by Ila Mercer
Once they were in the Keep, they stood within a vast courtyard. Buildings ringed the yard, four stories high with paint-blistered balustrades adorning every balcony. It must have been a grand place once, Lita thought.
The twins crossed the courtyard and beckoned for Lita to follow.
On passing through a splintery wooden door, the scent of baking bread and steaming stew made Lita’s mouth water and her stomach growl. The twins peeled off their mantles and hung them on a hook. Warming their hands above the fire, they beckoned Lita to do the same. ‘Don’t be shy,’ one of the Jim’s said as they shuffled over to make space.
A woman, with hair neatly wrapped in a bun, sailed into the room, her enormous hips rolling like a ship on the high seas. She swept a faded silk scarf over her shoulder and plunked a basket of eggs on the table. ‘Good morning Jims,’ she said, nodding.
‘Morning Sal,’ they replied in unison. Their eyes went soft and both wore vapid grins on their faces.
‘Who’s this?’ Sal asked, brow arched with all the aplomb of a chief commander.
‘A maiden we found.’
‘Well, I can see that. Does she have a name?’
The Jims stared blankly.
‘I’m Lita,’ she said, answering for herself.
‘And what are you doing here?’ Sal’s eyes began to narrow.
‘Aw, Sal, don’t badger the mite with so many questions. She’s cold and wet. And she could do with something warm in her belly,’ the second Jim said.
Sal’s eyes narrowed further, and her lip twitched. ‘I’m sure Lita can wait a little. I want to hear.’
Lita’s eyes flitted from the brothers to Sal.
‘Let me guess,’ Sal said. ‘Did they find you down a pit?’
Lita looked down at her soil stained knees and hands. There was no point denying it, yet she guessed it would get the Jims into trouble, and maybe her too.
‘She’s come to no harm. We’ve got to stop them poachers somehow. Those truffles you and Senna Yaron like so much keep getting thieved,’ the first Jim said.
‘A thief!’ Sal said, lips pursed and shaking her head at Lita.
‘No. I’m not,’ Lita said.
‘In our Keep a thief and his hand are swiftly parted,’ Sal said.
Tears sprang to Lita’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Tipple locked me in her cart and forced me to come. But now MaKiki won’t be able to find me and then where will I live?’
‘Hush now. Enough with the bibble-babble. Nobody said they were gonna cut off your hand, did they. Still you ought to know, thieving gets punished in these parts. And then what’s all this blather about a MaKiki? Who’s that?’ Sal’s hands were firmly planted on her hips.
‘My guardian,’ Lita said, with a sniff.
‘Then what were you doing with that other no hoper?’
Lita recounted the story, leaving out any mention of her ability to Change. At the start, Sal’s arms were tightly folded across her chest but as Lita’s tale progressed, they loosened. MaKiki had always said that a tale told well had more power than any weapon.
‘What sort of a guardian leaves a child with a stranger,’ Sal tut-tutted. ‘She don’t deserve to have a child in her care. Just as well we found you then.’
It was a shock to hear MaKiki judged this way – to mildly grumble about MaKiki was one thing, but to hear it from another... Lita bristled, but held her tongue. What would a Keep dweller know about the ways of a tinker? Sal lived in a Keep where living was easy and safe, and her bulging belly suggested she had never known hunger.
Sal fetched a stack of bowls. ‘Jims, show Lita where to wash so we can sit down for a bite. Then I’ll ask the Senna what he wants to do with her.’
After a breakfast of eggs and boiled beets, Sal went and spoke with Senna Worrel. When she came back, she told Lita he had agreed for her to stay until MaKiki was found. His only condition was that she keep out of trouble and work where she was told. Sal made it very clear that it was a generous offer and that Lita should be very grateful since he had no obligation to take in stray waifs. Especially, Sal said, considering the circumstances in which she was found.
Sal kept Lita indoors all day, treating her with caustic kindness, all the worse, because it was the very way MaKiki behaved. Perhaps if Sal had been soft and sweet, or even brutal and mean, Lita might have managed to keep the hollow ache at bay.
