Bringing up the basket was arduous work, bringing calluses to the hands and aches to the back. The wheel was stiff, unyielding, and on her own Anne wouldn’t have been able to turn it–but she had her shadow to help her.
She held one handle, her shadow held the other, and together they turned, turned, turned. Slowly, slowly, out of the mist, its long thick chain creaking, came the basket.
Hopping down onto the outcropping, liking the way the mist swirled around her feet, Anne grasped the thick rim of the basket and hauled it onto land. There was raw wool in the basket for carding, and a clay pot of flour, and a still dancing fish, as well as the usuals. A good basket, Anne decided. Yesterday had been an acceptable basket. The day before had been good. Seven days ago the basket had been bad. Today it was good.
Together with her shadow she unpacked the basket before kicking and pushing it back over the edge. They turned the crank and the chain went chung chung chung chung and away it went, plunging down into the mist, out of sight. The chain wobbled, snapped, and was still.
The fish had stopped dancing. That was good. She hadn’t relished the thought of killing it.
Anne put aside the flour and the wood in the old lean to they called the old fisherman’s hut and carried the fish and other perishables down the slope to the village. Their valley was shaped like a shallow bowl; all paths led up to the cliffside, to the baskets, or down to the village, which was a light and easy walk.
She ran the last leg, bare feet slapping on the ground, ready to the show the others the fish. They all agreed it was an excellent fish, with enough meat on it to feed half the village for a night, and all agreed that Anne had the best basket of the day.
The next day, which was Tuesday, she had an ordinary basket; the day after that, which was Tuesday also, her basket contained nothing but raw wool and an empty pot; the day after that she found lots of vegetables, some of which were purple; and the day after that, she found a girl.
Well, not really a girl. She was Anne’s age. But looking at her Anne thought girl, not woman. Perhaps it was her slight figure, like Maeve and Judith, not like Anne with her big breasts and thick arms. Perhaps it was the way she was dressed, the lacy shawl draped around her. Perhaps it was the way she was curled up in the basket like a baby.
“Well,” said Anne, hands on her formidable hips. “This is a pickle.”
Her shadow nodded its dark head.
“What am I to do with her?”
They brought up odd things in their baskets sometimes, still alive things and things no one had ever seen before but agreed were very interesting and useful. No one, to Anne’s knowledge, had ever brought up a girl. But there she was, curled up quite happily on a bed of wool, oblivious to the creaking of the chain and the drop down into the mist below.
“I can’t leave her here.”
Her shadow shook its head.
Together, they lifted the girl out of the basket and set her gently upon the springy grass. Her head lolled back. Her shadow was asleep too, tucked up beneath her like something had given it a fright.
Now what? She gave the girl a shake. She could pour water on her, she supposed, but that seemed unkind. Maybe it was best to let the girl sleep.
She could go down to the village and announce to all the women there ‘I found a girl in my basket this morning,’ and see what they said, but the thought made her uneasy. She supposed she’d always known – all of them had always known – that they couldn’t be the only people in the world, but it was one thing to know something was true and another thing to be confronted with such tangible and compelling proof.
Well, she certainly couldn’t leave the girl lying by the edge, where she might roll over in her sleep and fall. Together they carried the girl to the lean-to and there laid her down.
Anne took the wool, all wadded up, down to the village, where all agreed that she’d had a very bad basket that morning. Not to worry; she’d have a better basket tomorrow. Maude, on the other hand, had had a stupendous basket and they all sat down for a happy breakfast of bread and fruit.
Still wiping her hands on her apron she went back to the fisherman’s hut and found the girl still asleep. And so she sat beside her, and waited.
It was almost the middle of the day when at last the girl’s eyes opened. She looked around herself, gazing hazily at the ramshackle hut. She looked at Anne. She looked, and she looked, looking Anne up and down in bewilderment. “Who are you?”
The question took Anne wholly off guard. She’d never in her life met anyone who didn’t know who she was, just as she’d never met another she didn’t know. “I’m Anne, of course!” she said. “Who are you?”
