Page 36 of Mischief Maker
“You went to the village to get some fresh bread. Where is the bread, by the way?” She eyes my empty hands, then grins in a carefree way I only remember from when I was small. “Did you see someone handsome and get distracted?”
I stare at her for a long time, not sure what to say. How much have I wished I could see her again, alive and hale, and here she is. But none of this makes sense. Is this my real mother, waiting for me in the afterlife?
She stands there waiting for an answer.
“Sorry.” I give her an apologetic smile. “I did get distracted.”
Mother pats me on the shoulder and leads me into the house. “No problem. I have dinner cooking. Are you hungry?”
Oh, how I’ve missed her cooking. I’m quite a slouch in comparison.
“Starving,” I say on reflex, and she guides me to a chair at the table. All the chairs are here, not a single one smashed to kindling against a wall. Mother returns to the pot she has boiling over the fire and stirs it, then ladles out a spoonful and sniffs.
“It’ll be a good stew,” she says, but I can’t smell anything. I’m just so glad to see her, busying about, that I think little of it. She looks simply radiant, full of life, and for a moment I feel like I could just forget everything that’s happened the last few years. I could just be here, with Mother, with our strange cows that aren’t quite our cows, our crops that aren’t quite our crops, in this house that isn’t falling apart.
Soon the food is done, and Mother has been chatting the whole time about some neighborly gossip. She puts a bowl in front of me, and it makes my mouth water.
“Remember to let it cool down first,” she says with an affectionate chuckle. “I know how you like to burn your tongue.”
So I patiently wait while the stew cools, and then spoon some into my mouth.
I taste nothing. I chew and swallow, confused at how Mother’s special soup could have no flavor to it.
“Good?” she asks, her hands clasped.
I force a grateful smile. “Yes. It’s great.”
Once we’re finished eating the nothing-food, Mother pulls out her sewing. She shows off the new dress she’s making for me so I don’t have to wear the same one every day. It’s made of a fine yellow fabric, certainly too fine for us. I simply watch as she talks and sews, telling me about which cows gave the most milk today, and which crops should come in first. I listen attentively, soaking up the familiar sound of her voice. It’s as if she’s been alive here all this time.
Still, as I clean up the dinner dishes, the sun outside remains high in the sky. Shouldn’t it be setting soon? I stare through the kitchen window, an eerie tickle under my skin.
When I finish, Mother gets up and stretches. “It’s time for bed,” she says, and heads toward the stairs. “Won’t you go to bed, Faela?”
I nod, though I’m not tired in the least. Going to bed in this house, knowing my mother is safe and sound? How many days have I dreamed of such a thing?
“Of course,” I say.
We both change into our nightclothes, and once I’m under my blankets, Mother comes in to kiss me on the cheek. I let her do it without complaint.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she says, a familiar softness in her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Mother.”
She gives me one last kiss before leaving for her own room.
I close my eyes and try to sleep, even though bright sunlight is streaming in through the window.
I know this is wrong. All of it is wrong. But being here with my mother again... I see a beautiful glimmer of the life we could have had if the curse had never come. It is as wonderful as it is strange, beautiful while making me wonder what price I am paying.
Surely I came here for a reason. But what reason was that?
Soon, despite the light outside, sleep takes me.
The sun is still at its zenith when I wake up the next morning. Mother is already outside working with the animals. When I join her, the temperature is perfect—still and calm as a warm spring day. My mother gives me a full, wide, wonderful smile when I appear, and hands me the chicken feed. I had forgotten how it looked to see my mother smile in only a few short years.
Had I really started to forget her? What an awful daughter I am, to let that smile fade from my memory. The sound of her voice brings everything rushing back, and I remember the way she turned chores into a game when I was young and once scared off a wolf by yelling and waving her arms. I remember how a boy made me cry, and Mother hugged me and made me a blackberry pie to help me feel better. Though my heart was still tender, so were the blackberries, and by the time night fell I’d forgotten all about him.
When Mother hugs me now, though, I can’t really feel the weight of her arms. It’s like only my mind is here, and everything else is my imagination running wild. But I’m so pleased to simply be with her again, hearing her voice and seeing her face, that I brush it aside.
