Sourdough and Other Stories

by Angela Slatter

  Selke’s head droops like a flower too large for its stem, weighed down by sadness. She hopes and prays that one day the urge to cry will leave her. She hopes and prays that she never wishes or wants for anything ever again.

  THE BONES REMEMBER EVERYTHING

  I WALKED for three days.

  I had not left a note for Rilka, left her no clue; I had not thought of my lover when I entered the woods. The wolves were shadows and did not bother me. Need for neither food nor drink slowed my progress. There was only the voice, which no longer simply inhabited my dreams, but hummed through the waking hours like a daylight lullaby. I kept going until I reached the place where I was told I needed to be. Ingrid, welcome home.

  The path ended abruptly at a prickly barrier; a hide of thorns so thickly grown and woven that I couldn’t make out what lay beyond. The bushes stretched as far as I could see. Left and right, the briars had melded with the usual flora, and there was no way past to be found. I reached up in frustration, to touch one of the branches, but I misjudged and snagged a finger on a long barb.

  I put the digit in my mouth and sucked away the welling fluid, tasting its metallic tang. In front of me, though, the drop of blood remaining on the tip of the spike gleamed then began to eat away the brambles just as acid attacks metal. Soon, there was a wound in the wall, big enough for me to walk through. I gave one final look back to see the obstacle continuing to be erased as if it had never been.

  Ravens hopped across an untamed lawn and a grey stone tower rose up in the middle of the clearing. Lining the crenellations were statues—not gargoyles but cats. A single door at the base stood ajar. I did not hesitate; the voice urged me on.

  Inside, at the bottom was a disused kitchen; then halfway up, a library with shelf-lined walls; finally at the very top of a spiral of age-smoothed stairs a circular room waited. Four arched windows, set across from each other, to the four compass points, let in light. In one area was a spinning wheel covered in cobwebs; a stool was placed in front of it. A four-poster bed crumbled quietly, its hangings all decayed, and bookshelves had been picked bare by birds and mice looking to cushion nests. Only a tiny cat and raven, cleverly carved in stone, lay over-turned on the splintered wood. Against another part of the wall hung a frame made of bones; stretched across it was a covering of skin. At its foot stood a rough-hewn table and on that table were thread, a needle, a quill and a very large jar—almost a glass pail, really. At first, I thought it filled with ink, but closer inspection showed it to be a sluggish dark red, uncongealed. The lid came away with surprising ease. The scent of iron made me dizzy.

  The very air seemed to be waiting

  The quill was sharp, and when I picked it up, I felt a tingle in my hand that thrummed up my arm and made my shoulder ache. I dipped the nib into the ichor-ink and stood in front of the strange canvas. I swiftly sketched a woman, the one whose voice sang from my dreams. Without knowledge I understood that she shared my blood. The liquid soaked straight into the surface, did not run or smear; it knew where it was to stay.

  When the drawing was done, I waited for the outline of the face and body to dry. I picked about the chamber, trying to find a trail, a story in the left-overs of a life. There was little enough and I realised that the only truth was that of the bones.

  I closed my eyes and saw a girl sitting by a window, the north-facing window of that very tower, spinning. The thread her efforts produced was long and fine, flax entwined with strands of her own dark hair—she had been at the work for some time. Every so often she pricked her finger and the crimson welled, then was absorbed into the filaments as she caressed them with something like love, something like hate. The pain didn’t bother her, for she was spinning her own life, making herself into a tale, her own tale of blood and flesh and bone, and she would endure for the bones remember everything. And they will call.

  I shook myself and opened my eyes. The fine silver needle was surprisingly easy to thread. As I sewed and embroidered, the fibres took on the required colour: ebony for hair, white as new snow for skin, red as a ripe apple for lips. I stitched and stitched, and wondered what would happen when I finished.

  Still I did not sleep; day and night no longer mattered. I did not mind, though, for the voice called me by my name and told me its story.