“What is this place?” The girl squinted up at the rough ceiling, slitted here and there with sunlight.
“This is the old fisherman’s hut,” said Anne. “Do you have an old fisherman’s hut, where you’re from?”
“Do I – what?”
“I said, do you –”
“I heard what you said. I – I don’t understand.” Shakily, the girl began to stand and as she stood Anne was sure there was something strange about her – something she couldn’t put her finger on. “Who are you? How did I get here?”
“I’m Anne,” said Anne. “You came in the basket.”
“In the – basket?”
Perhaps, Anne thought, the girl was just very stupid. “Yes. I found you in my basket.” She took a step towards the girl, meaning to say something comforting, and her shadow stepped with her, stepping into a shaft of sunlight. There it stood, clear as day, hand outstretched as Anne’s was outstretched.
The girl looked at Anne’s shadow. Her eyes went wide, like a fish. She screamed.
And she bolted.
Anne had half a mind to let her run, for where could she run to? There was only the village. But then she remembered that the girl might be stupid, perhaps stupid enough to run clean over the cliff. “Wait!” she cried, and ran after her.
The girl hadn’t gone far. She was standing on the path, looking this way and that, at the way to the village, the way to the clifftop, each way screened by low trees.
“Mind the cliffs!” cried Anne.
“What?” said the girl.
And it was then that Anne realised what was so strange about her. The girl’s shadow was lying flat on the ground, as if she was asleep even though she was wide awake. It was flat – limp – dead. The sight of it appalled her. She clapped both hands to her mouth and stared, though she knew it was rude to stare.
“What is this place?” said the girl. “What is that?” She pointed a shaking finger at Anne’s shadow.
Anne’s shadow shrank back, stepping behind her, half out of sight. “That’s my shadow.”
The girl was shaking her head. “That isn’t right,” she said. “That – that’s horrid.”
Anne was beginning to understand, and behind her her shadow was quaking. The girl wasn’t stupid – not at all. It was just that, wherever she had come from in the basket, things were profoundly different and profoundly strange. Wherever she came from, everyone’s shadow was limp and flat and lay on the ground like it was dead.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, half to the girl, half to her poor shadow.
“Where does that go?” said the girl, pointing down the hill.
“To the village?”
“Are all the people there – like you?”
“They all have shadows,” Anne said.
“What’s that way?” The girl pointed up the rise.
“The clifftop,” said Anne. “There’s no one up there.”
“Right,” said the girl, and ran up the hill.
Anne lifted her skirt and jogged up after her, just in case she did fall. She found the girl standing near the cliff edge, staring down, down at the mist. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?”
“Oh, no!” said Anne. She thought about it. “Unless you usually dream when you’re awake.”
“Of course I don’t!” snapped the girl.
“That’s where I found you.” Anne pointed at the shifting chain.
“All the way down there?” said the girl. “Underneath the clouds?”
“Clouds?”
“The fog,” said the girl.
“Well, me and my shadow hauled the basket up first,” said Ane. Her shadow nodded, proud of its contribution.
The girl was staring down at the fog-sea. It was curious; Anne had seen people gaze out like that, out at the distance peaks of other hills, but never down. Why look down, unless you were bringing up a basket? There was nothing to see.
“But where is this? How did I get here?”
“You don’t have baskets where you come from,” said Anne, tentatively certain.
“Well, of course we have baskets!” snapped the girl. “But we don’t carry people in them.”
“Oh, neither do we!” said Anne. “This has never happened before.”
“But where am I?”
“This is our mountain,” said Anne.
“And you brought me here,” said the girl, “you brought me here – in the basket.” She was gibbering like someone waking up from a nightmare.
“Well, I didn’t bring you here,” said Anne. “I just hauled you up. Don’t know how.”
“Well, you can bloody well haul me back down!”
When Anne said nothing, she went to the crank and began to push and pull on it.