She could not yet believe that MaKiki had abandoned her. The wagon had to be somewhere nearby, and she worried that MaKiki would never dream of looking for her in a Keep. Lita decided then that she would sneak out at the first opportunity and find MaKiki herself. She could not afford to wait around, as if she were a helpless babe waiting to be saved. She had already made that mistake.
The moon rose late again and for this Lita was grateful. Sal had insisted that for the first night, until they sorted out a bed, Lita would sleep beside her, and so, she waited, lying awake with Sal’s round back pressed against hers. When, at last, the large woman’s breathing changed to a deep and steady rhythm, Lita rose from the bed and slipped out to the courtyard.
Two lanterns lit the courtyard with a dim glow. She lifted her eyes to the buildings. Mellow light shone from three windows on the top floor. When a bell chimed, the nightwatchman, a stooped little man, opened the iron gates.
Lita shifted into the shadows.
Moments later, hooves clattered across the courtyard. From her hiding place, Lita watched three riders advance toward the gates. Two of them she recognised almost instantly – they were the Jims. But the third she had never seen before.
As the riders passed under a lamp, Lita gazed upon the face of the unfamiliar rider and she noted at once that he was a younger man, perhaps not so many years older than herself. He had smooth skin, a full-fleshed mouth and strands of golden hair that fell softly around his face. As he passed through the gate, he waved to the nightwatchman and shouted a friendly greeting. She wondered who he was.
After the riders passed, moonlight broke over the wall. Lita slunk against the stone, until reaching a stair. At the top, she had a moment to view the entire Keep. It was shaped like a rectangle, not a square as she had first thought. Behind the buildings, there was another section: a walled garden with vines rambling over rickety trellises, bare patches of dirt, and rows of what appeared to be withered plants.
A feeling of restlessness stole over her. It was a feeling that often preceded the Change. Lita scanned the building and yard for any sign of others, but it seemed she was alone, apart from a black cat perched on the opposite wall: too far away to pose any serious threat. The cat swished its tail and regarded her with feline intensity, but Lita was unconcerned. After all, whom would the cat tell? Lita crouched, drawing her knees to her chest as the Change rushed through her body.
Fleetingly, she thought about how it could go wrong, as it had on her first Changing. She had run to MaKiki, screaming with terror because she thought she was dying. MaKiki had calmed her with soothing words and showed no surprise as Lita’s body sprouted tufts of fur, scales and feathers. Catching sight of her reflection in a polished kettle she howled, thinking this was how she might remain. But MaKiki knew better. She had told Lita to hush, that the Changing would go away if they sat in the dark for a while. After that, they had huddled under blankets until Lita became a girl again.
Since that evening, MaKiki had been a stickler for creating rules around the use of the Changing, stealing all of its fun. Under MaKiki’s stern guidance however, Lita had never come close to harm. It was only when heading off alone that she courted danger.
‘Blend,’ MaKiki had often advised. ‘A purple wolfhound can’t camouflage itself amongst the foliage.’ It was as easy to sprout wings with scales, seven eyes and a bright blue snout, as it was to mimic the artistry of an existent animal, but Lita saw the sense of MaKiki’s advice.
Remembering this wise council, she focused her thoughts as she Changed. When making a creature for the first time, extra care had to be taken. And s
he had never Changed to a bat before. Unless she really thought about what she wanted to be, the Change would do as it wished - sprouting a wing from an ear or a leg from the belly. One too many legs or no legs at all. Detail, that’s what you had to think of. Sometimes she got it quite wrong but over time she had learned to study her quarry. She remembered the length of a limb, the oddities of various creatures’ movements, the shape of an eye or a fang or a scale. So long as she imagined a creature well enough, the Change performed the hardest task of unravelling, rebuilding, perfecting.
When the transformation was complete, Lita felt surprised that she could see so well. She had always thought bats were blind. Wasn’t that the saying? But now she knew it wasn’t true. Her ears too were sensors of the highest order. She picked up the faint rustle of a mouse, the distant murmurs of the stable boy talking to the horses, and the cat shifting its weight from back to front legs. She sent a little sonar blip to the opposite wall and what came back to her was an impression. At once she knew the pits and pocks of that surface more intimately than she knew the skin on the back of her own hand.