  ***

  Once upon a time, there was a Queen. She was beautiful as they all must be, but she was sad as they aren’t supposed to be. Her husband loved her and he wanted children. She did not. In the course of time, though, she fell pregnant and two daughters were born.

  The pain of the first, the pale twin, she tolerated, but the second caused her such agony, such a rush of hate that she cursed the child. The dark twin did not cry, she was and always would be, a well of silences and depths no one could plumb. The other was shiny and shallow, a sprite of light and laughter. Two babes of the same womb, of the same birthing, should have been loved equally, but they were not. We were not. I was not.

  Ultimately, love hangs on acts, however unimportant they may seem at the time. It attaches to what people do or say and our memory of those things. Gestures that travel to the heart and lodge there for a while at least. They build a foundation for kindness and love from which a child can learn.

  I have no memory of such acts. I remember the chill of indifference. I remember living in the shadows of my mother’s unhappiness. I remember being famished my whole life, yearning for a crumb of affection, just one that might somehow quell the hunger inside me.

  But I starved. My sister ate her fill and her heart grew expansive and happy. She did not know want, she did not know how sharp your soul grows when it’s deprived, how its ribs stick out like dead trees on a bare landscape. She did not know what it was to never be sated. She could no more escape her fate than I could but even knowing this, I hated her. Hate her still, I think; perhaps more than I hate our mother. I don’t know why; I just know that I do.

  From my earliest years, a cat would find me, no matter where I was in the castle. The day my mother found the nursery filled with the creatures, Marietta and I in our gold beribboned cribs and my delicate sister sneezing wildly, was the day Mother banned felines from the court. They stole the breath of babes, she declared.

  My nurse, Ella, told me otherwise. She kept her own cat, thin as grief and black as sorrow, hidden in her room. ‘Your mother is fearful,’ she explained. ‘Cats don’t steal breath—they simply help souls cross the lonely spaces between life and night.’

  She was dark, Ella, and beautiful; her olive skin burned by the sun when she spent her hours outdoors picking herbs and bulbs. She was different from the other women of the royal retinue; quieter but far more self-assured. They were bright parrots, gaudy and loud; she was a hawk, watching, always assessing. Sometimes she would look at me as if she could not quite decide what action to take. I think, in the end, she surmised I would do more damage left to my own devices.

  It was Ella who fed me, brushed my ebony locks each night before bed, rubbed creams into my skin to keep it luminously white. She taught me magic ran in my veins, and how I might tap into it when needed. Hers were the hands that sewed my wedding dress, and hers were the hands that washed the blood from it after everything fell apart. Hers was the kindest touch I knew, but we did not share blood so it did not really count.

  She was not my mother.

  Life was not unbearable, though, until the wedding day. I was not loved but I had no reason to punish anyone. I existed in shadow, spent my time reading, learning from Ella, building a store of knowledge that I thought I would never use. I merely existed.

  My father, having demanded children, gave us only passing attention. When at last he began to feel the weight of his years, his thoughts turned to the matter of succession. We were mere daughters, but princesses can produce heirs. My mother had failed to provide him with a son, so he had to find sons-in-law who would do him proud. As the oldest, Marietta had been married off a year earlier.

  Raised properly, we did not q
uestion the men chosen for us. I was simply happy that Father had selected a handsome boy, tall and dark, not some old man whose breath stank as he rotted away from the inside. My betrothed was not too bright, but his kisses were intoxicating. I thought perhaps I might love him, with time. But he was merely a possession, something that I acquired through no virtue of my own.

  My sister’s husband did her the disservice of falling from a horse three days before my wedding. She did mourn him, I believe this, and quite sincere was her grief. But it did not last long.

  My wedding dress was ivory, a miracle born of Ella’s fingers, yards and yards of silk and tiny pearls torn from the sea far away from our little kingdom, and bought from the man who once had wings. Ella braided my hair into glossy ropes, intertwined with strings of gems. When she was done, I dripped with diamonds and emeralds (never wear emeralds they said, they will bring heartache—but I loved the stone more than I feared the risk).

