Tender Morsels (23 page)

But on their way home, in the forest, just before Hallow Top where the big stones lay, to Branza’s dismay and Urdda’s amusement, they came upon the little nasty again, crouched to one side of the path in the bloodied disarray of his hair and torn clothes. He had gathered such piles of shining objects, it was going to take all his nuggety strength to carry them.

‘My!’ said Urdda. ‘This is the treasure in all those tales of Mam’s, Branza, remember? And
these
—look, remember these? I asked her, and these are called
pearls
.’

‘You said you wouldn’t tell about him!’ said Branza.

‘And I did not tell, but I found out these were pearls, and they are very precious in some parts of the world, Mam says. This man is one of those greedy men from the tales.’

The littlee-man looked up suspiciously from counting silver coin. ‘Why’n’t you follow that bee there and buzz off from here?’

‘His manners have not improved, have they, sister? For being so close to being pecked apart and stuffed down the craws of eaglets.’

‘Come away, Urdda,’ said Branza. ‘He is a foul man, and cruel, and he will not improve with being told it.’

‘Yes indeed, liller smoocha-pooch, I am foul and cruel. Let your friend take you back to Niceland, or Sweetland, or Lovey-dove Land, where you belong. Or sisters, is it, did you say? Don’t look like it. Poked of different dads, I’d say. Slut-mothered, and no doubt of such matter themselves, eh?’ He spat into the bushes. ‘You don’t
know what I’m saying, do you, so iggenrent you are? I could flap out my old man, no doubt, and you’d think it was a turnip or some such.’

The littlee-man’s face fell as Urdda bent and selected a large ruby from the pile of treasure. ‘So, what do you call this colour of treasure, greedy man?’ She polished it on her sleeve. But then she gasped, and almost dropped it. The red stone turned over in her hand, and stood up on twig legs, and shook out a beak at one end and a tilting tail at the other. It plumped up, wriggled, flew from her hand a robin, and scolded them from a beech-branch nearby. ‘Did you see that, Branza?’

‘Get you your filthy, common sow-trotters off my property, you minx!’ The littlee-man leaped to his feet.

‘But how is it you can turn birds to treasure,’ said Urdda, ‘and frog-eggs to pearls? I should like to be able to do such things.’

‘Get away! Stand you back from all of it or you’ll render it rubbish, you waster-space!’

But Urdda stood firm. ‘Where do you come from, sir?’

‘I come’—the littlee-man stalked towards her in a way that might have been menacing, had he been full-sized—‘from Smelly-bumhole Land. You may call me Mister Odiferous. Up through the arse of the world I come here, and when I’m finished I will squeeze myself back out it. Now, take your lips and flap them somewhere else, useless hussy.’

Urdda laughed uncertainly. ‘Half your words I cannot understand, sir, through your accent and their strangeness.’

‘You can tell they are not nice, though,’ said Branza. ‘Come, Urdda, let’s leave him.’

But before Urdda could obey, the wood beyond the littlee-man shook with a deep growling.

Branza and Urdda froze; the littlee-man fell to the ground, crawled back to his jewel-hoard, and threw himself over as much of it as his small body would cover. Then, from the trees, a smell, all wildness, poured, and a shadow that stood high, bellowing, steep-shouldered, fur-footed, round-eared, sprouting claws and teeth.

Urdda was gusted back to her sister on the breath of it. ‘Oh, Bear!’ she cried. They clutched each other, Urdda in delight and
Branza in terror at the beast that was not playful at all, that was no man’s friend.

‘Mercy!’ screamed the littlee, hugging his jewels, trying to scrape them all together under his smallness.

‘He is like a
doll
there,’ whispered Urdda. ‘He is like a
puppet
, so small next to Bear.’

The bear bent and flicked the littlee-man off the treasure-pile.

‘Take them, take them!’ The littlee-man rolled and sprang up. ‘I can always find more! Take the fortune of them, all of them, and bless you, fine creature. You deserve, surely, to be bedecked and arrayed, oh king of beasts—’

But the bear had drunk up all the man-smell from the stones and coin, and now it stepped after the littlee, jingling the heaps apart and into each other with its uncaring feet.

‘No, sir, I beg you!’ he screamed. ‘There is nothing of me but a scrap of leather! Please, my lord, have these!’ He was behind the girls, and pushing them forward. ‘So plump, so tender! Full of juice and fat! They will make a fine meal for you! They will fill your belly twice over each one, not like dry old me!’

The two girls stood, still as landforms or dead things. Urdda gazed up adoring at the giant. Branza was locked against her sister, her face pressed into Urdda’s neck. Only the little man shrieked and made prey-noises. Urdda could smell him; he smelled of fear and blood.

The bear’s black paw came down. The wind of it swiped Urdda and Branza. Then the littlee-man was on the grass, the kicked jewels around him. His rags were torn away from his arm and belly, which all but fell apart into slices, they were clawed so deeply by the bear. His face also was cut open, and through the torn cheek Urdda saw two of his yellowed teeth before blood coated them and filled the cut. He gazed up from where the blow had thrown him, as if trying to make sense of the sky and the sensations of his body. And then he was a thing on the ground, a man no more.

Branza heard the silence and lifted her head. Her fright grew much stronger, but stiller, at the sight of the littlee-thing lying there. A worm of his blood trickled out into the grass, nosing to left and right.

