Tender Morsels (14 page)

‘Oh!’ She held the heavy lump as if it might burn her, turned it over, turned it again. It stayed gold in her hand, though smudged now with her mud, and with a leaf-scrap adhered to it. I held the ruby out to her. She gasped and put her pipe and stuff on the ground, and took the stone in her other hand, and moved it in a sunbeam so that it shot colour about. She stared from gold to jewel as if they were two eyes hypnotising her. ‘You have made your fortune, Dought!’

‘Annie, I have made mine, and yours, and plenty left over.’ I showed her inside the belt with the coins nestling like gold-backed insects, gleaming outrageously all around my middle.

She jumped up and away from me. She darted back and laid the treasures on the stump, careful, as if they might explode. She trembled behind her clutched hands, staring at me, her eyes filling. And then she was off in some kind of mudwife mad-dance, stamping and choking and waving those string-and-wire stick-arms she had threatened me with just a few days ago. I laughed to see her, and to see the bap still gold on the wood, and feel the coins still weighty at my waist. First, I would get Ashbert off my tail. He was ready to stave my head in if he saw me, though. I would get me a
servant
, and I would send my
servant
—a good big brute of a servant at that—with the payment, and I would not sully myself with company such as Ashbert’s again. I would move in entirely higher circles. I would be like a soaring eagle, tiny in that man’s eyes, not with insignificance but with unreachable height above him and with wealth.

Annie came laughing and weeping back to me, where I was smiling and piling the coins upon the stump.

‘Put it away, put it away!’ she whispered.

‘It is yours, though, Annie!’

She shook her head and the tears fell and flew. ‘It is too . . . much . . . money!’ she said. ‘How does a person spend such coins?
They are too big for me! They shine too bright! I would faint, presenting them. People would follow me home to rob me! I could not
carry
,’ she almost pleaded, ‘the copper I would get in change, did I spend one—it would tear through my pocket and fall all over.’

Oh, she was old, so old, and she had never known much of the ways of the world. That was mudwifery for you—sitting to one side and catching the odd copper fallen out of people’s ill-luck. ‘Let me organise it for you, Annie. Do you want a house built, or would you rather buy the fanciest one extant in town? I can arrange either for you—just you say what you want me to do.’

She gasped some more and looked around, at the rubbish of her magic-making, the ends and ashes of all the ingredients, the expense of which, I knew, was greater than any she had met before. I held out her pipe-bits to her and she looked at them as if they were challenging her to a punchfight. Then she took them and sat on the grass, and carefully made up the pipe and lit it, and surrounded her head with smoke.

‘Just,’ she croaked in the middle of the smoke-cloud, ‘a little cot is all I’ve ever wanted—just something a little better than I have. Not even that! I never thought to want! There was never any hope of such!’

And then she was weeping into her hands for all her years of hardship, from St Onion’s days to this. And then she had thrown her pipe aside and was up on her knees. She came at me on her knees like a pilgrim—it was alarming to see—and she kissed my hand, clutching its stubbiness in her long grey fingers.

This was not at all what I had been after when I came to her for aid. I’d been thinking of some brisk and cheerful transaction—as between men, is what I likely had in mind. She were twisting me all up, pouring her emotions out on me. I could see that such wealth was going to be more complicated than I had thought.

Branza walked a dream-forest, wearing a shift with two pockets. A tiny Urdda chattered in the one, a tiny Mam sewed silently at the
bottom of the other, and from their fragility an air of dread spread among the trees, thick as water.

He was on his way, the littlee-man she had pushed out of her mind this morning. She could feel him coming, though she saw nothing yet: all the birds, sensible birds, had fled; all the leaves hung very still. Branza stood aside from the path.

Here he came, with his unnatural walk. He was no bigger than when she first saw him, but his very stumpiness terrified her, his child-legs carrying all that intent, his big-baby head with all the hair, with all the beard, sprouted from his harmful intentions.

He drew level with her and stopped. He could smell her; he could smell how frightened she was, hear her heartbeat. Urdda was silent in her pocket, under her hand, but Mam worked on, and she was knitting now, and her needles gave off tiny, busy clickings.

The littlee-man’s face worked with delight and hatred. His head slowly turned, macabre on his hidden neck—perhaps he had no neck, but only the hairs tethering the ball of his head to his doll-body.

She could not even
think
of running. What would be the point? She stood among the trees—there was something chapped and scabby, something charred about their bark. Her hands, over her pockets, shielded the tiny Urdda, warned the traitorous knitting Mam. The man’s head turned slower and slower, teasing her with its slowness, letting her terror build. He was not smiling, yet he gave off a strong sense of glee.

Then she was pinned and screaming in the dark, struggling as he muttered in her ear.

‘Branza, Branza!’ Mam cried from her pocket, from her shoulder, from outside the dream, and Branza rushed awake and clung to her. Urdda reached out of her sleep beside her, patted her sister heavily as Branza wept, then slipped back away into her own busy dreams.

Well, I thought I were set for life then, I had so much gold. But then I found that human wants are like an evil fart; they will swell to fill every corner of whatever wealth is available.

