Magic – Chris Collins

To Feed My Woodland Bones

[A Changeling’s Tale] by Kate Garrett – Poetry Review

What makes this collection so captivating is its duality. There is the magical element; the image of the changeling: unwanted, misplaced, caught between worlds and doing its best to manage. Looking at each poem with this mirror reflects this surreal and fascinating character, the ‘merry wanderer of the night’ which so captures the imagination. But this is overlaid with the autobiographical mirror, stories of abuse and survival are transposed over the top of the mythical and both reflect each other. Reality and magic in this collection are woven together, like two eyes you can swim in, both different, both true.

A magical and unreal world is created as a backdrop for every real and traumatic moment. This leaves the reader in a state of suspense, always on the edge of horror, but soothed and kept at arms’ length by a childlike mystery. The poems ‘This Mortal Coil,’ ‘Changeling,’ and ‘An elf turns inside out for the dragon’ speak of very real human loss, isolation and despair. In the first, voice is given to the grief that ‘makes your solid shape unbearable;’ poignantly encapsulating that familiar sensation of wanting to give up; lie down and die when we are bereft. The speaker in ‘Changeling’ is ignored and alternately unliked and unloved by her mother, contrasted with the instinctive nurturing of the mare to her foal. This mother figure ripens eventually to the titular dragon picking ‘drive-thru-visit hoards’ from her teeth with the speaker’s ‘toothpick legs’ – the lair is set and strewn with bones which solidify into the starving ‘skeleton’ of this poem.

But between horrors, and even within them, the world beautifully glimmers. A woodland garden is incanted into being with purple valerium, playful duelling spiders, midnight moon temples, tentacle-waves and razor clams, will o’ the wisp and honey rain. The imagery enchants and weaves magic into the every-day, the changeling from faery walks into the human world trailing glowing beams of spells. The senses are drenched, and we drift away into this bewitching folk land. Garrett decorates it and plays dress-up with her metaphors; ‘an elf summons/ a storm/ and wears her windblown/ water evening gown’ and harvests ‘the sparkle off a slug’s back’ for ‘gemstones.’

And for me, it is this slug sparkle that stands as a major image of this collection – it is a work of transformation. And much of that transformation is just about how you look at things. These poems are of the bravery and strength of surviving – as a changeling exiled from the otherworld or as a human battered in, and exiled from, our own. The changeling is not only exchanged but changes; transformation is the essence of these poems. Darkness is transformed to swirling stars, horror to magic, trauma to birth; power and strength are seized and the elf pixie actively summons storms and songs and makes new life. The recurring motif of the crescent moon in the final poem, the woman’s symbol of growth, birth-magic and love represents the survival and change. The collection culminates with a tumbling prose paragraph of heady, breathless, hardly-daring-to-believe happiness in love, in children, in acceptance of the past and making change for the claimed future. This is the magic we can all strive for and Garrett leaves us this beautifully hopeful image of renewal. Look at the slug and see the finger gemstones.

I have no idea if my highfalutin interpretation is what the poet meant at all. Any active assertions of what these poems ‘are’ or are ‘about’ are my own thoughts, what I loved about them, and what I took from them to keep for myself. This will always be influenced by my own context.

But I loved them.

Kate Garrett’s chapbook is published by Animal Heart Press.

Crow Mother

For aunties and surrogates everywhere.

And for Reuben

Everyone and no one understands the mystery of birth. The superlative creation that any woman can do, if she wants to. Pouring living things out of her, slimy things that wriggle and scream – unlike the dry dead promises of men.

Something animal and entirely Godly. The screams and grunts a woman makes as she digs into a deep and primal place to bring forth her child are more abandoned than any that animal musters. Like dancing; primal and poetic – birthing is too. The wild circles of cries painted in the air – blended whorls of relief, pain, wonder.

This is not a Christmas story.

But a child was born.

*****

He came into the world and blinked – huge black myopic eyes. They tell me all babies are glass blue-eyed when they’re born.

He was not.

His cave-black eyes still reflected the dark safe womb and he stared down at the shadowed table – for comfort. The world is so cold, so loud, so hard. Everything hurts. His skin is as soft as insides and instead we show him edges. Horrified, he screams his way into the world and only those soft dark things – flesh, crevices, darkness comfort him against a world so sharp, so bright and green it hurts.

Mother crow heard him cry. All crows are mothers and aunts and when they hear a baby cry their breasts tug, their lower parts hurt, and it wells together to engender their desperate wailing caw.

No crow can hear a child cry without pouring out her own wail in sympathy.

*****

The little child was loved, so loved, and he was dressed in white and laid in his cradle in the garden in the shade of a great eucalyptus tree. The breeze stirred the leaves to peek through and whispered ‘oh! What a lovely child!’ And the tree jealously wrapped round its trailing tresses so it could keep the lovely child to itself. The bees loved the flowers then followed the budding glow of the child and said to each other ‘he izzz lovely’ and the flowers craned their necks to look at him. Birds flitted down to sing him lullabies.

The child dimly smelled milk and honey. Colours were bright and smudgy. In the glow, he felt better – much better. The sun was warm and soft on his little cheeks; his blankets were soft and edgeless and this new sensation of the gentle breeze and birdsong was lovely to his sightless eyes.

The bees and the trees and the craning clematis and all the flowers agreed he was beautiful, beautiful and they loved him deeply.

And in the garden, under the apple tree, the fairies felt it. They heard the talk of the flowers and the bees and trees and the birds and resolved to take this beautiful baby for their own.