“You won’t shift it on your own.” Anne bit her lip. If only the girl had a shadow that could help her – though perhaps it was just as well she didn’t.
“I – can – try,” said the girl through gritted teeth. “If this is how – I came here – then I can – go back.”
Anne looked up at the clear blue sky, wondering what to do. Things didn’t get put in baskets, only taken out again; but then, girls didn’t usually come in baskets. Maybe this was all some mistake. Maybe she should send the girl back.
Resigned, she put her hands on the other side of the crank, and heaved.
With a long, sad rattle of chain, the basket rose, clunk, clunk, clunk, into view. It was odd, seeing it come up empty, empty, empty.
The girl wiped her brow and gave Anne a curious look. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome.” Reaching out together with her shadow, Anne pulled the basket onto the grass. “I suppose you’d better hop in.”
The girl hung back, hugging herself. “And then what happens?”
“I’ve no idea!” said Anne, astonished that the girl thought she’d know. “This has never happened before.” She looked at the wicker bottom of the basket. “I suppose you get in – and I lower you down – and then you disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“Well, back to where you came from,” said Anne.
“Alright,” said the girl. “Alright.” Resting her hands on the edge of the basket, she clambered in, tumbling with an oof and a fumble onto the hard wicker weave.
“Comfy?” said Anne.
The girl put her back to the wall of the basket. “As comfy as I’m getting. Lower me.”
“Are you sure?” said Anne. What if the basket tipped – what if she fell?
“I’ll take my chances,” said the girl. “Lower me!”
Anne gave the basket an almighty shove – and went to the crank – and turned. It was hard work and all the while she thought, wistfully, of that funny girl with her dead shadow, descending steadily away from the mountaintop, out of her life.
She didn’t tell anyone about the girl. She didn’t want to upset them, when nothing had come of it. She sort of wanted to keep it a secret; something just for her. She ran back to the village and did her chores and talked about normal things to Judith and Ambrosia and put the girl out of her mind altogether.
Anne was good at putting things out of her mind. When, the next morning – which was Tuesday – she went out to the cliff edge to bring in the basket, she’d almost forgotten there’d ever been a girl; and so when the basket rocked into view with the girl crouched sulkily on the bottom she was quite stunned.
“You!”
“Oh, it’s you,” said the girl. “I was hoping I might at least come up somewhere else.”
Anne dragged the basket in to land, peering inside to see if there was anything in there but the girl. It was empty.
“I just want to go home.” The girl was soaked to her skin and shaking besides. “Tom’s waiting for me,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I was sitting in this damn basket all n-night.”
“You’re frozen.” Anne rubbed the girl’s shoulders.
“It’s c-cold down there.”
“Here,” said Anne, offering her a hand out of the basket. Meekly the girl accepted. “I suppose this means you are meant to be here after all.”
“What do you mean, meant to be here?”
“The baskets bring us things we need,” said Anne. “I suppose we must need a – well, a whatever you are.”
“I’m a woman of the Grand Plain and this is absurd.” The girl was hugging herself, shaking in the springlike sunlight. Her shadow lay flat on the ground. “Everything about this place is absurd.”
It was best, Anne thought, to let her vent. She took off her cloak and draped it around the girl’s shoulders. “There, there. I’m Anne. What’s your name?”
“I’m Mona Joy,” said the girl. “And when Tom finds out you’ve abducted me, he’ll come and get me. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure he will.” Anne put an arm around the girl and guided her down the path. “Let’s get you some dry clothes.”
“He’ll scale the cliff if he has to,” said the girl. “You’ll see.”
“There, there,” said Anne, patting her shoulder.
They followed the path down the gentle slope, the girl babbling all the way, down to the boundary stone. The village was hunched in the shelter of the woods. They came to the stream, where little Bess was making mud pies with her shadow. Mona Joy looked at her curiously, but said nothing. She said nothing at all as they approached the village, growing meeker and meeker at the promise of strangers.
