by Livi Michael
‘Can we light a fire?’ I say suddenly.
Dog-woman listens with her head on one side. ‘Fire?’ she says, as if trying to remember.
‘You know,’ I say, eagerly now, ‘to cook the meat.’
Dog-woman's listening hard. I swear I see her ears prick up. Then she laughs, surprising us; a low, rasping laugh.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Cook meat – good,’ and laughs again.
I can't see what's so funny, but I'm glad she think's it's a good idea. I get up awkwardly and fumble for the box. I've tucked it into my trousers for safe-keeping. Dog-woman seizes it at once and sniffs suspiciously. I start to look for dry wood and all the dogs gather round growling.
‘I make fire,’ says Dog-woman. ‘You sit.’
Suits me. I'm worn out anyway.
She squats over a bundle of twigs, cups her long fingers and sparks the flint, grinning to herself. Her face lights up. It's the strangest face I've ever seen, before or since – craggy and wezilled, but covered in fine, downy hair. Her long yellow teeth are sharp as a hound's and I can see the reflection of the flame in her crooked eyes. It's enough to scunner a stone. I look away but Annie looks up.
‘Angel,’ she says, and I nearly laugh. Yes, very likely, I'm thinking.
One of the dogs keeps sniffing me suspiciously, glaring at me with baleful eyes. I glare back. I'd kick it if I felt any braver. How did we end up here? I'm thinking. And, What kind of a mess are we in now? And, I hope she's not going to use all that tinder.
Soon there's a small fire blazing. Dogs don't like it at first, but she croons to them and they gather round, lying down in the heat. I can see their long tongues and the movement of their ribs, panting.
Dog-woman drops chunks of rabbit into the fire. Overhead some branches have been pulled into a rough shelter, and one branch is strung across at the back with bits of dead animal hanging from it. She pulls strips of meat down and feeds the dogs, then pokes at the fire with a stick and the smell of burnt rabbit fills my nostrils. Seems like the dogs get to eat first. But then she cocks her head at us. ‘Come,’ she says.
I'm wary but Annie gets up right away, goes over to Dog-woman and sits by her side, so of course I have to follow. Never seen her do that before. One of the dogs growls but Dog-woman shushes it. I squat down on the earth, next to Annie.
Dog-woman rakes bits of burnt rabbit out of the flames and on to a stone to cool. There are lots of things I'd like to say, a lot of questions in my mind, but all I can think about is the meat. Dog-woman picks up a chunk of meat and offers it to Annie, holding it in front of her mouth. Annie holds back, then bites it, right from her fingers. Dog-woman bares her teeth, pleased, and holds out another chunk, and Annie takes it. Then she holds one out to me.
‘I'll get my own, thanks,’ I say and I reach over to the stone, grab a couple of pieces and retreat, stuffing them in my mouth.
It's not up to Travis's standards. Burnt on the outside and raw on the inside, but I'm starving so I chew it anyway. Dog-woman lifts up her head and drops a chunk inside and chews hard, her mouth snapping open and shut, the juices running down her chin. Then she feeds Annie again.
‘Good,’ she says, watching me. ‘Good?’
For answer I grab more meat. Soon there's no rabbit left and Dog-woman turns to the strips of meat hung up.
God only knows what they are, but I don't feel like refusing so I chew a bit when she hands it to me. Leathery, and a stronger taste than the rabbit. Soon I've had enough and I'm thinking, What happens next?
‘Sleep now,’ says Dog-woman. ‘Eat, sleep.’
Not likely, I think, eyeing the nearest hound. I want to know what Dog-woman's planning but I can't think how to ask. Some of the hounds are circling now, or going a little way into the trees to squat down, and the air fills with the smell of what they're doing. At least they don't do it here. I scrunch my nose up and look around.
‘Do you live here?’ I ask.
Dog-woman grunts. Pig-woman. But I'm thinking about Travis's story.
‘Have you always lived here?’
She turns her strange, wall-eyed gaze on me. There was a cross-eyed woman in the workhouse and everyone said she was a witch. I feel like making the sign of the evil eye.
‘Long time,’ she says. ‘Long time live in forest.’
