from my throat, down to my tummy. I don’t know why it’s there, and I don’t know what it is, but then it’s gone.
They do not know that I am here, locked away forever at the top of the house. That I watch them. That one of them is mine.
They do not know my memory of growing my baby in me. And when it was time, the thunder in my stomach cracking me open. The stinging turning to burning and tearing and the final release of a head. I pushed the flesh and bones from me. My child.
I hadn’t expected the slippery, snake-like cord that held my baby to me. My baby’s screams as that cord was cut through.
‘Are you hurting it?’ I remember asking. I didn’t know whether I had birthed a boy or a girl.
‘The baby is fine.’ The Kindred had smiled as he pressed a cold flannel to my forehead. He wasn’t doing it to help me. It was to keep me down.
‘Can I hold my baby?’ I asked. But then the cramps took over my body again. My mother stood between my legs and she pulled that severed cord.
‘What’s happening?’ I screamed.
The Kindred only smiled again. ‘Trust us,’ he said. ‘Trust us.’
He won’t cry. Even though the drops of blood squeeze through the crack in his skin, I know he won’t cry. So Bobby just screws up his face and keeps his eyes shut tight as I check his foot for any more thorns.
‘They’ll give us blackberries in the autumn,’ I say, gently touching the brambles with my fingertips. ‘So we can forgive them for this scratch.’
Bobby’s face stays scrunched as he watches me pick a bracken leaf. I press it onto his cut. He tries to move his ankle away, but I hold it tight, waiting for the leaf to work.
When it’s done, I stand up and brush the dry mud from my skirt. ‘Come on, let’s get back before it rains.’
Bobby leans his head into me. ‘Thank you, Pearl,’ he says. And as we stand like this, I want to tell him: I think you’re my true brother. Because I knew, those five years ago, as soon as Elizabeth and Rachel reappeared with their empty bellies and the Kindreds carrying two mewling babies. I knew the moment I saw Bobby that he was mine.
But I say nothing. Instead, I take his hand in mine and we pick our way carefully back through the forest, back towards Seed.
The rain comes soon, when we are busy helping Elizabeth in the kitchen. It’s the first time it’s rained in the three days since I’ve been a woman. Kate walks in and she dips her finger into the soft cheese as I squeeze it in the muslin cloth. I laugh as I try to snap it shut, but she pulls her hand away.
‘Hey, dreamer,’ she says to me. ‘You’d gone to worship before I’d even opened my eyes.’
‘I went out early with Bobby.’
‘We found a robin,’ Bobby says. ‘It spoke to me.’
‘We managed ten rejoices before it flew away,’ I say.
‘I ended up going out on my own,’ Kate says, that wicked smile tipping at her lips. ‘I chose mud.’
I don’t understand why she’s saying such things these days. I want to ask her, but something is holding me back.
‘There’s beauty in everything,’ Elizabeth says, just as Ruby rushes in and the rain outside beats louder. We put down the cloth and go to the open door to watch it.
‘I like the way it bounces on the ground,’ Ruby says.
‘We’ll have to go out in it later. We’ve carrots to pick,’ Elizabeth says. She stands next to us, one hand on Bobby’s shoulder, the other pressing gently onto the glass.
I look at Elizabeth’s fingers and put mine next to hers on the glass. I’m sure our hands look the same. We both have slender fingers and small wrists.
She looks at me and smiles. ‘They’re just hands,’ she says, and I wonder how she knows my mind.
‘Come on, let’s go out in it now,’ Kate says. ‘It’ll be fun.’
‘Not you, Kate,’ a voice says from behind us.
Kindred John has walked into the room, his footsteps disguised by the heavy thumping of the rain. Ruby runs up and jumps into his arms. He throws her high into the air and catches her again. When she is back safely in his arms, she rolls the ends of his beard into her hands.
‘You have lines in your hair,’ she says to him.
Kindred John laughs. ‘Nature is beginning to paint my beard grey,’ he says.
I am so used to the blackness of his hair, I cannot imagine it changing. I don’t think I want it to.
Kindred John throws Ruby in the air again.
‘She’s too big for that,’ Elizabeth says.
‘Five years old isn’t too big for throwing in the air,’ Kindred John says, and Ruby laughs as he swings her up.
‘You’ll hurt your back,’ Elizabeth tells him, and he puts Ruby down.
‘Heather needs some more flour,’ Kindred John says. ‘I need Kate to help with the wheel.’
There’s a strange look on Kate’s face. ‘I’m helping Elizabeth,’ she says.
‘I have asked you to come with me,’ Kindred John says.
Then he leaves the room and as she follows him, I’m shocked to see her pull a face behind his back.
I glance at Elizabeth, but I don’t know if she’s seen. If she did, I wonder what punishment Kate will get.
‘Nana Willow needs her tincture,’ Elizabeth says to me. ‘Will you take it to her? She’s not good today.’
‘Of course,’ I say, but there’s a pebble of dread sitting in my stomach. I can’t tell anyone, but Nana Willow frightens me. She has stayed in her room for so many years that her mind has become as withered as her skin.
Her bedroom is downstairs. Out of the kitchen, across the hall and down the tiled corridor. I can’t help but glance at the door of the Forgiveness Room as I walk past. I have only walked through there once, and I never want to do it again. Another short corridor and I’m outside Nana Willow’s room.
I don’t knock. I know she can’t hear. Slowly I push open the heavy wooden door and her smell rushes up to me. I try not to mind it. I tell myself it is as natural as the flowers in the field.