There were twenty or some women in the village and a dozen girls. Judith was collecting water. Maeve and Ambrosia were gossiping in the shade of the green trees. Magda came out of her house, dusting flour off her hands. One by one they all came out, wide eyed, their shadows hiding behind them, to look at Mona Joy.
“I found her in my basket,” Anne explained.
Mo, the smallest of the girls, came up beside Mona Joy and tugged on her skirt. Mona Joy plucked her hand away, aghast. “What do I do?” she said, softly, to Anne.
Anne wasn’t altogether sure. They’d not had a visitor, not since – she didn’t remember. “Introduce yourself.”
Mona Joy straightened her shoulders and said, “I’m Mona Joy. I’m a woman of the Grand Plain. Who are you?”
Still dusting her hands, Magda said, “I’m Magda. We’re the women of this Mountain. You’re – you are welcome here.”
There was a murmuring of agreement, a certainty that yes, yes Magda had said the right words; a hazy recollection that yes, yes strangers were to be welcomed, strangers were to be treated as friends.
Strangers were to be treated as friends, Anne remembered, and strangers were to be fed. Mona Joy would be hungry, sitting in that basket all night and most of yesterday. “Here,” she said, putting a hand on Mona Joy’s shoulder. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
The assembled women relaxed, again remembering that this was right and proper. Anne took Mona Joy to her little house on the edge of the village and gave her a clean dry dress. Together they hung Mona Joy’s dress up to dry on upon a branch of the tree that stood over Anne’s house and sat down to eat breakfast.
Anne made porridge outside, the way she did most mornings. Mona Joy watched, eyes wide, as Anne’s shadow held the pot still over the cooking fire while Anne stirred.
“This is porridge,” she said. “Do you have porridge at the bottom of the mountain?”
“Of course we’ve got porridge,” Mona Joy all but spat.
“Well, I’m sorry,” said Anne. “I only thought I ought to ask, since you don’t have a shadow – not the way we have shadows.”
“Are you witches?”
“Of course we’re not witches!”
Mona Joy looked about herself. Seeing that no other women were nearby, she said, softly, as if she was asking a personal question, “Where are your men?”
“Our men?” Anne rested the spoon against the side of the pot, not sure what to make of the question. She never really thought about it.
“Yes, your men,” said Mona Joy. “Where are they?”
Stirring the porridge, Anne considered. “They went away.” As she said it she felt sure it was the right answer, dredged up from some distant, distant memory.
“When are they coming back?” said Mona Joy.
Anne’s brow creased. She rubbed it smooth. “I don’t think they are,” she said. “I don’t know if they’re ever coming back.” Glop. She spooned porridge into a bowl for Mona Joy and a bowl for her. “We’re happy enough by ourselves.”
“You don’t have husbands?”
“Not anymore,” said Anne. “No. I don’t think so.”
Mona Joy hunched over, wrapping herself around the bowl, wriggling her toes against the sandy ground. “I don’t like this.”
“This is a good place,” said Anne. “You’re safe here. We’re all safe here. Do you like your porridge?”
“Hm?” Mona Joy looked up, porridge dripping down her chin. Turning her face to the side she wiped it away. “I’m sorry.”
Anne slopped more porridge into her bowl. “Eat up.”
“I’ll tell my Tom you were good to me,” said Mona Joy, spooning porridge into her mouth. “Then he’ll go easy on you.”
“Is Tom your husband?”
“Not yet. No.” Mona Joy wiped her mouth. “Did you have a husband? Before?”
“I don’t think so.” Anne didn’t think she’d ever been the sort for husbands, nor would she ever be. “No. I don’t think I had a brother.”
“You don’t know? How can you not know?”
“It’s been such a long time.” Anne ate her porridge. She didn’t like this talk of husbands and brothers. There was nothing wrong with it, no, it was decent enough talk, but she had an uneasy memory that they didn’t like to talk about it on the mountaintop and for good reason. “Eat up, and I’ll introduce you to Old Ness.”
