Broodmother
by
Damian Woodall
Mother
rings the bell and we descend upon the dining room
like a pack of animals. Mindless and driven by instinct, we careen through
corridors from disparate ends of the house, barrelling through the door and
throwing ourselves at the food before us. Barely coming up for air, no thought
to what is present on the table before us. It has always been this way.
Shirley, as always, is the first to finish. She retreats to her room leaving no
trace she was ever there at all. My other sisters and I fall away from the
table one by one. Bellies engorged, lips glossy with saliva, appetites sated.
We lay silently within in each other’s company as our food digests, each morsel
appreciated, cherished, drifting slowly through our thankful bodies.
Mother
has always provided for us. One day we will have to fend
for ourselves and each day she endeavours to impart small fragments of her
knowledge upon us so that we may thrive in her absence. I won’t be here
forever she tells us. Winona often speaks of life after Mother. Wistful
fantasies of independence away from the rest of us. She speaks of places she
has read about in books, wasting away afternoons spinning the globe in the
library and dreaming of mountains and of the sea. Bea and I on the other hand
are content with our lot. Everything we could ever need is right here. The
manor house, crumbling and lost to time, has been our home since we were born.
We don’t know how Mother found it, or who would leave such a grand nest empty,
but its solid walls keep us safe from the howling winds outside. Though one
wing was burned down before Mother’s arrival, charred black and inhospitable,
we have all we’ll ever need. Its library and games room keep us entertained,
and the rooms are many enough that we might explore our whole lives and still
make new discoveries. Just yesterday Bea came bounding into my bedroom
declaring proudly that she had found a discrepancy in the wallpaper of one of
the rooms of the east wing.
“…and
that’s the thing, Esther, the rest of the wallpaper
goes bird, bird, flower, bird, bird, you know? But just there, in that one
corner does it differ – bird, flower, flower, bird! Can you believe it! What
other secrets might be hidden here!”
Often,
after we have finished eating and are laying
together on the cool, scratched wooden floor of the grand dining room, we try
to imagine the dinner parties that must have been held in here. Opulent colours
and grand feasts. Now the chairs are pushed to the corners of the room, no
longer needed. Remnants of our past meals adorn the table and the floor. Rent
flesh and bone tossed aside. We have no need to clean. The table wobbles as we loom
over it. Backs hunched and mouths wide. This has been our nightly ritual all
our lives. Mother does not eat with us, she provides to us and is happy with
our leftovers, only entering the dining room once we are satisfied and have
gone our separate ways to rest for the night.
On
the rare times Shirley does not scurry back to her room
after eating she tells us of those who lived here before us. She sifts through
the remnants of their lives left over – finding photographs and reading
journals. Her findings reveal an existence so alien to our own that we struggle
to comprehend. The patriarch seemed to be a man of importance, with a whole
room full of papers addressed to him at the centre of the burned-down wing.
Snippets of a life we will never understand. Our father has been
inconsequential to us, Mother saw to it he would have no say in our lives past
conception. A tradition we will continue when we find mates of our own one day,
Mother tells us.
•
When
we were younger Mother seemed infallible. A perfect
representation of us. Larger than life. She would stalk around the house, often
appearing seemingly out of nowhere, as if dropping from the ceiling, to impart
some wisdom upon us. Her education was never formal. It was impromptu, informed
by instance, but it was never rushed. She took her role seriously. Our survival
depends on it. She taught us how to set traps and where to hunt. How to close
the house off to the cold in the winter and how to attract a mate when the time
comes. Education at home is constant. She is a tough woman – a shrewd woman,
and she cuts a peculiar silhouette. Slim on top, she is nothing short of
bulbous from the waist down. Her pear-shaped frame belies a strength and
athleticism one would not assume from her physique. Her long, gangly limbs
stretch and dangle from her body, hair left to grow. There is no need for
preening. She is a paragon. Evolution par excellence. Watching her hunt is
enlightening. It is visceral, instinctive. She glides through the trees,
oftentimes leaving us in her wake. Only Winona is able to keep up. She seems to
have Mother’s innate skill for snaring prey and likes to brag that when she
finally leaves us we will perish without her. Mother tells us we will all be
competent enough to never struggle, though I fear for Bea and Shirley. So shy,
so meek – so much more like the animals we hunt than the predators my Mother
needs us to be.
There
are times that I recall Mother returning from her
hunt having snared king deer or giant boar. The carcass thrown over her
shoulders and carried home untold miles by her powerful legs. Cast onto the
floor upon arriving home, it became a practical lesson for us in how to ready the
food for ourselves. These days though, she has slowed down. Her lessons are
curt, oftentimes needing to rest for hours after her clipped demonstrations.
Each day she seems to sleep for longer, be less present.
•
To
supplement our practical education Mother insists we
attend the local schoolhouse with the other children. She insists we must fit
in and understand the rules and traditions of the world outside our home. Each
morning we trek the three long miles across moor and vale and into the village.
The other children shy from us. They see us as strange, they call us feral. I
think they fear us, a prospect which delights Winona, who does not see the need
for us to pretend to be like them. The bravest of them ask probing questions
about our home, sat high up on the moors overlooking their small village lives
like a warden in the dark. They ask us why we do not eat our lunch at school
like everyone else, and they cannot understand how the four of us can possibly
be sisters of the same age yet so different in visage and demeanour. They ask
about our Father and are dissatisfied when we say he does not matter.
