The Wonder(44)

She found herself counting the sleeping breaths. Nineteen in one minute, but the count would be different, and the rhythm less regular, if Anna were awake.

Something baking in the crock. Turnips? They’d cook slowly all night, filling the cabin with their starchy aroma. It was enough to make Lib peckish, even though she’d had a good supper at Ryan’s.

What prompted her to look back at the bed? Dark shiny eyes met hers. “How long have you been awake?”

A little shrug from Anna.

“Do you need anything? The pot? Water?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Elizabeth.”

Something about the way Anna formed the words, so politely, almost stiffly. “Is anything hurting you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What is it?” Lib moved closer, hovering over the bed.

“Nothing,” breathed Anna.

Lib risked it. “Are you hungry at all? Was it the scent of those turnips that roused you?”

A faint, almost pitying smile.

Lib’s stomach growled. Hunger was the common ground on which everyone woke. The body an infant stirring to mew, each morning, Feed me. But not Anna O’Donnell’s, not anymore. Hysteric, lunatic, maniac; the words didn’t fit her. She was like nothing so much as a little girl who didn’t need to eat.

Oh, come, Lib scolded herself. If Anna believed she was one of the queen’s five daughters, would that make it so? The child might not feel hunger, but it was still eating away at her flesh, her hair, her skin.

After a stretch of silence so long that she thought perhaps the child was sleeping with her eyes open, Anna said, “Tell me about the little man.”

“What little man?” asked Lib.

“The rumpled one.”

“Ah, Rumpelstiltskin.” She recounted the old tale just to pass the time. Having to call up the details made her realize how bizarre it was. The girl charged with the impossible task of spinning straw into gold because of her mother’s boast. The goblin who helped her. His offer to let her keep her firstborn after all if only she could guess the goblin’s outlandish name…

Anna lay still for a while afterwards. It occurred to Lib that the child might be taking the legend as fact. Were all manifestations of the supernatural equally real to her?

“Bet.”

“You bet what?” asked Lib.

“Is it Bet, what your family used to call you?”

She chuckled. “Not this foolishness again.”

“They couldn’t have called you Elizabeth every born day. Betsy? Betty? Bessie?”

“No, no, and no.”

“But it comes from Elizabeth, doesn’t it?” asked Anna. “’Tisn’t quite another name, like Jane?”

“No, that would be cheating,” agreed Lib.

Lib had been her pet name back in the days when she was anyone’s pet, the name her younger sister had given her because Elizabeth had been too long for her to pronounce. Lib was what her whole family had called her, when she’d still had a family, while their parents were still alive and before her sister had said Lib was dead to her.

She laid her hand over Anna’s on the grey blanket. The swollen fingers were freezing, so she tucked them in. “Are you glad to have someone with you at night?”

The girl looked confused.

“Not to be alone, I suppose I mean.”

“But I’m not alone,” said Anna.

“Well, not now.” Not since the watch.

“I’m never alone.”

“No,” agreed Lib. Two gaolers, turn and turnabout, for constant company.

“He comes in to me as soon as I’m asleep.”

The bluish lids were fluttering shut already, so Lib didn’t ask who he was. The answer was obvious.

Anna’s breathing was deep again. Lib wondered whether the child dreamt of her Saviour every night. Did he come in the form of a long-haired man, a haloed boy, a baby? What consolations did he bring, what feasts that were so much more ambrosial than the earthly kind?

Watching a slumberer was a powerful inducer of sleep; Lib’s eyelids were getting heavy again. She stood up, turning her head from side to side to loosen her neck.

He comes in to me as soon as I’m asleep. A strange construction. Perhaps Anna didn’t mean Christ after all but some ordinary he, a man—Malachy O’Donnell? Mr. Thaddeus, even?—who funnelled liquid into her mouth when she was in an in-between state of drowsy oblivion. Was Anna trying to tell Lib the truth she barely understood herself?

For something to do, Lib looked through the girl’s treasure chest. Opened The Imitation of Christ carefully, so as not to dislodge the holy cards. If we were perfectly dead unto ourselves, and not entangled within our own breasts, she read at the top of a page, then should we be able to taste divine things.

The words made her shake. Who’d teach a child to be dead to herself? How many of Anna’s most dearly held, mad notions came from these books?

Or from the bright pastel pictures on the cards. So many plants: sunflowers with faces turned towards the light; Jesus perched on the canopy of a tree under which people huddled. Sententious mottoes in Gothic type, describing him as a brother or as a bridegroom. One card showed a steep staircase cut into a cliff face with a looming heart like a setting sun and a cross at the top. The next was even odder: The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine. A beautiful young woman appeared to be accepting a bridal ring from an infant Jesus perched on his mother’s lap.