The Wolf Border by Hall Sarah

Author:Hall, Sarah [Hall, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-06-09T07:00:00+00:00

FOLLIES

December. She has become the servant of winter. The early darkness keeps her home, wrapped up warm by the fire, the lights blazing. She nurses the baby. There are colossal yellow clouds above Annerdale, loops of sleet, and serious snow on the fells. She does not go out. The last few months the world has come to her: deliveries of food and equipment, the midwife and healthcare worker, the men in her life, work. She nurses the baby; he takes an hour to feed, falling asleep halfway through, waking, continuing. She reads while he suckles. The cottage keens in the wind, the woods outside creak and rub. If it weren’t for the double-glazing, the wifi, and mobile signal, she might be in another century. Outside, too, there are wolves, no longer medieval – she can hear them calling occasionally from the enclosure, or imagines she can.

By 3.30 p.m., the sun has almost gone, its pale sump sinking on the horizon. Black wind at night, howling back, demonic almost. And rain, beginning to solidify. She worries about snow as she never worried before, worries about becoming trapped. She is unused to the long darkness – this first winter back in England is shocking, brutal, how could she have forgotten. Daylight feels incredibly valuable, if only she could access it. She leaves lamps on downstairs overnight. The baby sleeps in the Moses basket by her bed, within arm’s reach. At 4 a.m. she nurses him, while the darkness rolls past. It feels like the end of the world. Needles in her breasts and great pressure as the milk lets down. To have chosen love-enslavement to this little being means forfeiting everything.

He is Charles Caine, a family name, though no one knows it. To give a title to another human being is to acknowledge history, or to refute it – to say, we err, but forward we go, improving, hopeful. A full, dark head of hair. Long legs. One of his ears is folded over inside, like a shell, in some cultures lucky, in others, a bad omen. He is exceptional company; that is to say, he demands everything of her and is given it. She nurses him. She changes him. She nurses him again. He likes the firelight, turns his head towards the flames. He is beginning to differentiate colours now, beginning to smile, though many of his expressions remain less happy as he tries to absorb the world’s visceral information. He dreams, grimaces. She nurses him, at one hot breast, then the other. He is at his most immaculate afterwards: composed, bow-mouthed, his chest rising and falling, fists clenched as he sleeps. One in three hours given over to active care, she was told: a low estimate. She has buried the bellybutton stump next to the quince tree.

She can carry him for longer periods in the sling now, without the ache in her abdomen and back. He lies against her side like a warm, external organ. Below, the scar itches. A

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