They said there were the bones of the ancient dead feeding the vegetables here. Katherine turned her neck towards the wind stiffly thrilled by the rain. One bite of a sweet turnip and you could be led some where, way back into the past, where faces were once slashed with blood red streaks and voices sounded like this huge crow stood watching her like a Victorian school master.
It seemed worth the risk.
Katherine shifted her boots and sniffed at the far away smell of stewed food, rehearsing a conversation she wanted to have with the stranger; perhaps she had forgotten how to speak to people. She hadn’t even a name to call her yet and perhaps this was a good thing. Perhaps it was. For this was now a time for forgetting.( Her doctor had told her with his head on one side ). For setting loose those names that anchored her to this muddy-grey mortal life. ( Could she trust a man with plump pink hands?)
When she was younger, much younger, she had once practised talking into a mirror, changing her words, shaping her fringe and re-shaping her natural smile. There had been girls on the boat over who had assaulted everyone’s ears with their fast chatter and Katherine had watched them like this crow, appalled. Yet her voice had always been slow, finding words and applying just the right amount of pressure to make them her own.
She bent down slowly and pulled up a small turnip, sweating with this new effort. They could eat it together.