Old Ness was very old. She liked to joke that she was older than the mountain and Anne thought some of the girls believed her. She never left her house anymore, not even to bring in her basket. Her legs were too weak and her hands too shaky and the light outside hurt her eyes. She sat indoors, perched in her chair like a broody chicken on its nest, and the girls and women went to her.
“A stranger?” she said at the sight of Mona Joy in her high clear voice. “My. Long time since we’ve had a stranger on this mountain.”
Mona Joy was looking over and over Old Ness, which Anne thought rude, till she realised Mona Joy was looking for Ness’s shadow. It was there, but tucked away under the chair and half hidden. It was old, timid as a stranger, weak as Old Ness’s fingers.
“I’m Mona Joy, of the Grand Plain,” said Mona Joy. “Who are you?”
“I’m Old Ness, as old as the mountain,” said Old Ness, and laughed. “How did you come here?”
“In a basket,” said Mona Joy.
“I hauled her up,” chipped in Anne.
“How can I get away from this place?” said Mona Joy. “You said there’s been other strangers? How did they get away?”
“Hard to say,” said Old Ness. “It’s been a long while.”
“Well, how did the last stranger to come here get away?”
Old Ness smacked her lips. “You know, I don’t think she ever did.” Lifting her stick, she poked at the fire. “Let me tell you a story, Mona Joy.”
“I don’t want to hear a story,” said Mona Joy. “I want to go home to my Tom.”
“Sit down, child,” said Old Ness, “and I’ll tell you a story.”
Obediently, Mona Joy sat, and Anne sat beside her. She pulled her skirt neatly over her knees.
“There were two peoples in these mountains,” said Old Ness. “On these two flat topped mountains–and they had a long bridge joining one t’other.” She drew a line through the air with the scorched end of her stick. “And the cliffs were so sheer they never went up nor down. They were so happy up on their mountains! Why would they need to go up or down? They were at the middle of the world.”
“Two mountains?” said Mona Joy.
“But the king, you see, the king on his high throne, he didn’t like how happy the mountain people were. So he sent his men with a big knife and – snap! They cut the bridge in twain.” She sat back in her seat. “And that was that.”
“There’s no king on the throne,” said Mona Joy, slowly. “Not for a long time.”
“It’s only a story,” said Anne. “It’s a story.”
“I shall tell you another story.” Old Ness crossed her arms, hooking her stick over her elbow. “One day the goddess sent her shadow down to the mountains and the shadow said – with its hands, you see, for shadows don’t have mouths – the goddess’s shadow said, the goddess will provide you with all you need and no more. That is the meaning of baskets.”
Mona Joy was chewing her lip. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Anne, “it means, if you came in the basket, we must need you.”
“Need me for what?”
“Who knows?” said Old Ness. “You see that pot?” She pointed to a rough moulded bowl sitting in her one patch of sunlight, packed with dirt and trailing plants. “Now, when I found that pot in my basket, I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t need a pot! But not two days later, well, little Ursa dropped my good pot in the rocky place and whoops! I needed a pot after all.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mona Joy.
“What I mean to say,” said Old Ness, “is no matter how it may look now, we might need you – by and by.”
“You know what I think?” said Mona Joy.
“Hmm?” said Anne.
They were washing clothes in the stream and had been for almost an hour. It was slow work and Anne found it soothing, though Mona Joy cursed and grumbled a bit.
Mona Joy had been atop the mountain a month and she was making herself useful, even if she wasn’t needed; even though she ached for home.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re hiding,” said Mona Joy.
“Hiding?” said Anne. “No. I don’t think so.”
“It makes sense.” Mona Joy scrubbed her good petticoat against a rock. “You’ve been hiding up here for so long, you’ve forgotten why you were hiding – and you’ve hidden so well you can’t get in or out.”