*****

A woman – animal – primal – civilized – creator – walks into her garden with a book and milk; milk for her child.

The cradle is empty.

Her wail lifts and pierces the grey sky.

*****

In fairy land, the changeling child is doted on and loved. Fairies bring him milk and honey and tickle his toes. They sing to him. He is rocked in a cradle woven with dog roses and willowherb and the hawthorn fragrance soothes him on the bank by the stream. The bee sucks at the cowslip and the baby sleeps.

Are fairies wicked? Are they parts of nature? Is the bee wicked for taking the pollen from the rose? We devise romances – she is the go-between, passing love notes between rose and apple blossom until soaked in warm sun and scent, they meld together. Maybe this is like what fairies do.

Or maybe if you are left alone too long, they steal babies away to fairy land out of jealousy – like Oberon jealous of Titania’s changeling boy – and refuse to give them back.

*****

The little child had serious eyes. He awoke to find he was surrounded by ladybirds, moths and newts. He cast his dark eyes down because he remembered his milk and scented mother and she wasn’t there. Then with a crinkling of his smooth brow, like silk crumpled, he closed his eyes on flower and fairy, opened his mouth and cried.

Mother crow, black huge mother, felt his cry pierce her heart and opened her beak to wail.

Mother crow sobbed and wept at the despair of the little child. She hopped down, heavy from her high branch and crept silver-eyed towards him. She laid down her head on his tiny chest to hear him cry and nestled there, burrowed there, with her eyes closed while crystal tears moistened his cheeks and fists. She put her head on his aching heart and felt it – took it –as she nudged in.

And her own heart broke.

Hearing the fading suspiration of her last cry, the other crows flocked down from their high branches, desperate for their sister who had died for the sadness of a human baby. They set up their wail in chorus till the echo lanced the fairies and the people above fairyland, and together the crows carried the baby boy home to his mother.

Mother crow – who loves children so much she keens in despairing fellow feeling when she hears a baby cry – was carried home with the changeling child and brought out of fairy land; back to the garden. Mother crow laid open eyed and dead upon his breast, but he slept; comforted, with his tiny arm around her wing.

Mother came out into the garden and rejoiced in the sunlight to find her beautiful child restored.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

‘Sly, crafty old magpie,’ grandma said. She smiled and we watched wide eyed as she smiled her hundred-times grin; each crease in her face beaming another curve; sideways, upside down.

‘They steal you know.’ We watched her reach up to the tufts of twigs in the apple tree, blinded by the sun. We ducked from it as she strained to the glints.

‘Shiny things.’

The chitter of the monochrome magpies heightened as she pulled out tarnished silver and broken pieces of necklaces and handed them to our wide-eyed, wide hands.

‘Five for silver, six for gold. Do you know that on the other side of the earth, magpies don’t chatter, but flute? And they don’t steal, they swoop down and attack your eyes.’

We flinched. Grandma’s stories. Silver, gold, secrets, violence. Keeps you meek and the world magic, keeps you safe, keeps you fed your supper with no complaints, and in bed by eight.

Grandma winked at us and we stepped back as the bickering chutter of magpies scattered in a shimmer of eye aching blue and ebony.

‘Time for tea girls.’

* * * *

Over our bread and jam, grandma taught us the full rhyme. We ran upstairs after supper to the attic to sit cross legged on the floor and face each other. We were captivated by these thoughts of silver and gold and the secret lives of magpies.

‘So when you see two magpies, it’s good luck?’

‘Yes, because they’re married.’

‘What do you think a magpie wedding is like?’

We are momentarily lost, thinking about this.

‘Well I think they have to bring silver and gold.’

‘What sort? In sort of thread and material? Or piles of coins? Or goblets?’

We ponder again.

‘Coins have got to be hard for magpies to carry around. Maybe silks they can tie to their ankles like streaming ribbons. And thin pendants they can carry in their beaks. But what about the bad luck?’

‘Well, if one is alone, it means his wife has died.’

‘Or her husband.’

‘But why is it bad luck for three for a girl?’

This is troubling. Are we bad luck too; double bad luck? Were we not supposed to be born? We stare at each other seeking comfort in the endlessly renewing fascination of our matching faces. We are more accustomed to each other’s face than our own.

‘Maybe it’s more simple. It’s just a married pair, plus one.’

We look at the floor, doubtful, and pick at our skirt hems in thought. Then a chitter by the window disturbs us and we skip up to lean out of the sash from grandma’s attic and watch the magpies going to bed.

* * * *

Grandma combs our hair into bunches which we hate, and we go out into the lane. We skip along holding hands, reciting ‘one for sorrow, two for joy.’ We stop every time we see magpies to count them and whenever we see a solitary one in its white waistcoat and shiny black jacket, we remember to shout, ‘good morning Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?’ We alternate this with ‘Mrs’ and ‘husband,’ to make sure we’re fair.

A man stops to watch us throwing bread to the magpies.

‘They could be your witch familiars!’ he laughs, while grandma frowns. ‘Those two look the same. Just like you two.’

We don’t really know what a familiar is, but we like the sound of it.

Next door had a cat. It used to chase the magpies and we laughed to see ten of them see it off; ‘what’s ten magpies grandma?’ ‘ten for a surprise!’ and the cat slunk off to sulk. Grandma told us other versions and used to chase us when we saw ‘eight for a kiss!’ but it always ended up with the devil somehow.

‘Are magpies evil?’ we ask each other. We’re not sure.

‘But it’s always two for joy.’ We are calmed. Whether three is for a girl or a funeral, the two of us are always for good luck.

