Red Clocks(38)

The daughter gets it. But Yasmine would have come with.

A cabin appears, a plain little log square, windows lit, smoke drifting from the chimney. Ash’s sister said to look for chickens and goats as proof it was the witch’s place and not a rapist’s. Although rapists could have goats and chickens. The daughter sees what might be a coop but no chickens around—are they sleeping?—and a shed, in which (she sidles up to check) are two little goats, one black, one gray. They watch her with robot eyes. “Shhh,” she says, though they haven’t made a sound. Chimney puffing, lights on, the witch is home; so why is the daughter dawdling by these goats? But what if the witch hates unannounced visitors, what if she has guns? It’s legal to shoot someone if you say they were invading.

Going up the cabin steps, the daughter takes long breaths like Mom taught her to do at gymnastics meets, when she was still short enough for gymnastics.

Mom would understand this whole situation better than Dad would.

Not that the daughter is ever going to tell her.

Knock, knock.

The person who opens the door isn’t old. Is even almost pretty. Big green eyes, dark hair in coils around pale cheeks. Her outfit—velvet choker and coarse sack dress—is Victorian prostitute meets Cro-Magnon. Is this even the witch?

The person frowns and stares.

“Hello,” says the daughter.

Is it the witch’s servant, or the witch’s younger sister?

“You.” The person crosses her arms over her chest, begins to scratch her sack-covered shoulders. The fingernails make a whispering sound.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for … I don’t know if you’re … Gin Percival?”

“Why?” She stares sideways at the daughter. More like an animal than a human.

“I need some gynecological help?”

“How did you come here?”

“I heard about you from Clementine?”

“Clementine.” Still frowning, but now smiling too: a face pulled two ways.

“She said to tell you the, um, wart is gone?”

“Okay.” The person stands back. The daughter steps in. The room is warm and smells of wood; its rafters are strung with tiny white lights, shelves packed with jars and bottles and books. There is an old-fashioned stove. No cauldron.

“I’m Mattie—Matilda.”

“My name is Gin Percival.”

“Nice to meet you.”

The witch’s throat makes a long, low gurgle. Her big eyebrows are twitching. It might be true that she’s crazy.

“Sit.”

“Thank you.” The daughter takes a chair.

“What kind of help?”

“I need the termination herbs.”

“You’re pregnant and don’t want to be?”

She nods.

Gin Percival stretches a hand across her forehead, as though shielding her eyes. Gives a hard, short laugh.

“I’m not here undercover,” adds Mattie. “And nobody followed me.” That she knows of.

“How old are you?”

“Almost sixteen.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“February.”

“When in February?”

“The fifteenth. I’m an Aquarius.”

Gin paces around the small room, fingers interlaced on top of her head. “Oh?two-one-five. You’ll be sixteen.”

“Do you not—” The daughter coughs, to bury her nervousness. “Is the jail sentence worse if the seeker is a minor?”

She stops pacing. Lowers her hands to her sack-smocked sides. “That has nothing to do with anything. Want some water?”

“No thanks. I’m sorry I didn’t make an appointment.”

“How many weeks are you?”

“I’m not totally sure but I think eleven or twelve? My period was supposed to come midway through September. Ish.”

“Then you’re around fourteen. End of first trimester. You have to include the two weeks before conception.”

“But I still have time, right?”

Those eyebrows. Frantic brown caterpillars. Maybe because she lives by herself she has no idea how her eyebrows behave? No mirrors in the cabin that the daughter can see.

“For the kind of treatments I do? Barely. But yes. You sure you want to?”

What if your bio mother had chosen to terminate?

“Will it—” The daughter looks at the bare planks under her feet. “Hurt a lot?”

“Not a lot. You’ll drink a bad-tasting tea, then later you’ll bleed. You’ll have to stay home for a day at least. Better two. Do your, uh, parents know?”

Think of me and your mom, how long we waited.

The daughter shakes her head. “But I can go to my friend’s—Whoa! Hello!” A gray thing has leapt into her lap, a purring accordion.

“That’s Malky.”

“Hi, Malky.” She sort of hates cats, but she wants this cat to like her and for the witch to notice that he likes her. “Friendly little guy,” she adds.

“He’s not friendly,” says Gin. “Get on the bed. I need to look at you. Jeans and underpants off.” She goes to the sink to wash.

The daughter undresses. Gin has put nothing over the bed she presumably sleeps in, no fresh towel or sheet. Cat hairs all over the brown blanket.