than the night. Nothing exists now, except the sound of my crying, getting soaked up by the earth. My life force dripping away.
Slowly I feel my way down the steps. I lie at the bottom. My bones ache from the cold and the hard floor.
‘Please come, Elizabeth,’ I whisper. I kiss my palm and hold it above me, into the hollow blackness.
*
I’m woken by the sound of the trapdoor opening. There is light, muffled yet sharp enough to hurt my eyes.
‘I’m here, Pearl.’
It’s Elizabeth. She lights a lamp and I can see again. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘It is over.’ And she smiles at me. ‘You can change into this.’
She hands me a flowing green skirt. It’s beautiful. I reach out to touch its material in the flickering candlelight. It feels so soft.
‘It’s silk,’ she says. ‘I made it for you when you were born.’
I take off my trousers. As I put the skirt on, it feels like water on my bare legs. Elizabeth passes me a new slab of linen.
‘Change this for the one in your underwear. We must leave the old one here for seven days.’
‘Will I have to come back to get it?’ I ask, the panic rising like bile in my throat.
‘You will not have to come back here,’ she says gently.
Elizabeth takes the old slab from me. It’s heavy with my blood. When she has laid it face down in the earth, she turns to me. ‘You must never speak of this to anyone,’ she says.
She blows out the candle and starts to go back up the steps. I hurry after her.
When we’re outside, she lowers the trapdoor, covers it with leaves and pushes the heavy Worship Chair back into its place.
As we walk away in the early morning air, the birds are singing. The rain has stopped. My emerald-green skirt will tell everyone that now I am a woman.
I watch Ruby’s little fingers as she washes the mugs. In time, she too will become a woman. I know that it is years away, but I can’t bear the thought of her being trapped in the earth. I try to push the memory away. Concentrate on the frothy water in the sink.
When Jack comes in, he notices my skirt immediately and stops. He looks at me. ‘A woman?’ he asks, smiling.
Pride washes through me. ‘Yes,’ I say.
Jack hesitates. I wonder if he will bleed and then be able to grow his hair like the Kindreds. He’s sixteen already, so surely it can’t be long. ‘You won’t change, though?’ he asks.
‘I might.’
‘You better not,’ he says. Then he reaches into the sink and Ruby smiles as he flicks water at me.
‘Hey, watch my skirt,’ I say, laughing.
‘I won’t!’
So I splash him back and he runs from the room, straight into Kindred Smith.
‘Careful,’ Kindred Smith says. But he’s not angry. He never is. Of the two Kindred men, he’s always been my favourite, even though favourites aren’t allowed. With his beard the colour of autumn, I can believe that he grew in the wood.
Jack reaches over and rustles my skirt. ‘Pearl’s a woman,’ he says.
I see something flicker briefly in Kindred Smith’s eyes, but then he smiles warmly. When he puts his arms around me, I feel a strange aching to stay as a child.
‘I remember when you were born,’ he says, as he shakes his head. ‘Your hair was so white it nearly blinded me. And that yell of yours came close to deafening everybody.’ When he laughs, the wrinkles around his eyes squeeze close together. He takes my hand between his. ‘You’re no trouble at all now, though.’
‘Oh, yes she is,’ Jack interrupts. ‘You don’t know the half of it, Kindred Smith.’
I can feel my legs bare under my skirt as I laugh.
Ruby takes her hands from the sink and dries them on a cloth. She comes over to me and strokes the material of my skirt. ‘Are you really a woman now?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And one day, you will be too.’
Her smile is wide. I try not to imagine her alone in the ground.
First meal is being laid out on the two wooden tables in the meadow. It’s my favourite place to eat. And this is my favourite day, because Fridays are free days. Unless Papa S says different, we can spend all day lying in the grass if we want, staring at the sky. As long as the tables are laid and the food eaten, the day is ours.
Through the window, I can see Bobby as he puts the forks in the right places. He pauses to hold one up to the sun. Although he’s small for his five years, he seems wiser than most of us. He tells me that Nature speaks to him through sparks of light – I think he’s listening carefully now.
‘Can you take the bowls out, Pearl?’ Elizabeth asks, as she comes in from outside. ‘And, Jack, there are glasses on the side. The table won’t lay itself.’
I grab the bowls and run out into the meadow. I hear Jack and Elizabeth laughing behind me as I reach the knee-high grass. I push through, careful not to make a path. I wish I wasn’t carrying anything, so that I could reach my hand down and feel the strands on my fingertips.
When Bobby walks past, he kisses his palm and holds it towards me. It always makes me smile. He can’t wait to grow up and be like the Kindred men.
‘Did Nature tell you anything today?’ I ask.
‘It’s a secret,’ he replies before he disappears into the house.
Jack catches up with me as I’m laying the bowls, one in each place. He’s carrying towers of glasses in each hand.
‘What did you worship this morning, then?’ I ask him.
‘I haven’t been out yet. I had to help Kindred John with the drinking fountain. We fixed the leak.’
I look at Jack. He’s so proud that he’s finally been asked to help the Kindreds with proper manual work. For years we’ve watched from where we’ve been playing, Jack fascinated by the hammering and clattering of mending and building. Slowly he’s got older, and slowly he’s been allowed to learn.
‘About time you started to do some proper work around here,’ I say, laughing. He picks up a fruit cloth and swipes at me across the table.
We walk along the table together. For every bowl I put down, he puts a glass, until all eleven places are laid. I stop to watch an ant as it scuttles over a spoon. Press my finger in front of it, willing it to walk on my skin. But it turns back and disappears over the edge.
I
