Tender Morsels Page 18

  Sometimes bears are very cursory in their mating, but this was not one of those times. For nigh on an hour, Bear bullied the she-bear from behind, forcing her to collapsement in the sunlit grasses. Did she endure the coupling or enjoy it? Were the sounds she made protests, or pleasure-noises? Bear himself seemed alone above her, pursuing what it was he was pursuing, his rump working above hers, his paws on her shoulders, an expression on his huge furred face of ineffable seriousness and stupidity.

  At the end, tremors ran through him and the she-bear made a gruff noise behind the grass, behind the wild blooms, white and mauve and yellow, of the meadow. He lay on her awhile, as on a sunny boulder to absorb the heat; then he pushed himself upright from her and withdrew from her his member, surprisingly thin, long, and drooping, which drooped further in the fresh spring breeze.

  Branza must have made some tiny laugh or exclamation, for direct upon extracting himself, Bear turned and saw her. Straight away his face regained its most speaking look. He towered over the prone she-bear, and the member on him stiffened again and gleamed with tightness and the wetness from inside his mate, and seemed almost to emit light against the hairy darkness of his belly and groin.

  He spoke, and though his speech was wordless, there was no mistaking his pride and triumph, his pleasure that Branza had been audience to the mating. He plunged towards her—the ridiculous pipe-thing, the nozzle of him, wagging under his belly, and there was no mistaking that he desired to have of Branza in just the manner he had had of the she-bear.

  But Branza was gone. The forest streaked and flicked past her as she fled; root and earth, pebble and moss-clump propelled her away. Down the hill she ran, back the way she had come. Bear’s crying and crashing diminished behind her.

  When Bear had been inaudible for a good long spell, Branza flung herself down on the next stretch of open grass in a strange fit of laughter at what she had seen, at what she had done; at the thought of herself skittering away terrified, with the lust-blinded Bear falling through the forest behind her. At first she covered her mouth to hold the laughter in, and rolled in the grass trying to contain it, but in the end she could not, and shouts and hoots escaped her, frightening away birds and ground-creatures.

  I sound like Urdda, she thought. She felt a flash of understanding for her full-throated, passionate sister before that old grief, that two-year-old grief, smothered the laughter. She swayed, smiling and troubled in the sunshine. I know so little of anything! she thought. Affairs of the springtime forest rustled and hummed about her; a pair of hawks flew an arc across the sky above her; she could sit entirely still here and become just one among many splashes of sunshine and shadow. I love it all, she thought, but I understand none of it. And then there are these terrors: littlees and strange bears. What is the meaning of them? Will I ever be rid of them?

  Bear came to the cottage many days later, and there was nothing in his demeanour to say that he remembered what had passed between himself and Branza when they last met, either to please or embarrass him.

  But now he seemed to know how much he might venture with her, and he was careful not to overstep the bounds. Several times that year she played his game, and followed him into cave or covert and allowed him to embrace her, but he knew to do no more than hold her, and perhaps lick her face or neck once or twice, and perhaps rub his cheek against hers. And she would stand or lean or lie against him and sense again how little she knew, and puzzle over things he had done before, excitements he had had and annoyances he had given her. She did not know whether she was afraid of him trying them again or desirous of it; did she want to feel the press of that wand of his against her, or did she want never to see evidence of it again?

  And so the third year passed in a kind of wariness, in a kind of accommodation, with Liga always hovering nearby, wanting an accounting of things. Which Branza gave her, trimming and crimping her tale without even thinking any more, in accordance with what Liga wanted to hear.

  Bear disappeared for the winter, reappeared in the spring on a distant hill. Branza saw him wrestling a smaller he-bear under the leafless trees, with a she-bear tearing bark nearby as if quite unconscious of the two. She went home and waited, and eventually Bear presented himself, with a quiet, preen-ing air about him, and a scar across his nose to show for his triumphs.