“What would we be hiding from?” said Anne, playing along. Mind you, she could see why Mona Joy grumbled. It must be difficult work, without your shadow to hold the rock steady for you and dip its shadow hands into the icy water.
“A war,” said Mona Joy confidently. “There was a war – and your men all went away to fight – and you hid so well they couldn’t come back.”
A war, yes. Something prickled at the back of Anne’s mind. What Mona Joy was saying made a kind of sense. And yet it was all wrong. The men? The men had gone to fight? Was that how it had been?
“What I can’t fathom is where all the little boys are,” said Mona Joy. “They wouldn’t have gone to fight.”
“Maybe it was an especially nasty war,” Anne suggested.
“And that’s another thing,” said Mona Joy. “There haven’t been any wars – not for a long time – not since the King’s War. You can’t have been up here since then.”
“Why not? The Goddess provides,” said Anne.
“I’d say you must have the fountain of youth,” said Mona Joy. “But this –” She pulled her petticoat out of the stream, drenched. “This can’t be it. It’s too cold – and too wet.” She splashed Anne and Anne squeaked and splashed her back, and back again, and before they both knew it –
– They were wet to the skin and lying on the warm grass to dry, giggling, laundry forgotten.
“You don’t have clouds! It’s all blue!” Mona Joy spread her arms in an arc over the sky. “All that blue! And at night you can see all the stars – every night.”
Dimly, Anne remembered clouds.
“You live in the sky,” said Mona Joy. “Up amongst the stars! When my Tom comes and finds me, I’ll make him a night and see it.”
It had been a month, now, and not a glimpse of Mona Joy’s Tom. Anne had long since concluded that he wasn’t coming, whether or not he wanted to, but she was hardly going to say so.
“The Goddess raised us into the stars,” she said absently.
“Hmm?” said Mona Joy.
“It’s a song my mother used to sing to me.”
“Where’s your mother?” Mona Joy propped herself up on an elbow to look at Anne properly. “Is she in the village?”
Anne shook her head against the grass. “No. She went away – down the mountain. A long time ago, when there was a path.”
“Before this goddess raised you?”
“I suppose it must have been, yes.”
Mona Joy lay back down. “What about your father?”
“I don’t know that I had one. I had a brother. He was very small. He’s gone now.”
For a time, they lay in silence.
“I think you must be witches,” said Mona Joy. “Even if you don’t know it.” She rolled onto her side. “It’s alright – I don’t mind. I can tell that you’re good witches.”
“How can you tell?” said Anne, though they weren’t any kind of witch.
“Well, for one thing,” said Mona Joy. “Bad witches are ugly. Everyone knows that.”
“Do they, now?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mona Joy, and so speaking she reached out, her fingertips touching Anne’s jaw. Anne breathed in. “Pretty girls can’t be bad witches.”
Anne wanted to say, who says? But she wasn’t about to ruin this. “Well, it’s a pity I’m not a pretty girl.”
“Oh, but you are!” cried Mona Joy. “Not – not pretty like a painting, or like a princess – pretty like you.” Her fingers traced the line of Anne’s jaw more firmly. She raised herself up, looking down upon her. Her face replaced the sky and Anne was more than content.
“You have beautiful brown eyes,” Mona Joy went on. “And your face is a lovely shape – such strong bones! Half the girls in my village would kill you for them.”
Anne laughed.
“And your nose.” Mona Joy touched it gently. “You nose is all you. You look at it and think, yes, that’s Anne. That’s her nose.”
“Your nose is a little button,” said Anne, touching Mona Joy’s nose, which she duly wrinkled. Her hair was hanging down about her face like a curtain of willow, screening them from the world, long and smooth and straight, quite unlike Anne’s curls. You’re so beautiful, Anne wanted to say.
Mona Joy’s hand ran down the side of her face, touching her cheek, her neck. Dipping her head she touched their foreheads together, and they were so close, Anne could feel Mona Joy’s breath on her face, they were so close, so close. She shut her eyes.
