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Some years ago, deep in the mountains near a place called Cut Creek, lived a lady and her three young daughters. They were the last of an old and prosperous family: the three girls went to an excellent boarding school far away, and the lady’s house, alone at the back of the valley, had a long drive and a large kitchen with a big iron stove. The lady was a good housekeeper and an accomplished cook, and she taught her girls to be kind and generous. No one had ever been turned away at her door empty-handed or left her table empty-bellied.
It was shortly after Christmas when a boy from down the valley went missing. This was in the middle of the biggest snows of the season, and many days passed before he was found. It took many men to cut him free from the river, and when they saw the expression on his face, some them privately wondered if he had indeed drowned or if it had been fright that killed him.
Several days after that, the detectives came.
It was late afternoon when they arrived at the lady’s house and she was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Through the window she saw their car rumble up the drive, and she set down her knife and shooed her girls into the nursery with a slice of butter cake to share and the promise of more if they were good. The eldest gave her a haughty look for being sent away like a baby and the lady bent down and fixed her dress collar and whispered, “Keep them quiet now, sweetness. If you wish you may pray.”
A rap at the door, impatient. The lady pulled on her gloves, threw a shawl around her shoulders and hurried to answer. On her porch stood two tall strong men. One was older and dark, and the other was young and fair. They wore suits and thin, cheaply-made overcoats. She had never seen them before, and she smiled a nervous welcome.
The younger man blanched, his nose showing pink and the rims of his ears. He had never seen a woman of her age smile with so many gaps before. His partner, unfazed, nodded greetings.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” He held up a badge. He had some questions, he said, about the accident.
“Ah,” she said, her mouth turned down in sorrow. She had heard about the boy. “It’s so sad. He is in our prayers. But how can I help?”
The detective took out a pen from inside his jacket, and a notepad the size of his palm. He had a deep friendly voice, but his smile did not reach far up his face. “May we come in?” he said. “You sure do have cold winters out this way.”
She refused him, and his smile fell away. He asked her, then, if she had seen the boy prior; and if she had seen anyone else about the river, which after all bordered her land; and if she knew of anyone who might dislike the boy; or if she had seen anything strange, anything at all.
“No,” she said, to all of this.
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes,” she told him, but she had made a mistake. The young detective, huddled against the cold, his eyes flitting across the woods and the high mountain horizon, straightened up and frowned at her. It turned his mouth into a girlish unbecoming pout.
“You said he’d be in our prayers.”
“All of us in the valley,” she said, and tried another smile. “We pray for the family.”
“I see,” said the first man. “We heard you lived with your daughters, are they not here?”
The lady was glad then of her diligence, not to have left their little boots outside, or the youngest’s red trolley cart, or their clothes on the line. “They’ve returned to school, of course,” she said. “You must not be a father or you would know the holidays are over.”
“Is that so,” he said. He made a note in his notepad that she could not read.
“How does the boy’s mother fare?” she asked.
“Not well.” He looked at her from under his eyebrows. “Her child is dead.”
The lady pulled her shawl tighter around and shivered. “That poor, poor woman,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll call on her tomorrow.”
“I’m sure she’d be delighted to see you,” said the young one. He was not being sincere. The lady gave him a scolding look and he ducked his head, chastened.
That was, thankfully, the end of their questions, and the first man nodded again and thanked her for her time. His companion had already turned back to their car. The wind had come up as the sun went down, and his overcoat, hanging from his stiff square shoulders, flapped about his legs, too light for warmth.
The lady watched them drive away, hoping that she had dealt with them well. She closed the door and drew all the curtains, and stoked the fire and called her girls out to play, and went back to making her stew.
::
Later that night though, the lady discovered that she had doubts. She was sitting at the kitchen table in the warm glow of the stove, waiting on the next day’s bone bread to be done, and she laid down her embroidery in her lap and thought, that younger one was surely too young to be a detective. And what of the strange emphasis on seeing anything unusual? And what had the other man written in his notebook? It made her worried.
The lady was at that time embroidering three fine new sheets in white linen and gold silk thread. Each of her girls had a different design. Her eldest daughter delighted in rivers and lakes, and would amuse herself for hours at the well, calling down and listening to the damp reply; for her, the lady sewed a flashing border of running water, and reeds, and herons with squirming fish speared through. For the middle child, who could play for hours in the woods without getting lost, she sewed little scenes of trees and deer, and toadstools and fairies. The youngest was a sombre child overall. Her favourite thing was to point and laugh at clouds and birds, and it was these, the doors and messengers of Heaven, that the lady sewed tenderly around the edges of her sheet.