* * * *

We go into the forest at night. We planned it for weeks like a midnight feast, like a treasure hunt. We would find the home of the magpies and bring back everything they stole. We imagined reuniting tearful princesses with their jewels, and we would be heroes and be rewarded. It felt a bit like a betrayal of the magpies, but maybe we never thought we’d really steal their treasure. We just wanted to see it, shining and heaped up with the magpies dancing round it.

We went into the forest at night.

We went into the forest.

We were afraid in the dark, but we held hands and took turns being the bravest. We reminded ourselves that there are no bears and wolves; those mindless savages that can’t be reasoned with or be moved by two little girls in the woods. We were not lost, we marked two notches (two for joy) in a tree every time we changed direction.

Into the forest.

The moon is half full exactly and we can see the ghostly outline of its shadowed half. Black and white, a bit like a magpie. It’s a cool night, but not as cold as winter and we have our jumpers on. The forest is thick and shudders around us, leaves whisper and we tighten hands. We follow a crook in the path into a clearing.

And here is the Magpie King and all his court, resplendent in black and white, the green blue shimmers of their feathered coats gleam in the light from a vast pile of silver and gold heaped before him, and all the other magpies skip and flap around. The sound is deafening and the movement of black and white, white and black dizzying until all colour and shapes break down and become each other, identical twins, and we stop pretending to be brave now. The Magpie Court has us in its beak.

When the Magpie King steps forward, we see his silver chain of office resting on his white breast and there are gold ribbons streaming from his legs. Behind is his throne in giddy opal and amethyst and there are pillars framing it in emerald and gold, like the moon floating in the forest. When he speaks, it is the corvid call and chatter.

‘What two little girls dare to leave their beds in the middle of the night to wander my forest?’

We look at each other. No heroic plans of returning treasure now. We speak up.

‘We wanted to admire your beautiful court. We wanted to see your silver and gold.’

We wanted to tell the lonely magpies not to be sad and give them company.

‘So you wanted to gawp at my riches, not bring any?’ the king squawks. The talons on his feet gleam and his beak is razor sharp. His eyes widen and the rage swells his huge wings.

We shuffle awkwardly. We apologise. We beg to be allowed to go forth from that place and return again with gifts for the magpies.

‘No,’ the King’s voice ratchets. ‘Thieves fear thievery most of all.’ He circles us, inspecting us both, our bunches, our socks, our jumpers, his wings barring us from the rest of the forest. ‘You have seen our secret to never be told. Now I need a bargain to be sure you won’t steal our secrets or our treasure.’ And he lunges for us and drags at us and all the magpies peck and push and the world is black and white and sharp and we are pulled apart for the first time in our life.

It always ends with the devil somehow.

‘Bring back treasure,’ the king commands. ‘Before you can leave here together.’

I run alone through the forest.

* * * *

Our eyes are both stinging, we know, and our throats both breathless and shut; we both feel the empty air at our side, but I am so cold in the forest.

Back home I slam through the door sobbing and empty drawers – I have become magpie eyed for shiny things. I scoop up teaspoons, clocks, small figurines, I steal granddad’s watch and grandma’s wedding rings and pearl earrings from the painted china pots she keeps on her dresser.

Out again into the night I run with these offerings for the magpie king to pay for my sister back again.

* * * *

Crafty magpie, grandma said. Sly old bird.

Back into the clearing, there are no birds; no opal amethyst throne, no court, no sister. I lay down with my bag of offerings and wait. I watch the moon sink and the sky fade from black to white. I wait until I get hungry, and I get cold and I stay waiting. I wait alone for days with the seven-magpie secret.

Crafty old magpies. They steal things.

In the grey dawn, a single magpie drops onto the branch of the dead oak above me. It chatters mournfully.

One for sorrow.

Sensitivity Scorned

A light is a sign. It should be watched, listened to. Don’t hide it under a bushel.

Throughout our times, and those before, we have been given many signs. A leveret killed by a fox and its corpse smeared along the path. The way crows gather in huge black clouds. Owls hawking eagles. All these auspices we read in the sky and earth. We have learned to look for these signs, to watch the colour of sunset and the movement – skittish – of early blackbirds. To count the families of magpies and interpret them. We know how long to season oak, harden beech, mix nettle and primrose to heal our people. Some say we look into the seeds of time to see which will grow and which will not. Well, we are the sign readers. You ignore us at your peril.

With this meticulous looking and listening, I learned to love every contoured, coloured space of my country.

When I was a young girl, my mother taught me how to read the signs. The first spring we sat together under the ash; the air was sweet and soft as cowslips and Queen Anne’s lace made us a bright cushion. She taught me the repeated call of the song thrush and to learn the difference in its numbered refrains. She showed me the badger sets – to read their moods from their discarded hairs, and to hear of things to come in their snuffling; and in the call of owls, the movement of bats; the way moonlight falls in the secret places of deer.

One day, when I was a young woman, I plaited blossom in my hair and danced between the apple trees to wed a sweet boy. That night, before we bed, I slipped out in the full moonlight and buried a hard, dry pea in the earth where two paths crossed. I sprinkled spring water over it, whispered; and listened. A stillness. Then three screams of the owl. The earth rose gently and shifted, and a shoot broke through. Satisfied, I went back to my lavender scattered linen and my sweet Hrafn. I was pregnant by the end of the week.

