KAARON WARREN
Kaaron Warren lives in Canberra with her family. She has been writing horror, SF and fantasy since she was five, and won an Aurealis Award in 1998 for her story, ‘A Positive’. Her short story collection The Grinding House received four Ditmar nominations and is shortlisted for the inaugural Australian Shadows award. Prime Books will release a North American edition called The Glass Woman in 2006.
About ‘The Fresh Young Widow’, Kaaron writes: “Images of the bog people have disturbed me since I was a child. Those grey, transformed faces of executed people, their stomach contents preserved over hundreds of years. The image came to me of a woman lovingly covering a body with clay, and this seemed a good starting point for a story inspired by my childhood fear.”
* * * *
|
T |
he fresh young widow washed her husband’s body. She dipped her cloth into cloudy water and rub rubbed at him, cleaning the pores, washing away dried blood, picking at it with her long, strong fingernails. She closed her eyes as she touched his body but he was so cold she couldn’t imagine him alive. She laid her head on his belly and let her tears wet him.
There was a gentle knock at the door.
“Maria, they are wondering if you will see someone. An old woman who walked here eight days from Baristone. She thought the penance would help.”
The widow put down her sponge. “Connie, I am washing my husband.”
“I’m so sorry, Maria. But they told me to ask. She had a son with her. He’s very distressed.”
At this the widow walked to the door and opened it. Connie stepped inside, her head bowed.
The widow said, “Did he find his beloved husband knifed to the bone? Did he hold him as he bled to death? Did he wait for last words and hear none?”
“No, Maria.”
The widow patted at her wild and unbrushed hair, tried to straighten her filthy clothes.
“Oh, Maria,” Connie said. “Oh, Maria.”
The sympathy was too much to bear and the widow sank to the floor, weeping great painful sobs. When she quieted, exhausted, Connie said, “I’m so sorry about your husband. We all are. It should never have happened. Why do they even let the tourists in?” Connie began to cry. Maria felt so old around Connie, though the difference was just two years.
The widow knew most girls in the town had loved Brin. He had been funny, handsome and flirtatious. She knew he kissed them, sometimes. Nothing more.
He liked to kiss.
“I’m going to finish with my husband, now,” the widow said. She felt no strength in her voice. “Tell the son I may be able to get to his mother. Tell him the stories are not true. There will be no clay walk. No great resurrection. Dead is dead. All there will be is a monument to her. Okay?”
The young girl said, “Okay.”
Maria said, “This is new for me, too, Connie. I’m sure we’ll get used to each other.”
Connie nodded. She placed a box just inside the door. The widow knew it would contain offerings, bribes, and she felt a childish sense of anticipation.
She had three buckets of clay ready, collected as the sun rose. Soft and slippery. She took up a handful and squeezed, loving the squelch between her fingers. The fresh young widow worked the clay. Picked out stones and sticks, any small impurities. She dropped handfuls of clay into a large bucket of water, where small motes drifted to the top. These she skimmed off. She sifted the sludge through her fingers and when it was silky smooth she poured it onto a long flat sieve outside. Cloudy water dripped onto the ground and she left the clay to dry. When it was no longer sticky to the touch she could work it, kneading it until the smoothness of it satisfied her.
Then her real work began.
She added three of her fingernail clippings, a link from his mother’s chain, and a pinch of coriander, his favourite spice. She rubbed her fingers together and sniffed them, the smell evoking such an intense memory she smiled. She and Brin had been married only a few days, just returned from their honeymoon in the city, where everything was delivered on the asking; food, drinks, books. She was tired, exhausted, and so was he. He had enjoyed lovers before. She had not. Her learning with the clay was so intense not much else filtered through. She had friends but not close ones. She was popular without people really knowing her.
It had made her blush, returning from her honeymoon to all the attention. All the assumed knowledge. Everybody had smiled at her, nodded.
“How did you go?” her mother said, arriving at their home dusty, clay-smeared, her hair clumpy.
Maria nodded, too embarrassed to speak. Her mother had laughed. “You poor young thing. It’s all a bit terrifying, isn’t it? What’s he cooking you tonight? What are you cooking her tonight?” Her new husband came out of the bathroom, rubbing at his hair.
“Amazing how you forget about the clay when you’re away,” he said.
Her mother said, “What’s for dinner?”
“Oh,” he said. “Yes. Aha, can’t you smell it?”
The two women sniffed. A rich, rough smell.
