In the end, her mother had seemed hardly aware at all as Curl gripped her hand and shed her tears over her prone, draining body. Just once their eyes had locked. For a moment, her mother had looked upon her daughter with a blink of recognition. She had gripped Curl’s small hand until it burned with pain, and had glared at her as though trying to impart something of meaning in her last moments on this world.
Make the most of this life, my daughter, her eyes had seemed to say to Curl in the years to come. Follow no path but your own!
And then she had passed into sleep, and into death, and into the ground.
The years after that were dim too in Curl’s memory, as though some shroud of forgetfulness had covered her world. Only glimpses remained.
Her father, silent and spiteful, no longer the man he once had been, losing himself in his work as the local physician. A house without joy or happiness or laughter. Foot-creaks on floorboards; everyone treading lightly. And beyond the confines of their family grief, soldiers passing through the village; priests of Mann shouting sermons, decrying the old faith; rumours of war and rebellion like thunder in the distance.
At thirteen, her aunt and younger sisters celebrated Curl’s coming of age.
It was her aunt, whispery and wise and subtly beautiful, who had explained to Curl the budding of the moon’s cycles within her body, who had taught them all how they would some day become women. On that night of celebration, the woman had made a gift to Curl of a simple lump of wood. It was a knot from a fallen willow, she had explained.
‘Carve it tonight,’ she said, ‘when you are alone. Finish it before you sleep.’
‘What will I carve?’ Curl had asked in wonder.
‘Whatever you like, sister’s-daughter. Whatever brings warmth to your heart.’
When the others went up to bed, she sat on the deep rug in front of the hearthfire, a little drunk on the apple cider she had been allowed to sample for the first time, and with her father’s smallest carving knife and polishing stone, began to carve the piece of wood in whatever way seemed most appropriate. Hours passed fleeting; the fire dwindled until it was only ashes glimmering with the memory of heat.
She awoke where she had fallen asleep before the hearth. It was still night. Her aunt was lifting her into her arms. The woman had wrapped a blanket about her and was carrying her up to bed. Curl’s two sisters slept soundly in the other bunk.
‘What have you carved?’ her aunt whispered as she placed Curl beneath the blankets. Curl opened her hand to show her.
In her palm lay a simple figurine the size of her thumb, a woman of plump, fulsome curves. There were few discernable details in the carving, merely the vague contours of shape. The breasts were big. The belly swollen.
Her aunt smiled. Kissed Curl’s forehead.
‘Your mother would have liked that,’ she told her. ‘It’s a fine ally indeed. Now make sure you wear it always, and may it look out for you when you most have need of aid.’
Curl slept, knowing she would remember this day for the rest of her years.
Later, during the coldest nights of deep winter, her father began to visit Curl while her younger sisters feigned sleep across the room.
And so their world changed once more.
For Curl it was a winter of bitter dreams and darkness, marking more loss in their lives, not least of all a father.
In the spring of the following year, they found him hanging by the neck from the rafters of the smokehouse. They stood there, all three of them, gazing up at his gently spinning body clad in his old and handsome wedding garments, his shoes freshly polished, his hair neatly combed across his balding head.
Against his chest hung the wooden dolphin charm once carved and worn by their mother.
The morning the soldiers came, Curl was out gathering sixbell in the fields that overlooked the town of Hart, where her aunt had taken them to live following their father’s demise.
She was hoping to ward off the chance of pregnancy with the little blue herb, for she was secretly seeing a man in the town by then, a married wagoneer more than twice her age. That morning she wandered far, ranging over the hills in her searching, spending quiet hours slowly filling her pocket.