  Shortly on his return he attempted his chasing game, but Branza felt it was too early in the season to be safe to play it, besides which the day was too inviting, too fresh. It had been a long stuffy winter in the cottage, and she only wanted to keep striding in the open air. So when Bear disappeared into his cave, she stood at the cave-mouth, calling, but not minding that he did not emerge, the sun was so warm and pleasant. And then she went up the nearest hill to gaze out beyond the folds of heath and forest to the far mountains, but never letting the cave-mouth disappear from view so that she would not miss Bear should he come out and start the chase again.

  But he did not come out of the cave at all. Finally, she descended the hill. ‘Come out, Bear,’ she called. ‘We’ll have none of that today, none of your nonsense! Out you come!’ She stepped into the cave and felt her way along to the end of the tunnel, and all around. He was not there. She knew how quickly he could move; he could not have escaped past her, she was certain. But there was no sound of his breathing or his claws in that cave, only Branza’s small and distressed lungs; only her shoes making their little dull scrapes on the earthen floor.

  She returned to the cave-mouth for air, for spring air. All of a sudden, she needed the smells of snowmelt and raw earth and new greenery after that warm, still, gravelike place; needed to sense life moving in the air she breathed, in the breeze against her skin, pressing her skirts to her uncertain legs.

  Urdda touched her face and looked at her blackened fingers. I am filthy, she thought dazedly. He has filthed me all up.

  Screams and laughter sounded up the lane. Two girls ran in at the bottom, brawny girls, bare-armed and hoisting their skirts. They were in a fit of laughter and fear, and they bumped and scrambled past, hardly sparing Urdda a glance, and their faces were streaked and smudged with black, just as Urdda’s must be. And their eyes—

  I am there! she thought, watching the skirts of them, watching their dirty foot-soles as they ran away. I am in the other place, with the vivid people, with—

  And then he was there again, the black-legged man in the skin costume, but he had neither run into the lane from above or below, nor flung himself through that hedge there—Oh, no, he was a different skin-dressed man, black-haired where the other had been reddy-brown.

  ‘Blemme!’ he said, and patted his clothing, and touched his tall fur hat. ‘You!’ He panted some. ‘You’re the sister, Urdda!’

  ‘How do you know me? You’re not from our village.’

  ‘Well, I am and I amn’t,’ he puffed. ‘I been running,’ he said. ‘We were chasing.’ He gave her a sharp look. ‘You broke your sister’s heart, you know. Branza’s.’

  ‘She doesn’t even know I’m gone yet!’

  ‘Daft girl, it’s three winters. Haven’t ye—’

  Wild shouts and women’s screams sounded from somewhere. The boy looked up and down the narrow lane. ‘It’s still the Day, my gracious. It’s still the Day. How? The Day I left? Or a different Day, years on?’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘Day o’ the Bear, of course. Why do you think I am all skinned up like this?’

  People skittered to a halt at the bottom of the lane. ‘Bear!’ one shouted. Urdda had never seen such an assortment of strangers, wearing such faces.

  ‘The same Day,’ said the young man, sounding astonished. ‘Tad still has that cut to his forehead.’

  ‘Ooh, who’s the lucky girl?’ said one of the lads.

  ‘No sneakin off with your lady-love, Bear!’ trilled a smudged girl. ‘You’re all-of-ours today!’

  The boy jumped to his feet and ran at them, roaring.

  Urdda was hot on his heels. What was this? If a game
, it was exactly the kind of game she liked, the running noisy kind it was such work to enlist Mam and Branza in. Look at them all—grown people, running, shouting, filthy, the laughter falling out of them loud and unmeasured! Look at their warped faces as they glanced behind for the chasing bear, big-eyed and big-mouthed with terror and excitement!

  She recognised the street, with its rock slabs—and this wide way, too, up and down the hill. This is my own town, she thought, hanging back while the bear-boy threw himself into the crowd, catching hold of girls and women and kissing them and smearing them with his black. But look, so many more houses! So many more people! And smells! Farmish smells and rubbish smells and—There was so much strength and colour in everything, so much noise and movement, Urdda felt almost like Branza, wanting things calm and still so she could examine them properly.

  But with a shout, the boy was on his way again. Urdda joined the smudged girls thronging behind him who were safe from his attack, she gathered, because they were already marked and messed. Some of the girls she thought she recognised—was Tippy Dearborn so little as that, last time Urdda saw her?—but most were big, loud lasses, like none she had ever consorted with in her life.