“It’s my specialty. Ground Nut Stew.”
He led his wife into the kitchen and ground some spice for her to sniff. She coughed.
“It’s strong. But the flavour is so good. Beef, potatoes, ground nuts, cinnamon. You’ll love it. I hope you’ll love it.”
He kissed her, and she tasted onion.
“He’s a good boy,” her mother said later. “He understands. Just like your father. We have a little work to do before dinner.”
“It’s ready now,” Brin said. “Can’t we eat first?”
Her mother shrugged. “I guess the dead don’t travel so fast we can’t catch them,” she said. “I’ll leave you to your meal.”
“Stay, Mum, eat with us. We’ll call Dad and eat together,” Maria said, holding her mother’s arm.
“What about your parents, Brin?” her mother said.
“They’ll come tomorrow,” Brin said. “Go call your husband!”
They had eaten together, a happy meal. The men talked, the women, too, but Maria and her mother had thoughts behind their words, thoughts of what lay ahead.
After dinner the women walked to the workshop. It was a large, bright room, angled to let in the morning sun, but not the afternoon sun, so it never got too hot. The floor was slate, easily wiped clean but still ingrained with the red clay they worked with.
They had worked in silence, each intent on the process of covering the body in a way which was beautiful yet would not crack. This was an elderly woman, a resident long gone away but come home to die. Many of them did that.
After a while Maria had realized she was doing most of the work. She rested back on her heels and looked at her mother rocking by the door.
“Are you all right? Tired?” Maria said. Her mother had smiled. “I am, a little.” The clay slip filled the small lines in her face, exaggerating them, making her look older and more tired than she really was. “But, mostly, I like to watch you. You’re very skilled for one so young.”
“You were young and skilled once,” Maria said. Her mother had nodded and looked away.
“Your marriage has got me thinking,” she said. “Thinking about now, rather than when.”
“I’m not good with riddles, Mum,” Maria said. She worked a piece of clay and smoothed it over the belly of the woman.
“What I mean to say is, I’m feeling some resentment about this job. This… placement. I’m feeling I need to get away, see the world.”
“And Dad?”
“I’ll take him, too,” she said. She rubbed at her face. “What do you think?”
“It’s not a good job to do resentfully,” Maria said. “I know we don’t choose it, but I accept it. You go. Let me be the Clay-Maker. It will be okay.”
Her mother had fallen to her knees beside her.
“Thank you. Thank you. You kind and beautiful girl.”
Her parents had left the next day. They were gone three weeks when Brin was killed.
Maria wiped away the tears brought from remembering that time, dropped a pinch of spice into the clay, then began to cover her husband.
First his toes, feet. The ankles were tough; too bumpy. The shins, knees and thighs. The room was cold to stop the clay drying too quickly.
She covered his genitals, his belly, his back, slapping on the clay and smoothing it, shaping it.
She sat with him, not eating or drinking, until the first layer dried. This needed patience. Each layer needed to dry before more clay was placed on top, or the whole thing would sink, sag, slump. She felt like sagging herself, her weariness was so great.
Then her parents arrived to be with her. Maria never found out who contacted them, or how.
“Maria, my poor darling,” her mother said, pushing her way into the workshop. “We came as soon as we heard.” Her father hovered in the doorway, his face grey, shocked. Both of them had aged.
“Dad,” she said, and he held her while she cried.
“I should never have left you,” her mother said.
“This has nothing to do with you leaving. But I’m glad you’re back.”
“We came to comfort you, but also we need to talk. I have something so important to tell you. Let’s go sit by the wall.”
Maria and her mother walked together to the clay wall. “I know where I want us to sit. I remember where everybody is,” her mother said. She trailed her fingers over the clay faces then stopped. “Here,” she said. They sat down.
“You will need to act. I wish this talk could have waited many years, but this chance can’t be missed, as terrible as it is. It is better to make the child with someone you love.”
“So who was I born of? Someone you loved more than Dad?”
Her mother said, “No. No. You were born of my mother. She stands behind this clay man.” She waved her arm. Maria looked. The man frowned slightly at her, his features a little askew. “He wasn’t a very nice man,” her mother said. “He bit people.” Maria saw his clay teeth, larger than life, like a rabbit’s. She closed her eyes and listened to her mother’s words.
* * * *
Maria walked her mother to the house. It was not the biggest house in the town; that belonged to the Chief Mason. The Clay-maker lived in a modest but beautiful home, paved with baked clay tiles, walls of pale terracotta. Beautiful furnishings, gifts from the people of the town.
