Perfectly Preventable Deaths

16 Hart’s Tongue

I follow Mamó back inside her lair and sit on a plump armchair drinking tea. It feels strange that she lives in a place with armchairs and a kettle. A granite countertop, a little stove. It feels as if she should live in the sort of house a hobbit lives in. And always have at least one cauldron on the go. I lean towards her, formulating questions in my brain.

Before the words come out, she blinks at me, and speaks.

‘You did OK tonight. You needed Hart’s tongue, bog butter, basic soil. Those were the ones you missed. You got the rest.’

She’s speaking like I know what she is talking about. Like I’ve gotten a C+ on a test. I always get at least a B.

I inhale slowly, push my shoulders back.

‘What did we do?’ I ask. ‘I mean, what did it mean?’

‘You mean, what did it mean?’ She says this slowly. As though she is being incredibly patient with me.

‘Yes.’

‘It meant,’ she says, ‘that we were being careful. When you leave the house, you lock the door behind you.’

‘You didn’t. Lock the door.’

She looks at me. ‘My door is always locked. But not with keys.’

‘What does that even mean?’ I ask.

‘I don’t believe in taking stupid risks.’ She takes a long drink from her yellow earthenware mug. It has a star on it.

I take a breath, and ask a stupid question.

‘Was it … magic?’

Mamó leans back in her seat. ‘I wouldn’t call it that. T’was more insurance. Nothing like the good stuff.’

‘So. You can do. Like. Spells and things,’ I say. She inclines her head a little. ‘Are you a witch, Mamó?’ I feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. There’s no way for that question to sound anything but strange, coming out of my mouth. Mamó doesn’t react, her voice is calm. She just continues on.

‘I told Brian, when he married that … your mother, that he’d have to be explaining to ye the way things are in the village.’

‘And what way is that?’ I ask, ignoring the fact that my lovely, gentle stepfather apparently believes in magic.

‘I promised him I wouldn’t say too much. And I am of my word. But, I will say this, be careful. This village is a sort of –’ she scans the room, and settles on the fridge – ‘fridge. And some of us are fridge magnets. And some of us are food.’

This is not a very informative analogy, but I get the sense that explaining things is not Mamó’s strongest point. She yawns pointedly.

‘Do you not have a home to go to, young one?’

‘This is my home,’ I point out, wanting more. I want to understand.

‘This is my home. It’s just attached to yours, now up the stairs. We’ll speak sometime again.’

I obey. I don’t know what to think. Dawn is breaking as I venture in. The rooms are dim. I go into the kitchen, grab the salt, and carry it up to my bed beside me.

Catlin’s waiting for me in my room. Her face is stained, as if she has been crying.

‘Madeline!’ she says. As though I had been gone for seven years.

‘Catlin?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong? Are you OK?’

‘Ugh. Fine,’ she tells me, wiping at her face. ‘I just got really weird. I felt like you weren’t coming back or something. Like you were being dragged away from me. And then, after you left, I kept thinking about that story in Dad’s book. The one I almost thought of. You know the one I mean.’ She’s looking at me, and I can see the sheen of sweat on her forehead. She absently bites her right index fingernail, peels off a little crescent moon-flake.

‘What story, Catlin?’ I ask her, climbing under the covers, wrecked.

‘The one I was thinking of before – the forest-devil one. I remember it now.’

And I remember the stained grey cover and the yellowed pages of Dad’s book, the illustrations black and white and intricate. Mam’s voice stumbling as she read the words.

‘I think it was the first thing I ever heard that really frightened me,’ she says, and her voice is low. I close my eyes and picture it, one of us on either side of Mam, listening transfixed. Wanting it to stop, and not to stop.

Catlin pulls the covers tight around us both.

‘Where the woman’s child was sick, and she took a calf and brought it to the middle of the woods and called the devil …?’

‘It’s coming back a little …’

‘And she killed the calf. And prayed and called the devil again. And when he came, she offered him her soul to save her child.’

‘Oh, Catlin,’ I say, remembering. ‘You hated that. The way the child recovered but it didn’t love her any more. It couldn’t. The devil had taken her soul. And so, she wasted. Wasted, and when she died, the devil came for her, and took her straight to hell.’

‘It’s a horrible story to have in a book for children.’

‘I’m not so sure it was meant for children,’ I say. ‘I mean, it has so many deaths.’

‘I remember being so scared.’ Catlin’s voice is quiet. ‘That people could stop loving people. That people could go to hell like that. I think that’s when I started praying, really. As insurance.’

There’s that word again. Two different places, and two different mouths. Does that mean something?

‘Madeline?’ Catlin nudges me.

‘You’re not that weird,’ I tell her. ‘Have you seen my massive piles of salt?’

‘Did you fix the feeling at the crossroads?’ she asks. I squeeze my eyelids. Don’t know what to tell her.

‘I hope we did,’ I say. ‘I hope we did.’

I stay awake, thinking of the fox’s dead mouth, pink tongue lolling limply. The bright stare of Lon’s eyes upon my sister, the smile of him, the way it feels, a promise and a threat. I picture him smiling and smiling wider and wider, his mouth too big to be a human mouth. There are no wolves, but people can be wolves. I feel afraid of something I don’t yet know.

Being in the world comes at a price.