A time I had with that first carrying, as summer passed and winter thickened. I read omens in my aching breasts and sickness. My hair grew thick and long while the pain in my swelling hips interrupted my sleep. The baby growing in me never seemed still. It writhed before rain when I read the skies to see the rain coming, it flopped over before high winds. One night, I awoke to a painless dampness; blood streaked the sheets, and I roused my husband with shrieking afraid we had lost our child. There had been no signs. My mother was sent for and we three cleaned the linen and washed me amid our tears. Two hours later, I felt it move again, a vigorous kicking. But our relief was broken when the neighbours thundered at the door, screaming that a fire had broken out in the dry lightning storm and the barn was aflame. In the last two hours it had taken hold and the village lost four new born calves. Hrafn ran off to help save the rest while my mother and I looked at each other in the fire’s distant red glow. We read the sign; clear as morning.

That this child would not need to learn how to read them.

* * * *

When my daughter was born, she slithered into the world with her eyes wide open. Her left eye wandered outwards, unfocused. The right was sharp and piercing; it fixed me with her first look as I took her to the breast. We named her Arndis and my mother mopped the child’s skin with fennel and cinnamon water and blessed her with ashes. All the while, that unfocused left eye stayed open and rolled. I watched it that night, the second day, and the third. It never focused. But after watching and reading, I knew; I could see it; I knew that eye could see beyond the signs I could ever read.

* * * *

When she is five, I take my daughter to the flower meadow. I teach her the names of flowers, which tree bark heals, the mood of the weather in a bird’s cry. I teach her in the May morning to read the signs and she forgets nothing. She looks off into the distance and her wandering eye, blank behind the black pupil stares away left.

‘Mother,’ she beams at me. ‘Harvest will be rich this year.’

I smile at her childish tones. But I’m proud.

‘You read the signs well, little bird.’

But now she fixes me a serious look and her left eye droops more. I am suffocated by a sudden heavy gloom.

‘Store it mother,’ she pleads. ‘And next harvest, and the one after that, and the next. Eke it out. Plait more straw for trading when it runs low.’

‘What, child?’ I whisper.

‘Famine mother,’ she answers. ‘In four years.’ And she lays her light curled head on my lap and weeps.

This I could not read. But she could see it.

* * * *

Arndis turned nine with the last of the lambing. And she was right. That summer was cold and damp, the valley crops were water-logged and most failed. Harvest time came, and despite our season’s customs to bless the land and call for plenty, we had little fresh gathered at the thanking festival. Yet we were thankful. Our people have long trusted their sign readers, and when I had called for prudence with our surplus, it had been stored and extra planted in the good years. We would survive. My child was hailed as our greatest sign reader yet and those who came out of the forest and down from the foothills in need gave her thanks. We fed them, cared for them in sickness, and weathered the famine through the hunger months, until the first shoots of spring cabbage swelled for picking. In May, we drank our ale, gorged our bellies full for the first time in months and crowned Arndis as the May queen with flowers. We danced amid the apple blossom to give thanks in the warm sun that Beltane: famine was over at last.

* * * *

My child grew and we watched her with love and fascination. We had no more children, but my sisters did, and my daughter led her little cousins by the hand to the ash tree in the wildflowered meadow to teach them how to read the signs. She knew her gift, but kept her instructions temperate and careful. All our people in the valley and the hills and woods loved her; our sacred light.

One morning, when she was fourteen, she awoke me early with her face creased in pain. As I rose to comfort her, I saw the skin beneath her ribs flushed blue with bruising that flowered there. I held her shaking shoulders as she cried in the grey dawn light.

‘What happened, my dove?’

‘There is something in the bed, mother, that hurts me. Like fingers piercing me, bone-like, evil; I’ve not slept all night but rolled on bones.’

Of course we searched the bed. We pulled the blankets off to inspect the sheet. Finding nothing, we lifted the mattress, the bed itself. Still bewildered, I begged her to lie upon the bed again to try and show us where it dug the most; and her cries of pain were the wails of a lost child and it broke my heart so that I ripped the mattress to shreds for hurting her. Despairing, in a pile of feathers and straw we sat staring at the floor wondering what could have broken so violently the sleep of my child.

‘Mother, that crack on the ground,’ Arndis started to her feet. ‘It was never there before. When I kept my corn dolls under the bed for sweet dreams, it was never there before.’

I dug with my hands. I followed the crease, digging through the earthen floor. I called to my husband for the spade, we dug together an appalling hole in the floor of the room while Arndis leaned over, scooping earth away and pleading that we persevere, it was near, nearer, close now.

Two and a half metres down, my daughter triumphantly pulled out a shrivelled, mouldering pea.

‘It wasn’t that?’ Hrafn exclaimed in surprise. She looked at him, tears in her eyes.

‘Damn you, look at her back!’ I roared at him. ‘It did that! It’s a sign!’

Our child kneeled back on her heels, staring at the pea in her nightgown lap.

‘What do you see, love?’ Hrafn asked. She looked up at us again, frightened.

‘Call everyone,’ she murmured. ‘Everyone. It is a sign, and we can’t prevent this on our own.’

We called our people together in the long barn we used daily in winter with its central fire and ale store. I had seen my people dance at Thanking Festival in this hall, and on Wassail, and the Solstice tree clash in the flickering gold of the fire, vibrating the ceiling beams with their songs. This morning was tense. The elderly settled nearest the fire, folding their grandchildren in their laps and others squeezed around them knocking snow off their boots from their journeys down from the hill homes in a sombre hush. We sign readers stood at the front, my daughter ahead. My mother, her silver hair a cloak down her back, spoke first.

