by Meg McKinlay
In the middle of this, scoring Kari’s lower back near her right hip, was a crosshatch of translucent marks, the skin there so white it looked as if it had been polished. Though Kari’s had only been a small adjustment, she would carry these scars always. You didn’t cut into flesh – and bone – without leaving something behind.
As if in sympathy, Jena felt a sudden white-hot strobing in her own back – high up, between her shoulderblades. Though she had never been adjusted, she was not without her own scars.
Something like a sob choked from Kari’s throat. “It was green, Jena.”
“I know.”
“Do you think it’s her? It can’t be, can it?”
Jena knew Kari wasn’t really seeking an answer. Green smoke meant one thing only. It meant a man stumbling through the dusty streets, sentences barely formed, stammering alarm. A Mother hurrying from the Stores with a slim-necked bottle in her hand. To a house where a woman bit hard upon her lip, setting herself against whatever was to come. It meant willow-wort bubbling on the stove. The sleeves of a Mother’s cloak flapping as she fanned the flames. Anxious glances down the hall.
Boiled to its essence, willow-wort was the strongest painkiller they had. At its most potent when freshly distilled, it was used mostly as a birthing tonic. In addition to boiling it, the Mothers would place some directly upon the fire so it would infuse the very air around them. It was this that gave the smoke its greenish hue. It was this that made Jena’s heart catch in her throat.
“But she’s only six moons. It’s too early.”
Jena would have reached a hand to Kari if it would not have risked unbalancing them both. She understood only too well the fear that gripped her.
Early was good in a certain way of looking, if the baby were a daughter, which was of course what they hoped. Early meant small. It meant docile and sleepy, a baby who was content to give herself to the long days of stillness and compression that were to come. Who might one day follow her sisters into the network of narrow tunnels that was their birthright.
It meant all of that, if the child survived. But there was such a thin veil between early and too early. Six moons was on the very edge of things. A six-moon baby might hover between this world and the next, take a single rattling breath and slip quietly away.
If things went badly, it might take its mama too. People said smaller babies were easier on the mamas and that seemed to be true when they were eight moons or nine. But when a baby was born so early it was as if the mama’s body was caught too much by surprise, everything coming hard and fast and wrong. An early daughter could be the hope of the future but it could also be the death of it.
As quickly as the thought fluttered across her mind, Jena batted it away. “Nearly there.”
This time it was almost true. They had entered the last sweeping bend before the path came out of the forest and into the flat sameness of the fields. The curve hauled them along its smooth arc like the weight on a pendulum. The silver flash of the spring. The final stand of trees, the forest thinning in carefully managed patches where men had been felling for the winter stores. Into the sun as they reached the fields with their patchwork of crops aligned in neat rows – what little they were able to grow in the windows of light the mountain allowed them. Potatoes. Carrots. Beets. All of it ready for the Wintering harvest.
The village, the streets that radiated from the Square like the spokes on a wheel.
The next corner and the next. Left. Right. Towards the dark arch of the mountain at the village’s far perimeter. Down the narrow laneway that led to the row of houses that sat in the lee of the mountain, in shadow.
East, to Kari’s house.
Our house, Jena corrected herself. Home.
Strange how her thoughts went back to the old place in unguarded moments, the years between unstitching themselves like a loose-knit garment.
She shook her head. Those were the years that had mattered. The years that had made her.
She had pulled ahead without meaning to and now she shortened her stride, letting Kari draw alongside. They were so close now. Soon it would be over. A new life would be held aloft or it wouldn’t. In the days to come, the Mothers might call them to a burial, perhaps two. It was the way of things; that was all. No reason, then, for this mad headlong dash, this urgent scramble homewards.
Unless it was to say goodbye. If there was nothing to be done, that at least was something.
The last corner now. The final turn.
They took it together and then stopped.
FOUR
The street teemed with people. At the far end, the house was almost completely obscured behind the crowd. The village had gathered the way it might for a handful of occasions. A feast. A birth. A funeral.
Kari gripped Jena’s arm, fingernails etching half-moons into her skin.
There was an acrid smell in the air, unmistakable. But the smoke itself was hard to make out. It had been clearer from the fields. And clearest of all from the slope, at the greatest of distances. It was possible, after all, to be too close to a thing. By standing in the centre of it, to make it invisible.
Kari’s hand tightened. The crowd parted, peeling back to let them pass. Familiar faces swam in and out of focus – Asha’s older sister, Erin, who worked in the fields, her face red and prickled with sweat; Calla’s brother, Ralf, his woodcutting arms thick with knobbled muscle. Behind him, a familiar dark head bobbed up and down. It was Luka, his slight frame almost comical alongside the older boy’s. He joggled on his toes, craning to see. His eyes locked briefly on Jena’s and an instant was all she needed to read everything written there. Hope. Fear.
She kept moving. Around them, voices murmured. A daughter is coming. It will be a day. If the rock allows it.
A small figure stepped before them, halting their passage. Mother Vera’s eyes contracted to fine points. “Child, do you have a harvest?”
“Yes,” Jena said quickly. “We–”
“Where is it?”
