The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal

Author:Susann Cokal [Cokal, Susann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2013-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

Poison-auntie use to say there were no sore like the wound of not having, and the worst sorrow come of not knowing whether to weep be cause there be no thing to weep over. She make some potions not for killing but against sadness, to puff a spirit light as air or fill a heart with feeling where there were no feeling before, a dream-heavy kind of happiness.

Back then, half the aunties gone mad with emptiness. They figure they selves ruined to live behind walls with other women, men made in to women, swords to cut if they do not do as told, just one husband for all of them, and he gone to conquer other lands six months the year. If they have a child that lives and they live too, then they be doubly kept, for to leave a baby be the sin that put them in a sack with a stone at they feet and the sack toss over the wall in to the bay, to make a garden of corpses till the eels come by and eat them. As happen, I believe, with my own mother, for every lady there be called my auntie, and I belong to none of they.

Some times in this narrow place there be too much to feel. Too-much live in my gut with an ache, too-much live in my fingers that poke and grope around it. A fear that smash against my heart till I cannot say what make me sick. Other than the thing inside me.

I see them girls shaking skirts when I go past; they think to shake away witch craft. I hear whisper-wonders about why I keep this position when so many children die and my first mistress be disgrace. Why I were the one to win Isabel’s favor when I pulled that finger from the muck. If I could speak, I may say, I were not the one who saw it first. Or, I did not kill the Prince. Or may be I would simple let them wonder at my power, like poison-auntie did.

When I go to my box of belongs, each night I see it rearrange. But they will find no clue in there.

Truth be, if there be truth, I do not know why I am here. With out the scarlet skirt to remind, Queen Isabel have forgot I helped her miracle, she never ask for me. May be I have been forgot entire, or may be Nursery Master Krolik have some plan. I were not one who waited on Prince Christian in especial — that were all ways Elinor, the Prince’s favorite.

Now Prince and Elinor both are gone, and there remain just a hand full of nurse and two little princess, too weak even to attend they brother’s grieving feast. They snuggle in the swans and mew like kittens; they do not like that the lion sit empty. They fear the journey they will make soon, to wherever it be that dead children go.

I feel my own doom too — it is a black bat in my belly.

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