‘You know the power of my grandchild.’ She paused to look at the stern faces ahead that twitched in nods. ‘She has proven it in her birth, her visions and her warnings. She has kept us safe, ensured our prosperity.’ Murmurs of assent through the fire smoke. ‘She warns us now.’ Here she turned to my daughter. ‘Speak child. Tell them.’

Arndis stood forward. From behind I could only see her long hair, darkened to a light brown from its childish gold. Her shoulders were thin; she was always a small girl. But her back which faced me was firm, her voice when she spoke, though low, never wavered and I bit my lip to crush the emotion threatening to dismay me as I looked at her. My child. So young still, and holding the thick weight of our future in her thin arms that should hold the flowers and herbs I want to scatter over her beautiful head in blessing.

‘There will be pestilence,’ she said. ‘It is even now festering in the ground, coursing under the rabbit warrens of our land and souring the soil. Crops will die, but this is not like our last famine. It will cause disease in our people, poison our rivers and streams and all, from the smallest field poppy to the greatest boar in the forest, all will die.’

I watched the faces of our people as the cold, bony fingers of fear clutched their hearts and stopped their breathing. Silence followed.

‘Can it be stopped?’ a man called from the crowd.

Arndis sought him with her eyes. ‘Yes. It is the war our King is fighting on his further borderlands. The dead, the starvation and the rot have infected those lands deep beneath the fields. The blood of injustice corrupts it all. It is spreading fast. If I can gain an interview with him and put forth my application for peace, we could arrest the chaos and pour balm on the land; heal it.’

My mother twisted to her granddaughter, her steel hair falling over her shoulder. Her voice hissed. ‘You will make this journey?’

‘It’s my duty, grandmother. I must.’

I did not see how my mother swallowed hard, her eyes wild and her hands before her face. I saw nothing but my own child’s head as I screamed my protests and clutched those thin shoulders tight to me.

* * * *

I watched my daughter climb into her saddle. She had to jump a little to make the distance to the stirrup because she is still so young, and she scrambled and shuffled awkwardly, and I cried then for how will she convince a king if she can barely reach her own reins? I pinned mistletoe to her reins for luck, and seeing her cloak was fastened, I stood back, to let her urge the horse on. My husband urged his on after, his face grim but his heart soothed to go with his daughter. My own heart was cracking. I saw the fear through her brave smile and I could not speak, but squeezed her calf muscle as she moved off. A five-day journey across the mountain pass and down the planes through the late winter snow.

I was restless all week. I read the winds, the way the wolves came closer at night, clung with famine. I watched twelve crows descend in a ring and squawk, fighting over a dead vole. Another snow fall mixed with the mud stained melt and the paths between our village homes became a stiff quagmire to snap an ankle on. A grey fog descended, hiding the valley, hiding the peaks and the trees and hung there for three days. The wolves howled through. None of these signs were auspicious. The week stretched into another and a third, then one morning as I went to the wood pile, two magpies bickered on the nearest branch of the willow row. The sky had cleared and I knew my daughter was coming home.

Two more days I waited at the meadow edge to look out for her. At last, as the sun turned the late afternoon sky purple and gold I saw two figures on horseback. Hitching my skirts under my arm like a wash bundle, I raced through the muddy snow towards them.

* * * *

It had not gone well. By the fire, with my mother, my pale daughter told us of her petition. How the king had laughed and put my husband in chains, and forced him to watch the derision of his child. How the duke had demanded she prove her power, and took her to a room with seven beds, each piled with twenty mattresses, and bade her lay down on each one to find the old pea placed under one of them. How the prince had leered as she lay, stony faced on each bed. Here she paused. We winced. Hrafn continued that they were lucky they were not whipped for the king takes not his foreign policy from peasants, and they were sent away. We stared into the fire silently. We passed the hot ale around.

‘What now?’ I asked.

‘Blessings,’ my mother suggested. I looked at my daughter as she nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on the fire.

‘Be frugal with what we take from the land,’ she said. ‘Give back a morsel of all we take. Then when we have nothing, we’ll have a fat stag at the door. Be vigilant with our rivers, let not our waste escape in so our fish are killed. Keep clean. And dance and sing because we’ll need our spirits. We must love our land and each other to balance the hate of the king.’

* * * *

We watched the deer that rutting. We left offerings. We blessed the spring when it came, cautiously, and saw the birth of our lambs, of fallow deer, of pheasants. We lived carefully, with a new look between each other, of a shared unspoken thing.

And then winter. I watched the sun swell the thick, blood red of the Ragnarok stories, the poisoned red light that drives men mad. We drew in our breath, tensed. The earth was the steel death of winter and it dragged on past Imbolc and on towards Beltane, still with the low blood sun over short days. We continued our offerings. We tended the few weak lambs that crept, mewling, into life. There was only brown dead grass for them to eat in this eternal winter where the green fingers of spring had failed to stretch out from underground. Would we just die with our land? And then the falcons began circling high above the mountain and I read the horses beneath on the mountain pass. They showed me the death might be a different kind as the king’s soldiers approached our village.

Disease had spread in the city and Famine clawed at the keep’s walls. The prince had died. The king had realised the power of my daughter and in his anger and shame, he called us witches who had cursed his kingdom. He had ordered our capture and the soldiers had come for us.

The sign readers stepped forward. We were bound in chains and thrust into the cart that would bear us away. The light was hidden from our people.

