by Paul Butler
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Butler, Paul, 1964-
NaGeira: a novel / Paul Butler.
E-ISBN - 978-1-9268-8134-2
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
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Copyright © 2006 by Paul Butler
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To P.D. and H.B.
“Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-
dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”
William Shakespeare
CHAPTER ONE
There is another creak from the threshold. I glance from the table and see the sunlight harsh upon the floor’s shrunken planks. The door, wide open, hides whoever is too shy to approach.
“Come!” I say, my voice no more than a croak.
No answer.
A couple of dry pine needles scatter along the floor as the breeze changes direction. “Is that you, David Butt?” Though no one shows himself, I can think of no other who would stand on a doorstep trying to gather courage. I have observed David Butt well and know he is nearing his changes. His eyes are restless, and his skin turns red with no warning as though all the secrets burning inside him might spill out at any moment and splash onto the floor.
I go back to work, wrenching the black feathers from the stillwarm crow’s carcass. The creaking comes again, and suddenly David does appear, his fair hair thicker than autumn straw, his cheeks as red as apples.
“Why didn’t you answer me, boy?” My voice is sharp, though I am not really angry.
His green eyes glisten like those of a rabbit sensing a danger it does not understand.
“Answer?” he says. He turns back toward the doorway as though expecting to see someone else there. “Answer to what?”
My hands cease working. David stares down at the half-plucked bird, the pile of black feathers, and my pink swollen fingers flecked with blood. Most people would be disgusted, but this boy’s eyes are as curious as those of a babe who looks for the first time upon the rich dome of a summer sky.
“How long were you standing outside building up courage to enter?” I ask.
The boy hesitates, half-turns, then blinks.
“I just got here.”
He looks so startled I don’t have the heart to argue.
“I’ve been down by the wharf unloading with Uncle Seth. I was thinking about it, though, thinking of asking you … something …” The boy stumbles over his words. His cheeks flush.
Men begin where women end, it seems. My face burned like his thirty years ago to mark the end of my regenerative years. It ended in fire. I could feel it crackling within me. Go to sleep, old woman, said the hiss and snap of the rising heat. Your time to teem children has gone. Now, as the sap rises in this young man, a similar heat scolds him. Fiery shadows distract his sleep and enter his dreams. He wonders if he will ever feel comfortable and composed again, so overpowering is the great itch rising within him.
I watch him stutter once more and feel a smile upon my lips. I can’t help it. The arrogance of youth amuses me. He is the first boy ever to feel as he does, and he guards it all—this great secret. He feels that if someone were to catch one glimpse into his heart it would surely send cracks through the earth and bring about the Apocalypse.
“Who do you want to lay with, child?” I say casually.
His eyes open wide and his mouth gapes. His feet shuffle backwards and he flinches as though struck. “It’s not that!” he says firmly.
“No?”
“No, not the way you think,” he huffs, his mouth and eyes suddenly moist.
“The way I think?”
“It’s respect,” he says, taking a step to one side, flapping his arms. At first he looks as if he will lecture me like his Uncle Seth, pacing the room, a pipe in his mouth. Then he stops, looks fearful and adds more quietly. “It is honour and regard I wish to convey to … someone.” He hesitates, looking down at the floor, lip trembling. “And the same that I wish to receive in return.”
“If it’s words you wish for, you seem to have them already,” I say, trying not to smile too broadly. “Such words become a young gentleman as truly as finest silks, as true as sword and polished scabbard, as true as golden carriage and shining white horse. Why do you not go straight to this young lady with your fine words?”
The boy stares back at me, his mouth tight as though sewn shut, his eyes angry.
“I know why you won’t,” I continue. “It’s because the words only tell half the story. You are afraid if you open your mouth to your young lady to give them utterance, these words will betray you. You will try to say these high-minded things, but your tongue will trip and spill the other half of the story instead, the part you wish to keep concealed.”
The boy sighs, exasperated. He raises his arms again and makes a face a man might make under torture. “Why do you make everything so …”
“Truthful?”
The boy grunts, resentful but not arguing, and sits down on a joint-stool close to my working table.
“I want her to feel as I do,” he mumbles defeated, scuffing his boots against the floor. “I want her to notice me as I notice her.”
“Sara Rose?”
He blinks, astonished.
“How do you know?”
“Even I hear the best-known gossip. She may not have noticed you, my boy, but everyone has noticed you noticing her.”
Helplessly I watch his face form into a desperate frown. A shipwrecked man watching his wife, mother, child, and all his possessions pulled into the black, hissing waves of a storm could not have looked more forlorn.
“Now what chance do I have?” he cries from somewhere deep inside himself.