The cat hung over the precipice with ears held flat to its head. Lita knew she would need to be careful on her return. She had seen cats settle into long waits in order to catch their prey – and she had the feeling this was exactly what the black cat planned to do.
As she swooped from the wall, Lita caught sight of the three riders vanishing over the crest of a bare hill.
With the Keep behind her, she was alone once more. Not quite alone, she thought, because the moon would be her guide. It made her heart beat faster as she gazed across the silvered hills. She was again a stranger in a strange land, a mere pip against the vast woods. And somewhere out there were MaKiki, Old Hodder and their wagon.
As she soared over wooded canopies, fields and lakes, it occurred to her that the moon had transformed the land. In the liminal halflight the lakes became mirrors to the sky, drowning the stars and the moon. Heather giants slept were they had fallen; wind snakes whipped the meadows with their mighty tails; dark gullets opened to the underworld and a herd of grey clouds huddled under a dead tree. The night made all things strange. That is - until she recognised the track to Tipple’s hut. After that she lost her fanciful eye. The track was only a track – leading her back to the place where it had all started.
A wan light shone from Tipple’s window but there was no evidence of MaKiki or their wagon. Nor did it seem likely that MaKiki had returned, for surely she would have left a sign in plain sight, knowing Lita would come looking.
She circled the yard once more and then settled on the bough of the pine she had climbed only two days before. Tipple had not moved the wolf. In the shadows beneath the tree it appeared only as a mangy scrap, already sinking into the earth. Insects pattered through its stretched lips, speeding its decay. Lita turned away. She realised that she had given no more thought to the wolf pups since Tipple locked her away in the hut. Once again, she wondered where they were and whether they would survive the winter without their mama. For a moment, she considered giving up her own search to look for the pups. But they could be anywhere. They would be tucked up, hidden away from hunters with sharp senses and hollow bellies. And so, if she set off on a search, it would be a false gesture, to ease her own guilt. The pups just had to survive winter and on the long dark nights, when their mama’s absence clawed at the pits of their stomachs, they could at least curl together for comfort.
Her flight from Tipple’s yard was not the lofty, swooping pleasure of before. The wind had picked up, sometimes tossing her along like a leaf. The moon became pallid and she imagined that predators hovered, just beyond the next rise, the next bend. Her eyes scanned the fields and roads. Occasionally, her heart leapt as she made out the shape of a wagon but each time she drew close she would discover the pitch of the roof was wrong, the arabesque carvings were absent, or the horse did not carry Old Hodder’s familiar scent. Wearied, Lita finally returned to the Keep. Tomorrow, she thought, the search could continue. MaKiki had to be close. A tinker’s wagon could not vanish.
*
The following morning, Lita woke to the sound of a mighty yawn. Sal’s great bosom quivered like custard as she heaved herself from the mattress. Shamelessly, she stripped off her nightdress and padded naked through to the other room. Despite her embarrassment, Lita could not help staring. Sal’s white flesh undulated with the luxuriance of whipped cream.
From the next room, came the sound of splashing and vigorous towelling. ‘Do you want me to save you the water?’ Sal hollered.
‘No,’ Lita replied. ‘I’ll bathe later.’ The previous evening, she had avoided undressing until the lamp was extinguished. She and MaKiki were so much more discreet, always averting the eyes when the other dressed or washed and she was not about to bare herself to Sal. Lita wriggled from her nightdress and snatched her tunic and undergarments from the stool near the window. By the time Sal returned - fully dressed - Lita was tying her shawl.
‘Oh no, no, no.’ Sal wagged her finger. ‘You’ll not be getting back into them old rags. Off with them. I should of took them last night when I had the chance.’
Lita stripped reluctantly to her petticoat and drew her arms across her chest.
‘That too,’ Sal said.
Lita hesitated.
Sal shook her head. With a sigh, she went to a trunk in the corner and opened it. One by one, she pulled out gowns, cloaks, wraps and petticoats, piling them on the bed. There were silks as soft as baby hair, thick cloaks with heavy gold brocade, full skirts made of wool. They came in every shade of red from palest rose to deepest crimson. ‘I used to be a lot smaller than I am now,’ Sal said, holding up a wool dress the colour of blood plums. It had shiny black buttons from the waist to the bust and tiny black roses embroidered up the sleeves. She pressed the dress against Lita’s lithe frame. ‘I think it’ll fit you.’ Her expression became wistful. ‘It was my lucky dress. Nothing bad ever happened to me when I wore that dress.’
