Eleven

Daughters,

We prepared ourselves for the flames, for the purifying cleanse. For we were tainted, and sacred light can not grow in a blackened vessel.

She didn't understand it, then, why scars were made to be opened, why forgotten pain was meant to be remembered. Only by acceptance may we find the life. I didn't know it, and so I rejected the wisdom when it came to me. I cherish that wisdom now, though it is too late.

I break my bones to compensate, but it's too late . . . it's too late.

~ the woman in the woods

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Most of the next day, Minn lay in the small bed in her cottage and drifted in and out of illness and sleep. Moments of clarity were marred by nausea and headache, so she kept herself in vague darkness as much as possible. She understood somewhere within that her situation needed remedying, that she should get up and find her son, that things were getting out of control, and yet she was under too much mental fog to organize any coherent words or actions. She thought that Peter came to her at least two or three times, and so did others—Sister Dorothea, maybe? Opal? Someone put a cool cloth to her head and face and breast, and someone shifted her blankets around her, and someone spoke in hushed tones above, and someone sat there, just sat in the room, for a long time. Wolf? No, surely not. She wished he were with her. She wasn't certain about anything, really; her dreams merged too effortlessly with reality, and when she thought she saw a face or form hovering over her, it might suddenly vaporize or replace itself with snakes or moony bare bodies or blinding white light with black tadpoles squirming at its core.

Slowly, slowly, the bits and pieces began to settle, like so many grains of sediment in a shaken jar of water, and into the early evening, the first real vestiges of cognizance began to return. With them came the realization that someone else was with her, sitting in the sole chair.

The cottage was dim and almost too warm. Minn was sure she was running a fever, embraced by chill as she was, and as her thoughts crystallized, a new concern surfaced: if she'd contracted a virus, what could she do? She'd be more likely to die out here in the middle of nowhere than to get to any hospital in time! Her bag, though—it'd had a basic first aid kit, which included acetaminophen.

Attempting to sit, Minn turned to the young girl, who couldn't have been more than eighteen. Her jet-black hair hung in two thick braids at the sides of her head, and she wore only a sheer, sleeveless white shift. Minn couldn't help thinking the girl resembled Wednesday Addams, with her ashen cheeks and wide, dark eyes. "Hey!" Minn croaked, her throat sore.

The girl, who'd been staring off into space, startled to attention and jumped to her feet. "You're awake! Oh, praise be!"

"Listen," Minn grumbled as she sat up. "I need my bag back."

The girl goggled at her, frozen. "Bag?"

"Yes! Yes, my bag, the one I came here with. I—Dorothea took it, and I need it. I have stuff in there that will help me feel better. Please—" She was talking too much, too fast, and her head throbbed with the exertion. Minn pressed a palm against her face, breathed slowly in and out.

"Here, have a drink!"

The voice was too close and the rim of a cup at Minn's lip so unexpected that the woman swatted it away, sending the vessel and its contents across the room. "I don't want anything," she gasped, slightly remorseful at the upset she'd caused. She looked up at the startled-rabbit-of-a-girl. "I'm sorry," she forced herself to say.

Rather than soften, the girl's features hardened, and she clasped her hands. "Now, sister," she said with more authority than her age should've allowed, "my name is Ursula. I've been offered in service to you. Sure as I wouldn't rather be with Sister Opal, but I'm a good girl, and I listen to my mistress."

Sister Opal? That's where Minn had seen this girl! She'd been one of the two in that wild vision. Had she felt better, Minn might have chosen her words more carefully, but as it was, she just blurted, "What kind of relationship do you have, you and Opal?"

Ursula appeared troubled. "I don't understand."

"Do you . . . I mean, you all don't seem to be into men very much, and I thought I saw you and Opal . . . you know, together."

"Together?"

Had she caught them? Was the girl embarrassed?

"Aye, to be sure we are together! I'm in service to her; so is Gerda. For Sister Opal is full of the life and she nourishes us. Are you full of the life, sister?"

Full of the life? "I don't know what you mean." An awkward moment passed during which Ursula's gaze very obviously dropped to Minn's chest. Instinctively, the woman drew her patchwork quilt up around her. She understood. "You mean breast milk? No. I don't have any. I haven't had a baby in eighteen years." Minn thought she recognized a flicker of disappointment cross the girl's face, but Urusla thankfully left it at that. Minn tried to keep her goal in mind. "I really need my bag, Ursula. I don't feel well, and I have medicine that can help me. I have no idea where Dorothea took it, but if you ask, I'm sure she'd give it to you. Didn't you say you were in service to me?"

"I'm in service to you, sister, insomuch as I don't leave my post. Sister Opal would be disappointed should I displease her."

The girl was more stubborn than Minn had thought she'd be. Ursula insisted it wasn't right or proper that she become an errand girl. Her tasks were different, she claimed: purification, submission, pleasure. They weren't sneaking about and taking things, disobeying her elders. Before long, the girl was half in tears, her frustration and desperation coming out in half-formed sentences, to the point where Minn was beginning to doubt her authoritarian tactics.

"Fine, fine! I can't argue with you. I—I feel so sick."

"Let me serve you, sister, so I may please my mistress. And . . . and then, perhaps . . . perhaps I will mention your request to Sister Opal."

