The Widder Woman, Page 2

  The widders.

  The kelp forest was more frightening than any forest Toomi had ever been in, more frightening than when she and Sanni had gotten lost and her father had found them huddling in the hollow trunk of an oak, shaking with terror. The dead floated everywhere, like logs bobbing on the river during a spring flood. The widders’ eyes were closed. They might have been sleeping but Toomi knew they weren’t.

  The widder woman floated before the corpse of a man. He was so far gone in decay that Toomi couldn’t make out anything about him: not his age or who he once might have been.

  I might have known him, Toomi thought. Might even have spoken to him.

  The widder woman unstrapped the basket from her back and tied it to the kelp stem. She took some of the mashed up skyweed and rolled it up into balls. She swam right up to the widder, pressed her fingers to either side of the mouth until it fell open, and stuffed the skyweed inside. When the mouth was full, she made smaller balls with the skyweed and jammed it into the widder’s ears and nostrils. When she had finished, she untied the basket and moved on.

  Toomi followed at a distance, fighting her revulsion.

  A thought kept nagging at her. Where is my grandmother? She had been very young when her grandmother had stopped visiting. Her memories of the woman were hazy but a sense of being very safe and much loved came over Toomi whenever she thought of her.

  She has been called by the widders, her father had explained. Toomi hadn’t understood what that meant, but she did now.

  Toomi forced herself to look at the faces of all the widders she passed, searching for anything she recognized.

  The widder woman halted by the side of a widder who might have been a boy not much older than Toomi herself. She pointed at Toomi and then at the widder.

  There was no mistaking her instruction.

  Toomi dug some slimy weed out of the basket and rolled it up. The widder’s skin sank inwards under her fingers. Gorge rose in her stomach. She pressed her thumb and finger to either side of the widder’s mouth until the horrible black hole fell open and quickly stuffed the skyweed inside.

  The widder woman nodded in satisfaction then moved away, leaving Toomi alone to finish tending the widder. Toomi found that the head bobbed back and forth as she poked the green weed into the squashy holes of its ears. To steady it, she reached up to grab a handful of hair. But before her fingers could touch it, the head suddenly jerked sideways. The eyelids snapped open and a pair of orange eyes fixed on Toomi. A freezing hand grabbed her wrist.

  Welcome, widder woman.

  Toomi screamed, sending a stream of bubbles racing to the surface. She kicked, breaking the widder’s grip and fled upwards. She broke the surface gasping. The sunlight on her face felt sweeter than she would have thought possible.

  Father Sky, she thought desperately. Please help me.

  Frantically she paddled to the shore and pulled herself out, a sharp pain stabbing her chest as her breathing transferred from her gills to her lungs. Toomi ran along the shoreline, not knowing where she was going. She ran until the breath burned in her chest, until her legs shook. She stumbled, fell, rose and ran once more. Eventually she staggered to a stop. Exhausted, she crashed onto her knees and toppled onto her side in the sand.

  Toomi started awake. Horrible memories closed in on her.

  White, rotting skin. Orange eyes. A pale hand reaching out…

  I can’t do this, she thought. I have to get home. They’ll understand won’t they? They can find someone else to be widder woman. I have to get home.

  Across the lake, lights were twinkling in her village.

  I have to get home.

  Toomi walked into the lake and began swimming.

  Kick your legs, scoop your arms, keep moving, just as her father had taught her. But the light got no closer. How could the lake be so wide? Surely it didn’t go on forever?

  Toomi’s arms began to burn. Her shoulders ached, her legs kicked that bit slower on each stroke. Then she was sinking down through black water.

  I have to get home.

  The widders—

  I have to get home

  —will get me.

  Settling into soft, welcoming sand on the lake bed. Cocooned in velvet darkness. Safe now, so very safe.

  Toomi closed her eyes.

  After an indeterminate amount of time, she heard singing moving towards her through the darkness. When she opened her eyes a creature appeared before her. Almost human but not quite. He had long hair and skin covered in copper scales. From his back spread a pair of silver wings.

  She recognized him, even though she was sure she’d never seen him.

  Father Sky sends his guardians to keep us safe.

  One of the Sky Folk.

  He regarded her with amber eyes. I’m sorry I startled you earlier, he said gently, although Toomi wasn’t sure that he had spoken aloud.

  She didn’t understand what he meant and she didn’t care. She suddenly felt very warm and very safe. The sky man wrapped his arms around her and Toomi pressed herself into his strong embrace. He smelled like sunshine after rain.

  Time to get you home, he said. The lake doesn’t want you yet.

  They rose through the dark water. As they reached the surface, the sky man gave a great kick of his legs and burst free of the lake in an explosion of silver droplets. He unfolded his wings and they flew low, skimming the surface of the lake.

  “Thank you, Father Sky,” she whispered. “Thank you for saving me from the lake.”

  The sky man laughed gently. There can be no distinction, he said. We are the lake and the sky. We are one.

  Toomi didn’t like the sound of that. The lake was dark and scary but the sky was soft and comforting like velvet. She reached out a hand, feeling the gossamer touch of the sky as it whirled past.

