by Ila Mercer
Lita found she could no longer meet Tipple’s eyes. ‘A girl. Just a girl. And anyway, I can’t hurt you. Not now.’
‘Go on.’
‘Last summer,’ Lita faltered, her voice catching in her throat, ‘that’s when it first started.’ She had never needed to explain it before. MaKiki, after all, had been a witness from the beginning. The act of putting it into words made it strange, made her feel different about herself. ‘I don’t know why I can do it. Just that it happens at night when there’s a moon. I Change. That’s what you saw last night.’
‘You turned into a bear.’
‘Yes.’
‘You say it only happens at night. Never by day.’
Lita nodded and tried to read Tipple’s face for signs of doubt and fear. But the old woman merely narrowed her eyes.
‘Only into a bear? Or can you do other things?’
Lita bit her lip, knowing she should not reveal too much, except she feared what Tipple might do if she didn’t answer. ‘Most creatures. But sometimes I make mistakes. Once I tried to Change into a snake and ended up as a seal pup.’
‘You mean you can change at will?’ A strange gleam entered Tipple’s eyes.
Lita began to feel nervous. ‘Yes. Well, no. I mean only when there is a moon.’
‘Could you turn yourself into an ox?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Or, let’s see…a horse, or a hunting hound?’
‘Well, perhaps, but I’ve never tried.’
‘And yet you say you’re not a Beast.’ Tipple laughed. Then with narrowed eyes, she rubbed the whiskers on her chin. ‘I never thought I’d meet one. Never imagined they could pass so well as one of us.’ Tipple shook her head, studied Lita, sized her up. It made Lita feel as insignificant as a gnat. ‘Now here’s something to think on,’ Tipple said at last. ‘What say you turn into a hunting hound tonight?’
‘But I’ve never hunted like that before,’ Lita objected.
‘So, now’s your chance. Though I could get a tidy sum for handing in a Beast and the woman who gives it refuge. If that suits you better.’
Lita could see that Tipple almost hoped she’d refuse. Then she realised. She had ceased to be a girl in Tipple’s eyes. All Tipple could see was a Beast. Suddenly Lita felt vulnerable in a whole new way. She nodded. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, knowing that she would only go along with the plan – until there was a chance to escape.
Shortly afterwards, Tipple locked Lita in the hut, nailing boards across the windows so that she could not see. The air stank with the scent of gin and stale bedding. It was only when Tipple lit a smoky fire, that the scent was masked. Though Lita could not see it, she heard it, roaring as Tipple fed it dry tinder. And then smoke seeped through the crevices of the hut, stinging her eyes and nose. For a terrible moment she thought Tipple had turned the hut into a pyre but after a while the roar mellowed. It snapped, ticked and hissed until even this grew too faint to hear.
Tipple brought neither food nor water, and when Lita banged on the door, saying that she had to relieve herself, she was ignored. In the end, she had to urinate in the corner, an indignity that filled her with shame because it was as if Tipple meant to make her into an animal.
All day long, Tipple hammered and sawed, except around midday, when she paused for a short while. Lita heard talking. At first, she thought Tipple must have been talking to the horse, but the rise and fall of the speech made her think she was talking with someone. Something jingled, the talking stopped and then there was the clop, clop of a horse riding away. Had MaKiki come back, she wondered? And if so, why had she left? Wouldn’t she demand to look inside the hut? No, it must have been someone else. But who? Where was MaKiki? She couldn’t be too far away now. And when she came, she would set things straight. It was a wonder that Tipple had forgotten this small detail, Lita thought.
With nothing to do except wait for MaKiki to come to the rescue, Lita dozed.
When Tipple finally opened the door, she held a thick leather collar and chain. ‘I want you to put this on.’ She pronounced her words with exaggerated care. The rigid, wide legged stance did not fool Lita, because Tipple listed, ever so slightly from side to side and she fumbled with the buckle until she finally thrust it into Lita’s hands. ‘You do it,’ Tipple said.
Lita thought about kicking Tipple between the legs as MaKiki had taught her, but she didn’t know if it would work on a woman. And then she lost her nerve. Where was MaKiki? Surely she would be close now. Lita opened the buckle and secured the collar around her throat.