Maria felt a little dazed. She was not old enough for this information, this task. Yet the task was hers.
“Have some lunch first. Fill yourself,” her mother said. “No. He’s waited long enough. I must get to him,” Maria said. She walked slowly to the workshop, though, stopping to talk along the way to anyone she saw, accepting their condolences, asking after them. She wondered if her face looked different, now she knew.
* * * *
Brin grew fuller, thicker. Maria wondered if she could get him through the door, he was so large. She built him into a giant. She built the image of a girl on the clay case; vagina, breasts. Then she smoothed it away.
Knocking came. It was the masons. “Is he ready, Maria? Ready for the Kiln?”
“Not yet. Wait,” Maria called out. She fashioned Brin a penis and she made love to her clay man. She sent his seed back to him, kissed his clay lips. She felt the dryness of the clay in her throat, and she coughed and choked as the masons entered. They did not flinch at her appearance. They knew she did not wash, did not change clothes, for the time it took to do her clay work.
For all her hard work, an impurity in the clay gave his face a scowl she had not intended. A downturned mouth she tried to fix but couldn’t.
The masons stared in silence at his face.
“I told you we needed to find his killer,” the oldest mason said. “You said no violence for violence, but look at his face.”
The masons muttered together. There was a clamour at the door. The other mourners.
Two masons lifted the clay man so it appeared he walked, aided, between them.
They carried him outside. The widow staggered into step behind them, tears waterfalling from her eyes. She didn’t sob; she was beyond noise.
The wailing around her began. His mother collapsed at his feet. She kissed them, huge sloppy kisses that left small damp patches on his clay toes. She rose, her lips dusty.
“It’s wrong, so wrong,” she wailed. Her husband and friends supported her so she walked almost like her clay son did.
The widow felt intense pain in her shoulders, her fingers. She had worked feverishly on her husband, making the clay warm between her fast fingers, giving it blood warmth. They carried Brin to the Kiln, a tin shed outside the walls, set amongst the burning sand. Here he would stand in the searing heat until his clay case baked hard. Here her work would be tested; a single flaw and the case could crack open.
* * * *
As the time came, people gathered by the Kiln. There was a sigh as Brin was brought forth. The case was perfect, uncracked.
The procession marched through the streets of the town to the wall. The wall rose just a little higher than the tallest mason, so if he stood up on his toes he could peer over it. It was broad, though, thick with clay people. Solid with clay. There were no gaps. These were filled by the masons as they appeared. The clay changed little in its shading, testimony to the unchanging environment of the town.
Maria was very proud of the wall. There, two more masons waited with cement.
They placed her husband Brin next to the doctor’s wife, in the wall two weeks now. Maria could not help noticing how perfect her work was; no cracks in the clay woman, and the expression captured perfectly her kindly nature.
“It should be that tourist here instead,” Brin’s mother shouted. “He should be the dead one, not my son.”
“But then Brin would have been a murderer,” Maria thought. She held her mother-in-law tight and closed her eyes, resting for a moment.
“Into the wall we cement thy physical being,” the Chief Mason said. “May your soul be free to roam until the great clay walk. May your body stay safe within the wall, an empty vessel awaiting your return.
“May your physical being keep this town safe from outsiders and repel evil from within us all.
“May we serve you and you serve us until the time of the great clay walk.”
Maria collapsed at Brin’s feet, clutching her belly.
“May the seed you planted within me grow, my love. I love you so much. I had so much more time for you.” The snot ran down her chin, tears down her cheeks. She felt she was masked with her own fluids.
There were murmurings around her, high-pitched murmurings of hope and excitement. “A baby! A baby! There has not been a baby born here for two years!” They were almost as barren as the clay.
Connie stood staring, a fixed smile on her face. “Congratulations,” she said.
“It’s all right, Connie. You can care for both of us. You will be with me for life.” Although the widow had deliberately misunderstood, Connie still smiled. “Your place is safe,” the widow said.
* * * *
The Chief Mason and the youngest mason came to her. The Chief Mason said, “I can tell you, Maria, that we are outraged by your husband’s murder. He was a great man. A good mason.” His eyes shifted there and the widow knew he was lying. Her husband had not been a good mason. He didn’t have the seriousness for it, the rock-solid dedication needed to build. He was too funny, too rebellious. He liked being the husband of the Clay-Maker. It gave him many privileges and he could shock the others so easily. The Clay-Maker’s husband merely had to laugh loudly to be noticed.