  The widder woman was waiting. Lamplight framed her anxious face as she stood in the doorway looking out into the dark. The sky man handed Toomi over and left without a word.

  ***

  Toomi stared out of the window. An autumn storm battered the world outside, throwing waves crashing against the stilts and turning the sky into a hissing beast.

  The widder woman was sitting by the fire, singing a song without words. The storm did not bother her. But for Toomi the storm took her back to another room, another window, years away and a young girl waiting for her father to come home.

  “Don’t fret, child,” said the widder woman. “It will blow itself out come sundown.”

  But it didn’t. It raged all night.

  Toomi awoke with a start.

  “Word from the village,” the widder woman said from her chair by the fire. “We are needed.”

  She turned away, and so did not see the horror creep across Toomi’s face.

  Not the village, please! I can’t go back there!

  But even as she thought it, the child in her was shouting, Home! At last!

  They climbed into the widder woman’s boat: a broad-bottomed scow with a single sail, and began the long journey across the lake.

  Finally, the boat scraped the far shore. Did the sand feel different under Toomi’s toes as she climbed out? And was that fish and salt smell different? Could everything change in so short a time?

  But no, there was the boat builder’s house and beyond that were the smoking huts, just where they had always been. And look, children peeking out to stare at the visitors, looking just as scruffy and rag-tag as they always had.

  But after all, perhaps they were not quite the same. These children did not giggle and dig their fellows in the ribs to point out the visitors. They didn’t follow behind in a gaggle, firing questions in a stream so quickly they were barely intelligible. Instead, they stared fearfully and watched in silence as Toomi and the widder woman entered their village.

  What has happened here? Toomi wondered. I have not seen the village this sad since—

  Toomi’s breath caught.

  —since the storm when I was nine when
the lake took all those people.

  They walked down the main street, greeted by no one, their only company two skinny hounds following in the hope of food.

  All the doors were shut.

  Not welcome, those doors said. Not welcome here, you dealers of the dead.

  Toomi recognized the route the widder woman was taking. She had walked it every day.

  Left here past the well. Straight to the end and you’ll find—

  Toomi stopped.

  There it was, the place she had dreamed of all summer. But not the joy, the elation, oh no. Fear. Cold and hard as an iron ball in her stomach.

  The widder woman walked to the door.

  No.

  Toomi took one step. Two. Three.

  Please.

  Pushed the door open. Inside. Familiar smells. Memories. Everything the same and yet utterly changed. There was her mother and sister standing by the hearth.

  I’m home! she wanted to shout but they would not even look at her.

  Sanni, her baby sister, looked up once, her eyes flicking towards Toomi and away again, coming to settle on a figure laid out on a pallet in the center of the room.

  Skin pale and clammy. Lips tinged blue. Sodden hair that slowly drip-dripped onto the floor.

  Toomi wanted to scream. She wanted to run from the house and keep running until all of this was far away. Instead, she found herself walking towards the figure on the pallet.

  He was probably making jokes, Toomi thought. And smiling, even as they went down. Because that’s what he did. My father.

  Finally, the tears came. So many that they swept Toomi away and she lost all sense of time. There was a brief embrace from her mother and sister then men came and carried the body back to the boat.

  Then came a journey back through the growing dawn. Just the widder woman’s wordless song for company and the body of her father on the floor.

  “Help me carry him, Toomi.”

  Woodenly, Toomi rose from her seat and did as the widder woman asked. The body wasn’t heavy. Unnatural strength was one of the gifts of the widder woman, Toomi had learned. Toomi took her father’s feet, not wanting to be anywhere near that cold, familiar face and they laid him out on the beach.

  Toomi sat herself high up on the beach with her knees drawn up under her chin. The widder woman bent over the dead man. All the while, she sang her song without words. Tears shone in her eyes.

  What’s he to you? Toomi thought. Why the tears? Surely just another widder for you to tend?

  “He must be given to Mother Lake in the proper way,” the widder woman said.

  “Why?” Toomi cried. “Just throw him in and be done with it. What difference do your stupid rituals make?”

  The widder woman did not reply for a long time. She just stared at Toomi with her eyes full of an emotion Toomi couldn’t place. Sympathy? Pity? Toomi did not want any of it.

  “He’s dead!” she shouted. “And he’ll go to the Deeps and rot with all the others!”

  The widder woman seemed about to say something but changed her mind.

  Look out the window, Toomi, she told herself. Look out the window and pretend that none of this is happening.

  But there was no window, and no matter how hard she tried, Toomi could not pull her eyes from the corpse lying on the sand.

  I can never come home now can I, father? You will never change your mind and tell me you want me back.

  “Come, Toomi. It is your duty. He deserves no less.”

  The widder woman took her father’s left arm, Toomi took his right. Together they dragged him into the water.

  The sky seemed brighter, more crystalline than she had ever seen it. Her father’s skin shone, so bright that she had to squint against the glare.

  But the lake was dark and menacing.

  Soon they were deep enough for the water to take the weight of the corpse. Toomi and the widder woman lifted their feet and dived down, trailing her father’s body like a piece of bobbing weed.