Jena’s hand went instinctively to her front. Usually, she gathered the pouches from the others and hung them across her chest from the rope, the way a hunter might wear the pelts of his quarry. There was a sharp stab of panic before she remembered.
“I didn’t think.” She gestured at the house. “We saw the smoke. I …”
Vera pursed her lips briefly. “All right.” Her eyes dropped to Jena’s belt, appraising. “Seven times what you carry?”
“More or less.”
“A good harvest, then. Thanks be.” She turned towards the house. “And a new daughter. It will be a day.”
“If the rock allows it.” Jena’s response came easily, without thought.
“Just so.” Vera stepped aside to let them pass.
The crowd funnelled them forwards. Ahead, the house squatted low, waiting. Behind it, the mountain curved, tall and dark. All of it was cast into sharp relief, like something seen for the first time. It was as if the world had narrowed to this alone.
The yard now, the stubby timbers of the verandah. The rough sod and thatching on the roof; the ragged hide stretched across the shuttered windows. Jena let Kari draw her along, her own hands leaden with the numbness of a dream. But when they reached the doorway, she stopped.
“Jena?”
Her eyes met Kari’s. She gave a small shake of her head. For so long, this had been the only home she knew. But it was not hers today, not for this.
After a long beat, Kari nodded. She stepped through the doorway and was gone, swallowed by the shadows inside.
The door swung closed behind her but Jena didn’t need to see to know what was in there. The darkened hall, the low-roofed room at the end, the Mothers gathered, waiting, urging.
It had been ten years since her own long walk down the corridor.
But not this one, she reminded herself. Her gaze flicked to the space where her house had been. It was a relief now it was gone, now it no longer stood there like a decaying skeleton, its timbers half-stri
pped like flesh hanging from bones. It made it easier to forget, to let the past be the past. To let her old family fall away behind her, as she knew they must.
“It’s good you came.”
Jena turned to see Renae’s mama, her hair flour-flecked and tangled from the bakery. She had never been a tunneller; her body was tall and thickset, her limbs heavy. The arm that gripped Jena’s shoulder was solid and muscled from kneading dough.
“It will be all right, child.”
At the woman’s touch, something lurched inside Jena. The crowd was so loud, the crisp autumn air suddenly stuffy and close. The world became a wall of bodies pressing towards the house, towards her. Something had shifted; a kind of pressure was building, a moment stretched hard against its breaking point.
“I’m sorry. I …”
She shrugged the arm roughly away, then placed a hand on the doorknob and pushed against it. She would wait just inside, close the door tight behind her.
But as she stepped into the house, her knees buckled. A thick smell fugged the air in the hall, sickly sweet. She felt suddenly dizzy, as if something deep within her had come loose. The smell was inside her, clogging her nostrils, stoppering her throat. Her vision blurred, making the figures down the hall ripple and sway. A familiar face turned towards her, eyes wide with alarm.
And now the walls were a tunnel around her, a narrow band of dark, collapsing and dwindling to a single fine point. Carrying her down.
Jena is four, perhaps five.
They have told her to run and so she is running.
She hurtles through the streets, not knowing why but everything in her alive with the thrill of it. Because she is special, unwrapped early. The Mothers did not come for the other girls, not even Kari who lay right beside her.
There was one pair of hands only, reaching down into the bed, lifting her out. Turning and unwinding until the last of her wrappings had fallen away and she was free.
Straight home, the Mother said. Go, child.
When she rounds the corner, the street is full of people, their faces shining. When they see her, they step aside.
You have a sister, someone says and Jena thinks, Oh. So that’s what it is.
She had known there was a sister coming. A baby, at least. Mama said it was a daughter but the Mothers said you can never be sure. It doesn’t do to wish too hard. Only to wait and hope.
It is the mountain that will decide.
In this, as in all things.
The Mothers have taught Jena the words and they roll smoothly from her tongue.
But it is strange that it is today. Mama’s belly is big – so big it makes Jena laugh – but Papa says it isn’t time yet, that the baby won’t come until the first snow is high on the mountain.
Still, when Jena reaches the house, there she is, white and tiny, sneaking her birthday in early. A Mother stands on the doorstep, holding her up, smiling.
Jena wants to hold her too. She reaches for her and says, Please, because it is her sister and she has been waiting.
But the Mother shakes her head. She says, Go, child, and points down the hall.
Mama.
She looks pale and tired but Jena knows that’s how mamas are when a baby comes. They are weak for a while and have to stay in bed. The papas make soup and you tell them it’s delicious even though it tastes like water. Then each day the mamas are a little better until before you know it they are up again, singing and smiling and taking the pot back, saying, Here, let me.
Jena knows this because Loren told her. Her mama has already had two babies after Loren, but they are both brothers. Loren will be jealous of Jena’s tiny new sister.
Mama. Jena finds herself whispering because the room is so quiet. There is Papa and two Mothers and a strange kind of heaviness.
Jena. Mama’s voice is soft but that is okay because that’s what mamas do sometimes. They come in the night when you wake up sad or frightened or sick. They speak gently and sing you back down into dreaming.
