The Innocents by Michael Crummey

Author:Michael Crummey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2019-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

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There wasn’t a real break in the miserable run of rain and drizzle until the beginning of September, a mocking sliver of summer too late to be any use. Ada crossed the brook and walked the beach to the berry hills every day while the decent stretch lasted. The berries were sparse and small and sour but even so she persisted, stooping to the work and carrying on a long one-sided conversation with Martha until the afternoon showed late and she started for home. On her last trip out she stumbled on a bear cub as she came up through the spruce trees into the berry fields, the animal as startled and shy as herself, rearing to its full height twenty paces away. Even on its hind legs it was not much taller than Ada and after a brief stare-down it turned tail and scooted across the open ground.

“Now Martha,” Ada whispered. She caught sight of the mother on the far side of the clearing. Raising her head at the sound of her young coming in a rush, bulling into the open until the cub was behind her. The dam stood straight, making a growling racket that prickled the skin on Ada’s neck. The exhalation when she dropped to all fours like the wet chuff of a whale as it breaks the surface. Turning to the cub and shepherding it into the underbrush, glancing over her shoulder repeatedly before disappearing into the trees.

Ada remembered how the bear had circled on them the previous year and she backed into the spruce behind her, then turned and ran all she was worth. She didn’t stop until she reached the brook and fell to her knees there, winded, a taste of blood in her throat. “Piss and corruption,” she said, her hands shaking, an incongruous smile on her face. She turned and shouted her mother’s curse out over the ocean. For the first time in months she felt alive in every nook and cranny, all the lamps of her self trimmed and lit and burning bright.

It wasn’t quite mid-morning, almost warm out of the wind. She couldn’t imagine going back to the berry hills this day, maybe ever. She gathered a handful of alder branches and then stripped out of her boots, out of her shift and trousers and stockings, and she stepped into the brook, completely naked for the first time since she’d bathed there the year before. The water was running high and cold from the steady rains, it stippled her skin head to toe and she yelled against the icy shock of it.

“Piss and corruption!”

She took a breath and went under all at once and she stayed down as long as she could hold it.

Evered was on the stage splitting the few fish he’d caught in the early hours of the morning when he heard a voice yelling over by the brook. Their mother’s curse and sounding eerily like the dead woman. Ada was still in the tilt when he left before first light and she was planning to walk up to the berry hills, he thought.

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