  ‘He gets up a good sprint, this bear!’ laughed one behind her.

  ‘You’d think he’d be flagging,’ puffed another. ‘I am flagging, and he’s been going hours now.’

  ‘It’s magic!’ A third girl ran up past Urdda. ‘They get strength from it, all the maid-kisses. Remember that feller Ramstrong, who went all day and into the night that time?’

  ‘Bring them bakers on, I say, and let’s move to the dancing!’

  ‘Come on, Maddie. Pick up your skirts—no one minds today!’

  The town raced by them in spurts and stops, known and yet not known to Urdda—some windows shuttered blank, others garlanded and with elderwives and grumpas leaning grinning in them. In the streets, children sat on parents’ shoulders, some screaming terror, others delighted and beckoning the bear-boy. Pomade and body-dirt; hay, sweat, onion, and a bitter, yeastish smell—by turns each person’s odour teased Urdda’s nostrils. Everything was so thick and rich, she hardly knew whether to cringe or scream or shout for joy herself.

  The chase ended in the ash-tree square, when a pack of men dressed as bakers leaped from a lane and brought the bear-boy down. They beat him with flour-bags, and all around had floury masks added to their smudged faces, and the girls cheered and shouted and celebrated. A man with an axe came, and through the mist of flying flour Urdda saw him make as if shaving the bear-boy’s furred chest.

  ‘Teasel! Teasel!’ the big girls chanted. The boy flexed his muscles and roared.

  ‘You is tamed now,’ shouted the axe-man. ‘You can stop with your noise, for you are man again. No more grabbin of girls; no more smudgery. Come civilised up to Keller’s, and fill your belly with man-food and ale.’

  One of the girls rushed in and planted a kiss on the boy’s mouth, then stood a moment leering at her friends with her floured face, her tongue startlingly red, her red hands rubbing the boy’s chest-and belly-fur.

  ‘Aye, you shameless!’ The axe-man laughed and pushed her back into the cheering crowd.

  Urdda followed the crowd to Keller’s Whistle. The street there was strong with the bitterness she had smelt on some men’s breath as she passed, and the house itself was crowded all about with laughing people. Two other bear-boys were there to greet the Teasel boy, their faces, like the women’s, disquieting with black grease, and flour caked in their hair. Men clapped all three boys on the back, thrust cups into their hands, clanked their own cups with them, and drank the foaming stuff that smelled so sour.

  Urdda went unnoticed in that milling and mixing of people, trying to recognise girls she knew but frustrated by the face-paint. The men were easier, not being so marked, but here again there were differences. In general, they were fresher faced; some that she knew to have full beards were only just beginning to show down on chin and cheeks; some whose hair she knew to be silver-streaked were still fully golden-headed, or chestnut, or black. She was on the point of greeting one or two, but she was not sure that in fact she did know them in their present incarnations, and she would rather fill her eyes with sights and her ears with sounds, as a cat laps up a bowl of cream, and venture nothing herself yet.

  Soon it was evening. The alehouse windows burned red and gold, and the festivities went on both within and without. Urdda continued to wander, seeking things she had not seen before—quarrels and sly looks and rude guffaws, and people fondling each other in corners. She returned and peered in the alehouse windows, and tried to follow the words being sung in there and find the face of that boy Teasel, which always was very red and busy with singing and the drinking of ale.

  ‘How long will they be in there?’ Urdda asked a woman near her who was selling white-dusted cakes from a basket.

  ‘All night and well into tomorrer, I should think,’ said the woman. ‘Fancy a cake? I’ve jammed or plain.’

  ‘I have no money,’ said Urdda, for she had watched this woman transacting. Had she had the coppers, she would have counted them out correctly.

  She walked away. She was not going to stay here all night. She was not even sure she did want to speak to that Teasel boy; he looked quite wild and ill from the ale-drinking, and some people falling out the alehouse doors had been in no state to do more than slump in doorways and snore; or stagger away, singing or complaining. She was tired herself, with all the excitement and unfamiliarity, and the noise and the lamplit fragments of faces had the senselessness of a dream, and not an entirely pleasant dream at that.