There is something sweet on Mama’s breath and Jena’s nose wrinkles. Sweet is good – it means some wickerberry for the porridge or honey for the bread. But this is neither of those things; this is on Mama and in the air around them. It is the smell of a birthing, she supposes. Or of a baby.
The word echoes in her mind, making her smile.
She will hold the baby later. She will ask Papa and he will let her. Even if it is only for a minute, before the Mothers take her to the Centre. She will lower her face and breathe her in, the sweet, new smell of her.
Look after your sister, Mama says now, and she will.
Mama slips a hand from the bedclothes and reaches for Jena.
Oh. Her hand is damp beneath Jena’s fingers. It is hot and cold all at once.
Mama?
The bedcover shifts, falls away.
There is a blanket underneath and a white sheet. Only it is not white because something is blooming across it like a strange flower – a stain of red spreading towards the edges of the bed.
Mama? Jena says again, her small voice unsteady.
Fingers flutter in her hand. It’s all right.
But it isn’t.
Later, they come for Mama. There is a special place, Papa says, where the Mothers will get her ready to go in the ground. Soon they will put her there. And Jena will go with Papa, with the village, to say goodbye.
She will remember then, Jena thinks – the fluttering fingers, the swift red flower. But she will not cry.
Mama has had a good leaving, she tells herself. She has given us a daughter, a sister.
It is a day. She repeats the words over and over. The Mothers have said so, and it must surely be. The rock has allowed it.
She will not cry. She will set her mouth in a line and take the stone from Berta’s trembling hands. She will kneel and place it soft upon the quiet earth, and she will say goodbye.
For that is what a girl does when her mama goes.
FIVE
“Stand up, child.”
There were arms under Jena, lifting, insistent, a fog of warm breath on her neck. The voice was unmistakable.
“Mother Berta.” She set a hand against the wall, willing strength into her legs. “I–”
“You’re all right.”
Was it a question or a command? Jena turned to face her.
“You’re all right,” Berta repeated, and it was a statement now, a matter-of-fact quality to it that allowed for no other possibility. Her voice was hard-edged but there was kindness in it too. Jena had spent enough time with her over the years to hear it.
“Were you dizzy? Kari said you ran back.”
Jena hesitated. They had run and she was dizzy; that much was true. But she was not sure the two things were connected.
The smell lingered in the air, though it seemed to have eased. Perhaps it was something else on the fire – a medicinal herb or root used for the birthing – its strength ebbing and flowing with the force of the flames?
Willow-wort for pain? Calumb for healing? She called up the only names she could think of. But she was a tunneller, not a healer. It could be either of those or one of a hundred other things whose names she would never have reason to know. Whatever it was, it had reached back across the years, dragging her with it. She felt shaky still, as if the ground beneath her might shift without warning.
She turned to Berta. “That smell …?”
Berta looked sharply at her. Then her expression softened and she placed a hand on Jena’s arm. “You need air. Come.”
As she steered Jena outside, there was a flurry behind them. One of the younger Mothers hurried from the kitchen, steam rising from a bowl in her hands. She disappeared into the bedroom at the end of the hall.
Another question formed on Jena’s lips. “Do you know anything? Is she …?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s so early. She–”
“I know, child.” The reply was firm but gentle. “But we must trust.”
Berta went to place a hand on Jena’s shoulder but then let it fall back, as though the effort of reaching were almost too much for her. Berta had always been small and seemed to have become more so lately, as if a weight were settling upon her with the passing of the years. She had the birdlike frailty common to all who had tunnelled – her back hunched, her shoulders stooped. Wiry greying hair was pulled back around her weathered face into a tight bun. There was something filmy about her eyes, like they had slipped behind a haze of cloud. But Jena knew there was little they didn’t see.
They were outside now and Berta closed the door with a click. A sigh rippled about them. The crowd had been waiting, Jena realised, for someone else to come through that door. They had been waiting for news.
“Mother Berta?” a voice called. Berta held up a hand.
The yard was full of people but they had stopped at the line of the verandah. Jena was grateful for it meant there was space – and air – around her. Then it came – somehow close and distant all at once – the faintest of cries, slicing the air like a fine-edged blade. A second followed almost immediately, this one stronger than the first.
The crowd fell silent. It was as if the village shared a single breath. Held it, waiting. Footsteps padded down the hall – no haste in their step, each footfall precisely measured, just so.
Jena moved aside as the door opened. Leathery arms grasped a tiny, naked bundle. Mother Elena stepped onto the verandah and the crowd drew back, all eyes fixed on the child.
Alive. That was the first thing.
A daughter. That was the second.
They knew this without being told, without searching the newborn’s features for some telltale sign. If the child had been a boy, the Mothers would have emerged empty-handed. They would have filed quietly from the house, leaving the family to their disappointment.
A boy was simply another mouth to feed, another body to keep warm through the winter. A boy might wield an axe or trap a bird. He might mend a roof or skin a rabbit.
Such things were useful; there was no denying it. But a daughter? A daughter could do those too, and much more besides.