Their lips touched, the barest breath of a kiss, so quick and feather-light that had every nerve in Anne’s body not been primed and waiting, she might even have missed it.
And just as quickly as the kiss, Mona Joy was gone, on her feet and racing away, leaving her clothes soaking in the stream.
Sitting up on her elbows Anne watched her go, a cry fading on her lips.
Night fell and there was no sign of Mona Joy. Anne ate alone, and said good night to her neighbours, and lay down to sleep beside the tangled blankets and dipped pillow where Mona Joy had slept those past weeks.
She was dozing when there was a hiss of a curtain and Mona Joy was there, in the room. She knew her before she opened her eyes, knew her footsteps and the sound of her breathing. With a cli-clink of flint Mona joy lit a candle and began, slowly, to take off her dress.
Anne’s heart was under her tongue, her breath shallow. Mona Joy’s dress fell to the floor. She stepped out of it and stood in her white slip, her arms bare. She eased the slip from her shoulders, exposing the sharp plains of her shoulder blades, the long fine dip of her spine. It slid to her waist, clutching at her thighs; slid down the length of her legs, pale and dusted with downy hairs.
The slip was a pool of white on the floor and Mona Joy stood naked. She didn’t look over her shoulder, didn’t so much as acknowledge Anne’s presence, but she knew, she knew Anne was watching. There was a feel in the air, a heat, a quality to Mona Joy’s movements; fine strings of want connecting the two of them.
Mona Joy’s small hands cupped her breasts, pale with dark nipples standing on end in the night air. Anne glimpsed her eyelashes, before her hair fell about her face like a curtain.
She turned away, rooting in Anne’s basket for her borrowed nightdress. With a swish of cloth she pulled it over her head, covering all her soft pale skin. It fell to her thighs and she was covered, and yet – and yet.
Mona Joy lay beside her, fitting her head into the dip upon the pillow. She lay, and she breathed, her eyes closed, but not sleeping. She shifted, her hair mussing against the pillow.
Heart under her tongue, scarcely able to breathe, Anne rested a hand on her upper arm. Mona Joy’s fingers touched hers, cool and rough from years of work. Mona Joy’s fingers touched hers, and lifted them, and brought them down, down to her breast, where Anne could feel her nipple through the thin cloth of her nightgown.
A sigh; a shift of cloth on wool blankets. “Will you kiss me again?” said Mona Joy, not opening her eyes.
“That I will,” said Anne, touching Mona Joy’s face, her chin. At her touch Mona Joy’s head turned, her eyes opening, narrow and bright; and before Anne could kiss Mona Joy, Mona Joy kissed her.
And Anne kissed her, and kissed her, and her mouth was soft and easy to kiss. Mona Joy rolled over and for a scant moment their mouths were parted, but Anne reached for her, touched her face, her hair, and kissed her again.
When at last they slipped apart, the candle burning low, the light orange-gold, Mona Joy said softly, “I shouldn’t want this.”
“The heart wants what it wants,” said Anne. “So the Goddess says.”
“My heart,” said Mona Joy, “my heart doesn’t know what she wants.”
But she kissed Anne, and oh, it was so sweet; and when she ran her hands down Anne’s body, touched her hips, her thighs, when she let Anne touch her in return, it grew sweeter still.
Anne woke, the morning air milky and soft, Mona Joy playing with her tousled hair; and she couldn’t help but laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” said Mona Joy, hurt, but too sleepy to be truly hurt.
“I’m not laughing,” said Anne. “I’m happy.”
“I’m not,” said Mona Joy, in dour, silky tones.
Anne rolled over, unable to summon words.
“I mean, I am,” said Mona Joy. “But – I don’t think we should have done that, last night.”
“Why not?”
“I have a husband,” said Mona Joy. “Or I will soon.”
But Mona Joy’s husband was at the bottom of the mountain, and he might as well have been on a different earth, a different plane of existence, for there was no way up or down except through the will of the Goddess.
But Anne couldn’t say that.