* * * *

A light is a sign. Arndis made a light. The hardest thing for me was to trust what she saw; trust what I had never seen. Our arrival to the keep was a humiliation we had never known. The city’s populace, scabbed with festering sores, stained black and red with plague had turned out to jeer at the witches. They threw what rotten vegetables were left in that starving place into my mother’s face and I cringed to see her strong back sag, her silver hair smeared with filth. Hate is a weapon and they hated us. And watching them mock my child, and cow my proud mother, I hated them too. But Arndis leaned forward, trying to clasp hands of the mob and press remedies in their fists. We have healed plague in our home, and as they threw cabbages and shit, the shit of their animals at her, she still spoke calmly: yarrow infusion for the fever and vomiting; garlic and wild thyme against infection. Even chained to a dungeon pillar later, I felt relief that we were shielded from the vicious hate that had been whipped up in these people.

We waited there three days. My mother and we three daughters watched the star and moon patterns through the small grating that served for a window and tried to balance the good and evil we saw there. But Arndis looked at nothing, only leaned back against her pillar and idly fondled the fetters. Then on the third evening, we were visited by the Duke. When he swept into the room, I watched my daughter flinch and shrink back into the shadows. The Duke of the bedchamber and one hundred and forty mattresses to lay my child upon. My mother and sisters and I stepped forwards, our shoulders a wide wall in front of Arndis as he leered.

My mother lifted her chin. ‘Well?’

‘You will be executed at dawn,’ the duke said, an ugly scorn cutting his nose and mouth.

‘So now you have a notion of the importance of symbols and offerings?’ my mother laughed bitterly.

The duke leaned in to her, his face close enough for me to spit at. ‘You will be burned,’ he smiled. ‘That should cleanse the evil.’

‘And the war?’ asked one of my sisters. ‘If that continues, burning us will not make a difference.’

‘It will comfort the city and the king to watch you writhe and die,’ the duke snapped, turning to her. We stood in our walled line, our faces stone, staring forwards with our chins up and our shoulders touching. We must not break. My mother inclined her head slightly in assent.

‘Good luck with it,’ I said. ‘You know as well as we, that we are all lost. Our deaths will be more painless than yours.’ I felt my daughter move behind me, my child of sixteen with a life stolen from her and my rage flickered and flamed. And in my rage, I read what I saw, and the vision was comforting. ‘You will suffer a death of fire, sir,’ I cursed. ‘It will consume you as you stand and catch your hair and your fine robe so you will be a living pillar of flame. Your skin will crisp and crackle like a Yule hog and your last moments will be anguish and horror. You will fall to your skinless knees and beg for water to quench it, but your voice will be lost in choking smoke, and all will flee from you. I curse you, sir.’

He hit me then. But we were a stone wall and I did not even reel back but was motionless standing masonry. Blood came from my eyebrow and I smiled. He looked at us in confusion and mounting horror while he nursed his useless fist, then swept from the room.

That night, we slept little. I held Arndis to me as my mother clutched her daughters round her. We sang to spur our defiance and watched the moon, swollen and silver. We wrung love from the last hours together and tried to rejoice through our strained wakefulness, that we were together at least. Three generations of sign readers. A pattern. A sign in itself.

And then the last sign came. Just as night was almost at odds with morning, a noise from the window roused us. A magpie had landed there and strutted back and forth in its tailored waistcoat and frock coat. We watched it, a comforting life in monochrome. Then it was joined by another. Then another and another. We read aghast, the swelling visitation until the seventh arrived. It held a piece of sweet-pea in its beak – the pink and purple of late June. We stared at each other. Arndis spoke.

‘Can’t you see it now mother, when it is so near?’

I looked at her. Those thin shoulders, her long hair; her heart that loved so blithely. My heart broke again. I saw her, our light, and I saw now what the signs said. My mother saw it, and my sisters and my nieces as we stared, dismayed at Arndis, with the eye that never met ours, but saw further.

‘When I shout run,’ she whispered, ‘do not hesitate.’

* * * *

The rest is a series of dark pictures. We were pulled out at dawn; subjected to more jeering. We cried now and the king and duke laughed, thinking to have broken our spirits at last. But the cramping, biting, wrenching loss was not for our own lives, but my child’s, who knew, all along, what her fate was.

We were bound to stakes and hefted onto pyres. The man in the black mask with his burning brand stood by, waiting. My breath caught and my heart fluttered like a wren and the damp on my hands and under my arms made my bonds slip. The king was speaking but I heard nothing through the black wall of noise, the black buzz of ‘witches!’ and cheering as the executioner held up his brand and walked towards my child. Only a child. And such fear of a child. She twisted her head towards me and smiled, the most beatific smile I’d ever seen her beam. It was serene, it was joyful, and it smeared through my tears into something misty and permanent. I could see her mouth the words ‘now, mother!’ like a triumphant shout, as if she was starting a race, and the pyre was lit and the faggots caught and a light, a white shimmering light erupted; burst like a waterfall and fanned out in a summer heat we had not felt for ten months.

Our bonds singed first, and we slipped into the kindling. We waded through it, and gathering wrists of sister, mother and child and ran through the crowd, ran through the gates as soldiers bolted past us to bring pails to the explosion. We ran out of that cursed place as it was engulfed in the flaming inferno of my child; burning duke, king and pauper; melting metal, boiling lead, scorching septic earth and slaughtering the pestilence, war and corruption that infected the land.

A light is a sign. Her light could not be hidden.

* * * *

In lands far from ours, a burning cleanses. It opens space for light, it nurtures the soil; enriches it. The trees grow stronger and the regrowth is thicker; birds return. My daughter’s fire did this for our land. We made the journey back through forest and mountain pass, filled half with joy and half with despair, while the iridescent blue of kingfishers darted past us in forest streams and magpies called to each other. As we reached the willows at the edge of our home, we saw the purple and gold of crocuses had broken through the earth. Spring had come. Our land lived again.