He looks so raw and shocked—like a hare that has been skinned in its sleep and awakes to see itself bloody and steaming in the reflection of a pond. I feel I must comfort him.
“Perhaps not everyone knows,” I offer a little doubtfully.
The boy gives a short, mirthless laugh and stares at the floor again. “But she must know,” he murmurs.
“But what does it matter if she does?” There is a sudden impatience in my voice. No one takes himself more seriously than a young man in love, and this morose child is wearing me down. “You may not have noticed it, young man, but there are few enough of us in this little place. Get it off your chest, boy, and move on if she refuses you. Move on before her sisters are spoken for, too.”
“Sisters!” The boy almost spits.
“You’ll be mourning over one of her sisters like a lovesick calf before the end of this summer if the first one refuses you.”
“It’s not like that. Not with me.”
“Not with you, ah.” My fingers are working with the crow again, pluck
ing carefully, stopping every time the boy speaks.
Now he looks up at me, curious.
“What are the feathers for?”
“Your Uncle Seth. Newly plucked crow feathers will ease the stiffness in his shoulder.”
His green eyes watch my bloody fingers.
“How do you know what works and what doesn’t?”
He hunches his shoulders and scuffs his boots on the plank flooring again.
I allow myself another smile and pluck the last few feathers from the bird. Its bald, pink head twists dejected on the table as its body jolts to the action of my fingers.
“What you really want to ask,” I say, “is how do I know a love spell will work if I prepare one for you.”
I lift the crow’s carcass by the wing and hold it out to the boy. “Throw this to your uncle’s dogs. When I have prepared his medicine, I will see to yours.”
The boy springs to his feet, grabs the bird, and flies out of the door as weightless as if he has inherited the former life of the unhappy creature he carries.
———
“We burn something of yours and something of hers together in the same flame.”
David still holds his palm to the side of his head as though stemming the bloodflow from a mortal wound.
“Come,” I say. “It could not have hurt so much and you have plenty to spare.”
“You could have used a knife rather than pulling from the root!”
“And lose precious skin and blood?” I say, laying the clump of coarse sandy hair close by the now raging hearth. The wood the boy brought me is good and dry and will do for days. It hisses and smokes but little, sending odd sparks rising into the room. They waver in mid-air for a moment, then wink out in the darkness. The nights are still cold, and I am getting too old now to gather wood for myself.
“What do you have of hers?” he says hugging himself morosely, sitting far off by the joint-stool.
I reach into the folds of my dress and pull out the tooth—dried blood still on the root and a crack down the middle. “When you are physician to everyone, a piece of everyone remains with you.”
His look of disgust does not affect the odd sense of pride I feel. No one in this place can do without me, I know. It doesn’t matter how I am shunned. Sudden elation gets the better of me for a moment and I am like a child again, striking out for the first time to discover the possibilities and limitations of my powers. I defy the crone that has become my outward shell. It is just a disguise; I can feel the withering years peeling away from me. “You should be careful what you wish for, my boy,” I say. “A girl who loses a first tooth at thirteen will likely lose her last at twenty. You will feel you are sucking on the mouth of a codfish!” I laugh with abandon. Although it feels like the mirth of youth flowing in a torrent, I’m sure the boy, who now purses his lips and turns to the door, would call it a cackle.
He knows he cannot leave now. His desire is too great and is held fast in my darkened room as sure as the black and gold shadows that leap and duck over the four walls.
“Now come, boy, kneel beside me by the fire.”
I turn to the flames with the boy’s hair in one hand, the tooth of his beloved in the other. He leaves the joint-stool and shuffles towards me, kneeling.
“What now?” he says.
“Put out your hand as though to receive.”
Obediently he does so. I put the clump of his hair in the middle of his palm. His hand is sweating and the hair sticks as it should. I place the tooth in the centre of this little nest.
“Now close your fist.”
Again he does as he’s told.
“Now,” I say grabbing hold of his wrist and turning it so that the knuckles face upward. I can feel his alarm in the stiffness of his hand. “Don’t be afraid. Hold on as long as you can. Only when you cannot bear it any longer, only then can you open your fist and let the hair and the tooth drop on the fire.”
Feeling his wrist tug away, I look at him hard. His eyes glisten with fear and he is breathing quickly, yet I know he is bracing himself. He nods. I put both my hands behind his elbow. David grits his teeth and mumbles to himself. I squeeze his elbow tight as a sign to get ready, then push his elbow forward. He does not resist.
David gives a muffled cry and jolts his arm back for a moment. Stiffening, he plunges it forward again, gives a small, rising moan but keeps his fist steady above the flame. Then, shaking with pain, he opens his fist and pulls his hand away, cradling it to his belly like a chick he has lost and found again.
