The Untold by Courtney Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

mother stuffed me inside her shirt and opened the latch with her toes and slid out of the cart and then she sprinted into the dark. When she heard the old woman holler, she dropped to the ground and we rolled and we rolled until we hit a log. She crawled into it and she held me tight and told me to be as quiet as I could.
    She’s gone!
the old woman screeched, and then the sound of the cart rattled through the forest with the sound of the dog tearing through.
    The dog found us in no time and circled the log. He pushed his snout right in and we could see his teeth and we shrank back andback but there was nowhere to go. The old man grabbed my mother’s hair and pulled us out.
    You can’t escape smelling like that
, he said.

    M Y MOTHER’S DREAMS did not end there. She was scrambling barefoot up the mountain, pursued not by anything that she could name but by looming shapes that moved steadily and changed direction only when she turned to face them.
    When she woke, she was lying in a room she did not recognize with a heap of knitted blankets piled upon her. She was sweating all over. The sheets were damp and she kicked them from her and when she raised her hands to rub her eyes, she saw her nails had been clipped and shaped and cleaned. There was a silver bracelet around her wrist. She tried to pull it off but it was too small for her hand and it pushed up against her bone and scraped her skin. It felt to her like a handcuff.
    She sat up and pressed her feet into the floor and her head felt light and the floor looked to be a long way away. She examined her feet. Her toenails had been clipped too and she had never seen her feet so clean.
    She was dressed in a nightgown. Lace fringed her neck and scratched her skin. It was cold out of bed. There was no window in the room but a draft streamed up between the floorboards. A dog barked outside and she could hear the voice of an old man. She remembered the barking and the voice and then the face of the old man leaning over her.
    She searched the room for her clothes but could not find them. Aside from under the bed there was nowhere to look. There was nothing in the room except the bed, a kerosene lamp and a chair. She wrapped herself in one of the knitted blankets and opened the door.

    S HE WAS STANDING in a sunlit kitchen. The wall facing her was made entirely of window frames, jigsawed together. They rattled in the wind. Outside, a stick flew through the air and the dog ran after it. She could see a cleared yard; from the rise of it and the way it was littered with bush rock she guessed she was very near the base of the mountains.
    The dog reappeared with the stick in his mouth and the old man walked into view. My mother’s first instinct was to hide from him so she crouched beneath the window. But she realized immediately that hiding was a foolish thing because here she was, already in his house, dressed in his wife’s nightgown, which meant she had already been found. She stood up slowly and hoped he had not seen her attempt to hide. She tugged the blanket around her shoulders and tied it in a knot at the small of her back so it looked like a shawl. She stood tall, hoping her fear would not reveal itself to the man or the dog.

    T HE OLD MAN did see her. Ducking down and rising up and then standing at the window. He took the stick from the dog and pointedit and walked towards her.
Look here
, he said, tapping the stick on the glass.
She’s risen from the dead.
    His voice warbled in her ear and the sound of it chilled her.
    She was standing there, her arms folded across her chest, wondering what to do next, when the old woman burst through the door.
    Oh, child!
    The old woman pushed her back against the door to shut it, and held on to her hair which was twining around her.
    Where are my clothes?
said my mother.
    With that old blanket around you, you looked like a harpy at the window.
The old woman chuckled.
Only, harpies belong outside.
    My mother was