Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [9]
‘You go up,’ said Corin. ‘I can do that.’
She looked at him doubtfully. But he knew, if he let her feed the boy this time, tonight might as well not have happened.
‘I’ll make him one of my slabs,’ he said in the new low voice. ‘That’ll fill him.’
She smoothed her hair and went. He heard the sounds of Billy climbing into the chair right to the walls of the kitchen, and of Nance’s feet on the stairs reverberating to the edges of the house, and beyond that was the garden and the summer night in all its size, with all its traffic of creatures and breezes and brooks and planetary light. And here he was in the middle of it, for the moment, in this house, in this room, moving from here to there gathering bread, gathering cheese and sausage and pickle, knife, board, plate—though he was not, himself, in any way, hungry at all.
{ The Golden Shroud
I dismounted as soon as I saw the round tower, its broken crenellations, its warning flag. I hobbled Goosestep and crept forward. The forest was harmless, sun-dappled, on all sides; birds fought and fluttered in their green houses, and sang soaring above them.
The witch’s horse was not there. I broke from the trees, readying my throat to call.
But, ‘Ah!’ started from me, like a cry from the girl herself. The tower door was open. Light was piled golden before it, motionless fire, a weighty plaited sun.
My horror carried me to this wreckage, and buried my arms to the elbows in it. Was it still warm? Did she lie dead above? Did the witch await me?
Not caring—daring the witch, indeed, to present herself to me in my terror and rage—I ran in, I ran up. On a single breath, it felt, I reached the room.
The door stood wide. All was as it should be within, except that I entered this way, and into emptiness, not by the window and into my love’s arms. How plain, how threadbare all this was without her, that had seemed such rich furnishings and so essential; how sad the little pillow on the bed where we had lain and whispered, how poor the rug, covering so few of the cold flags! And the chill! I had never felt it before. She and her hair had warmed this air before, her breath and life, the love we had built between us.
The mad fear seized me, that as I gaped here some animal, some thief, was carrying away that treasure below, and down I ran again. No, there it lay, all sumptuous as it had ever been.
I could not leave it, yet I could not carry such a weight— I had tried, marvelling, laughing, often enough. She herself had kept it coiled on bed or wall, roaming from its weight only so far, like a tied dog. It was a cruelty to her, even as, pegged through on the sill, it had made our meeting possible; it had been my ladder to her and my line. You can reel me in like a fish, I had laughed to her. And unsmiling she replied, Only if you are there below.
I knelt and attacked the gold, unplaiting from the thick head-end, where the witch’s sword or scissors had hacked. The stuff fell apart, slithered side to side, transformed it seemed into other matter: cascading water, rippling cloth-of-gold. Strands of it wandered in the air and at the edges. I fought it and wept; I was in a welter of goldness, up to my knees, bogged in beauty. Perhaps if I dug far enough I would find her, curled delicate as an ear underneath all this richness.
I did not, do I need say? The hair was spread, lacquering path and field like a syrup, materials for a thousand gorgeous bird-nests, and she was gone. It was only as I loosed the ribbon at the narrower plait-end, and unworked the last several yards from there more easily, that cold realization came, and cooled my tears and my sweat, and sat in my heart like stone.
I lay in the slippery whorl of her hair, the spread sun on the ground, trailing and looping out into the green. I smelt, I felt, the grass through the perfumed strands pillowing my cheek. What had the old bitch done: had she killed her? Had she worse? Had she found worse than this tower