The hair and tooth land on a glowing log. The hair sizzles and curls around Sara’s tooth. A single small flame dances around, licking the now black and withering strands. Perfect!
The boy shivers and breathes heavily, his head bowed.
“Up!” I say, using my knuckles against his shoulders to climb into a standing position. He is slow to react. “Salt water!” I say to rouse him. “And quickly, or your hand will be useless for a week.”
I lift the bucket onto the table while he gradually rises, stumbles towards the table, and plunges his hand into the water. He cries out, turning his head to the ceiling, eyes tight shut.
“Quiet!” I hiss at him. “Do you want them to hear you down in the cove?”
I know no one will hear us—my home is far from the rest of the settlement. But this boy is beginning to worry me. So timid, yet sullen; so backward with his girl, yet so determined to win her, no matter how singed his skin must become in the attempt.
“If your uncle, or anyone else, asks about your burn, tell them you were helping me with the fire.”
The boy doesn’t reply but looks down, drawing his hand out of the bucket. Tears of pain run down his face and he breathes hard, gritting his teeth.
“What now?” David asks, gazing down at his pink and trembling hand.
“Now?”
“What must I do to win her?”
“You have done it already. Go home. Rest. Let the medicine work.”
He stands rigid, still staring into his quivering palm as though expecting to see some kind of answer there.
“You have sent your message to the gods and goddesses who reign over all,” I whisper to comfort him. “They are in all living things, in the earth and the sky. You have joined Sara and yourself in the flames. To the gods, you are one.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” says the boy, his tears mingling with sweat.
“It will work because the spirits move in Sara as they move in us all.”
The boy stares at me for a second.
“I am grateful to you, Sheila,” he says, then turns for the door.
“Treat her well if you want to repay me.”
He nods without turning. His movements are slower, heavier than before. I think of the boy who came to see me earlier, his coltish love and his shyness. That boy was a more delicate creature altogether than the figure whose shoulders now block my narrow doorway.
David opens the door and steps into the night, closing it after him with a clunk. His heavy footfalls crunch on the path as he makes his way down to the cove.
I turn back to the fire which still leaps and ducks around the wood. The spitting violence of the flames seems meant for me, but I am equal to it and stare back in defiance. We are adversaries, the fire and I, and I do not mean to yield to it yet.
CHAPTER TWO
I have lived too long, and I know it. It’s been part of me always, this inclination to survive. All my life I have been skipping rocks over a writhing ocean. People around me gurgle and scream, their anguish like wasps in my ears, but my nimble feet carry me along, barely allowing for pause. As I am predestined to outlast them, I feel a passing sorrow, but little guilt. I have lived beyond events which should wring the very soul from a woman. I have heard the cries of my children as they are taken or slain by pirates, and have felt the fire of grief overcome me. Salt tears have turned my cheeks to rivers. My very life, it seems, oozed in that flow, mingling with the dust at my feet.
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But the salt tears dried upon my face, crusted, turned to powder. I was breathing, seeing, feeling. Before too long even hunger began to nibble at my ribs. I would go in search of food to sustain myself. What manner of thing am I to have survived so much?
But I knew from the start. I had been warned.
When I was a child, I met the man of the forest. I recall but little of his appearance now. It was a face that revealed itself one moment, then faded the next into shifting light and shadow. A face whose contours were the knots and dips of tree bark. I remember how his voice hissed gently like the rustling of leaves. The forest is yours, he said, through the whispering melodies of the foliage. While the woods embrace you, no spirit or beast can harm you, no strangers or neighbours smite you, no dank ague infect you. When death lies all around you, the leaves and boughs protect you.
I cannot justify or explain it even to myself—this feeling that the lives are too fleeting to mourn, that only the heart of the forest is constant. I met a playwright once in a London prison. Much of what he said seemed nonsense, but one thing, I thought, was quite good. He talked of life as a flame. “Out brief candle,” he said.
It stuck with me.
———
If only they knew, the people who live in the cove, how easy it is to grow old. I see them studying me sometimes, trying to fathom my secrets. Like cats watching the surface of a stream for movement, they imagine they will catch some word, some action that might explain it to them. That’s it, they might say, she crosses her legs from right to left, this is why she has grown wise enough to overcome the frailty of years. Or, I know! She bathes her forehead in brine twice a day. That’s how she keeps time’s scimitar at bay.
It’s the one thing they respect me for, my age. They accept my cures grudgingly. They even listen to my stories with half an ear. But somewhere deep in their hearts, they distrust me. They look to the ocean and build their homes close to its dim and murmuring shores. I look to the woods where I feel protected by the birds and the fragrance of pine.