We
are quiet and attentive during lessons. We have been
taught to respect authority. Shirley excels, she loves to record new
information much like she does at home. She gathers it and hoards it, her
thirst for knowledge insatiable, as if it could offer her something different
than the life we were born into. We are quiet during the breaks too. We stand
cautiously in the corner of the yard, distancing ourselves from the other
children. We do our best not to draw their ire. They play strange games that
mimic the hunt: chasing and catching and laughing. We were invited to play
once, but Winona tackled one of the bigger girls and sunk her teeth into her
arm. The children and the teachers were mortified, poor Winona didn’t know what
she had done wrong, she had only done as Mother had shown us.
The
parents of the other children wait in the schoolyard at
the end of each day, protective of their offspring. They glower at the four of
us as we pass, muttering to one another. Mother does not collect us from school,
she says she wants to foster independence in us, to have us become familiar with
the land around our home, to feel its changes through the seasons. She says
that it will aid us more to learn these skills whilst she is here in
preparation for when she is not.
•
Bea screams, calling for
us with a shrill, panicked voice
that echoes throughout the house. Even Shirley responds. When we find her she
is in the grand entrance hall standing over Mother who is slumped against the
wall. She is panting and her eyes are glossy. Pupils lost, floating loosely in the
fog. Blood spills from her forearm but as Winona approaches Mother pushes back
viciously and grunts. A wounded animal. Pride hurt, Winona fades behind us and
I approach cautiously, crouching to meet her eyes.
“What
can we do, Mother? How can we help?”
Again she swipes
her arm toward us. This time it is weak, half-hearted, and I notice the fang
hanging loosely from the wound.
“Please, let us help.”
There
is whimpering behind me. I glance back to see Bea
leaning into Winona’s chest. Her back heaving sharply. Winona looks on
protectively, eyeing Mother with suspicion. Shirley has faded back up the
stairs, watching on from a safe distance.
I
turn back to Mother and she is moving. Trying to move.
Pulling herself up, stumbling toward the door. She heaves the heavy oak door
open and leans out, stepping out and then immediately back in, dragging behind
her the body of a large wolf. She tosses it feebly before me, the viscera
splattering up my shins as I step backward. Mother slams the door once more and
collapses back to the floor, leaning her head against the brick and tossing out
a dismissive hand to wave us away. I feel Winona’s presence beside me and
together we haul the carcass into the dining room and set to work on it. By the
time we’re finished and heading up to wash the blood and bone from ourselves
the entrance hall is empty again. All that remains are droplets of blood
leading up the stairs and a lone fang.
•
Mother’s
condition is deteriorating. For the first time in
our lives the bell for dinner did not sound today. Though food has been
appearing, we have not seen Mother since we found her in the hallway almost a
week ago. I have tried calling to her but she does not respond. Bea and I are
scared. Mother has always provided for us, she has never let us down. Winona
has begun making plans for tomorrow, she says we should begin to venture out
and collect what we can. Bea is reluctant, her faith in Mother is unwavering.
Shirley will not hear us, she avoids reality as if it is nothing to her. A fly
on a horse’s flank. I am conflicted. It is plain to see that Mother is
suffering, but I do not think we should abandon hope in her. She would do
anything for her daughters. Mother has always insisted we not hunt alone, that
when the time comes she will take her leave of this place and we will know then
that it is time for us to fend for ourselves.
•
The
dinner bell is ringing. From the hallway outside my
room I hear the echoes of my sisters’ feet as they race toward the dining room.
The feral, hurried scurrying of near-starving animals. I am slower, wary.
Mother would have been in no fit state to hunt.
When
I enter the dining room, I look upon the tableau in
front of me and retch. A visceral reaction to the terror I feel welling inside
me. None of them have noticed. We never notice. Once the bell rings and we
smell our meal we are blinded by instinct. Tonight though, my caution has tempered
my appetite, and I gaze on as my sisters rip and tear at the carcass lying upon
the table. Scraps of flesh and viscera hurled aside as they feast. Bea and
Winona shroud the torso and the head from view but I see, with horrific clarity
of vision, Shirley clamping her teeth into a thick, muscled thigh and tearing at
flesh and tendon. Her face smeared with blood. They stop when they hear me cry.
A noise so anomalous to mealtimes that it breaks their haze. They look firstly in
my direction, their blood-stained faces once so familiar, now barbaric to me,
and then to their quarry on the table.
As
Bea steps back from the table she knocks loose a long,
thin arm which drops to the floor with a hollow thump. Spilling from its hand
is the dinner bell which rings a dull, muffled tone as it rolls across the
floor.
We
gather as sisters above the body spread before us,
already bastardized by our need, and we step forward together for one last meal
as a family. This time we are not mindless, savouring every mouthful of blood
and love. Tasting on our tongues grief and sacrifice. This is our inheritance. One
day my own daughters will do the same.
Damian
Woodall is an aspiring short fiction writer living in Manchester, England. He
holds a Masters in English and American Literature and has previously had a
short story entitled "The Weald Twins" published in an anthology put
together by the Myth & Lore zine, "Spun Stories".
