Bone House - Hardcover

Chapter One

Her death has made us numb. Dora, the great-bellied woman, lies frozen in the ground. And like some part we've lost to frostbite, our minds still reach for her. The men of the village wear a wandering look in their eyes. They forget their work, leave their tools lying idle, drink to excess, then roam like dogs until they drop in the mud. Even the women are uneasy, for though she was one of us, we could never hope to fill her shoes. The great-bellied woman, with her door-wide hips and plate-sized breasts, was more woman than we could ever be. We even envied her belly: her great, laden belly, filled with the fruits of her whoring.

She left behind the boy, the giant boy, her only child. He is built like an ox, just as she was, though he is slow of speech, and some say also of thought. But this is unfair for he is not yet a man, but a boy of eleven trapped in a man's body. She christened him Johann, a name from her past, but from the beginning she called him Long Boy. Yesterday, when she was laid to ground, Long Boy trembled and nearly broke with grief. He collapsed, sobbing like a child, but it took four strong men to carry him home. I do not know what will become of him now that she is gone. And neither do I know what will become of us, for some people are the center of their world, and others are the spokes.

She came across the water, blown like a seed and touched down here. In the beginning there was talk she'd killed a man across the sea, though she never spoke of it and no one dared ask her, no more than they would ask the queen. But if she did he was probably deserving. Dora lived by her own rules, but they were not unjust. I admired her for this: she was not bound by superstition, nor by fear, nor by other people's prejudice. She did not justify herself to anyone, no more than she sought the whys and wherefores of those who pitched up on her doorstep. These were mostly men, but women came as well, for different reasons. She gave counsel freely, offered food and shelter, and sometimes even money to those who needed it. But mostly she gave of herself, her big, bounteous self, and those who sought her bed paid handsomely for it.

Her death was sudden, a freakish accident. They found her frozen, her belly to the sky, at the bottom of a ravine. She'd taken a shortcut through the forest and had slipped on snow-covered rocks that were slick with ice underneath. She would not have died except for a blow to the back of her head from a sharp stone that edged the creek. She'd clearly tried to stop herself; in her death-grip was a sapling torn from the banks as she fell. But with her great weight, it would have done little to slow her. Her feet sliced through a pool of ice at the bottom, and it held her fast up to the thighs. In the end it was the chisel that set her free. Her blood was everywhere, they said.

I saw it later, a dirty spray of ink across the snow.

I was five when she first came to the village. She was great-bellied even then, but she carried her burden easily, not in an ungainly way as so many of the village women do. One day at market I was scrambling in the dirt while my mother haggled over the price of carp. Thinking I would hide, I crawled under the fishwife's cart. At length I heard my mother calling me, her voice impatient. I did not go at first, but kept my place and listened to her calling.

I remember hearing her voice climb and swell, like birdsong when it builds at dusk. It made my pulse race as it became more shrill; the sound of her fear pleased me. But when she finally screamed my name my stomach lurched, and I scrambled out from under the cart, only to collide headfirst with Dora's rock-hard abdomen.

She did not even flinch, but reached down and lifted me high. And as I scaled the heights of her body, I found myself staring straight into her eyes, pale blue, with speckled flecks of brown, like pigeon eggs. She said not a word, only handed me to my mother, whose face by now was tight with fear. My mother gave a brief nod of thanks and took me from her, squeezing me so hard that I burst into tears. Then Dora laid her own hand gently on my mother's arm, and in an instant I saw the fear and anger ebb from my mother's eyes, as if Dora had siphoned it away through her outstretched fingers. Suddenly I felt my mother's grip release. I stopped crying and we stood, the three of us, for a moment. Then Dora let go of my mother's arm.

"They say you are a midwife," she addressed us haltingly. My mother nodded, her eyes dipping for an instant to the woman's swollen belly. "I am in need of you," she continued. Her voice was low and thick, and her accent strange. She spoke slowly and with care, as if plucking fruit from a tree. My mother nodded, her own voice failing her at first.

"Come to me at dusk," my mother said finally. Then Dora smiled and turned away, and I watched her disappear with long strides through the market crowds.

When she came to us that evening I was already in bed, but I watched from behind the curtain as my mother kneeled in front of her and spanned her belly with her hands. I saw her chest rise and fall and heard the sound of her breathing, hard and regular, like a horse's. The air was heavy as my mother worked her hands around the globe of her abdomen, turning her palms at different angles, pressing and probing, then smoothing the taut skin beneath them. She leaned forward and pressed an ear to her belly, her outstretched hands resting gently on each side of the sphere. At length she rocked back on her heels.

"It will be soon," she said.

Dora nodded.

"This is not the first," my mother ventured, looking up at her.

"No."

"The others?" she asked cautiously. Dora gave a brief shake of her head. My mother acknowledged this with a circumspect nod. If she taught me one thing as a child, it was the importance of discretion where women's secrets were concerned.

"You will be staying in the village?" said my mother.

"Yes," she replied decisively. "Here I will live."

Dora moved into the miller's cottage. He had died of cholera only weeks before, as had his wife and only son before him, and the cottage remained empty. She cleared it out, burning his furniture and woolens in a huge pyre of flames, a gesture of extravagance that many thought unnecessary. She then proceeded to make her own, hauling timber herself from the forest. She had arrived on horseback laden with her belongings, and within a few weeks she had sold the horse and built or purchased the few remaining things she needed. It was clear from the beginning that she had come to stay, and after a short time, no one questioned her presence.

I do not know when she began to trade her body, or how it happened, or indeed whether she had planned it so. Only that it seemed both right and natural. As a child I used to play outside her cottage. Men came and went, and always they were cheerful. When I asked my mother why Dora had so many visitors, she told me that the house was a shop, selling things that people liked but did not need. This I took to mean food, and for a time I imagined a secret cellar full of rare delicacies and sweetmeats. But when I asked whether we could not taste the things she had for sale, my mother said they would not appeal to us. To me this meant food from the sea: oysters, cockles, jellied eel, and the like, which I have always disliked. When I asked my mother whether this was the type of fare Dora served, she paused and said it was much the same. So I came to think of her house as a sort of tavern, where men could come and gorge like kings, and feel contented. Later, when I was old enough to know the truth, I wondered at my mother's explanation, for it seemed to me that the men who crossed her doorstep did so as much out of need as desire.

For life was often hard, and there was little enough to relieve it. In winter th