The Mothering Coven Read Free

bottle is intact, but the spanker mast has snapped.
    “How did she do that?” wonders Dorcas. She looks at Ms. Kidney moving vigorously about the parlor. She wonders if Ms. Kidney has a Theta-brain.
    Dorcas tries to picture Ms. Kidney engrossed in the harvest: Ms. Kidney moving slowly and rhythmically through the trees, dropping a thousand round oranges, one by one, into the Indian River.
    Dorcas pictures the oranges bobbing all the way to the harbor where the International Association of Lepidopterists has merged at last with the International Association of Longshoremen, netting and crating oranges, loading them onto ships. One crate. Two crates. Tall cranes. Blue sky. High spanker masts. Warm air, oddly still.
    “Dorcas, how beautiful!” cries Bryce. Dorcas looks down at her hands. Her hands have been scouring the rinds of oranges.
    Dorcas watches from the other end of a Theta wave—hands peeling bright wings of orange rinds, mounting them on the bare branches of the hat stand. The cockatoos have fallen silent, watching.
    [:]
    Bryce claps her hand over her mouth. Why can’t she keep her peace, like a cockatoo?
    “Because beauty crowds me,” thinks Bryce, woefully. What if her impulsive cry has trapped Dorcas’s soul forever among the starry branches of the hat stand?
    Bryce remembers the story of the old couple in the forest, how they shaped the snow into a maiden with a glittering crown and a brocade cape and the snow maiden was so beautiful, the old couple cried, “Come home with us, Snegurochka!” and she went with them between the pines to the warm little hut with the wood fire crackling and she turned into a puddle right then and there. The old couple tried and tried, but they couldn’t love a tepid little puddle, and the puddle-maiden was so saddened she wept bitter tears, and every day the puddle grew larger until at last the old couple was swept away, the end.
    “Oh!” thinks Bryce. Will she be swept away? No. Bryce will love Dorcas’s soul up in the branches of the hat stand. She will care for it tenderly. She will hang Dorcas’s favorite things from the hat stand—hard squares of cinnamon toast and her collection of clear plastic cassettes. She will put Dorcas’s body in the opposite corner, with her arms stretched upwards, just like a hat stand. She will put an orange in each hand.

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    Ms. Kidney’s purple overalls have given off all their steam. They’ve started to shrink, the cuffs rising up to the tops of her swamp boots until they are the perfect length for wading in the Indian River. It’s almost time to go, then. A moment more.
    Ms. Kidney and Agnes and Mrs. Borage sit together on the sofa, talking politics. Mrs. Borage is remembering a red-lacquered voting booth, how she swept the velvet drape to the left and all the golden rings whistled on the pole. She sat. A burst of light. Her picture fell through a metal slot.
    We have the picture on the mantel. Mrs. Borage looked serious, voting. Those were serious days.
    [:]
    The three women on the sofa have fallen asleep. Now there are many kinds of brain waves in the parlor. Bryce paints the different waves across the walls. She doesn’t know very much about neuroscience. The waves are all tangled up.
    “Medusa again,” sighs Bryce. She adds a pegasus. She gives the pegasus a mane of green vipers and a green viper tail.
    Will Bertrand see the self-eating serpent? It is unlikely. Every year there are fewer snakes in Europe. The Irish Example has proven too powerful.
    [:]
    Agnes jumps to her feet.
    “Fo ic under fot, funde ic hit hwæt eorðe, mæg wið ealar wih-ta gehwilce and wið andan and wið æminde and wið ba micelan mannes tungan,” says Agnes. She looks around the parlor. The charm has had no effect. Bryce’s painting, however, has turned Dorcas to stone.
    “Beginner’s luck,” thinks Agnes. “Luck of the Irish. Lucky stars.”
    Ms. Kidney is pulling on her parka.
    “You,” yells Ms. Kidney. “Buzzard with the