by Julie Hunt
As soon as she left, the sleek crept towards me, his eyes on the fish.
‘Sit down, Sleek!’
To my surprise, he obeyed me. He sat down and began washing himself.
Eadie returned with handfuls of dried grass, some big leaves and two saplings that forked at the right height to go under my armpits.
‘Pack a wad of grass under each arm for padding.’
She wrapped the fish in the leaves and put it on the coals, then she settled herself next to the fire, patting the pockets of her coat.
‘That’s the only trouble with a coat like this – it has a life of its own, and things are not always where you left them.’
‘What are you looking for, Eadie?’
‘My pipe, of course. Ah, here it is!’
After she’d lit her pipe, she dived into her coat again and pulled out her story bag.
‘Lesson one?’ she asked.
‘Always open and close your stories.’
‘Good waif!’
She took a small handful of sunflower seeds out of her little bag and put two of them in my hand.
‘There was once a girl called Blot. She had a birthmark on her face that covered half her cheek.
‘This girl was the daughter of a woman of power – a queen, or perhaps you would call her a swamp hag.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘She lived in a great house on the riverbank. And she was as mean as they come.
‘What a hideous baby, she cried when the girl was born. I’ll have to find a cure for that face!
‘She went to her remedy room and consulted her library. She had books on everything – how to make tonics, tinctures and potions; recipes for balms and balsams and herbal draughts that could cure any condition. Finally she found the recipe she needed. It was in an old book called Natural and Unnatural Cures – The Herb Queen’s Almanac. Three drops and the girl’s face would be fixed. But the ingredients were rare and some of them grew far away. It would take a long time to gather them all, and the mixture should boil for ten years and a day.’
The sleek stopped washing himself and stared at the fish. I put my hand on him and, when he didn’t spit at me, I began stroking his red fur. I was surprised when he purred.
‘What is more important, the story or the snide?’ Eadie asked. ‘If you are my apprentice you must listen with both ears.’
I’m listening, I thought. And I’m not your apprentice. I’m just travelling with you.
Eadie ignored this and continued with the story.
‘The queen began making the mixture. She collected the ingredients that grew close to home and set them to boil in a big pot on the riverbank. She employed a boy to tend the fire under the pot and an old blind man to supervise the boy. He had to be blind because she didn’t want him to see what she was doing. Then she went away to find the other ingredients.
‘Meanwhile, the baby grew into a little girl. The old man and the boy looked after her. They didn’t mind the birthmark on her face. To them, she was beautiful.
‘When Blot was four years old, her mother returned.
‘What’s that girl doing outside? she demanded. She should be locked up in the great house where no one can see her.
‘The woman shut Blot away and ordered the boy to take food to her once a day. Apart from that, the girl was to see no one until she was cured.
‘If you don’t do what I say, I will know it and you’ll be punished, the queen told the boy. She added the new ingredients to the pot and went away again.
‘The boy and the old man felt sorry for the little girl, but they were afraid of the hag so they didn’t let her out. However, the boy made a gift for the child.’
Eadie put down her pipe and stood up. ‘Turn the fish over, will you?’ She walked down to the water and waded in.
‘You’ll get your coat wet,’ I yelled.
She returned with a handful of mud, the bottom of her coat dragging behind her. Then she sat down and closed her eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m seeing the story in my mind,’ she said. Her hands began kneading the mud. ‘The boy got clay from the riverbank, and he shaped it into a doll.’
Eadie quickly made a head and a body, and she took the two sunflower seeds from my hand and pressed them into the doll’s face for eyes. She looked at what she’d made.
‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘You do the hair. Use grass.’
When I finished pressing in strands of grass to make hair for the doll, Eadie nodded. ‘The doll in the story was more lifelike, but we haven’t got time to do that. I need to get the story told before the fish is cooked.’
I smiled, and I gave the doll a smile as well. First I drew it on with my fingernail; then I found something better, a curved piece of shell.
