Bereft by Chris Womersley
Author:Chris Womersley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, General, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781402798139
Publisher: SilverOak
Published: 2010-09-01T04:00:00+00:00
The following morning, Quinn noticed an odd bundle strung from one of the eaves, the unravelled remnants, or so it first looked, of a bird’s nest. Closer inspection revealed the package to have been constructed from several thin bones, indeed perhaps those of a bird, bound together with black hair and lengths of dried wheat grass. The frail, prehistoric-looking object crackled in his hands. He scanned the porch eaves and located two more, each hanging like the first by a length of cotton from a beam. Sadie was out somewhere. He had not seen her since he woke. He took down the bundles and pondered them in his palm before putting them back.
When she returned later that afternoon, he asked her about them, but she offered no explanation. She stared at him with her sooty eyes. “You didn’t do anything to them, did you?”
“No.”
“Don’t touch them. They’re important.”
“But what are they?”
She put down the apple she had been eating. “Leave them exactly where they are. Don’t even touch them.”
With his vision now attuned to the offerings, he began to spy them everywhere. She must have been fashioning them for years. Here and there in the bushland around the shack, he stumbled across Lilliputian cairns of rocks and stones. Clumps of hair, fingernail clippings and torn shards of photographs leaked from the gaps between them. He found clusters of bones arranged in patterns on the ground, the cuticles of insects. Once, even a brass candlestick, its stem stuffed with wax and shredded cloth. An old medicine jar crammed with animal teeth and kangaroo paws. Arranged on windowsills and the shack floor were patterns of string and dry grass, mounds of desiccated snail shells. A red marble hung from a tree on a length of twine where it glowed in the afternoon light like a globule of blood.
One day, several hundred yards from the house, he found a wattle tree adorned not only with its brushy yellow flowers but also with what he took to be dozens of children’s fingers. He remembered what his mother had said about Mrs. Fox’s involvement in witchcraft. He approached with trepidation and was relieved to discover the pale cylinders to be rolled pages of the Bible, bound with hair. The ends of each were crimped shut.
He stood there for some time admiring her handiwork, which must have taken hours to accomplish. The air shrilled with cicadas. He plucked a tube from the tree, picked apart the seam and poured the contents into his palm. It contained ash, seeds and pebbles, an empty silver locket. The page was from the Book of Jeremiah. I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord. Mindful of her warnings, he placed it back as carefully as he could. Sweat coursed down his face and dried gritty as salt on his lips.
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