Tipple lifted Lita’s hair away and tugged the tough leather, making sure it was well fastened. When she moved aside Lita finally understood what all the banging had been in aid of. On Tipple’s cart, stood a crudely built wooden cage, made from rough-hewn saplings.
With the long knife tucked under the crook of her good arm, Tipple led Lita to the back of the cart. ‘I had a different idea,’ she said. ‘We’re going to The Downs to hunt truffles. Truffles sell better than gold, so you can turn into a truffle hog, right?’ Her speech, now unguarded, slopped like water from a pail.
‘What? You mean a pig?’
‘Yep, same thing.’
‘What about food?’ she said, thinking to stall the old woman. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’
Tipple reached into the tray of the cart, picked up a cob of dried corn and tossed it to Lita.
‘I can’t eat that.’ Lita stared at the shrivelled kernels.
Tipple shrugged. ‘In that case, get in.’ She nudged Lita towards the cage.
‘What about MaKiki then? She’ll be along any moment. And when she finds out what you’ve done…’ but Lita’s threat trailed off.
‘Something tells me we won’t be seeing MaKiki again,’ Tipple said. ‘She paid her debt when she handed you over. You’re mine now.’ Again, she smiled in that smug and nasty way. ‘Oh, and by the way -’ She leaned close, breathing her foul stench on Lita. ‘I’m deadly accurate with the knife, even when I’m half cut. So don’t try nothing stupid.’
‘MaKiki would never leave me. She’ll be back.’
‘We’ll see.’ Tipple sniggered, as she pushed Lita into the cart.
Lita stumbled and twisted her ankle, but the sting of Tipple’s words hurt far more than the rough treatment.
*
Tipple announced that they had entered the Downs County. The darkness cloaked everything, and their bobbing lamp cast less than a cart span of light before them. If it had not been for the comforting presence of stars, Lita would have sworn they had descended into the underworld.
She rose stiffly from the floor and pressed her face against the bars of the cage, looking past Tipple’s head and shoulders. Still and heavy air suppressed the rising fog, so that it appeared that their nag waded through a billowing, white stream. Other than this, there was nothing to be seen.
Tipple’s hands lay slack at the reigns and Lita realised the horse had more than a passing acquaintance with the track. Pungent pine perfumed the air, and the darkness on her right seemed denser than that to the left. She tried to adjust the collar where it chafed against her neck and then rewrapped the thin shawl around her torso. She glared at Tipple who seemed not to notice the cold and had continued to drink all through their journey. It was a wonder she had any sense left to drive.
Little by little, the line of a ridge, the contour of treetops, and the dim promise of a rising moon appeared. The nag swung to the left. The forward pitch of the cart, the echo of horseshoes striking stone, suggested they had descended into a gully. When the cart bumped across a deep rut, Lita lost her balance and fell to the floor. The short chain halted her slide, but the collar whipped her neck and chin, grazing her tender flesh.
They stopped beneath a cliff. Tipple slid from her seat, groping and cursing as she unhitched the lamp and stumbled to the back of the cart.
Lita’s blood began to tingle, and she lifted her eyes to the sky, noting the rise of a thin shining crown. Tipple stru
ggled to open the latch of the cage.
‘How soon until you can do it?’ Tipple asked.
‘When it’s higher. Not yet.’
After Tipple had detached the chain from the bars, she wrapped the free end around one hand and aimed her knife at Lita with the other. ‘Just so you don’t try nothing,’ she said. ‘Remember, truffle hog.’
Lita nodded. For a moment, she considered changing into a bat or a nighthawk. It would be easy to slip through the bars of the cage and flit into the night, but she had no way of knowing whether Tipple’s boasts were true. It was a chance she dared not take.
Before long, the moon’s pale light fell across the cart. The bars of the cage became shadowed stripes across Lita’s body and her ears roared as light coursed through her. She closed her eyes and willed the creation of the truffle hog. Under Tipple’s prying gaze, she could not have felt more uncomfortable had she been naked.