I were sensible, I thought: I did not give to beggars nor splash the money about too wantonly. I bought three fine houses: one for Annie in St Olafred’s, one for myself in Broadharbour, and another for myself near Annie’s so I could visit now and then and instruct her further in how to be wealthy—for she had no more idea of handling money than a slug has of flying. But I did not dress outrageous, only sober and high-class; and I did not squander on parties, or on devilments beyond the odd
very
fancy fancy-woman; I did not lose my senses and marry or breed up a big puddle of expensive children or nothing; I lent money to no one except those I knew to be trustworthy in meeting my terms and rewarding me later.

Still, it ran out—well, not completely, but two years on and my pants-seat were looking a bit thin to the wind; I could feel the whistling. And then one of my trustworthies come along and admitted to me that it were, matter of fact, his feckless
son’s
venture that he had had me backing, not his trustworthy own, and sure and he’d have the sixty crown to me just as soon as he’d earned it off his tin mine, but with the tin mine, see, things were not going so wonderful there as they had done the past many years, and, well . . .

Which it ended up, very suddenly everything went to shit and there was one, just
one
, card game involved where I had done all I could to ensure that I would recoup the part of my fortune I needed to meet those hanging off my hems for payment, but even that were not enough. So, as I say, very suddenly I found myself fleeing Broadharbour for the country, with Pinchman Brady and his boys on my tail, and despite my feinting and dodgery, they managed to follow me to St Olafred’s, and before I knew it I was skedaddling down the town with Brady’s boy Canard after me on his great long legs like a spider’s, and me thinking, What the bishop’s knickers am I going to do about this?

And there must be something after all in bishopry, or at least in godding, for as I were running down that twitchel behind Eelsisters’ convent it comes to me, in a kind of slow flash, if you know what I mean—the kind of very clear thinking a person is capable of in a very tight spot, a more or less ultimate spot. Between one step and the next I seen again Muddy Annie brooding and looking shady
as we walk through her town house that I’m about to organise the buying of, our footsteps echoing in the big empty rooms.

You could always go through a second time, she says, and fetch more money. Now that it have been punchered, the . . . the rind of it, like. I could not exactly advise it, but there is nothing in your way, only my qualms
.

So there I stopped, right in that twitchel. Canard turned in at the top and shouted triumph. And I stamped my foot and I said, ‘Let me through, let me through!’

‘You hoping for the nuns to save you?’ says Canard, running down at me.

Nothing gave underfoot, stamp as I may. ‘Through! Lemme through!’ I danced like a kitten on top of a stove.

The bugger was laughing, stopped in the lane right before me and laughing, close enough to grab me but now taking his time, enjoying the sight of the little stamping stumpet.

Then he laughed no more, but stepped back in a fright. I glanced behind me—what was he falling back from? Nothing there. And then I heard it, like the flap of a bird-wing above me, and there it was, the wheeling star, the fold between the worlds.
Sproing!
I was up there, dived up into it like an arrow with my joined hands, like a prayer darting up to the heavens: Thank you, bishopry and nunnery and goddery! Off I go. And the wheel-thing sucked me up into the water.

Well, it was just as nasty as last time, the sensations, like being swallered by a very thin and muscular snake. I forced up through the water—not half as deep this time, thank the Pieman in the Sky—and tried to pull my beard after me, but it was all snagged and snaffled in the bottom. I could stand straight, and well out of the water from my tailbone up, but I could not get free of the mud. And there—I just got the one horrible glimpse before the muddy water slopped back over—was my beautiful beard, grasped in Canard’s fingers, which had forced through the star-fold, coming after me.

The snake’s belly did not want to let him through, though. I pulled and pulled, thinking my entire manhood would be torn out of my chin by the roots, but all that must have happened were, the
hairs must have slipped some through his fingers, for he did not come through follering.

I kept to pulling, wishing, oh, for a stone to whack at Canard’s fingers and make him relinquish me, whereupon I was sure he would slip back away. I cried out for someone to rescue me—I should not care how much they lectured me the while—but no one came to my calls. So on I fought—’twere like dragging an oxcart by my beard, I tell you, so-o-o slow and hard. The water, bit by bit, grew shallower—ah, but I turned and what did I see but the bobbles of Canard’s knuckles coming up the surface? Gawd, I were pulling him through, though I did not want him here—perhaps I could just get him partway, stand on his head, and drown him?

I were too panicked to consider if this would help my cause or harm it, if I would manage to get back
myself
, were he jammed dead in the hole between worlds. I were too busy eyeing that clump o’ daisies there, near the bank. If I reached those and held them, I’d have coin to quiet him—quiet them all. So, all made of leaden pain, I clawed my way up the shallows.

Well, I had paused to thrash a little in my frustration, and Canard’s force were dragging me back down somewhat, when I saw to my surprise and relief, lifting my hand, several pearls underneath it, smeared with mud. A broken blob of frog-spawn floated at my fingertips also, slipping away as Canard hauled me. I made a snatch at this and lo! the little jellies turned to hard sweet lovely shining pearls in my magic hand. Fast as foxes, I pulled out my pocket and began stowing the things, and reaching for more—maybe pearls would do; maybe pearls would be sufficient to gold! I remembered pearls being a fine price when my fancy-girl’s fancy turned to them that time as I were wooing her. And that were Broadharbour—here in at landlocked St Olafred’s, they’d be thought marvellous indeed.

I had only a whisker of hope there before Canard, the nuisance, gave a tremendous jerk to my poor beard, and just like a hooked fish I was brought back to the depths, where he wanted me.