‘Blot loved the gift,’ Eadie continued. ‘Every night, when the boy brought her dinner, she gave a little bit of food to the doll. Then, one night, the doll opened its eyes and spoke to her.
‘I am your true friend, it said. Tell me what’s in your heart.
‘Blot told the doll her deepest fear. If the brew doesn’t clear the mark from my face I think my mother might kill me, she whispered. Either that, or I will remain a prisoner forever.
‘Don’t worry, said the doll. I will help you.
‘When the hag next came home, six more years had passed and Blot was ten. The queen added the ingredients she’d collected to the boiling brew and stirred it with a paddle. The old man stood back and shook his head and the boy watched sadly as the hag sat by the riverbank and consulted her recipe.
‘On the last day, she read, add the girl’s most precious thing. Now what could that be?’
Eadie stroked her chin and gazed into the fire, then she looked at me with her keen eyes. ‘The queen knew, of course. She knew about the doll because she had special powers and nothing could be hidden from her.
‘On the morning of the ten years and one day she took her daughter to the riverbank and told her to throw her doll into the pot.’
Eadie stopped talking and poked at the fish with a stick.
‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘We’ll finish the story later.’
‘No. Finish it now.’
She pulled the fish from the coals.
‘When Blot refused to throw her precious doll into the pot, her mother grabbed the boy.
‘I’ll throw him in instead! she yelled, holding him over the boiling liquid.
‘No! cried Blot.
‘At that moment the little doll leapt from the girl’s arms into the brew. Three drops splashed out onto the old man’s face – two drops on one eyelid and one on the other. He opened his eyes and saw the pot crack open. The brew burst out all over the queen and she was burnt to ashes. The old man saw the two children clinging to each other.
‘You will be my grandchildren, he said. We will live in the great house, and no door will ever be locked.
‘And that’s what they did. Forever.’
‘What about the little doll?’ I asked.
‘She went back to the river,’ Eadie replied. ‘Her body became mud and her hair became grass, and the two seeds that were her eyes grew into beautiful sunflowers.’
I set the doll on the ground next to me, and she seemed to watch as Eadie put the rest of the seeds back in her little bag and returned it to her pocket. She pulled the fish from the coals, unwrapped it and gave me half.
We ate in silence. The only sound was Eadie sucking the fish bones.
I liked the story. I looked out over the river and thought about Blot. She still had the birthmark, and she’d lost her precious doll but she had a best friend and a grandfather, and she was free. I liked the way the recipe backfired on the herb queen. It didn’t fix the birthmark, but it cured the situation. Maybe all the recipes in the book – the almanac – worked that way.
‘Did you read any books, Eadie, when you were learning the herbs?’
‘It’s so long ago I can’t remember.’ She was licking her fingers clean.
‘Glad you liked the story, Peat. Plenty more where that came from. I’ve got more stories than pockets in my coat.’
She blew into her sleeves, then she stood up and, leaning forward, she began opening and closing the front of her coat very fast. She looked like she was trying to take off.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Puffing up,’ she replied. ‘With a coat like this you never need bedding. Trap some air in the pockets and, no matter how cold the night, you’re always warm.’
She lay down by the fire. ‘One of these days you might own a coat like this, Peat, if you’re lucky.’
I settled myself down for the night. Eadie’s coat was all right for her, but it wasn’t something I would ever want to wear.
Soon Eadie was asleep. Her snore sounded like the rattling purr of the sleek, but it was a hundred times louder.
MOTHER MOSS
Eadie woke me early the next morning. The doll had baked dry by the fire overnight.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a long way to go.’
She handed me the sticks.
‘Goodbye, little doll,’ I said, as I made my own way down to the reed-boat. My leg felt steady. I couldn’t believe how quickly it was healing.
We paddled all morning, the sleek gliding along in our wake. When we stopped for lunch, he dived under and appeared with some weedy green vegetables he must have pulled from the river bed. He laid them at Eadie’s feet.