I get the feeling that when she says long she means it – like thousands of years. ‘Well…’ I say, thinking hard, ‘where did you live before you came here? Where do you come from?’
Dog-woman doesn't answer but she looks as if she's thinking.
‘Do you come from around here?’
Dog-woman thinks harder. You can practically hear the wheels going round. Somewhere in those ash-coloured eyes there's a little flame of memory, if you could just poke it hard enough.
‘You must've lived with people sometime,’ I say.
Still no answer but the frown lines on her bony forehead deepen.
Then Annie says, ‘With angels,’ like that explains everything and Dog-woman sighs noisily, staring off through the trees.
‘Yes,’ she says.
Of course she would say that. Who wouldn't rather be an angel instead of living like a dog in a pile of sh*t? I wanted her to tell us herself.
Dog-woman pokes the fire moodily, till it flares up a bit, then goes on talking. ‘Long time live in forest,’ she says. ‘Long long time. Meet many people.’
‘You do?’ I say, surprised.
‘Many people get lost in forest,’ she says, turning that ashy gaze on me again. ‘Wander in – can't find their way. I find them. They stay with me.’
That's nice for them, I think, but I say nowt. Annie strokes Dog-woman's stringy arm and they look at one another as though they're talking without words.
I've had enough of this. Seems to me they're both daft.
‘Can you tell us how to get out of here?’ I say.
‘Out?’ says Dog-woman, as if she's never heard of such a thing.
‘Of the forest,’ I explain patiently. ‘You know – to the outside world.’
Dog-woman looks blank. She's good at that. For a moment I think she won't answer, but then she says, ‘Where?’
Good question. Just as I'm thinking of the answer Annie says, ‘We're lost.’
I nudge her sharply, but Dog-woman says, ‘Many wander into the forest, and few leave.’
Because you feed them to your dogs, I'm thinking, so I say, very firmly, ‘We're not lost. We're looking for the town we've got to get there before nightfall. So if you'd just show us the way, we'll be grateful.’
Dog-woman says nothing to this.
‘We're not lost,’ I repeat. ‘At least,’ I add darkly, ‘we weren't until your hounds chased us. So maybe you can show us the way again.’
Dog-woman turns her ashy eyes on me. One eye, that is. The other one's staring at her nose. ‘Dogs bring you here,’ she says flatly, as if that settles it.
I'm not happy about this. ‘Yeah, they brought us here, and now we'd like to go again,’ I say, thrusting my chin forward.
Dog-woman looks cunning. ‘Road takes you to town,’ she says. ‘Big road, people come and go all the time. Not go into forest. People come into forest to hide.’
She squints at me and I squint back. Perhaps she's not one egg short of a basket after all.
‘We are hiding,’ Annie says, and if it wouldn't look too obvious I'd kick her, but Dog-woman doesn't seem to hear.
‘To hide – or to find something,’ she says to herself, poking at the fire. Then she looks at me again. ‘What looking for?’
Now there are lots of answers I could give to this. ‘Work’, I could say, or even ‘Travis’, but somehow they all stick in my throat and I can't think of a thing to say, so I say nothing. Feels like Dog-woman's good eye is boring straight into me, but Annie says, ‘Mother.’
There it is – she's said it. The thing I knew she was thinking all the time. It hangs in the air between us and all I can do is look sullen. But Dog-wom
an nods.
‘People come to forest,’ she says, still talking to herself. ‘Men and women, children too – look for shelter, look for food. For safe place,’ she says, staring into the fire. ‘Long, long ago a woman came. Broken heart. Needed mending. She left her children in a bad place, over the hill.’ She nods outwards and suddenly I'm listening hard, even my skin is listening, because I know she means the workhouse. I don't want to listen but I can't help it.
‘Two children,’ Dog-woman says. ‘Boy and girl. Girl only a baby. It was winter like this – snow thick, soft. She had nowhere to go.’
Annie is clutching her beads and Dog-woman's arm, craning forward to see her face. ‘What did she look like?’ she whispers.
Dog-woman touches Annie's face with a bony finger. ‘Like you,’ she says.
I leap up suddenly, scattering the twigs from the fire. ‘I don't believe you!’ I shout, and several dogs spring up, barking and growling, but I don't care. ‘Don't tell your lies to us!’
