One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries by Marianne de Pierres Tehani Wessely Read Free Book Online

eyes, shakes her head derisively “—you have to start over. The whole thing, three times through — unbroken — for each friggin’ leech. If I have to do it proper, so do you.”  
    Little bitch . Won’t be so clever when that smooth chin turns to suet. When those cheeks sprout gin blossoms. When those tits start to droop no matter what she’s about, and she can’t stop it, and she finds she pisses her britches with every sneeze. When she’s no longer the ripe apple everyone wants to pluck. When her man starts looking elsewhere, just as Cora’s did and does.  
    Cole’s taken to calling her ‘The Burren’ when she comes abed late, late at night. That is, when he bothers calling her much at all. Woman. Wife. Burren. Never Cora, never a chuisle . Thinks a bit of wordplay makes him smart. As if his own name wasn’t perfectly apt.  
    Barren as the burren… Oh, the housekeeper knows what he’s getting at — but he’s wrong, of course. Cora’s not barren . She has it in her to bear life — she’s fallen pregnant more than a dozen times — she just can’t keep the babe inside long enough for it to thrive.  
    M’Amie, though, the self-centred thing, doesn’t have the faintest idea. She can’t fathom what it was like — surviving all those sad, wet, painful fiascos. Erasing their presence. Moving on. Ever-hoping. Silly bint, hasn’t been at the manor anywhere near long enough to know the years Cora swelled and failed. M’Amie hasn’t yet seen a winter in this county, four months she’s spent here more or less, and a lazier scullery maid Cora’s never seen, though she moved herself fast enough into his lordship’s good graces.
    Little bitch, little bitch, let me come in. Oh, yes, while she’s pert and willing, milord will ever be at her door, finding her in the corridor, the cupboard, the kitchen. Tossing the skirts over her head as and when he pleases. And she, stupid slut that she is, somehow has the sense to keep letting him in.  
     
    ∞ ¥ ∞ Ω ∞ ¥ ∞  
     
    Brona has watched for their return, feigning patience. A blurred path skirts through the dust, the floor foot-polished. She has waited, shuffling between the window, its glass obscured by cobwebs and marsh-spatter, and the hazelrood screen. When the maids appear, trying and failing to step carefully from sturdy tussock to tussock, trying and failing to stay out of the oily water, dawn is still some hours away. The cunning woman has had no sleep. She stands vigil, ever awake.
    The women tap twice at the entrance, quiet as a heartbeat. Brona forces herself to wait until they knock again, then twists the knob too hard. “Quickly,” she says, ushering her supplicants in. “Close the door.” With shaking hands, she nudges them towards the rickety table. Her ears drink in the sound of full bottles clacking in the satchel M’Amie still carries.
    “ Put them here,” Brona says, pulling two jars from the girl’s grasp. Brona places them carefully down, as far from the table’s edge as possible. One jar, two, three — she reaches out, but there are no more.
    Rather, she is given no more.
    Cora and M’Amie stand, united for however brief a time, but united nonetheless. They hug the vessels to their chests, mouths set in identical determined lines.
    “ Give us what we came for, hedgewitch,” says M’Amie.
    “ Give us what we’re owed,” says Cora through gritted teeth.
    “ Gifts,” Brona reminds them. “Favours. Let there be no talk of owing .”  
    Her brain is fuddled and fuzzy with exhaustion. Through the glass, in the jars’ swirling myriad contents, she thinks she can see … can see … slinking, slithering forms, yes. But more, something more. A shape. A boy? So small, so small. Wispy, spinning. She catches strange glimpses, shadows spiralling around ghostly, slow-forming limbs. She blinks and the vision is gone.
    Hallucinations , Brona thinks. Exhaustion.  
    She shakes her head.
    “ I’ve never broken a