* * * *

I am much older now, but I am a great favourite with my sisters’ grandchildren. My hair is a steel cloak down my back and my husband’s is a long white cape. I keep a small shrivelled pea on my hearth to show these babies and tell them about our greatest sign reader, as I teach them to read the meaning of magpies, what will come from the colour of sunsets and how to make a decoction from oak bark. And the light is returned to our people.

Sensitivity

‘There’s quite a lot of blood on this one,’ Tessa muttered into the steaming sink.

‘What?’ Myrtle looked over, elbowing her damp hair away from her eyes. ‘Another miscarriage?’ The grey haired woman looked up from the mangle.

‘Bring it over.’

Tessa pulled the sopping sheet out of the tub and twisted it fiercely to ring out the excess water. Holding it away from herself and leaning back, she carried it over to the mangle.

The older woman absently drew her finger in a crest behind her ear, clearing away strands of hair she’d never realised had thinned. She gripped the folds of the sheet in both hands, holding flat a portion of the stain. Her green eyes stared, narrowing as she considered it.

‘No, the stain is too dark and it’s too near the top of the sheet.’ She pulled another handful of the linen up into view. ‘And here’s the menses, further down.’ Her eyes locked Tessa’s as she handed the sheet back and they remained this way for a moment. Myrtle had also stopped and all three women looked at each other over the blood smeared sheet with set mouths and jaws flinching.

‘Just clean it,’ the older woman directed.

Tessa took it back and scrubbed it viciously in the thickening silence. Turning her face, but not her eyes, she spat over her shoulder. Her mouth grimaced.

‘It’s nearly every week now you know.’

Myrtle also looked up again and slapped her brush against the tub’s side. ‘And it’s just a mindless–’

‘Clean it.’

Tessa scrubbed bitterly and the stain began to diminish. As if all the misery and ugliness in the world could be cleaned away just like a stain on a sheet. With just a little effort and pain, as her knuckles hit the side of the tub in the fierceness of her scrubbing. Myrtle’s face also twisted as she wrung sheets until her hands hurt. Over it all; the faint creaking of the mangle as the older woman turned the handle. Rotated it rhythmically to impose order on a wrinkled sheet and a rumpled world; to smooth out and remove her sorrows and those of that woman upstairs, shivering alone on her tower bed.

All three minds wandered through different passageways to that same woman. Tessa thought of the ceremony, Myrtle of the girl’s arrival, drenched from a violent storm; the older woman the first miscarriage. All thought of the desire in the Prince’s cruel eyes and the delicacy of the pale girl.

Ripe for violence.

Myrtle cleared her throat. ‘It’s been over a year since she came now.’

‘No,’ Tessa corrected, ‘It was just such bad weather that week. She arrived at the start of August. It’s only spring now.’

‘Oh yes,’ Myrtle looked up to search for the memory and nodded. ‘August rain can be as bad as November; the clouds drop and you wouldn’t know the difference.’ Her eyes glazed again. ‘She was so straight-backed, wasn’t she? You could tell she was beautiful even though her hair was plastered to her face and her cloak soaked with mud nearly to the elbow. And she didn’t cringe in her wet things as she moved, she was…’ Myrtle searched the high ceiling to her right again for the word. ‘Proud. In the way she walked I mean.’ Tessa grunted her assent.

‘And she spoke nice. Quietly, but assured. Kind. They should have worked it out from that.’

‘But there has to be the Test,’ the old woman spat.

Oh of course. There must be the Test. Tension bubbling and steaming on the borders for months, allies desperately yet fruitlessly searched for and always the anxiety for an heir, an heir. Three years hunting for a suitable alliance while skirmishes broke out and trade lines were blocked, until the kingdom was all but cut off and the Queen despairing while her son rode out to find soldiers at the borders and satisfaction for his lust on the peasant girls the other side. And this bedraggled woman, claiming to be a Princess from another Kingdom who only asked for a night’s board with her pledge of great royal future recompense for the kindness, was promising. She was already at a disadvantage; alone, in flight, in need. She could be compelled. Then alliance, an heir, stability. But to be sure. So the Queen made assurance double sure and with a painted smile, led the girl after dinner to her bedchamber heaped with mattresses. Twenty stacked to the ceiling; the Princess lay there like a fresco painter for the worst night’s sleep of her life.

‘Just a little pea under all those mattresses,’ the old woman murmured.

‘Just a little prick,’ Tessa sneered.

‘Oh Tess, honestly.’

Tessa defended her crassness. ‘She looked worse the next morning than the night before! Haggard. Her eyes were hunted and black. And how she struggled down the stairs. She’d asked for help the night before. I know it is just a pea, but they knew what they were doing, how could they hurt someone so defenceless?’

‘Oh the elite are a cold lot I’d say,’ Myrtle suggested. ‘And it’s a Princess’s duty to be sensitive, to endure for her Kingdom. I suppose once she’d proven her worth, she knew they needed her and she owed them, so she had to stay. But look, when did you see her? I only heard about it from Mary because her Stephen was serving at breakfast.’

‘Because I changed the damn bed,’ Tessa retorted. ‘Eliza couldn’t manage it on her own, there was so much linen. So they sent me up. As I left with me arms full of bedding, she was still making her way down. Her face was contorted with pain, she was biting her lip to stop from whimpering. And the Prince was there, with the Queen, at the bottom of the stairs. Watching intently to see if she had Passed. He had both hands in his pockets and that little smirk and he watched her all the way down. Every step. She was obviously in agony and he never said a word nor moved to help. Nor the Queen.’

