A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [73]
Marie shook her head.
“Nor me. But, then, I knew I was coming up here later.”
“I knew that too.”
Annabelle was surprised by this revelation but decided not to let on. “What’s your favourite thing?” she asked.
“Night,” said Marie, “now. My bed is all that is mine.”
“But it’s not yours,” said Annabelle, proprietorship igniting briefly in her small self. Didn’t her father own the whole house and everything that was in it? For that matter, didn’t her father own the whole island and everyone on it, and all the ships that were built there and sailed to and from it, and all the timber that was rafted down the river? There was something unfair about this distribution of ownership and Annabelle knew it, even then. Still she added, “Your bed belongs to my father,” then to associate herself with this awesome power, “to my family.”
“But I am the only one here and I like that. And after I come up to bed at night and lie down, nobody tells me what to do.”
“I’m here with you now,” Annabelle persisted, “and if I told you to do something you’d have to do it.”
“I would not,” said the girl. “I would not because I’d say no.”
Annabelle believed that that was precisely what the girl would say and decided to pursue the notion of superiority no further. In truth she was relieved that she had been allowed entrance into the girl’s world, not sent away as she had suspected she might be.
Marie had the whole pillow. Her pillow, thought Annabelle. “Maybe,” she ventured, “if I asked nicely you would do it.”
“Maybe. What would you ask?”
“I would ask you about the orphanage.”
The nuns have no money, Marie told Annabelle; all the money goes to the monasteries where “there is nothing but men.” Some of the boy children in the orphanage would eventually enter monasteries themselves, hoping to experience comfort. It was a very good idea, if you were a boy, to pretend to have received a “call” from God, instructing you to become a monk or a priest. That way you wouldn’t have to be a farmhand owned by a mean farmer. It was not, however, a good idea to pretend to have received a “call” if you were a girl “because nothing would change except your clothes and those for the worse.”
Annabelle had paid very little attention to these details. “But how did you become an orphan?” she asked.
Marie was silent, staring at the ceiling. Then she rolled over on her side to face Annabelle, her dark head in the angle of her arm. “It was a wolf,” she said.
Annabelle doubted this. “All the woods are chopped,” she announced. “Father says so. They’re chopped all the way to Lake Superior so there can’t be any wolves here. All the timbers come down on boats from Lake Superior.”
“Yes, this wolf came on a boat with the timbers and he came dressed as a soldier so no one could know. Then he got to our house and ate my mother all up and killed my father.” Marie was silent for a few moments and Annabelle feared that this wolf was the only part of the story that she was going to tell. Then the girl added, “He was a royal wolf with blue eyes, and he had medals from the wolf kingdom.”
“And he made you his orphan,” murmured Annabelle. Drowsy now, it seemed to her that this change of status from daughter to orphan would be like a sort of marriage, would necessarily involve ceremony and a long significant pause in the action when the blue eyes would lock with yours and tokens would be exchanged. Perhaps even a kiss. Then orphanhood. And, yes, then beauty.
Annabelle wanted something to dream about, something that was all hers, an orphanhood, a wolf of her own.
“The wolf made you beautiful,” she said, drunk with a combination of this thought and approaching slumber. “Where is he now?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“He’s here. He swam beside the boat to the island,” said Marie. “He’s always with me. He bought me when he killed my parents. He owns me.”
Both girls began to fall seriously into sleep. “He’s come down with the timbers, he’s just outside the house,” said Annabelle, who was already dreaming of a flash of blue eyes caught in moonlight and large,