Sourdough and Other Stories

by Angela Slatter

  But I am up too high, and the shadowy thing with flashing eyes cannot climb. It has my scent though. I try to peer into the darkness, to discern what waits so impatiently. There is only the glow of eyes; more than one pair, a forest of red glares up at me.

  One by one, the owners of those glittering orbs begin to sing. It starts as a howling, but soon enough the chorus melds and twines into a tapestry of voices, the unalloyed joy of children. They embroider a folk song, a fairy tale set to music, so the ideas dance in my mind, sugar-pink girls and bold boys, hand in hand moving through the woods. There is nothing else to be done, so I let them sing me to sleep.

  ***

  Unlike my mother I can bear the touch of the sun and like the sky above me, a clean breeze in my face. During the day, I happily sit as high up as I can and enjoy the light and warmth. The night, though, gives me the comfort of shadows, places I can hide.

  At the edge of the forest it’s a small leap to the walls of Lodellan. I jump, teeter, find my balance and melt into the black spaces of the ramparts. From here I can slip around the edges, shimmy down if I wish and move from rooftop to rooftop. I know the tall houses and some of their inhabitants: there is the woman who makes bread and her pretty daughter with hair so like mine; there is the inn where people purchase affection; the miller’s dwelling filled with his entire extended family and the mill set in the back, straddling the stream that runs through the city; the spinster sisters whose spinning wheels thrum long into the night; the schoolmaster’s residence; the Archbishop’s manor; the Smithy; the Treasurer’s home; the Prime Minister’s abode that takes up an entire block but contains only him and his servants; and so on.

  I choose a smaller house close to the outer walls near the postern gate, not one of the big structures that dominate the inner cantons; a domicile with a straw roof, not the hard tiles used on the others. Only one family lives here: the Woodsman’s. Mother, father, son. I climb down to cling to the thatch, hook my toes into the woven fibres and listen.

  People have no idea how many secrets slip up their chimney with the hearth-smoke. I like roofs; I like being up high and seeing the stars, and smelling the scent of eagerly roasting meat. I make these visits, sampling the sounds that rise. They vary: sometimes it’s children playing, whispering and giggling before bedtime; other times it’s lovers sharing confidences in the dark; yet others are slaps of discipline or love; hurtful words thrown across a room, sometimes regretted, sometimes not; and, if I’m lucky, it’s bedtime stories, fairy tales and the like. These are my favourites. I settle in and listen, pretend I have a mother, a father, a grand-dam to lull me to sleep with fables and rhymes.

  Tonight, though, I seek no tales, only the truth or a hint of it.

  I am mindful of Ingrid’s fear, she who fears nothing. If she goes into the city the adults will ask her questions: where are her parents? Why does her mother no longer come to the markets? They will pat her golden head and tell her she is too young to live on her own. They will try to make her stay in the orphanage, where rich people send their cast-off clothes so they feel better about not loving anyone but themselves.

  I cannot ask, cannot show my face; they will throw things at me, curse me. The only way I can learn what they want to keep hidden is to steal the knowledge. They think whispers released within four walls will remain inside like obedient pups.

  I choose the Woodsman’s roof, for who else will know better if the forest is changed, restless? But before I can pick up a thread of conversation there’s a noise from the garden. A wolf stands below in a bed of white lilies, its pelt bristling, nostrils flared; a young male, almost grown out of his adolescent awkwardness but still likely to trip over his own large paws. He is beautiful beneath the moon, a phantom limned silver and grey; my heart thuds. I lean out further than I should.

  One of my feet slips and pulls loose a hank of straw, which drops and falls in front of the beast. The handsome head is swiftly raised and I’m pinned by scarlet eyes. He throws his head back and howls, incautious. From inside the house come the sounds of chairs being pushed violently back, of panic and, finally, of a door being thrown open.

  The Woodsman is a blur as he charges out. The animal barely has time to react before a huge axe is swung, moonlight catching its edge. There is the dull wet sound of metal cleaving fur and flesh.

  In place of the wolf lies a sad figure curled on the bed of now-red lilies. I recognise him. In death, the Woodsman’s son has lost his wolf’s coat; he’s naked and pale, except for the blood seeping from his neck and his near-severed head.