  Was it just Toomi’s imagination, or some trick of the current, that made the other widders seem to turn and stare? Did those swollen eyes really watch as Toomi held her father’s corpse in place whilst the widder woman tied him to a strand of kelp?

  The widder woman moved away, giving Toomi a chance to say goodbye. Toomi approached. She saw nothing of her father. Where was his easy smile? Where were his bright eyes that crinkled when he laughed? Where was the strong voice that shouted at her to get out of bed every morning?

  No, he was just a widder now. And she was a widder woman. From her pocket, Toomi took a rolled up ball of skyweed. Mechanically, she began the ritual. She pinched her father’s cheeks and shoved the skyweed into his mouth as it fell open. It was easier than it should have been. It seemed as if she had never known him, as though he was just another faceless widder.

  This is me, she thought. My life. First my father, but one day it will be my mother and my sister and all my friends. One day I’ll have to bring them all down here.

  The widder woman’s hand brushed her own. The old woman was watching her with sympathy in her eyes.

  Leave me alone you old hag! I don’t want your sympathy!

  Toomi sped back up to the surface, not stopping until she had clambered from the lake and back to the house. Once there she dragged the huge iron kettle over to the well, filled it with water and hoisted it onto the iron peg over the fire.

  Next, she collected an armload of logs from the woodpile and dumped them into the fireplace. She took the tinder pouch from the mantelpiece and, crouching low, struck a spark and gently blew until the wood took flame. She straightened, glanced around, and her eyes alighted on the pile of carrots lying in a bucket. She dragged the bucket over to her three-legged stool and began peeling them furiously, saving the peelings to take out to the compost heap later.

  Toomi heard the widder woman’s heavy footsteps on the stairs outside. She threw herself onto her rickety cot, turned her face to the wall, and pulled the thick blanket up around her head. The door creaked open and the widder woman slowly crossed the floor and lowered herself into her chair with a sigh.

  “Toomi? Are you awake?”

  No! I’m fast asleep so don’t talk to me. Please don’t talk to me.

  The chair creaked as the widder woman leaned back. Toomi drifted into uneasy sleep.

  The following days bled one into the other. A numbness gradually crept through Toomi, blunting her emotions until they felt far away, like they belonged to someone else. At night, she slept fitfully, and spent hours awake, staring out into the darkness.

  Is this it? her thoughts whispered in the hours of night. Is this all there is?

  By day, she carried out her chores with a kind of mechanical detachment. She cooked. She cleaned. She tended the chickens and milked the goat. She pounded skyweed bulbs into paste and put it into the widder woman’s basket.

  But she didn’t go into the lake and the widder woman seemed to understand. Toomi no longer looked out over the lake. She no longer raised her eyes to her village and hoped.

  Toomi was milking the goat out the back when the widder woman approached from behind.

  “Come here, child.”

  The command in that voice made Toomi go cold.

  Don’t answer. Pretend you haven’t heard and she might go away!

  The widder woman’s hand closed on Toomi’s shoulder. “Come, child. It is time.”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  The widder woman’s eyes were harder than Toomi had ever seen them. “You are a widder woman. You have a duty. I have allowed you time to grieve but that time is over. You will come into the lake with me. Now.”

  Toomi followed numbly as the widder woman took her hand and led her down to the shore. But as her feet touched the water she baulked, and pulled back.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why are you making me do this? Don’t I work hard enough? Don’t I keep the house and the animals so the only thing you have to do is go into the l
ake? Why would you make me do this as well?”

  You sound like a child! Toomi said to herself. I don’t care! I won’t go in there! Not ever!

  The widder woman sighed. “I need you to trust me, Toomi. I need you to come into the lake with me now, before it’s too late.”

  Toomi looked at the wrinkled, tired face and for the first time, didn’t see just the widder woman. Instead, she saw an old woman who must have been young once, with a family of her own.

  How long has she been out here alone? Toomi thought. How many of her own family has she taken down into the Deeps? And yet, she never complains. Day after day, she tends the widders, accepting that this is her life.

  Toomi nodded.

  With the widder woman holding her hand tightly, they swam down into the dark waters. Toomi’s heart thundered in her chest. But the widder woman’s hand was like a clamp, keeping her grounded and the fear at bay.

  And then there it was: the strand of kelp that anchored the newest additions to this underwater barrow.

  A widder bobbed gently in the water, so far gone as to be barely recognizable. The arms and legs were missing and it looked nothing more than a great swollen maggot.

  Somehow, Toomi knew that this was her father.

  Panic broke through her restraint and she turned to flee but the widder woman caught her in arms suddenly as strong as granite and held her fast, turning her to face the widder.

  Wait, child! You must watch. This is why we tend the widders. This is what it truly means to be a widder woman.

  The words blossomed in Toomi’s head, without the widder woman having to speak at all. Just like the voice of Mother Lake on her drowning night. Like the voice of the Sky Folk who had rescued her.

  Toomi stared at the widder, suddenly unable to take her eyes off it. Then to her horror, it began to move. Toomi struggled, wanting to be somewhere, anywhere, but here but the widder woman held her fast.

  The widder’s milky skin broke open and a head emerged, bearing a face she knew.