t put him back because I liked his noiseless comradeship and he discouraged the mice from making a return. He never made a sound, not a miaow, not a hiss. Just swirled in and out between my ankles and curled in my lap when I sat to read one of the old books from the library. The raven I kept on the shelf, just in case.

  Life was silent and wonderful. The stillness was not oppressive: I welcomed it, swallowed it in great gulps as a thirsty man would water. I passed my days in reading, sewing bits of the surviving fabric together into dresses and hangings, petting Malkin, sitting at my windows and bathing in the silence I had always sought. It was perfect. For a short time, it was perfect.