  I’m still clinging to the roof. From the corner of my eye I catch a movement. At the edges of other buildings shadows move, seeping from one puddle of darkness to the next until they are gone. The Woodsman’s wife screams, throws herself on the body and weeps. The Woodsman himself raises his head to the sky to let loose his cry. He sees me and I am frozen in the beam of his stare, held by his terrible grief.

  His eyes catch the light, but there’s no flicker of red there, merely the opalescent wash of the moon. His wife lies at his feet, her son’s blood soaking into her clothes, covering her hands as if she herself killed him. The Woodsman is caught between her and me, between letting out his anger and comforting the wailing woman. We are trapped, he and I, immobile for long, long seconds until he hurls his axe upward in vain hope of hitting me, of finding an outlet for his rage.

  But I’m moving before the first bellow charges from his throat. I bound upwards, scrambling across rooftops until the weeping grows faint and I can fling myself from the walls and into the welcoming arms of the trees.

  ***

  I have been inside Ingrid's cottage before, at times when she has not been, at times when her whole family still lived but none of them were home. I suppressed my dislike of four walls. I touched their things, respectfully, longingly. I drew the scent of their lives into my nostrils and wept for all that was denied to me.

  My half-sister has always been gentle with me and because of this, I make sure I wash in a stream before I go to see her. I sit and scrub myself with the fine grains I find on the streambed and let the water rush through my carroty mop of hair. I cannot change how I look but I am clean at least.

  This morning I sit, still fresh and damp, on the doorstep and drink the tea she offers. She cooks the silver fish I brought her, fresh from the stream; I eat mine raw, neat as a cat. I tell her the fate of the boy. I tell her to lock her doors at night. I tell her to be careful.

  Leaving, I walk along the paths into the deeper darkness of the forest. The flat packed earth of the trails makes me think of padded feet smoothing the dirt as they pass. Deep in thought, for a while I do not realise that the idea of padded feet has become a reality. I turn to look about when I should simply climb. Shaggy grey forms appear and take me down.

  Stupid, stupid girl. I had not thought that daylight might be as dangerous as night.

  They pile on top of me and I try to fight my way clear of the roiling, writhing mass of wolves, some cubs, some adolescents, all vicious. There are white teeth, scratching claws, muscular limbs that trample. I feel my ribs crack and a sharp pain in my left hand. I shriek. It seems to startle them, a reaction more human than wolfish, and they pause. Then there is a voice, lovely and low, that chills my blood.

  The pack, reluctantly obedient, backs away.

  Ingrid’s mother is tall and beautiful; she is the sign of what Ingrid will become. Her hair, more silver-grey than blonde, is loose and wild. There is a moment when she is between, when four feet become two, when fur gives way to blindingly white skin, until at last she shifts a red dress, woven from her very flesh, across her nakedness.

  She smiles. ‘Little troll. Little filth. My husband’s little bastard.’

  I push hair out of my eyes, feel blood trickle onto my face. The thumb of my left hand dangles by a thin string of sinew. It hurts like fire.

  ‘Bitch,’ I say and red spittle comes out. I rub my tongue against a tooth and feel it try to wi
ggle free of my mouth. This, too, hurts.

  Olwen laughs as if the compliment delights her. She nods and gestures to the pack. ‘Yes, and look at what I can do: one nip and all these puppies.’

  ‘Where do they come from? Don’t their families look for them?’ But I think I know the answer.

  ‘These ones? No one looks for them; they are the refuse the city throws out and leaves on the streets. But I, I love them. I give them a home and gentle motherly kisses.’

  ‘The Woodsman’s son?’

  ‘Ah, yes. He was sniffing around in the forest and saw us. At first I thought to kill him, let my children feed, but why should I waste such a fine young man?’ She smiles, drawing her lips back over her teeth. ‘What would you become, I wonder, if I bit you?’