It was hard for the lady to keep her hoop steady and embroider with precision, having as she did only the thumb and two half fingers on her left hand, and the thumb, pointer, and little finger on her right. It was hard for her to knead her breads and pastries as well as she used to, and it was hard for her to chop wood for the fires, and it was hard for her to dress, and shave her hair close to her scalp, and drive, and keep the garden path shovelled. When it came time for her to need a walking stick she was not sure how she was going to cope. But she did all this without complaint. She was a good mother, and she loved her girls more than anything.
The drowned boy, she was thinking that night as she sewed, was not a good boy, and there were plenty like him in the world, all prone to misadventure. It was nothing new in a place like this to lose one. But if it meant that detectives were sniffing around her land then she had to consider carefully what could be done to keep her girls safe.
She limped down the hall into the nursery, where her youngest lay sleeping, and picked her up. The child wrapped her arms around the lady’s neck and snuffled into her shoulder still asleep, and the lady pressed her face into her soft clean skin. Her eyes welled with tears. Still holding the child, she crossed the hall to the bedroom, where her other two lay peacefully curled towards each other on the big bed. Their hair shone gold and their faces were pale and fine as bone china.
Before they had first gone away to school, far over the mountains, the lady had been very frightened for her girls, and prayed that they would return safe to her. She had prayed every day.
Many prayers, it’s true, disappear into a vast reach of silence. But some few are heard, although doubts remain as to who it is who hears them.
And some fewer, the lady knew, are even answered.
::
The next morning the lady evaluated her larder and decided to cook the girls silver dollar pancakes for breakfast, with homemade blood orange jam, whipped cream, and apple juice from the market. The youngest two squealed in delight and gobbled their pancakes down. The eldest, who had become prim and serious at school, ate more slowly, but she said thank you mother, and did all the dishes, and called the youngest child over to help dry, perched on a high stool by the kitchen bench. The middle child sat in the lady’s lap and suffered her hair to be combed and plaited.
After that they did their chores, and after that they did their lessons, and the eldest again looked solemnly at her mother until finally the lady asked her what was on her mind.
“Who were those men yesterday?” she asked. The lady reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear and said that they were no one.
“I heard you talking,” said the eldest, who could not be tricked. The lady sighed.
“They were asking about the boy.”
“Did they know it was me?” asked the girl. The lady shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It is not your fault he took fright.”
“When do we go home?” asked the middle child, looking up from her grammar. For a moment the lady could not answer. She thought her heart might break, once again, and wondered how the mending would be possible this time.
“You are home, my darlings,” she said eventually. “I told you, you must stay with me,” and the youngest child said, “when do we go home,” in a voice so small that the lady didn’t hear her.
After lessons, she fixed the girls fresh bread with a thick layer of butter. This was a special treat, a favourite since they were in swaddling, but although the youngest two dug in the eldest took her bread but didn’t eat.
“I don’t think I am very hungry,” she said.
“You must eat,” said the lady. “Growing girls must eat or they waste away.” So the eldest ate her bread and butter.
She settled them in the front room with their toys and pencils and books, and told them to be good and listen to what the eldest said. She put on her thick grey winter jacket and her woollen beanie and her mittens, and walked behind her house to the path that lead into the woods. It was hard going, with heavy snow boots on and the gaps at the toes stuffed with extra cloth for balance, but she had a long strong branch for a hiking stick, and once she was under the trees the ground was almost clear of snow and it was easier to walk. The cold made her bare gums ache, and she drew her scarf up over her mouth. There were no other tracks but deer, fox, and raccoon.
The graves, each at the foot of a crooked birch, were undisturbed. A great worry lifted from the lady’s shoulders. She knelt down and cleared them of snow and fallen leaves and twigs, and reset the stones that bordered each one so they lay square. She recarved the tree trunks deep and neat. Finally, she cut a sod from each grave and wrapped it individually in a square of winding cloth, and put all three in her satchel. She was very careful with the cloth. There was not so much of it left; soon, she knew, she would need to cut up their bedsheets, and she was falling behind on sewing the new ones. There never did seem to be enough time for what was needed.
The walk back took long enough that her feet froze numb through her boots. Before she entered the house, she sat down on the back porch and took her left boot off, and the two socks, and the bandage, and with a chisel and a hammer cut off her third toe, the roast beef one. She put it in a special pocket in her satchel, and then redressed her foot, and put her shoe back on, and limped inside. She was very sore, but when she opened the door she could hear her girls laughing in the front room. The sound was a pure and joyous medicine, and washed her pain away.
Two frozen clods the lady put under the girls’ bed, in the bedroom. The last she put under the little bed in the nursery. The toe she took into the kitchen and divided carefully up, nail, flesh and bone. She set the bone and nail on the stove to dry for grinding later, and put the flesh in the refrigerator with the rest of the week’s meat.
When she looked out the window over the sink she could see that the day had darkened early, with heavy grey clouds and a cold cold chill. She was very tired.