  In the mirror was a beautiful girl, seventeen, but behind her lurked another image. A second woman waited, older, but still me, ephemeral, standing like a fetch, dressed in black, hair wild as if a mighty storm inhabited it. I leaned closer, peering hard because it seemed that I was becoming fainter, while she grew more solid. I did not fear—what had I to fear from myself? But I did wonder why she was there; then the door opened and my parents stepped into the room.

  My sister was to have my husband. She was the eldest, her need was greater than mine, the kingdom required a prince to replace my father or at least to get an heir. I would, eventually, be found a new husband. But not today. Not this wedding day. My sister would have this one.

  I looked back at the mirror and watched the girl in the wedding dress fade. The woman in black froze into focus.

  I nodded to my parents. Would my sister like my dress? My jewels? They went with the husband, did they not? They did not hear the sarcasm, I was a shadow child, after all. Send my sister to me and she will get her prize.

  Golden Marietta with her fat, happy heart waited in the corridor. She entered and I told our parents to leave us so we could swap clothes. Only Ella remained, watching us with a wary eye as we undressed. I think she waited only to see what harm I might do, what havoc I might wreak, how I might reward her training.

  I laid the ivory silk gently on the bed like a dead child. Marietta let her black mourning gown pool on the floor as if casting off a mood. When we stood naked, the light twin and the dark, reversed images, I moved close and placed my hand on her smooth belly, settled it over her womb and thought of heat.

  ‘Nothing will grow here, I swear it. You will get no joy of these stolen things, Marietta. He can plough you nightly but nothing will take root; a hundred men may labour over you but nothing will come of it, sister.’

  I slapped her and blood spurted from her nose, staining the pale cloth of our wedding dress. She reeled back and stared down at the mark on her belly; the shape of my palm and fingers stood out like a brand. She watched as I dressed in her widow’s weeds, pulled the gems from my hair and let it loose as a storm cloud.

  ‘Help my sister dress, dear nurse. Then pack my things for I will leave this place.’

  I found my erstwhile fiancé in his chamber, surrounded by valets and groomsmen readying him for his bride. He preened before the mirror and as I stood behind him, he started; perhaps he saw my double image. I sent his men from the room, opening the front of my gown before they had even pulled the door to.

  ‘Any bride will do, it seems. Give me this one thing, my love, my heart. I ask but this and I will leave you free to marry my sister and have this kingdom.’

  He made no argument, but lay back as I rode him like a witch, like a whore. He cried out and I felt his seed take hold inside me. I left him spent.

  In the few days it took for Ella to arrange our departure, I passed through the corridors of our tiny castle like a whirlwind; none stood in my path. My mother I saw several times in whispered conversation with my nurse, telling what things might go and what things must not be taken. My father merely watched with a kind of horror when I entered a room. Courtiers stepped aside as if too close contact might contaminate them. I did not see my sister in those final days.

  We rode out early one morning, a fine carriage for myself and my nurse, and a cart piled high with possessions. Four men accompanied us as guards.

  We came to this tower; it seemed we wandered aimlessly, but I wondered later if Ella directed our path all the while. The men hefted the furniture and belongings up the winding steps and then disappeared into the forest in short order, taking both carriage and cart with them.

  There were people living nearby, forest folk, hunters and the like. Cottages, huts and hovels housing women and children who waited for husbands and fathers to return from elsewhere. Others still lived alone, women and men both, happy with only the silence for company. For a while we saw them every few days; Ella would trade for provisions, bartering her healing skills. I paid them no mind, stuck to my round room and brooded as my belly grew; read the books Ella had brought with her and those in the library beneath; consumed the knowledge therein. Eventually, they disappeared, those forest dwellers, moving away to places where, presumably, they did not feel quite so uncomfortable with my brooding presence in the tower. Soon enough, the animals as well deserted our part of the woods. There was no longer even the familiarity of birdsong.

