Sssshhh. The woman is picking Kensay up. Back and forth she walks, a ring on her finger like an iceberg.
‘She just wanted a cuddle,’ a man is saying. There’s a smile to it, though I can’t see it. Kensay is closing her sleepy eyes. Together, the man and woman back and forth and ssshhh.
And I can’t be there any more. I lie back on the couch, knackered, and pour lemonade into the Peter Rabbit sippy cup. I sip and sip, sliding my feet onto the sticky coffee table that smells of lemonade.
When We Were Witches
Mother craned from her chair. Two crows scraped their beaks on the stone ledge outside. She ran to the window, knocking over the vase on the sill. Off they flew, leaving scratchy bird feet in the snow.
‘One for sorrow, two for joy,’ she said.
She sat, then got up, listening to the morning. Knock kno—… She flung the door open, a leathery fist hovered midair.
‘Come in.’
The witch came in without wiping her feet. I sat on the mat, inching behind the chair. The woman’s skin was dried meat, withered. The top of her spine was a question mark.
‘Is this the child?’ She squinted at me the way women at the market squeeze peaches, getting a feel for a bad patch under the skin. I looked at the rug. I don’t remember every rag in it. If I’d known, I’d have torn the colour of waistcoats and bodices from the mat, I’d have studied my mother, folded up the look on her face and put it in my pocket to read when I might understand it.
‘Stand up,’ the old woman said.
‘Go on,’ Mother said, ‘it’s best.’
I stood straight as a sunflower saluting the light. And, like a sunflower, I drooped, the curve of my spine refusing to let me stand as straight as I’d like. I crossed my legs, one foot in front of the other. The bad foot ballooned, still bigger than the other, whether I looked like a girl about to curtsy or not. The woman grabbed my hands, wiggled my fingers and turned my palms upside down.
‘Nowt wrong there anyway,’ she said.
‘Can you take her?’ Mother asked.
The woman nodded slowly, a burden weighting her pointy chin.
Mother grabbed the bundle of my clothes from under the chair. The witch took them, knotting her other hand around mine. I pulled away.
‘Ssshhh. Don’t fuss,’ Mother whispered. ‘Go, it’s for your own good.’
Outside, snow landed on my hair like salt rubbed into meat for the pot. Clamped to the woman’s hand, I walked down the path and looked back at the gate. Don’t make me go. Mother had already closed the door.
We hobbled over cobbles, past houses with half-drawn curtains, out past the big house and into the woods. Our feet bit into snow, our breath was rags in the cold.
‘Where we going?’ I said. ‘I want to go home.’
‘We don’t always get what we want,’ the witch said, fingers twined.
I knew she was a witch. What else could she be? She was ancient and ugly and there was a devil’s mark on her neck, a raisin of flesh. I’d heard what Mother’s visitors said. Bundled into the box bed when anyone came, I pressed my ear to the door.
‘Too much sickness,’ a man said. ‘Crops failing. Some reckon there’s a witch in the woods cursing us all. They say she can turn people to stone.’
The woods thickened. The sun lowered, spinning our shadows spindly on the ground. Somewhere, I could hear water. The trees we passed now were scarred. Hanged men dangled, scratched onto the bark. I looked back, but I didn’t run. It was some sort of spell, I was sure. I couldn’t let go of the witch’s hand. I remembered Mother closing the door: Go.
The house hunched in a clearing littered with stones. Looking close, I saw they weren’t just stones. Each one was something, a sleeping cat dusted in white powder, a bird that looked as if it had been flying over the house and fell out of the sky. On the rickety porch was a row of children’s clothes and small toys — all stone.
‘Wipe your feet, girl,’ she said.
I stamped into the house. Once a witch sets her eye on you there’s nowhere to run — a girl’s sugar and spice catches up with her in the end. The kitchen flickered with firelight. The smell of ginger cake drifted up my nose. And my stomach rumbled, obeyed. If the witch wanted to fatten me up, I was too hungry to resist. She took a knife and hacked a wedge of cake out of the tin on the range. I nibbled and sniffed, nibbled and sniffed. She handed me a cloth for my face. I was crying without making a sound, I knew no other way. Ssshhh, Mother always said, don’t fuss.
What have you heard about a witch’s house? Some of it’s true. It was higgledy-piggledy with bottles and jars, and bunches of herbs dangled from the shelves. Everything looked put out to dry, a string of wizened toads stretched like bunting over the fire. I stared at an iron pot, big enough to make children’s bone soup. The witch patted a fat chair. I sat, one eye on a cage by the door. It looked too small to fit in.
‘Feet!’ she said. She bent with a crack, mopping up clods of snow melting into water on the floor. I swallowed my last bite of cake and she began to unwind the leather wrapped around my feet. This was it. If she ate me, she was going to start at the toes.
‘You never had proper shoes?’ she asked, tossing wet leather at the fire. It sputtered and spat.
‘Mother said it’s best I don’t go outside.’
She squeezed my bad foot. It was purple, bound tight to make it look smaller than it was.
‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
I couldn’t feel anything: my foot, my fear, Mother closing the door. The witch slopped water into a bowl and said, ‘Plonk your feet in.’ It was warm, steam sighed from my toes. When they were good and wrinkly she patted them dry and rubbed in something waxy-cold from a jar. I yawned, my eyes closing, refusing to keep an eye on her. She turned down the blankets of a small bed in the other room and tucked me in tight as a sausage in pastry. I slept well. All night I dreamed I was eating her house.
Porridge breathed on the wooden table. A jug of rosehip syrup sat next to it. I grabbed a spoon, poured and ate. Snap. Snap. Snap. A crunching outside like something wicked breaking bony necks. She came in, carrying sticks for the fire.
‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked.
I smacked sticky lips painted shiny by syrup. ‘Yes.’
She nodded and laid a sheet of paper on the floor.
‘Stand there,’ she said.
She bent down and drew around my feet. The pencil tickled, but I didn’t laugh. When she was done drawing, she cut out my paper footprints, laid one on a rabbit skin and started to stitch, pins in her lips.
‘Try it,’ she said, handing me the rabbit-skin boot.
I walked unevenly. One foot bare.
‘How does it feel?’
‘Soft. Warm.’
‘Not too tight? I need more skin for the other foot,’ she said, picking up the cage by the door.
The snow landed white, speckling her dark shawl as she set the trap. I stood in the doorway looking at the stones on the porch. One was shaped like a doll. One looked like a girl’s bonnet, another was a small stone boot. I looked down at my bare foot beside the one covered in fur. I could try to run, run back to Mother, but not today. I’d wait until I had another rabbit foot, then I’d hop away.
Each morning we collected wood, set traps and hacked vegetables out of the frozen soil behind the house. I walked past the stone shoes and bonnet and shivered. The wind swept snow over the footprints of birds on the ground. Looking out at the woods, I was no longer sure which direction was home.