‘Good little snide,’ she said.
‘He’s not a snide, he’s a sleek.’
Eadie rummaged around inside her coat and brought out a fish spine, which she must have saved from last night’s dinner. She began combing the sleek’s tail with it.
‘Whatever he is, he’s done a good job,’ she said.
The sleek closed his eyes and I heard his rattling purr.
The sun shone on Eadie’s coat and gave it a reddish tinge. It crossed my mind that perhaps Eadie and the sleek belonged to each other – but as soon as I had that thought the sleek jumped up, spat at both of us, and dived into the water. Eadie stuck the fish bone in her hair.
‘Time to go,’ she said.
By midafternoon the river had narrowed slightly and I could see the other side: a long shoreline with pale hills behind it.
Eadie stood up in the craft and spread her hands. ‘It’s grand to be out of the marshes!’ she cried. ‘Now we must paddle hard.’
Eadie and I spent many days paddling up the river, and the sleek travelled with us. Sometimes he followed along behind. Other times we would round a bend and he’d be there, waiting.
Eadie checked my leg from time to time, and she made sure I had enough to eat. And every night she taught me a story. She had stories about everything – about journeys, places and creatures I had never heard of: rats that spoke human language; fish that swam upstream, leaping waterfalls; birds big enough to steal children; men who were made of salt. She told me stories about the marshes, and how it was one of the few places in the world that was a refuge.
‘Once you’re there, you’re safe,’ she said. ‘Nothing can touch you . . .E xcept the other aunties,’ she added, and she went on to tell me a funny tale about the time Lily accused Olive of stealing her glimmerweb and how it ended in a mud-wrestling match.
When I asked her about her own story she just laughed and waved me away.
‘You wouldn’t believe it, Peat,’ she said.
The memory of Eadie’s face on the night we’d left the marshes began to fade. I didn’t want her to own me, but I had come to think that I wouldn’t mind being her apprentice after all. I liked learning the stories. And I would have liked to learn the herbs as well. I was already learning the names of flowers. She was pointing them out to me as we went along.
‘It’s a good life,’ she said. ‘You can travel around healing people. I’ve saved thousands of lives, and nearly every person I’ve treated has told me a story. That’s why I’ve got so many stories in my collection. You’ll love this life, too.’
I didn’t say anything, but I knew I wouldn’t stay with Eadie, not forever anyway.
One day, the river forked. We went left, and paddling became harder against a swift current.
‘Let’s leave the boat and walk along the bank,’ I suggested. ‘I can use my sticks.’
‘The bank won’t last,’ Eadie said. ‘The water is the only way.’
The landscape changed from open country to forest.
‘How far is Hub?’ I asked.
‘Not far.’
We reached a bend in the river and I saw beehives under the trees on the bank. They were like the ones we’d seen before, except these were in good condition. Eadie told me to stop. She pointed further along the bank to a spot where a tree grew way out over the water, its long grey leaves trailing in the current.
‘That’s a woe tree,’ she said. ‘The bark is good for sadness. Wait here. I won’t be long.’
She waded ashore, but she didn’t collect the tree bark. Instead, she walked quickly along the water’s edge and disappeared around the bend.
I decided to follow her. My leg was almost better, and with the help of the sticks I could easily swing myself along.
‘Come on,’ I said to the sleek. ‘I want to see where she’s going.’
The sleek and I hurried after Eadie. When we rounded the bend I saw a clearing near the riverbank. A very old lady with long white hair was standing in the doorway of a timber hut that was half covered in pumpkin vines. Her face was as round as the moon and her hands were all white. Next to the hut was a big oven with a domed roof and a chimney pipe out the top. My nose caught the smell of fresh bread. She was a baker, and her hands must have been covered in flour.
‘Eadie!’ the old lady cried. ‘I knew I would see you again!’