At first, her outline dissolved within a shimmer of light. Clothes and collar became absorbed too by the Change. When there was nothing left of Lita the girl, the weaving began, creating anew. The trunk of her body grew back thick and shaped like a barrel tipped on its side. From this, four stout legs sprouted. Then came skin that was rough, black, dotted with coarse wiry hair. A bud appeared at her rear, which lengthened and twisted until it resembled the inner spring of a chair. Finally, the light shimmered like a cone, funnelling its energy into the moulding of an elongated snout, floppy ears and two small eyes.
‘It worked,’ Tipple said, leaning in, allowing the knife’s tip to drop to the floor of the cage. ‘Can you talk?’
Lita grunted and waggled her ears. Her head dropped, and she fixed her eyes at the ground. It had never felt quite this way before, as if she were a freak in a troubadour show.
‘Where’d the collar go?’ Tipple grabbed the flesh around Lita’s neck. ‘Thought to trick me, hey?’ She twisted a fold of flesh until Lita squealed.
‘Just as well I’m wearing a belt and have spare rope,’ she growled.
Once Tipple had secured the makeshift collar and rope to Lita’s neck, she flicked her across the rump. ‘Time to get us some truffles, hey piggy?’ She snorted twice and then tipped back her head and howled with laughter.
Lita’s legs became rigid and her eyes narrowed. Tipple tugged on the rope but she would not budge.
‘What’s this?’ Tipple heaved at the chain. ‘Come on, piggy, piggy. We’ve only got a couple of hours before the Senna’s gamekeepers come along.’
Lita braced herself against the wooden floor of the cage as Tipple pit her full weight against her. The rope grew taut, the collar squeezed her ears forward, and the hide on her neck and face changed from pink to red.
‘You silly little sow.’ Tipple scowled. Her grip on the chain slackened as she leaned over and reached for a long stick lying on the dirt.
Thwack! Lita squealed and staggered forward. Tipple hit her again, and again, hard across the forelegs. With each vicious strike, she heaved on the chain until Lita hobbled forward and stumbled to the ground.
‘There’ll be no more of that,’ she snarled, as she yanked the chain hard again. ‘You lead. Then I can keep my eye on you.’
Blood trickled through the coarse hairs on Lita’s forelegs, but she did not feel the pain. All her anger and shame turned inward. It made the blood pound in her ears until it was the only sound in the world. It charged her muscles with a red-hot fury and blurred her vision. When a small stone became lodged in the cleft of her hoof, she did not notice. It was through reflex alone that she adjusted her gait, hobbling on three legs.
*
They stopped when they reached a stone wall and Tipple knelt down. Lifting Lita’s front foot, she poked the lodged stone with a stick. ‘Learned your lesson?’ she said snidely when it popped out. But Lita gave no sign of acknowledgement, keeping her eyes forward and spine rigid. Her anger had abated, but her resentment towards Tipple had not.
‘Gorn then.’ Tipple twitched the rope, gesturing to a break in the wall.
Lita limped to the break and felt her way through the crumbly gap with the tip of her snout. On the other side, a forest of pines stood shoulder-to-shoulder, equally spaced and perfectly straight. This was a forest of design, not chance. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Berries grew nearby, stagnant water lay over the next rise and a corpse rotted somewhere to the left.
Tipple caught sight of Lita tasting the air with her snout. ‘That’s right. Get that sniffer working. We’ll head that way first. If I remember right, there were oaks and chestnuts that way. A likely spot for truffles.’
But Lita had no thought for truffles, her mouth watered, with the promise of ripe berries nearby. The sweet scent roused her hunger. If it was a pig Tipple wanted, then a pig she would be, sating her own need before anything else. Her ears flapped against her head as she raced on, forgetting the pain in her trotter. Tipple strode beside her, dodging the thickest of the low branches, and crashing through the rest. Their noisy tramp disturbed a deer, her young fawn and a family of rabbits. Lita smacked her lips; she could almost taste the berries but then a light breeze drifted through the pines, carrying with it a new scent.
She stopped and turned towards its source. The new and tantalising odour wafted towards her – something like fermented honey, freshly hewn hay, spice and wet earth. Instinct drove her towards the new scent and an urge she could not define. Tipple scrambled behind her, managing to keep up with the aid of the rope that dragged her along.
