Dagmar's Daughter - By Kim Echlin Page 0,15

enacted her ritual agon, witnessed by her thought’s dark clamour, and wrapped her bleeding breasts in bandages and crouched near the door, watching the moon’s pale course. When her strength returned, she took herself down to the edge of the sea and removed her skirts and bandages and waded naked into the salty waters, hands stretched high above her head, bony fingers reaching to hold the ungraspable sky, her callused long toes gripping the sharp pebbles. She waded deeper and deeper until the salt bit her breasts and stirred in them renewed dying. Then she hung weightless, the endless waters washing at her blood. No deep could hold her immortal vigour. She purged her stinging body awake from its meditation in the cold of the sea. She crouched and caressed the new traces on her skin, her art and travesty. Her presence demanded to be known by someone. This is the life in the darkness. What cannot be seen must be acknowledged. What cannot be honoured must await transmutation by uncreated night.

When the spring was over with its sudden storms that drowned men who could read the shifting skies and men who could not, everyone pulled out instruments to play at bonfires behind Norea’s house. Colin built up the fire and beat on a seed-shaped drum held squeezed between his thighs. Donal came with his retuned bass, his fingerings finally stamped on his mind and hands like a new mother tongue. Together Donal and Colin hammed it up for the winter-weary people as if they were busking on faraway cobblestone. Colin licked two fingers and drew them firmly across the drum’s skin, pulling an eerie moan out of the drum’s hollow centre. As each wail faded he pattered his long fingers across the tight surface. Donal watched with an ironic cocked eyebrow, as if to say, Bogger on you, and pushed his childhood friend into more complex rhythms. The others in the settlement laughed at their boyish competition and joined them with a choir of fiddles. Dagmar watched Donal upstage saucy Colin. Donal rested one arm on the purfling, a lit cigarette stuck between the strings and the top peg, and shrugged. He nuzzled his cheek against his old instrument as if he were listening through the wood and beat out a simple bass line. He let his bow fall to pluck out a pizzicato rhythm, using his thick thumb for the fat low thump that marked each shift. Projecting into the open air was difficult. He took up his bow again and worked with his whole arm and his strong back, bending and curving himself around his double bass. Up and down the forty-two-inch strings, Donal beat and caressed his instrument, his powerful fingers working deep vibratos from the strings. The flames shone on his forehead and he dropped his face in an attitude of penitence. Sweat beads fell on the dark varnish and deepened the tonality beyond the range of even the most appreciative ear in Millstone Nether. The crowd admired his playing, but when they wanted to dance, they called back Colin.

Colin set aside his drum, pulled his spoons out of his pocket, started up a textured patter and tried to catch the eye of pretty Dagmar from the greenhouse. He watched her examining his spoons flashing on his thighs and willed her gaze up to his face. Finally his eye caught hers and he grinned and winked only for her. Then he called lightly across the crowd, Lovely Dagmar of the green thumb, sing for us! Encouraged by her blush, he got up and pulled her to stand beside them. With her strong, sure voice she sang,

The gardener’s son being standing by,

Three gifts he gave to me, me—

The pink, the rue, the violet blue,

And the red, red rosy tree,

The red, red rosy tree.

Donal played a light bass to keep her company and Colin left off his rattling spoons and sat near her feet. When she came to the last verse she raised her eyebrows at the crowd and made them laugh:

Come all you maids, where’er you be,

That flourish in your prime, prime.

Be wise, beware, keep free from care,

Let no man steal your thyme, thyme,

Let no man steal your thyme.

Norea heard a new and passionate colour in Dagmar’s voice. But Colin grasped the young woman’s hand and pulled her to sit beside him and after the fire burned down Dagmar followed Colin to the cliffs above the sea. Hand in hand, standing in the wind, Colin brought