I crouched behind a rock and watched Eadie run towards her. They hugged each other.
‘Your coat has grown huge,’ the lady said. ‘And it smells worse than ever.’
Eadie laughed. ‘I’ve got more pockets now, Moss. I’ve got a pocket for everything.’
‘You haven’t changed.’ The old woman was suddenly worried. ‘But why are you here?’ she asked. ‘Where are you going? It’s dangerous for you to be out of the marshes.’
At that moment the sleek made his chirping sound. Both of them turned around and saw me.
‘I told you to stay put!’ Eadie yelled.
The old lady staggered and gasped. ‘Who does that child belong to?’
‘No one,’ said Eadie. ‘She’s a swamp waif.’
‘Come here, child.’ The woman held out her hand. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Peat.’
She looked at me with pity in her eyes, then she glared at Eadie.
‘Take her back.’
‘Take her back where?’ Eadie had switched languages: she now spoke in the western tongue. ‘To the marshes? To the wretched place where she came from? She was lost and I found her.’
‘Don’t do it!’ The old lady spoke in the same language. She clasped my hand.
Do what? I wondered.
I quickly looked at the ground and pretended I couldn’t understand, which was true in a way: I knew the words, but I had no idea what they were talking about.
‘She’s injured,’ the old woman continued. ‘Let her go, Eadie.’
‘I will. I’ll take the mud cast off tomorrow.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
They were silent for a moment, but there was an air of anger between them. Eadie turned to me.
‘This is my friend Mother Moss. She used to be a marsh auntie.’
‘If you take that child I’m no friend of yours,’ said Mother Moss. ‘Go and get your skiff, Eadie. You will stay with me tonight, and tomorrow you will go back to the marshes.’
Eadie huffed and turned on her heel.
‘Are you her apprentice?’ Mother Moss whispered as soon as she was out of sight.
I shrugged. ‘Eadie is taking me to Hub,
Mother Moss,’ I said.
‘And where will you go from there?’
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what answer to give.
‘Come here, little waif.’ Mother Moss put a floury arm around me. She smelled of dough and fresh bread. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked.
‘My sister Marlie and I lived at the Overhang, but I can never go back there.’
I wanted to tell Mother Moss everything that had happened to me since I’d run from Alban Bane, but I heard the splash of Eadie’s paddle and the reed-boat came around the river bend. There was a landing in front of Mother Moss’s place. Eadie tied the boat to it and came ashore.
Mother Moss gave us bread and soup and potatoes baked in the oven for supper, followed by honey buns served with cream.
‘Do you own a cow, Mother Moss?’ I asked.
‘I have Cara,’ she replied. ‘But I think she owns me, rather than the other way around. You can meet her tomorrow.’
We ate on a bench outside the hut, and when the meal was over I watched Mother Moss stoke the oven. She added more logs and the flames crackled.
‘By tomorrow it will be just the right temperature,’ she told me. ‘I leave the dough to rise overnight and I get up very early and cook the bread. Perhaps you would like to help me?’
‘She can’t,’ said Eadie. ‘We will be leaving for Hub tomorrow.’
Mother Moss gave me a blanket and rolled out a mat next to the oven. As soon as I lay down, she began speaking in the western tongue again.
‘Don’t go to Hub,’ she said. ‘Go back to the marshes and stay there.’
‘I don’t want to hide in the marshes forever, Moss. I want to be back in the world.’
‘Eadie, you once saved my life, and you know we will always be friends . . .’
‘And I will save many more. Moss, I have to do this.’
‘But the child . . .’
‘I know. I like the girl. She’s bold and clever. She can remember stories.’ Eadie raised her voice. ‘It’s not easy for me, but I have no choice. I made a bargain and I must keep it!’
‘You were so young when you made that deal, Eadie. You hardly knew what you were doing.’ Mother Moss stood up. She went inside the hut and didn’t come out.