‘Ease up,’ she called.
At the crest of the rise, Lita grunted and dragged against the rope as Tipple held her steady. Tipple scanned for signs of the gamekeepers and, once satisfied, allowed Lita to lead them down the recently felled slope. Pine stumps and scattered limbs scarred the hillside, but barely hindered her. On the opposite hillside, a stand of oak trees grew beside a limestone outcropping and this was where the scent came from.
‘Easy, easy,’ Tipple said.
The scent was so potent that Lita failed to notice other odours. If she had paid attention, she might have wondered about the scent of freshly dug soil, might have noted the slight, square depression in the soil before her, and the fact that the soft grey branches on the ground did not come from the trees above them. Lita hurtled on despite the warning signs. She strained against her collar, ten paces in front of Tipple, when the ground fell away.
She squealed and paddled her legs but there was nothing to support her. Rough bracken, jagged branches and clods of dirt ferried her down the shaft. Tipple yelled, ‘Quick! Change into a bird!’
But this, Lita could not do.
Her fall winded her but a thick layer of branches softened the impact. Whoever had dug the trap had not intended the fall to be fatal. When she stood up, pain shot up her right leg.
Tipple continued to shriek from above, ‘Change into a bird! Change into a bird!’
But Lita had failed to tell the old woman she’d only ever managed one Change on any given evening.
Nothing illuminated the gloom of the pit. The earth smelled damp and the crushed branches gave off a pine perfume. Lita hobbled to the edge of the pit and followed its contours with her snout. It was wide and deep: too hard to climb.
‘What’s taking you so long?’ Tipple demanded.
Lita thought about squealing, but then she changed her mind. What did she care if Tipple thought she was dead? Perhaps then the old woman would leave her alone and, in the morning, after she had become a girl once more, she would decide what to do. She remained very still and listened.
‘Say something!’ Tipple called. ‘You hear me?’
The old woman huffed and stamped around the edge of the pit. And then Lita heard a branch snap and showers of dirt rained down on her as Tipple poked around with a long stick. But it did not reach her. Throwing the stick into the pit, Tipple cursed, ‘You can stay then, ungrateful sod. I’m gonna find those truffles and then when I come back you better answer, else I will leave you for g
ood. Argh, I could do with a drink.’ She stomped off and it became very quiet.
Lita sighed and nestled into the branches. Sounds from the forest barely reached the dense base of the pit, except for the screech of an owl on the hunt. It was cold, very cold but she tried not to think about it. Instead, she thought of her warm bed in MaKiki’s wagon and wondered what her guardian might do when she discovered they were not at the hut. The horrible shadow of Tipple’s words stole into her heart, but she pushed them aside. She could not bear the thought that MaKiki might have abandoned her.
The Fire-haired Maiden
They had given him his own room – deep beneath the Keep’s tower, and it was furnished with every luxury a Senna might desire: a bed with a soft mattress, five warm blankets, a candle for the night, a washstand that was filled with clean water every morning, and a chamber pot. He had the room to himself, a luxury and a loneliness he’d never had before.
In his village, his people slept together on straw mats. When they dozed into sleep, they could hear each others breath and gentle snorings. It was warm too, because there were so many bodies. There was comfort from knowing you were surrounded by kin. But when he’d lived this way, Ari never thought about these things. They just were. Now he missed them with a deep, yearning ache that kept him awake for many hours each evening.
He would have preferred to sleep with the horses in the stable, or shared a room with the tack boys, just for the comfort of sounds but this he could not do, for his host, Senna Jogan, though permissive in many regards, made sure that Ari was locked in every evening, afraid of what he might become, should he venture outside after dark.
Lars had turned crimson faced when his father suggested the room, and though he protested vehemently, had not succeeded in changing his father’s mind. Apparently, it was a room for housing thieves and wrongdoers; this was an idea Ari could understand. In his village the worst crimes led to banishment. To be cast out by one’s village, was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. It was worse than dying and this is what he imagined the Keep’s prisoners must feel when they were locked in the bowels of the earth with no company, no light, no movement of air.