She ought to say that Mona Joy wasn’t to worry, that her Tom was sure to come any day now, and that she and Anne shouldn’t be together, of course they shouldn’t, for Mona Joy belonged to someone else.
But Anne didn’t say that.
What she said, in the end, was, “I only want to love you.”
Her cheek pressed to the pillow, her fingers in Anne’s hair, Mona Joy said, “I’d like that.”
Anne would have kissed her, then, kissed her and maybe never stopped; but from outside there came a cry.
The sun was up, up in the sky, and the grass was vibrant green. Anne pattered over it, Mona Joy behind her, other women and girls poking their heads out of their houses, here and there.
In the doorway of Old Ness’s house stood a tiny shivering figure. It was little Bess, her shadow scampering about on the grass behind her, its limbs stretched to thin frenetic lines. “Bessie?” said Anne. “Bessie, now, what’s wrong?”
Little Bess looked up at her, her face streaked with tears. Wordless, she pointed through the doorway.
As Anne stepped forward, into Old Ness’s house, Mona Joy knelt beside Bess and put an arm around her shoulders, comforting her. All the while her eyes were trained on Anne.
The inside of the house was draped in shadows, a few shafts of light here and there where the roof wanted patching. Slumped in her chair lay Old Ness, her mouth and eyes open, her shadow flat and all but invisible on the ground. There was a smell in the air, a bad smell.
Anne took a deep breath; and another; and a third. Her shadow stood close beside her. She felt cold inside, if she’d been struck beneath the breastbone; but this wasn’t new. In the hazy depths of her memory, she had seen death before and she knew what to do.
Going to Old Ness’s side she said a word for the Goddess and covered her face with a cloth. What they would do with her, Anne didn’t know. Lower her down, perhaps, down in her basket, so that the Goddess might take her back.
Outside on the sunlit grass, little Bess’s mother had come and taken her away from Mona Joy, was holding her in her arms, no longer crying but face still wet. And there was Magda and Maeve and Judith and Ambrosia and all the other girls and women of the village, in their night things and shawls, blinking, staring, not comprehending.
“Old Ness is dead.” There was a shocked gasp. Someone began to cry. Mostly there were grim nods. Death wasn’t new – rare, but not new. “We’ll give her back to the Goddess.”
“Yes,” said Magda. “Yes, that’s right.” Stepping forward she went into the house, to say her last goodbye to Old Ness, and in trickles the other women followed.
Mona Joy stood alone on the grass, alone and hugging herself, her expression horror struck. “She was right,” she said to Anne. “Wasn’t she?”
“Right?”
“About the pot.” Mona Joy shrank still more into herself.
And before Anne’s eyes, Mona Joy’s shadow, sprawled flat on the grass like a dead thing, twitched, and twitched, and rose up like smoke to stand beside her. Mona Joy didn’t look at it; perhaps she didn’t notice. But Anne, Anne saw, and she walked all but tripping over her own feet to Mona Joy.
She stopped a few steps away, not daring to go any closer, for Mona Joy was close to tears and trembling, her shadow stark in the bright air. “I’m sorry,” said Mona Joy. “About Ness.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Anne, though she knew that wasn’t what Mona Joy meant; or she thought she knew.
“I want to go home,” said Mona Joy.
And Anne said nothing, but her shadow moved forward, silent as a ghost, to stand by Mona Joy’s. Reaching out, it took Mona Joy’s shadow hand in its own, and held on tight.
Mona Joy started and turned to look, her hair falling in a thick curtain over her face. And what she saw, in their shadows, Anne couldn’t say.
Katie Gray is an author of science fiction and fantasy based in Scotland. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in MYTHIC, Corvid Queen, Microtext 3, an anthology from Medusa’s Laugh Press, and in Shoreline of Infinity, Scotland’s dedicated sci-fi magazine. Her short story 3.8 Missions was reprinted in Best of British Science Fiction 2017. When she’s not writing, she works as an office admin for a social care provider.