The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan Page A

and knuckles. She had not been very finely worked, but still I cursed the number of burns I must sustain to erase her. Clumsily I reknotted the bands at my shoulder, and walked home shaking both hands to ease the pains I had given myself unmaking the spell.
    We buried her. My sisters agreed that I should have the use of the house, which was only fair, seeing as I had been nursemaid of both our mam and dad, and otherwise one of their child-crowded houses would have to take me in. But they took their time deciding, holding long and pleasurable discussions in my hearing about what should be done should I ever marry, or should Billy return with a wife to settle. The most they would promise me was that I could live there as long as these things did not happen. If either did, they said, all this talking would have to be done over again. Perhaps I could be maid to Billy and his foreign wife that they had invented? Perhaps we could pay the sisters rent, me and my unimaginable husband? I said not a word; I would not give these bargainings energy by protesting. Whenever they asked me my opinion, I would say, “You work it out among you. You decide what you think is fair. I’ll not live with any of you resenting this decision.” For how could I
care
, even, with my fortune staring at me from over their shoulders, in the form of Able and whoever else would traipse along behind him? Let them go on; let themhave one last boss and blurting-out of righteousness, before their world went to splinters. I would end up best off of them, though they talked of me now as their burden, to be shared out among them, and shrugged off if they could.

    We waited a few weeks more for the moon to come to the full.
    Able brought clothing and some boots for the girl, and a bulge in his coat pocket that must be my money. We went early, so as he could carry her straight off on the Cordlin boat that morning, and marry her respectably as soon as he could.
    I was entirely prepared, starved but for bread and teas and only the tiniest meat these last three days.
You’re looking well
, Bee had said suspiciously the day before when she had met me unexpectedly down the town, so anticipation of the magic must have gone to my skin and hair and carriage too; I could not keep it a secret. Even a man or two had glanced at me, taken aback, this last day or so. What was it about me, I could see them wondering, that I was not so ignorable as usual, not so repellent?
    I was like a banked-up fire. I was glad of the bands crossing my chest, containing what was in me.
    I met Able at Lawson’s stile, so we should not be seen together and commented on. We walked out unspeaking, not at all the way any other lad walks out with a girl of Potshead town. Soon we stood at the top of the cliff at the Crescent, looking down on the many silken bodies lying ashore like poor-piled bolsters, sandbags, jelly bags.
    “Which one of these, then, is your wife?” I laughed, hands on my hips. Someone flapped her flippers below; some seal bab croaked and yowped after his mam, and the mother crooned back, somewhere between dog- and person-sound.
    “Does it matter?” he said. “Aren’t they all equal of beauty inside that lard?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, and laughed again. “But beautiful or ugly as a sow’s backside, you are only getting the one. If she ends up the Misskaella of seals, that is your trouble, and the price remains the same.”
    “There’s worse than you,” he said kindly, because he was feeling kind toward everything this day.
    “There is, and worse we might see. Be prepared.” I had no fears, not really; but I could not, now we were so close, resist testing our bargain yet again, just to watch it hold. Several ways I had begun to spend that money in Able’s coat, that the wind was bouncing against his belly. New boots I would have first, not Hardbellow’s clumpers that all of Rollrock wore, but something Cordlin crafted, of softer leather and sweeter