Herbs and Hands

Chapter 6:

I came up out of the dark once, on my back, moving.

The sky was above me and it was moving too, sliding sideways, and there was a sound like boots on gravel and a woman's voice doing a low steady stream of words I couldn't get hold of.

"—eight pounds soaking wet and nobody thought to feed her, nobody thought to—"

The sky rocked and I was going up steps.

"Hey," I said.

The sky stopped rocking.

"Hey. Hey, don't do that, don't talk." A hand found my forehead and pressed it down, firm, no argument in it. "We're almost in. Don't you dare talk."

"I'm not—" My mouth was full of cotton. "I'm not that heavy."

The woman made a sound. Not a laugh. Close to one, but it had a crack in it. "You're a sack of bones and wet wool. Don't flatter yourself."

The door frame went over me. Inside light. Warmth hitting my face all at once, and it hurt, the way warmth hurts when you've been cold too long.

"Chair," the woman said, to nobody. "No. Floor. Floor's better."

The floor came up under me.

I got a look at the ceiling. Beams. Low. Somebody's whole life of smoke up there in the wood. Then a blanket came down over me and the cold got worse before it got better, that awful shivering that starts when the cold is leaving.

"Feet," the woman said.

"My feet are fine."

"Your feet are blocks of ice and I'm taking your boots off."

"Don't—" I tried to sit up. The room tipped sideways and I put a hand down and found floorboards. "Those are my boots."

"They're wet leather. They'll take your toes off." A tug. The left boot came off and my foot lit up like it had been asleep for a year. "There. That's one."

"That hurt."

"Good. That means it's still yours."

The right boot came off and I made a noise I'm not proud of and lay back down on the floor and looked at the beams.

The woman moved around the room. I could hear her — cupboards, a kettle, the scrape of a chair she didn't use. Something got poured. Something got stirred.

"You're not from the village," I said.

"No."

"You're not from any village. You'd be in a village."

She came back with a cup and knelt down and put her hand behind my head and lifted it like it weighed nothing. "Drink. Slow."

It was bitter. Not tea. Something with roots in it. I got half of it down and my stomach turned over and she saw it in my face and pulled the cup back before I could lose it.

"Small sips," she said. "All night, small sips. You're not going to like what happens if you drink it all at once."

"Where's my bag."

Her hands stopped.

"What?"

"My bag." I tried to sit up again and she put one hand flat on my chest and held me down without any effort at all. "It came off me in the woods. My mother's ring is in it. My money—"

"I'll find it."

"You don't know where—"

"Jane." She said it quiet, and then she said it again, softer, like the name was a thing she'd been keeping in her pocket for a long time. "Jane. I'll find the bag. I know these woods better than the trees do. You lie down."

I lay down.

The floor was hard. The blanket was wool and it smelled like woodsmoke and something sweet, and the shivering had gotten into my jaw so my teeth clicked, and I lay there and looked at her.

Old. Grey hair pulled back and coming out of it. Hands that had done work — the knuckles big, the fingers scarred across the backs. A wide mouth. Eyes the color of weak tea.

"You know my name," I said.

She stood up with the cup.

"Who told you my name," I said.

She put the cup on the table and picked up a cloth and started wiping a surface that was already clean.

"Ma'am."

"I heard you the first time."

"Then answer me."

She wiped the whole length of the table and folded the cloth and put it down and turned around. "You told me," she said. "In the yard. Before you went down. You said 'Jane.'"

I lay there and thought about it. I couldn't remember. There was the hill and the chicken and the trees opening and then my shoulder hitting the ground, and everything in between was dark water.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?"

"I can't remember. So okay."

Her face did something. Relief, maybe, or the end of it. She came back and knelt down and put two fingers against my wrist and held them there and counted to herself.

"Your heart's running like a rabbit," she said. "When's the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday."

"Yesterday morning or yesterday night?"

I had to think about it.

"That long," she said, and got up, and was back a minute later with bread and a bowl of something that steamed. "Sit up. Slowly. If you go down, I'm not catching you, I'm too old."

I sat up. The room stayed where it was. That felt like an accomplishment.

The bread was hard and the soup was just soup, broth and barley, and I ate all of it and then sat holding the bowl with both hands like it was a pet.

"Thank you," I said.

She nodded once.

"What's your name?"

She looked at me for a while. "Margaret."

"Margaret." I tried it out. "Margaret. Where are you from?"

"Nowhere you've heard of."

"Try me."

"No." She took the bowl out of my hands. "You'll be here three days, maybe four, before you can walk. Then we'll talk about where you're from and where you're going. Not before."

"Three days—"

"You fell down in my yard at sunup and you couldn't move your arms." She said it flat, no drama in it, which made it worse. "You slept in a forest in October in a wool coat and thin boots. Three days is if you're lucky and you do what I say."

"I have to—"

"You have to lie down."

"I can't stay here," I said. "I don't know you."

Margaret stood up with the bowl and looked down at me, and the light from the window was behind her so her face was all shadow except the eyes.

"No," she said. "You don't."

She went and washed the bowl.

I lay there on her floor under her blanket with the fire going and the shivering slowing down in my bones, and I looked around her cottage.

Small. One room and a curtain. Fireplace, table, two chairs. Shelves of jars, all of them labeled in a handwriting that wasn't hers, or wasn't the same, I couldn't tell. Bunches of dried things hanging from the beams and turning slowly in the heat.

The bed was against the far wall and it had two pillows on it.

Two blankets folded at the foot.

There was a second chair at the table, and it was pulled out, just a little, the way a chair is when somebody sits in it every day.

I looked at that chair for a while.

"How long have you lived out here," I said.

The washing stopped.

"Long," Margaret said.

"Long like how long."

"Long like long." She set the bowl down on the shelf with a click. "You're not going to eat and interrogate me in the same hour. That's not how this works."

I laughed. It came out wrecked, more of a cough, and my ribs hurt and I put a hand on them and she turned around fast like she thought I was dying, and when she saw the laugh she stood there with her hands dripping and looked at me like I'd done a trick.

"There," she said. "That's something."

I lay back down on the floor.

The fire did its thing. The wind got up outside and pushed at the cottage and the dried bunches swung. My shivering slowed and stopped and my hands came back to me, burning, which meant blood, which meant I was going to live.

I was almost under when I heard her cross the room.

The blanket got pulled up to my chin and tucked in on one side and then the other, and her hand pressed flat on my shoulder for a second, brief, like a blessing or a habit, and I heard her say it.

"Just like your mother."

I opened my eyes.

She was already standing up and walking away, and the firelight got into the back of her and made a shape out of her, and I lay on the floor with my heart going wrong in my chest.

"What?" I said.

The fire popped.

"What did you say?"

"I said rest." Her voice was even. "You're not going anywhere for three days and you're burning daylight."

"Margaret."

"Sleep, Jane."

My hand came out from under the blanket. It moved before I decided it should, out and up, and I caught her wrist.

She went still.

Her wrist was thin under my fingers and the skin was loose and the bones underneath were hard as a bird's. I held onto it. I couldn't hold hard. I had nothing left to hold hard with.

"You said," I said. "Just like your mother."

The fire popped again.

Margaret stood in the middle of her cottage with her arm out and my hand on her wrist and the wind pushing at the walls, and she didn't pull away, and she didn't answer, and the firelight moved over her face and I watched her decide something.

She turned her arm and closed her hand over mine.

"Tomorrow," she said. "You want answers, you stay alive through the night and ask me tomorrow. That's the deal."

And she pulled the blanket up over my hand, her hand on top of mine, and pushed my arm down gently to my chest like she was putting something away for safekeeping.

Chapter (6) Ends.