  She did the sensible thing: she set off for her home. Down the town she went, and the sound of her own footfalls emerged from the ebbing rousty noises behind her, and the hot glare of the alehouse faded to the cool of moonlight. The main street, with all its extra houses, channelled her down to the gate like a tunnel—a tunnel with a starry ceiling—and the town gate stood open at the bottom, giving onto the passing road. Two guards lounged there: strangers to her, one with a pipe lit, both of them with eyes.

  ‘Who is us?’ said one, approaching her from the gate-shadow. ‘A bitty maid trotting out on her own i’ the night?’

  ‘Where might you be headed, missy?’ said the other from within his cloud of smoke.

  ‘To my home, sir. I live out beyond the Font.’

  ‘Ah, is a gypsy lass,’ said the closer man. ‘I am surprised you is alone.’

  ‘We ought escort the maid, mebbe,’ said the other, shifting and waving smoke away. ‘She look to be quite pretty under the Bear-black.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Urdda. ‘I know the way very well.’

  ‘You hear that, Lorrit?’ There was a note in the closer man’s voice that Urdda could not interpret. ‘Your services are not required.’

  ‘Good night,’ Urdda said. Without slowing her step, she walked under the arch of the gate and out to the road.

  ‘My services?’ said the pipe-smoker disbelievingly. The other guard chuckled.

  Outside the town, everything was more or less as she expected, in its shadows and cool night-forest smells and night-bird noises. Urdda made a good pace, pausing for a drink at Marta’s Font. I hope Branza has left some bread for me, she thought, and not fed it all to the birds.

  At first she walked right past the path that led down to the cottage. When she realised her mistake at the next bend and retraced her steps, she found that the tunnel into the forest was not nearly as easy to distinguish as it ought to be, although the rough stone steps down the slope were much the same.

  Down she went. Twigs caught at her clothing, vines at her hair, and spiderwebs—not an anchor-rope here and there, but whole curtains and entrapments of webs, speckled with black-wrapped remnants of insects—masked and gripped her face, or required to be torn apart for her to make her way. But she was Urdda, not Branza; she plucked the webs from her face and hands and persisted.

  She pushed the last
overgrowings aside, stumbled into the clearing, and stopped. A little scream escaped her, very like something Branza might have uttered from one of her bad dreams. And then, in disbelief, in the strange noonish-moonish light, she walked forward through the wild grasses, dead and dried and risen into waves now that their burden of winter snow had melted from them. She bent to the wreckage of Liga’s rose-arbour—the climbing rose uprooted, black and leafless, its knuckles in the lattice as if it were still in the act of tearing the arbour down. There was no sign of the garden’s neat rows; it was a wilderness of bare ground with scraps of gone-to-seed herbs, with caved-in gourd-shells scattered about and rabbit-scrapes dug where once turnip-tops had swelled.

  Urdda sidled along the path, turned to left and right, gasped shocked breaths and exclaimed them softly out again. At last she fetched up against the cottage step. It was the same step, without a doubt; she crouched and examined with desperate hands its pits and cracks, the hollow worn in the middle. But the ground to either side was bare of white-blooming bush and of red, and the doorway had no door, nor even a lintel, but gave straight onto the stars above, and below onto a mound of rotting thatch lumped with roof-beams that must have fallen years ago. The walls had melted under the rains and snows to stumps of things, with wattle sticking out, bleached and uneven, at the top.

  ‘Where is Mam?’ whispered Urdda. ‘Branza! Where have they got to?’

  All appearances gave them to be dead and gone, but that could not be true. Urdda had left them alive and breathing in their beds that very morning. She had stepped over the paw of the snoring bear on just this step! She lowered herself to sit on the stone—she was cold, now that she had stopped walking and struggling through the forest—and stared at the ruin around her, the wasteland. And when that had exhausted her by not assembling into any kind of sense, she raised her gaze to the familiar stars, and to the cheese-round moon, rough-faced and impersonal, coasting along the cloud-streaks above the black trees.