  She pretends to consider it, but I know she has only death for me, not change, not transformation. Desperate, I look about for an escape but with my injuries I cannot scale any of the trees, not with sufficient speed. With my other hand I worry at the dangling thumb. It comes away with a snap and I throw the meaty chunk over the lupine heads. They yip and howl, follow its arc with their narrow eyes, and leap as one when it hits the ground. Even Olwen is distracted by the treat.

  I heave myself to my feet and I run, blood spattering from my wounds. Behind me, Ingrid’s mother laughs and her voice dances after me, ‘Not too quickly, my babies, don’t let it end so soon!’

  Fear makes me fleet in spite of the pain and I run off the path and into the undergrowth. Ingrid’s cottage is not so far, but it seems like the other side of the world. I must trust my sister, but in truth I do not know how she will choose.

  The chase is a wild hunt of green and brown, shafts of errant sunlight, flashes of grey and excited howls swirling around as if to trip me.

  At last the bright spot of the sunflower garden is before me and I trip and fall, rolling and rolling until I slam against the stones of the cottage wall and feel a shoulder crack.

  The wolves’ frenzy dissipates and they stop just outside the invisible boundary of the yard. They stalk back and forth, watching, waiting, growling, teeth and curling lips dripping with saliva. I do not question the respite, am merely thankful for it.

  I hear the latch on the front door lifted and Ingrid steps out. She kneels beside me and touches my hair, tries to wipes the blood and dirt from my face but merely succeeds in aggravating the grazes.

  Olwen glides through the ragged hoard of cubs. She smiles at her daughter’s disapproving expression. She alone can step into the garden; she lived here once, this is her territory. The pack, however, has no such right.

  I push myself into a sitting position, back against the support of the wall.

  ‘Hello, my darling.’ Olwen laughs and it’s like a chime.

  ‘Mother, you promised. You promised to leave her alone.’

  Olwen pouts as if denied a longed-for delight. ‘I lied.’

  ‘She’s my half-sister.’

  ‘She’s nothing to me!’ Olwen’s voice rises to a shriek of rage. With visible effort she calms, reinstates her smile. ‘Come now, Ingrid. Come, my daughter. I ask such a tiny thing.’

  ‘Mother . . .’

  ‘Won’t you let me be rid of this one single thing? This remnant of your father’s betrayal? This constant reminder of my hurt?’

  Ingrid hesitates and my stricken heart hammers. She glances between mother and sister. In this struggle I now know I will lose.

  ‘Darling girl,’ says Olwen.

  Ingrid no longer looks at me, purposefully averts her gaze.

  Olwen comes closer and closer still; she bends down in front of us. She leans in and I can feel her hot breath on my cheek.

  ‘I do not think you will be tasty, you ugly scrap. I wonder will you be rancid? Bitter?’ She opens her mouth wide and the teeth inside shift and elongate, her tongue becomes redder than a berry and her breath smells like something rotten.

  ‘You will never know,’ I tell her and jam the knife I’ve torn from her daughter’s belt between Olwen’s ribs. Its slender blade finds her heart and punctures it. With not even a growl of disbelief, Olwen slumps on top of me. I gasp as the weight crushes down on my cracked ribs.

  From beyond the border of the garden comes a howling, then the noise of crying, naked children. Among them, though, I can see some who still retain their wolfish shape. Whether they are children in the skin of wolves, or wolves in the skin of children, I cannot tell. I fear some of them, though, mourn their lost fur and the freedom it gave.

  Ingrid, too, begins to weep, if for her mother or for me, I neither know nor care. She says through her sobs, ‘There, there, Dibblespin. There, there, sister-mine. I’ll take care of you.’

  But there was a test and she failed it. She had a chance and she betrayed me, would have given me up to her mother like a trophy; like a lump of flesh and bone to be played with and then devoured.

  I struggle and stand. My hand has stopped bleeding and the pain is receding to numbness. I leave my half-sister there with her mother’s body. The wolfish-children and childish-wolves let me pass. I will find the stream and wash myself clean. Then I will climb the tallest tree and turn my face to the sun and the wind and I will not come down.

