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by Sarah L. Edwards
Fantasy, 22 pages.
Originally Published in Aeon 14, 2008
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It wasn’t fear that drove me to people, nor loneliness. It was hunger, aching dull and hollow, that took me knocking at this door or that one, offering my service. Though the housewives wore varying shades of kindness, none had work for me and none cared to ask me in. It was the hair, I suppose, gray, wiry stuff that wouldn’t lie flat. Or my eyes, a bit jumpy and wrinkled around the edges from staring down the road too long. Or maybe it was my dress that left them uneasy, what with the streaks of sweat and dust and the fraying around the hem.
The night air, blushing and coy and damp after the spring’s first warmth, brought me smells of the outer places. As a girl I went where they led, seeking out hares, whiskered and mustached, and there I guarded their secrets and knew their pains. I strayed from the ways of people as long as I pleased. But wild things die young. Long ago I’d learned to wear the garb of mankind—when I needed it.
At the last house I pulled the scarf tight over my silvered hair and shrugged, settling the hare deeper in his pocket in my shoulder-pack. I walked past a grazing pony to the dim-lit house, not much less shabby than I, and tapped the stranger’s knock. In a moment, a beam of light slit the black slab of house, and a man stood shadowed in the doorway.
“What’s your business?”
I held my token to the light: a hare’s tail, dyed crimson.
The man shook his head, but his tone was softer when he said, “No midwiving needed here, ma’am.”
I opened my hands and started motioning, making the signs it seemed folks were readiest to understand as offers of work for food. Sewing? Skinning? Cooking? I hadn’t much hope of the last, for the smells of a hearth fire were blowing out from the door.
“I don’t reckon we need your service,” he said.
The hare at my back stirred, and a wisp of the scent in his nose came to mine as well. There was work here.
I pointed beyond the man and cupped my hands at my stomach, and then held up the token again. I tapped my chest and motioned into the house.
“You want to have a look at her?” said the man, hesitant. “Someone sent you, I guess.”
I shrugged and stepped closer to the light.
He put a hand to my shoulder and looked me up and down. “Not from nearby, are you?” The question was tentative, searching. I shook my head. “All right, then. If Renna doesn’t mind. Come on in.” He pulled the door open wider and stepped aside to let me through.
The woman leaned by the hearth, pulling at a kettle smelling of carrots and meat. The man was not so old as he looked, all sunburnt and weather-worn, but she was younger still, not much past first blood. As much a girl as a woman. As I walked in she straightened, and I saw what the hare smelled. Near time, not lacking more than a week. She stood in the way of a new-shorn sheep—not true afraid, but nervy, and not quite used to the new shape of back and legs and belly. Her first, then.
A last breath of spring rushed in as the door swung shut behind me, and I couldn’t help but start a little. Already I thirsted for open sky, but I held my place. It was an old thirst, and I’d work to do.
I followed the man’s motion to a stone bench at the table. We both were clumsy at it. Was he, then, no more used to house living than I? I thought of the pony out front. A traveler by trade—perhaps peddler or tinker.
The woman brought over a pot of stew and served us each. Her movements were quick and silent. “It’s a fine meal, Renna,” said the man, patting her hand. A brief smile, a flicker of light on the surface of a stream, crossed her face. Quickly her gaze fell to her plate, and did not lift again while we ate.
When we’d finished, the man rose. “I’ll mind the dishes. You women go ahead.”
The woman—with my mind’s way with names I’d already lost hers—she rose and made a nervous motion with her hands.
“It’s all right,” said the man. “She’ll just look you over, is all.”
She raised her hands again, but after a glance at me she dropped them and turned away, leading me past a curtain into the second room. I motioned her to undress. Though she paused, she didn’t protest.
Wake up, I whispered mind-wise to the hare. Work to do. The hare shifted from dozing weight to alert stillness on my back.
When the woman had pulled off her dress, I walked closer and reached out my hands. She stepped back and twisted away, looking at me with eyes that were suddenly deadly still.
I pulled my thoughts away from the hare and reached for the words I needed. They stuck like burrs in my mind so that I could barely pull them loose.
“Won’t hurt,” I mumbled.
She frowned, and I wondered if I’d have to try again, but when I stepped forward this time she waited for me, and only shivered when I put my hands on her belly.
For a moment I ignored the hare and used my -- [End of Preview.]