  There was a child, though. Of course there was. When she was born, I called her Dowsabel so she would be sweet and gentle, and gave her to Ella to take to my sister. To let Marietta raise the baby I’d stolen from her womb. It may have seemed kind, it may have seemed like forgiveness.

  Ella did not return. I don’t think I expected her to do so.

  In this tower I delved deeper and darker into magic; living as long as I could, until I sensed illness sinking its claws into me. Young still, yet I sickened and could not cure myself. I wondered if the evil I had done poisoned me. The more I studied, the more I realised the only way to cheat death was to wait.

  I began this work. I put in place spells that needed simply the final word to set things in motion. I delayed though, drinking in whatever life was left to me until the day I felt the tightness in my chest was not going to release, that the harshness of my breathing would not ease. The cyclone of magic that tore me apart peeled the skin from my flesh, filleted me, built the frame and made the canvas, then liquefied my organs and poured them and my blood into this jar. I sundered myself piece by piece, using every bit of craft I had learned.

  And I waited. I waited for you.

  ***

  My hands move lethargically now, putting the last stitches in place. My golden hair is gone. It has been woven into the design; patches of skin are missing from my arms, and the torn bodice of my dress shows that I have used a knife to take squares of my own hide from there, too, small swatches to quilt the thing on the wall before me. So many needle marks mar my fingertips that the flesh is a mass of tiny wounds; a pallid pink jelly seeps from them. Where the canvas is marked with this pigment, a tiny pageant has made itself—my lover, her journey, plays itself out.

  I watch as I work, my attention divided between finishing the tapestry and taking in the tiny Rilka as she searches for me in a sparsely sketched series of scenes.

  I see her miniature simulation leave the Battle Abbey and ride to the love-nest in which she’d installed me not many months since, when I’d come from the cathedral-city. I had thought to find some peace, somewhere to flee the years haunted by memories of my dark-hearted mother and my strange half-sister. And the soul-blackening guilt that I had failed each of them in turn—being neither obedient daughter nor protective sister, and in the process losing them both.

  In truth I had wandered without plan—I simply fled. Had I thought about it, surely I would have realised that the convent was one of the Church Militant’s outposts and would not likely be a haven of serenity. Rilka was the Abbey’s Marshall and she tried to be discreet, but the reality was th
at the Church did not need her order to behave as did other nuns. These women conducted their holy worship by sword and fire.

  ‘You don’t belong here,’ Rilka had said and the honey of her voice took the edge off the words. I was in the laundry, folding newly boiled sheets, and applying the heavy iron heated on the wood-fire stove to shirts and breeches of rough cloth. I remember the warmth of her breath on my neck, the firmness of her grip, the muscles in her broad back.

  Rilka convinced me that my path did not lie in the cool of the cloisters, nor on the training fields, nor indeed with any of the offices. What she offered seemed as good as any other road open to me.

  In the tiny cottage, comfortable and bright, somewhat like the one of my youth, the idyll was agreeable. But the haunting began that very first night.

  ‘There’s a voice in my dreams,’ I told Rilka.

  ‘Dreams? That means you’ve not enough to occupy yourself; you need exhausting.’ She grinned and pinned me to the bed. She had no concerns about leaving me alone. I thought of those moments as I watched the tiny figure inscribed in red ride into the clearing to find the cottage empty. She rested only long enough to stuff a sack with provisions.

  I wondered if Rilka questioned why she hunted for me. By her own admission, there had been many women before. Perhaps it was love, perhaps it was lust. Or perhaps she did not like being left.

  The wolves follow Rilka. She does not dismount from her tall horse during the day unless she must, and she keeps her sword unsheathed. At night, she builds a huge fire and sits close by it. She does not sleep. When she comes at last to the tower, she approaches the door, and finds it locked. Her head cocks to the side as she listens to the conversation floating out the windows and gliding down to her. Rilka stands back and kicks at the door, again and again until the lock collapses under the onslaught of her soldier’s boots. She mounts the stairs.