I don’t think I will go out again after all, the lady thought. Not with this mess to clean, and the vegetables to peel for the roast, and the pie still to bake. I know: I’ll bake a spare, and take it to the boy’s mother tomorrow. So she made dinner and they all sat around the kitchen table to eat, and the eldest this time did not protest that she wasn’t hungry. Afterwards the lady set two apple pies to baking and joined her girls in the front room. She picked up her sewing from the basket by the easy chair and, over her hoop, watched them play late into the evening, her heart full and sore with love.
::
But as the lady was preparing to go visiting the next morning, there came another knock on the door.
The girls were finishing their lessons and all three looked up at the sound. The lady gathered their books and sent them into the bedroom again, and pulled the heavy curtain that separated the back of the house from the kitchen.
The young detective was by himself this time. He was in workman’s clothes under his thin black overcoat, and his pale skin was still pink at the nose with cold.
“Ma’am,” he said, his breath turning to frost in the air. “Mind if I come in?”
“I do mind,” said the lady, but to her shock he simply pushed the door open and squeezed past, knocking her off balance. He peered into the front room, and then walked straight down the hall. The lady shuffled behind, demanding that he must leave.
He ignored her. In the kitchen he glanced at the curtain but did not open it. Instead, he leaned against the sink and folded his arms across his chest.
The lady stood in front of the curtain. She pulled her shawl up over her head, and tried to quell her shaking, and think what to do. It was clear that he was not a detective and did not care for the law; the same went, she supposed, for his partner. She felt, with a grave deep fear, that she and her girls were in great peril, but he did nothing besides contemplate her kitchen.
“What are you doing?” she asked, when she could stand the silence no longer.
“Waiting,” he said, and nothing more. He drew his coat closer about and chewed on his lip. Winter in the mountains is a long procession of underfed and sorry creatures, and the lady had seen enough in her time to recognise another. Hoping it would make him take pity, she offered him a glass of milk and something to eat.
His gaze went straight to the pies, cooling on the counter. “I suppose a slice wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
The lady wiped her hands on her dress, and took a nice plate from the credenza and a knife from the drawer, and cut him a slice. The pastry was short and golden, and the apples gleamed in their jelly.
“It’s good,” he said, after taking a bite. “Thank you.”
Behind the lady, the curtain swung aside.
“Is everything okay, mother?” asked the eldest.
“Everything is fine,” said the lady, darting a look at the man. “The detective will be leaving after he finishes his pie. Would you like some, darling?”
“I am not hungry,” the eldest said, cross. She looked very beautiful and severe in the morning light. “Eat, eat, eat. Why must we always eat?”
“How do you like school?” asked the man, and the eldest stared at him silently and turned her eyes up at her mother.
“She likes school very much,” said the lady. “But she is glad to be home.”
He nodded and wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers, and placed his plate in the sink.
“That’s funny,” he said, but he wasn’t laughing. “Because I heard your daughters never came home. All dead in their beds, is what I heard.”
A coldness swept over the lady. She felt like the world was shaking. She turned around and went into the front room and took up the hatchet from its basket by the fire. Grasping it two-handed, because she did not have so many fingers left, she limped back into the kitchen and swung, but the man stepped sideways and plucked the hatchet from her grip.
“No!” she cried, and beat her fists against his chest, but she could not move him. “Who are you? Leave us alone!”
“Mother,” said the eldest. “I feel strange.”
The lady looked over and saw that her daughter’s ribbons were burning with a ghostly fire, and her dress, and her black leather shoes. The girl lifted the curtain and ran away down the hall; echoing down to the kitchen came the confused cries of the two youngest.
This was what he was waiting for, the lady realised. His friend had exposed her girls’ graves, and was burning them, and their time had once again come to an end. She wailed, and reached up and slapped him across the face. He stepped back, hatchet raised.
“Stop,” he said, but the lady was caught up in a terrible madness and could not listen. She hurled a glass at him, and missed. She threw a plate, which he batted away. Finally she she saw the knife resting in the pie dish. She flashed her hand towards it, and with a single swing of the hatchet he cut through her arm at the wrist.
The lady sighed and fell to the floor, clutching her arm to her chest. Her heart broke for the last time. She felt her blood draining away.
The young man looked down at her. “You can’t keep them with you,” he said, after a little while. But the lady was dead and could not hear.
After he left, the three girls returned to the kitchen and looked at their mother lying on the tiles. They were as naked as the moon, with thick shining hair, and strong white teeth. The eldest bent and whispered in the ears of her sisters, and then they all knelt down together and with a knife divided the lady up between them, taking care not to forget the hand which still lay on the countertop. They did not leave a drop behind. And then inside them they took the lady home, although whether it was to Heaven or to another place, nobody yet knows.
::
The end.