  THE NAVIGATOR

  WINDEYER perches atop the mast, face to the wind, eyes (all pupils) unblinking. His shoulders twitch as if the stumps of his wings itch and ache. Some days, when he’s aloft like this, I think I can see the sun shine through him, his bones a dark frame beneath his skin. Perhaps I imagine it. He should have been able to fly; they should have left him that.

  Not many ships have Navigators such as him anymore; his kind began dying out twenty years ago. Pining, avian-human diseases, masters who got sick of having to retrieve runaways and, in frustration, transected them with a crossbow bolt. It was, I think, a kind of mass suicide, a tribal loss of the will to live. With their wings taken, with no freedom, what was the point?

  He moves and I tense. In a fluid motion he dives from the mast, from the very top, into the waves. I watch, fearful that he won’t come up, will founder like his father. That he will drink in the sea instead of the air and choose to sleep on the sandy bottom. At last, he surfaces.

  I do not chide him. His cruelties are few and this is the worst of them: to endanger himself in front of me. Some days he won’t talk. I feel, more and more, this distance between us, his lack of wings and mine.

  ‘How much longer?’ I ask as he hauls himself over the ship’s rails. I’m relieved he doesn’t consult the map. It’s drawn on human skin and I do not wish to think on how he came by it. He reaches out and runs his fingers down my face, leaving salt and water there, writing my tears for me.

  ‘Another day, another night. Afraid?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ he says. ‘We can still turn back. You can marry your way out of poverty.’

  ‘Or I can sell you. That would clear all debts.’

  It hangs between us, bitter fruit. I turn away and fix my eyes on the endless horizon. The feeling of the wheel under my hand is sweet.

  ***

  Windeyer was sired on a human whore by Father’s Navigator, Desidero. The woman had waited for a year until the North Star returned to the port at Breakwater. She presented the surprised sire with a babe in arms, whose metre-wide wing-span took the breath away. She demanded money in exchange for her son. Desidero begged my father to buy the boy.

  Desidero was wild, his wings clipped late, but he found some bond with Balthazar Cotton and stayed. Behaved abominably but stayed. It must have been something more than a shared interest in whoring that kept them together, must have been a kind of friendship, for in spite of his wildness, Desidero never tried to run. He loved the ship and he loved my father. Perhaps it would have been better if he had fled for he died in a storm when his son was five.

  I was born six years after Windeyer. Mother was a fine lady of good family who’d married a merchant and expired with the shock of giving birth
to me. Balthazar Cotton didn’t entrust me to a governess as a proper parent should: I was carried around in a small woven cocoon, hung on the nearest mast when he needed both hands free, always carefully shielded from the sun. My father, son of a landlocked city, discovered late in life that he loved the ocean; I was born to it. So much time did I spend at sea that solid land always felt foreign to me. The inland air I breathed when Father took me on occasional visits to his birthplace of Bitterwood was free of salt and soak; it tasted wrong.

  Windeyer was given guardianship of me—to teach him responsibility—and he looked after me as well as a brother might. In those early years his wings had not been taken and he would sweep me up and we would fly above the water as the ship floated beneath us. This was his gift to me: to know what it was like to soar on the thermal currents, to see things the way the gods might, to feel unbounded by earth and dirt and gravity.

  And I took that from him.

  ***

  The night air is clean. I breathe it deep and hold it in my lungs as long as I can; as if every breath counts. We are anchored outside the reef surrounding the island of the Sirens. I would not risk the passage in darkness, so Windeyer has been forced to wait. He sulks in the bow, his back to me. I think I see the shadow his wings once cast.

  ‘I have a way out,’ he said not so many weeks ago. This is the only ship left in the fleet I inherited: a small sloop, just barely manageable by the two of us. The others have been variously lost: storms and sea monsters; one destroyed by pirates; and one lost in a regrettable card game for which I blame Windeyer entirely.

  There is still the house, the white stucco and iron-fenced mansion perched on the gentle hill above the port. But it is mostly emptied of furniture, all but our bed and cooking utensils for those brief times when we are at home and not scouring the sea for some kind of commerce. We stop short of piracy as much as possible, transporting as many small cargos and paying passengers as we can to keep body and soul together. I have had to let the crew go, one by one, to ships where they are guaranteed pay.