It was beautiful.
Sal put it on the bed and then rummaged around in the bottom of the trunk. With a cry of success, she pulled out a simple cotton tunic and a petticoat. ‘You’ll be wanting a work smock too. It’s not nearly as fancy as the other, but it treated me well too.’
Sal left then, saying she was off to fetch some fresh water from the well, and would see how the dress fit on her return.
Once the door closed, Lita slipped out of her thin, frayed, petticoat and put on the new one. The fabric, so soft, so smooth against the skin, reminded her of Hodder’s muzzle. Then she slipped the wool dress over her head. After she had fastened the buttons, it fitted like a second skin around her chest and waist. When she moved, the long skirt flowed around her body like water. She ran her hands down the sides. Somehow, the dress seemed to create curves where she thought there had been none. Never had she owned such a fine dress.
She noticed then, that the lid of the trunk had a mirror, and she angled it so that she could see her own reflection. She stepped back until she could see most of the dress. It was like looking into a dream. The mirror was hazy and dull with age but nothing could hide the bloom in Lita’s cheeks, the delight in her eyes, the proud swivel in her hips as she turned this way, then that. As she gazed into the mirror, Lita wondered if MaKiki would recognise her. In fact, she barely recognised herself. Though the colour was a little brazen, she decided it suited her bronze skin and brown eyes.
‘Thought it might fit,’ Sal said, as she stepped through the door. ‘And looks good on a brunette.’
She came close and touched the sleeve. ‘I always loved this dress. Made me feel like a proper Sia.’
It was hard to picture Sal as a slender young girl. As Lita glanced again at the dresses of various sizes, a startling image came into her head. She imagined Sal as a wooden doll, like the ones she had seen long ago at a market. One had only to twist the doll at the waist, open it, and inside (as though swallowed whole) was another doll
, the same except smaller. And so on, and so on until you had a stack of six dolls, each smaller than the last. Somewhere, deep inside the large woman, hid a smaller Sal who had once worn a beautiful plum wool dress.
After breakfast, Sal took Lita to the kitchen, a long narrow room with windows set so high they offered no view but plenty of light. A brick oven sweltered in the corner of the room, and several pots fumed on a stovetop. The room reeked of sweaty onions and boiled fat. Lita was glad that Sal had insisted she change from the wool dress. She realised now, it would have absorbed the odours of the kitchen like a sponge.
At the end bench, two stout girls chattered as they kneaded dough. They stopped when they noticed Lita.
‘This is Lita,’ Sal said. ‘She’ll be staying at the Keep awhile. Show her what’s to be done and make her known to others.’
‘Course Sal, it will be our pleasure,’ one of the kitchen maids said.
Lita shifted from foot to foot. She wanted to make new friends but found she did not know what to say to them. It had been such a long time since she was able to speak freely with girls her own age.
Once Sal had gone, the maids cast their eyes up and down Lita’s slender frame. ‘Look at her Vicca,’ one of the maids said. ‘All skin and bone like a skun rabbit. I bet when she’s naked you can count her ribs.’
‘Don’t mind Tilly,’ Vicca said. ‘She’s just jealous. But you could do with a bit of pudding. And this is the place for it. Best job in the Keep because a cook needs to sample her cooking, don’t she? You know, to see whether it needs a dash of salt or spice.’ She winked conspiratorially at Lita.
Lita smiled in reply. By their appearance, she guessed there was often more sampling than cooking going on. Even as she thought this, Tilly reached into a jar of currants.
‘Oy.’ Vicca snapped Tilly across the wrist. ‘After that jar, there’s none. And we’ll still be needing currants at Rumetide. So, get your piggy hands out of it. Gorn.’
‘Just one bitty scoop.’
Vicca glowered for a bit and then putting hands on hips said, ‘Awright. Just this once. As long as you split it.’ And she put out her hand to receive her share of the shrivelled berries.