‘Breeding,’ Myrtle sneered. Tessa snorted.

‘Well you can keep it.’

With the Test passed the kingdom was saved. The prince took her as his bride and they had a real princess at last, from a powerful dynasty; a union, an alliance. They were married three weeks later at the start of September. Every servant was ordered to wash and turn out to throw the pink and blue flowers. There was substantial largesse in the celebration. A feast was put on for the servants too, a fiddler was brought from the next valley, and there was dancing. Myrtle remembered the fiddler very well.

But not so well as they all remembered the couple walking out of the palace courtyard after the ceremony. The Prince in his finery, his black hair curling just a little above his collar. His overwhelming exotic scent of bergamot masking the sweat of the warm day as he walked amid the flowered arches through the double line of his cheering subjects. Hope for the kingdom! His long, straight nose curled his upper lip as he smiled right and left right over his bride’s head and the desire was savage in his eyes. It chilled the women as he passed them. And his bride, squinting in the bright sunlight, looked down, still obviously suffering; chewing her lip as she controlled her pain in her slow walk half a pace behind the groom. Holding her grace, hiding her limp. And spreading upwards from the low cut of her bodice, staining her pearl white skin; the blue and black blush that in three weeks, had not faded.

Autumn. There were subsidies for trade, the economy improved. The women felt it in the price of flour and fish. More ribbon at market. More pennies to buy it. There were reinforcements at the border, and a peace of a kind had been sustained through to winter. Strong and stable. But still no heir.

That first infliction, the black flush after the storm-soaked August night, was only the start. Conceiving the heir was next. Uncharitable gossip ripped through the servants’ hall about the Princess walking awkwardly, sitting gingerly. Then a breakthrough, whispers of a pregnancy at the start of Advent. A God given Christmas gift for the Kingdom! Then at the end of January the washerwomen found the bright red political disaster smeared all over the bedsheets and a cloud fell over the palace. The older woman washed that sheet herself, taking her time reverently, learning every spot and matching it to her memory, never mixing the splashes from her own eyes with the soap from the tub. Washerwomen; cleaning to purify the ugliness from the world. Then a storm shook the Kingdom one night in February. Without was all thunder and the screaming wind, beating the rain relentlessly against the fortress walls, and within the Prince was beating the Princess against the walls in his fury. Still no heir, no heir. How could peace last without one?

Three servants attended the Princess that night to bathe her skin and press it softly with witch hazel. But skin is not like the sheets the washerwomen took, and while blood can be rinsed away, the blue blush cannot. The Prince was subdued in the days after this and the Princess kept to her chamber. The moon waxed and then when the washerwomen cleaned the menses off the sheets, blood from a battered face began appearing regularly.

‘It’s done,’ Tessa said at last. She threw an end to Myrtle and they began twisting from both ends to ring out the water.

‘It’s all we can do,’ the older woman sighed.

‘It’s like we’re hiding it.’

‘It’s all we can do.’

‘Can’t she ask for help?’ Myrtle blurted. ‘Powerful family like hers, I’m sure they’d not like this happening to one of their line.’

‘I suppose it’s probably shame,’ the older woman answered.

‘You had none,’ Tessa reminded.

‘Well,’ the older woman’s eyes darkened. ‘Maybe she has no one to ask. Perhaps it’s different asking a neighbour as opposed to a far-off Lord who’s married you off.’

‘Our little coup de grace was pretty good, wasn’t it?’ Tessa snickered.

‘Yes…’ the older woman admitted, allowing herself a half smile. ‘After twenty five years, another day drinking the rent and he never knew what hit him.’

‘Tessa’s poker did, I recall,’ Myrtle grinned. ‘And off away he went at last! A well-co-ordinated operation, ladies.’

‘Well, enough was enough, wasn’t it,’ the older woman leaned back from her waist to stretch out her shoulders. ‘I make enough from the wash and it’s peaceful enough indoors now. It’s different for you and your men these days. You can build something. And your sons will be better. And your daughters will never have seen that sort of thing.’ She finished her stretch and held out her arms. ‘That’s fine girls, bring it here now. It’s the last one, then we’re done and tomorrow is Sunday.’

‘You seeing your fiddler tomorrow Myrtle?’ Tessa asked with a devilish glint.

‘Stop calling him that, his name’s David.’

‘He’s good though, isn’t he? At fiddling?’

‘Stop it. Honestly Tessa, you’ve got no poetry in you. We’ll walk up the crag to the tarn. He said he’ll bring his violin. You know, when he plays, it’s like being on the crags with the heather, it’s lovely.’

‘Yep, soaring up there, penetrating those clouds, all very…’

‘That’s enough girls, pack it in and go home,’ the older woman interrupted as she emptied the tubs. The women splashed cold water on their faces to cool themselves, then dried off their arms and folded the last sheet. Myrtle opened the door into the bright early May sunshine.

‘How did your apple wine come out in the end?’ she asked, turning hopefully to the older woman, who smiled knowingly.

‘Well, I suppose it needs a test!’ She stretched her arm through Myrtle’s to support herself and reached for the other girl. ‘You too Tess, come round to mine first and try it. If it’s any good, I’ll pack you both off with a jug. I’m sure you’d like some for your little outing tomorrow Myrtle, in case of a picnic, and Tess, I’m sure you and your husband aren’t averse to a weekend tipple.’

The women walked home in the sunshine.