That was a start, Minn thought; maybe they were making progress. "Do you know where my son is?"

"That I do not, but I am to bring you to supper in a bit if you are well enough, and sure you will see him then."

Minn wasn't reassured. She never saw Peter at meals.

"Lie back, sister," Ursula directed. The girl rose from the bed, which hardly shifted from her displacement, and went to the fire, where a kettle had been placed over the flames. Minn hadn't noticed it before and wondered what was in it. "This will heal your distemper," Ursula said. Removing its lid with a cloth in her hand so as not to burn herself, the girl located the cup Minn had slapped from her hand and brought it to the kettle, ladling it full of steaming liquid. Then she brought the cup in both hands up to Minn's face, refusing to allow Minn to take hold of it herself. Though she wasn't hungry and was wary of putting anything into her stomach, Minn's thirst was painful (she'd begun to regret not taking the earlier offering of water), so she allowed Ursula to tip the liquid through her lips and, after several moments of small sips, had consumed the entirety of the hot, weak wine with which she was already familiar. It had the same slightly bitter aftertaste as it did when tepid. She supposed everything here, being so close to the earth, had the flavor of it, but Ursula hadn't been wrong; Minn's nausea ebbed, and she was soon relaxing against her pillow once more, allowing her body to revel in acceptance of its own lassitude.

"A shame you've lost your hair," came Ursula's voice, though Minn's eyes were closed and she listened with some degree of distance. "A woman's strength is in her length." The girl sat near the head of the bed and ran her fingers through Minn's cropped hair. "It's a fine color, though. Had you enough of it, we'd sure make a pretty crown."

"My brother's been telling me to grow it out; he thinks it's too short," Minn commented drowsily, opening her eyes. "My son—Peter—his is dark, like yours."

"Ah, he's a toothsome figure."

The strange word choice struck a chord in Minn. She propped herself up a little, but Ursula put a hand to her chest and gently pushed her back.

"No cause for tiring yourself, sister. Rest while I prepare the wash."

"Wash? No, there's no need—"

"For the Osterfeuer tomorrow night, all must be cleansed, especially you. You must allow it, sister. If Sister Opal—"

"I don't care about Opal! Just . . . oh, hell with it. It's all right. Do what you need to do. I'm just . . . so tired."

Smiling, Ursula touched a finger to Minn's nose as if the woman were a child, and then the girl busied herself about the room. Whatever sort of wash Ursula had in mind, it didn't seem pressing. The raven-haired adolescent wrapped her braids up into two knots, and then she moved back and forth between the kettle of water and a basin that'd been brought into the room. Minn supposed she was heating water, transporting it from place to place, though the woman became too sleepy to pay much real attention to what was going on. The sounds of the crackling fire, the warm close atmosphere, the peace that had taken over her body—all of it conspired to put her into a restfulness so thick she hadn't much knowledge of what was going on until hands were on her.

Minn's first thought as she was lifted from the bed and turned about was that Ursula was far stronger than her small form had implied, but then she distinguished a second voice, and she peeled her lids apart to see another dark-haired girl had joined Ursula. The two of them were fussing about Minn. They'd sat her up and turned her to the side so her legs swung off the bed. Because Minn was hardly master of her body, the girls had piled blankets and pillows behind her, and now that Minn was sitting steadily enough, the girls turned their attention to the large basin, which they sprinkled things into. In her haze, Minn couldn't help thinking the two looked like a couple of little witches hopping about a cauldron, and the prospect was amusing. Yet the girls turned to her again, and they scooted the basin over, lifted Minn's bare feet, and plopped them into the scalding water. She screamed but little sound came out, and she was forced to endure the pain as the two smiling teenagers scrubbed her lower legs and feet raw.

"Prettier than to be expected, isn't she, Gerda?" Ursula chimed to her companion, oblivious to Minn's torture.

"Sure there's none that can complain this time."

"Hush!"

"Well I'm ready, aren't I? Can't keep on with that dirty thing, can we? What sort of meat's on her bones?"

Ursula clucked her tongue, sat back and put a hand on her hip, scandalized. "That's enough out of you, then! Sure I'll tell Sister Opal, and you'll get no more!"

Gerda giggled as she pulled one of Minn's feet up out of the water and, to Minn's disgust, licked the sole from heel to toe. "Then I'll stay with Sister Minnow tonight. Sure she's full of the life—"

Ursula slapped her peer's hand away from Minn's breast, where it'd been headed. "Sister Minnow has none of the life, she assured me. Now help me, Gerda. Do her ties."

The more flippant of the pair stood and eyed Minn up and down. "She's had her drink of dreams?"

" Of course."

Gerda pursed her lips. "All right, then."

The nausea was returning. The sinking within assured Minn it was no illness. She'd been foolish all along, believing in their decency in spite of their eccentricity. She'd been in and out of her own mind for days, now, unable to make proper decisions, to control herself. How could she have been so stupid? Of course they were poisoning her!

Gerda's hands were behind her, working the knots of her dress, and though Minn wanted to protest, she could do little as the girls stripped her of her clothing and, tying and fastening her arms to a pendant hook, invaded every inch of her body with their rigorous, violent cleansing.