Mourning came to the little house in Elusa. The hamlet, nestled on the roadside to Ambra, housed only a few farmers, a blacksmith, a butcher, one lawyer who called himself Mayor, and Anirea, the whore. Anirea and her children. The whore, her three daughters, and her newborn son.
Mourning came in the bleak of dawn, while the moon still hung on the horizon, crescent-faced and lonely. The birds did not stir and the crickets now slept. But Anirea screamed. The torment of contractions gone wrong.
The village heard. Agony. But they did not come to aid. Daughters alone fended for her, rushing to the Crossing Well and back again, boiling water on their little hearth, soaking up blood in the rags of their skirts.
The men heard the cries of the whore. The men who were married, each to a one. But none of them had ever visited the whore before. Surely. Nor all of them, to be sure! Why would they begin so now?
Instead they lay awake in their beds. Possums asleep. Hearts cringing at every shriek as wives, wide-eyed, glowered in quiet vengeance.
Elusa, saintly village, with the little house at its outskirts, so close to mourning. Virgins held heated rags to the sweat-beaded face of the whore. Shaking mother, with newborn on the way, now arrived. But the flow does not cease. Mourning so close.
The morning now dawned, and Analia, eldest of the three, regal and solemn, held her new brother in her arms. Crimson-yellow fluids now washed. Cord finely cut. Wrapped in a blanket, he slept the peace only infants know as her mind cast far afield upon the winds of fear, searching vainly for a thought which might bring salvation to his life from the starvation which would soon begin.
Synu and Talitha, both merry of head, dressed the lukewarm body of the whore without their customary smiles.
“We will need more water for the floor,” Analia said, already assuming her role as matron, wondering what other unsavory tasks she would also be asked to perform for their suppers.
“I will fetch it,” Talitha answered. She paused to look on her mother's face, still furrowed and stricken with the last moments, before she covered it with their final clean raiment of beaten canvas.
“It is not yet light,” Synu said. “I shall come with you.”
The family bucket between them, they made their way a last time for the night to the the heart of town. Patient and dull, it rested at the Crossing, where the road to Ambra met with the brief avenue of homes.
The whore’s house lay well beyond all these, kept to the edges, hidden behind a copse of bushes which bloomed with violet cockles in the spring. In high winter wolves sometimes dared to come too close. There was no guard in the town. But at the height of summer, the morning was pleasant and safe.
They did not see the figure who sat beside the Crossing Well. She had not been there before. Hunched. Veiled. Transparent among the shadows. Only as Synu drew the bucket back from the deep of the water with a plopping splash did that figure raise her face. Her eyes pierced the twilight. Ice. Shining planes of the bluest light, but burdened with a cold grief.
Mourning, Synu knew.
“Oh!" Talitha said, no more than twelve, her hands fleeing to cover her mouth.
Synu, three years her elder, returned to drawing the bucket as she spoke. “Greetings mistress traveler.” Hand over hand she pulled. “Welcome to Elusa.”
The woman gave no response. She only stared, sorrow heavy. Palpable.
After the bucket was drawn, when all that remained was to return home, Talitha took a firm step toward the visitor. “Mistress, you are welcome. Though it is summer, a seat beside a well on the highway is no place for a guest to our town. Any hearth in Elusa will welcome you and give you board. If you will walk with us, though we have griefs to tend yet, we will embrace the chance help you on your journey.”
“You cannot know grief.”
The words cut hard. Her voice bane and rank solemnity.
“No child so spritely as yourselves can possibly comprehend what I have born.”
The sisters looked to one another. Talitha made to turn way. But Synu drew her back.
“I do not presume to question your wisdom, mistress,” she said. “All the same, we will share with you what means we have. Even in summer, the bank of a well is no place for rest.”
“Rest only prolongs the futility,” the woman said. But she rose all the same, her long cloak spreading wide behind her. “Lead on.”
When the door was pressed open and the stranger led in, Analia still sat by the hearth. Grim, icy eyes took her and the meager dwelling in with a single sweep, but locked with stunned purpose upon the brother swaddled in her arms. Wide and flushed, emotion washed over the woman’s stark features.
“You are not the mother of this infant,” she said.
“No, mistress,” Synu answered from where she poured the bucket into the pot set in the hearth. “She lies upon the bed.”
The stranger glanced in that direction as she stumbled slightly forward to catch herself in the chair beside Analia. She hastily looked to the three young women in turn, then fixed her eyes back upon the child once more.
Silence descended. Talitha stood by the door, cautiously eyeing their guest, studying her now that the night no longer hid her features. A sharp nose. A firm cheekbone. Less than mid-life, with clear, pleasant skin hidden beneath the deep, swirling blue of her traveling cloak. Like the depths of the ocean, or so Talitha imagined.
The cupboard made noise as Synu took down a plate. She placed cheese and a bit of bread on it.
“Will you take food?” she said.
“How will you feed the child?”
“We do not know,” Analia answered. “There is some milk in our mother's breasts, but it will not last till midday. He will soon follow her, I am afraid.”
“He?” She leaned forward, as if hovering. “Have you named him?”
“We had not thought of it,” Analia said.
“I was a mother,” the woman said, her icy eyes afire with pain remembered. “Not such a long time ago.”
The words hung in the air, but not as despair. They were filled with vigor. Unmistakable answer.
“I will nurse him.”
Analia looked to her sisters with uncertainty. Seventeen, and full of grace, she governed herself with the timidity of a child.
“Thank you,” said Talitha, for the first time stepping away from the door.
“There is enough grief in the world,” Synu added, coming to place her hands on her sisters shoulders.
Nodding with resolution, Analia stood and stooped to deliver the boy into waiting arms. With a flourish he was hidden beneath the wide draperies of her oceanic cloak. The sisters each took seats by the fire and the pot began to boil. Icy eyes, no longer so cold, took them in each in turn.
“His name is Earth,” she said.
The story of Earth continues…