Dog-woman hardly moves. She's still touching Annie's face, Annie's staring into hers.
‘El-len,’ she says, without looking up. ‘El-len.’
I can feel my blood running thick and cold, my tongue stuck up in my mouth. Because that was our mother's name – that much I know. I remember her telling the master of the workhouse, and him writing it down in his book. Joseph and Ann Sowerby, children of Ellen Sowerby, widow.
‘I don't believe you,' I mutter again. It's all I can manage to say. But Annie's face is shining. She's staring speechlessly up at Dog-woman, and this makes me mad all over again.
‘Well, so what?’ I say loudly, setting the dogs off barking. I lower my voice. ‘So what if you did see her? That was years ago. How's that going to help us now? She left us years ago and she never came back for us – never!’
‘She not want to leave you,’ Dog-woman says, and I feel a pain in my heart that makes me even angrier. If she didn't have the dogs with her I swear I'd lay into her there and then. As it is all I can manage to say is, ‘But she did,’ and glare at Dog-woman's ugly face.
Dog-woman looks back at me for a long moment, then turns back to Annie. ‘Your mother go to town, look for work.’
The town, I think. I've always wanted to go there.
‘She say she go back for you when she can.’
I snort loudly. ‘Well, she's taking her time.’
‘She come back if she could.’
Dog-woman says this very definitely and I glare at her. What would she know? And I feel like saying something bad, the worst thought that's in me, so I say, ‘She's probably dead then.’
‘No,’ says Annie, very definitely.
Well, that's that then. I expel my breath noisily and kick the nearest tree, wishing it was Annie, or her hound-like friend.
‘All right then,’ I say. ‘Now what? You've told us this – now what are we supposed to do?’
‘What do you want?’ Dog-woman says, and both she and Annie are staring at me with their eyes all lit up by the fire, and it's like all my words are jammed in my throat.
Dog-woman stands and her hounds get up as well. ‘You rest now. Sleep,’ she says.
I find my voice at last. ‘But we're supposed to be in town by tonight.’
‘Night now,’ Dog-woman says.
I look up at the overhanging branches. How can she tell?
‘Sleep now,’ she says.
I don't like the thought of sleeping here, with some half-human woman and her stinking hounds, but it doesn't look like there's a choice. I rub my fingers across my forehead. ‘But how will we get out of the forest?’
‘Sleep now,’ Dog-woman says, and more and more of her hounds gather round. ‘In the morning I take. I take your mother, I take you.’
All the dogs are surrounding her now, panting up at her with their long tongues. I look at her suspiciously. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I hunt,’ she says. ‘You sleep.’
Just like that, I'm thinking. Yet the thought that she won't be here makes me feel better. She's leaving us alone. We could run off. But we don't know the way, and it's night, and we're dog-tired, so to speak. Besides, there's nowhere to run to that she couldn't find us.
No choice then. No choice about being left at the workhouse, or sent to the farm. No choice about having to trust Travis, or to believe this creature, who's sniffing the air, making strange dog-like noises in her throat, shaking herself like a dog. And the dogs bark back at her, wagging their shaggy tails so hard that even the branches are shaking with them. Then she crouches, tense as a bow, and you can feel the dogs tighten into a pack, so solid, they might be one beast. Then with a single bound she's off, and they're all off after her, leaping through the forest that's thicker than night.
I look at Annie and she looks at me. But when she sees the expression on my face the light in her eyes dies down. She settles herself near the fire and turns away from me, lying on a heap of leaves facing the flames. It's the best spot.
‘Move over, can't you?’ I say.
Nothing.
‘Come on – shift,’ I say, kicking her.
‘No.’
‘Move your a*se.’
‘You!’
‘No, you.’
‘You.’
We glare at one another. It's not like Annie to talk back. Her chin's stuck up and her face all shut up like a box, and I can see she's not going to back down. About moving, about Dog-woman, about anything. She turns over on the leaves with a sigh that means she's not going to talk.
‘You'll talk to Dog-face,’ I say. ‘You'll chat away to her all right – “O you must remember when you were an angel… Where do you keep your wings?… I didn't know they had such beautiful angels in heaven.” No wonder the shepherds near died of fright. You'll talk to her all right but now you clam up. Eh?’