The bear, breathing calmly, bent to him, its paws crushing the
grass-stalks on either side. It commenced to eat him, and Urdda held Branza tighter at the sight, for fear of her sister gasping or screaming, and bringing the same fate on the both of them. The littlee-man swung as does a bird in the mouth of a hunting dog; he appeared not to mind any of the eating, to still be thinking about what had happened, to still be realising. And then he had no face to realise with, and the bear was cracking his small skull in its jaws and licking out the contents with a very particular noise, all cupped close and rasping, and the littlee-man’s hair was all over the bear’s face and front like a spiderweb. Then he was nothing but pieces on the ground, cloth-rags and flesh-rags both, and bones, eyeholes in the red grass, and stains and shreds around the mouth of the bear, and patches in the clearing, memories of the noises.

The bear belched softly, swung its head towards the sisters and away again, then rose and walked on its bloodied paws in among the trees a little way, where it sat and began to groom itself.

Urdda and Branza, stiff with watching, watched still the tongue, like a pale creature, dancing in the shadows there. The teeth whitened again with its cleaning; the claws emerged yellow-grey.

A flight of tiny birds sprang up around them from the treasure-pile and flew out, some green-tufted, some ruby-throated, some gold-winged. In the grass the shine went off the gold and silver coins, and only flowers of dandelion and white-maiden lay, smelling of the sap of their torn stalks.

‘A beast turning upon a person,’ said Urdda, thrilled. ‘Just as in a story, Branza!’

‘I can hardly believe it, he is so gentle with us,’ breathed Branza.

‘Nor can I! So savage!’ The littlee-man twitched and swung and cracked in Urdda’s memory. In the trees, the bear huffed and tongued his paws.

The first thing Branza must do, as soon as she could move, was hide the bits and bones of the littlee-man.

‘Help me, Urdda.’ She pulled up a grass-clump to start her
excavation. ‘Collect up the scraps of him and bring them here.’

Urdda looked as if it were the first time she had seen them. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Mam must not see him, even in pieces.’

‘Why not, though?’

‘She will want to know who he was and what he wanted.’

‘Why then, we will tell her.’

‘We will not,’ said Branza, digging. ‘She must not see.’

‘What has got into you?’ Urdda said distractedly, and wandered bearwards.

‘Urdda, no!’ Branza sat back on her heels and clicked her tongue. ‘Let her be eaten, then,’ she said to herself crossly, ‘for not helping me.’ And she rose and ran to where an oak-bough hung low, from which she could take leaves to use as gloves and wrappings so that she would not have to touch the little nasty’s wetnesses.

After placing several pieces of him in the ground, she checked again, and there was Urdda in the forest fringe, leaning towards the bear and pleading with him. He took scant notice of her, but only busied himself cleaning the blood and fibres of the littlee-man from his fur. Branza could hear Urdda’s tone—insistent, high, the tone she achieved just before Branza or Mam either smacked her or gave in to her pleading. ‘He will swipe you too, Urdda,’ Branza sang under her breath, shaking her head as Mam sometimes did, knowing better. Then a leaf unstuck from where it had been folded in the grave, and a littlee eyehole stared up, and she hurried to fetch other pieces and leaves to cover it.

‘Here we are,’ Urdda said. She and the bear loomed at the edge of Branza’s sight. He was on all fours, his head low and his expression almost chastened. Urdda had gathered some littlee-hairs off his chest and face, and carried them like sewing-silks loosed from a skein, floating out behind her. ‘Look, he is all cleaned up to present himself to Mam.’

She bundled the hairs and dropped them into the littlee-grave, and stood with her hand in the bear’s mane while Branza filled the hole in and replanted the grass she had pulled up. It did not look quite natural there; nor did the stamped earth around it.

‘If we are out with Mam, we must avoid this place a little while, until this weathers in,’ Branza said.

Urdda lifted an eyebrow, as if Branza were mad. The bear beside her raised his nose from the soil, snuffed the air for Branza’s scent, and pushed his nose into the palm of her earthy hand.

‘You carry the basket, Urdda, at least until we reach the stream and I can wash.’ Branza scratched the bear between the ears while Urdda fetched the basket. ‘I am rather glad you ate that littlee-man, yes I am,’ she murmured to him. ‘I am quite pleased that we do not have to worry about meeting him again. I did not like him at all.’

The bear made a contented noise, and rubbed his great soft cheek against her side.

Liga, well pleased, carried two gutted fish home, a heavy silver meal. Soon the girls would stride in from town with the fine herbs and long-beans that only Wilegoose could grow, and they would all be full tonight.

There they were now, on the other side of the cottage. She could hear their happy voices—but a little clearer, sounding more self-conscious than usual. Had they brought someone back? The Gruen boy, maybe? How ought she to behave with
him
? she wondered. Would he expect to eat with them? Would there be enough fish? How much did dream-people eat at a sitting?

She forgot fish and food at the sight of the shadow with her daughters—low, broad, rippling-edged. Too deeply delighted even to tremble or laugh, she stood feasting on the sight of his shape in the dusk, his amiable all-fours ambling.

‘Mam, look who has come back!’

They brought him to her, and doubt sang down Liga like light along a knife-edge. His walk was different; she tried to discern in what way. And—it was like a cloak of mist or dust—a tawniness clouded his face and shoulders. His face was the wrong face: rounder, younger, blander. Worst of all, he did not seem to recognise her.

‘It is not the same bear.’ Liga walked to the bench by the cottage door and laid the fish there.

‘Are there more than one, then?’ said Branza.

‘Fool-girl! Just as there are many deer, many foxes, many swallows, there are bears all through the world.’

Branza and Urdda both looked startled, and Liga heard the bitterness in her voice. It is only, she thought, that I thought you brought
my
bear, and life lit up for a moment. And now it is returned to its usual dimness, which truly I had thought was bright enough for me.