Annie says nothing to this so I say nothing either, though I'm thinking plenty. I lie down on the other side of the fire from Annie, not looking at her because I'm still mad, and I watch the firelight dancing over the leaves and the forest yawning beyond, thoughts of what's happened and what's been said chasing themselves round and round in my brain, but no answers coming, no ideas. I just lie next to Annie, thinking hard, doing nothing.
No choice.
7
Pack
I'm woken up by a hound licking at my face, breathing all over me with its stinking dog breath.
Disgusting.
I scramble up sharpish, rubbing my eyes.
Dog-breath shifts position and starts licking my hands, then my ears.
‘Clear off!’ I tell it. ‘I'm not your breakfast.’
My head's aching and I feel stiff and bruised. But I can smell food. Dog-woman's lit the fire again and is sitting a little way off, chewing something that's still got fur. There's blood on her chin and bits of meat and gristle caught in the hairs on her face.
Lovely.
Most of the dogs are lying around, worrying at chunks of meat between their paws. My friend with the bad breath's still gazing at me hopefully. And Annie…
‘Where's Annie?’ I say very sharp, and when Dog-woman doesn't reply I say, ‘Eh, you, where's Annie?’
Dog-woman looks at me. Her eyes are yellowish in the green light. ‘Fetch water,’ she says.
I'm not happy. ‘But where is she?’ I say, getting up stiffly.
‘Here,’ says Annie, coming through the trees with her stumpy walk. She's carrying a misshapen wooden bowl with water sloshing over the sides. She brings it over to me and I slurp at it noisily, like a hound. Then she takes it to Dog-woman who nearly tips it over, sloshing it all down her front, and then Dog-woman puts what's left down for the hounds who all gather round it at once, nudging one another out of the way.
Then Dog-woman brings us the carcass of whatever it is she's been chewing. ‘Eat,’ she says.
I can't even tell what it once was. I point at the fire. ‘Cook,’ I say. I sound like Dog-woman. Soon I'll start to look like her.
She gives me a look, as though I've amused her, but starts tearing off chunks and flinging them on to the fire where they crackle and curl. She hands me a stick with a pointed end and me and Annie take turns at spearing the chunks of meat, then eating them hot.
I start to feel better. New day, new hope, as they say. There's a ray of white light coming through the trees and a breeze lifting the branches. My head starts to clear. Dog-woman means us no harm or she'd have done it by now. Chances are she'll show us out of the forest, then we'll be on our own again, heading for the town. We'll find work, and a place to stay, and Annie might forget the daft idea of chasing our mother.
Course, pigs might fly.
I start on the last chunk of meat, wipe my chin and look up to see the dog that licked me awake staring at me and wagging his tail.
‘Here, boy,’ I say, holding it out to him, and he eats it out of my hands, his teeth just tickling my fingers. I laugh.
‘What's his name?’ I ask.
Dog-woman's tearing off chunks for the others from some other animal.
‘No name,’ she says, without looking up.
‘What – none of them?’ I say, looking round. ‘What do you call them?’
‘Names for people, not dogs,’ she says, twisting the meat. The movement of her hands reminds me of Travis. I look at her curiously.
‘What about your name?’ I say.
Dog-woman doesn't answer at first, then she says, ‘No name,’ under her breath.
I look at Annie, but Annie's poking the fire and her hair's hanging over her face.
‘You must have had a name once,’ I say, but Dog-woman doesn't answer.
Hard to imagine having no name. What kind of life has she lived, with no one giving her a name? Still, I'll say this for her – she seems at home here in the forest, like Travis did on the road. Like we're not.
I get up, wiping my hands on my skins. ‘Will you show us out of the forest now?’ I say.
So that's how we come to be running with the pack.
At first I don't like it. Dog-woman sets off at a cracking pace and it's hard to keep up with all the dogs milling around. Hard enough not to fall over tree stumps without falling over dogs as well. I'm desperate not to be left behind, though, and I jog on until my lungs are near bursting point. I want to tell her to stop, but she's too far ahead and I've no voice left.