“Thank you,” she said. She swallowed. “Can you tell me how? What? All people tell me is the tragedy of it, the waste. I want to know what he did.”
“It wasn’t his fault. He was a funny man. He liked a joke. And the tourist was being disrespectful. He was drunk, and he poked and squeezed at the girls, joked about them being full of clay until he made Connie cry. Brin told him to leave her or he would turn to clay. He called the tourist some names, some cruel names,” the Chief Mason said.
“He had a sharp tongue,” Maria said.
The youngest mason blushed, and Maria wondered if images had popped into his head of the widow and her husband’s sharp tongue. He stammered, “None of us expected the tourist to do what he did. He was skinny, you know? And pathetic. A bully. Brin turned away, we thought it was over, but the tourist leapt on him. Brin was down before we could react. Then we took him to the doctor’s and fetched you.”
The tears ran down her cheeks and drooled saltily into her mouth.
“Thank you,” she said. “And the tourist? Where is he?”
“We’ll find him,” said the Chief Mason. “We’ll find the killer and bring him back. Then perhaps Brin will smile as he watches over us.”
Maria nodded. “You know what you will be sacrificing in leaving this place?”
“We do. We are prepared to age a little to see our brother at peace.”
“You are good men,” Maria said. She allowed herself to be held by the Chief Mason.
They were gone for over a week.
* * * *
The clay had changed little over the last hundred years. The statues circled the town, staring in, watching the people. Her husband was part of the third row. He stood in front of a child, dead twenty years. The widow’s mother was the clay-maker then.
The fresh young widow went to him at night, when all others were asleep.
She fell to her knees, weeping. Then she took a small hammer from her backpack.
She tapped hard at his belly, and the clay cracked. A sighing sound emerged. She lifted out the pieces and reached inside. A baby girl was in there, gasping for air. She cried with a dry throat. The widow lifted her out and wiped clay dust from her face. Cleared her nostrils. The widow tucked her into the folds of her skirt.
Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out things to fill the clay case with; a dead cat, a sack of flour, some stones. She sealed the case again with new, wet clay.
Then she bundled the baby up and took her home, walking over the rough ground. There was the smell of paint in the air. The ground was green, freshly painted for the newly arrived batch of tourists. The ground was too full of clay for grass to grow. Visitors were advised to bring their own drinking water. The stuff in the town was so full of clay you needed to be born to it or your insides would clog up and you’d be constipated for a week. Washing water was the same; showers were red tinged and gritty. A good rough facial scrub people paid good money for elsewhere.
* * * *
Maria washed her baby in warm, soapy water and placed the baby into a cardboard box for a bed. Then the grieving son from Baristone arrived.
“Are you busy?” he said. He was an idiot, thick-faced and stupid.
“I’m always busy. Always someone to attend to.” She was desperate to lie down and sleep beside her baby.
“I promised my mother I would do this,” he said. “She died at the wall. Once she’d seen it. She died right there. I wish we had come sooner. You all look so youthful here. Glowing.”
“You should never promise anything which relies on other people.”
He hung his head.
“Come with me to collect the clay then. You’re lucky; no locals are waiting. My husband is in the wall, now.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.
“Not sorry enough to leave me alone.”
Maria strapped her baby onto her back. There was a growing hubbub as she walked, “She’s had the baby, there’s the baby, when did she have the baby?” Her mother had told her not to worry about deception and to forget about trying to fool the people into believing the child had been born naturally. It was part of the mystique of the Clay-Makers. Let the people guess at the process. Let it add to their respect of the Clay-Makers.
She took some of the children with her to search for the clay. It was an adventure for them, outside the walls, and she could send them out clay-hunting on their own, once they knew how.
“We look near river beds, even ones no longer running. Look for puddles; clay holds water so water is an indicator.”
One of the children shouted, “Here?” Maria walked over. It was gritty there, and pale. Not perfect, but she saved the best stuff for the locals. This stuff would do for the woman. “Good,” she said. She scrabbled with her fingers until she had a palm-sized lump.
“To test it, we roll it into a coil and tie a knot in it. This is good clay - no cracks or breaks when we tie it. Not too much sand or gravel. Well done!” The child blushed with pleasure and the others rushed to impress, too, digging hard and vying to carry the most clay.
They took it back to her workshop. “I will need to prepare the clay,” Maria said to the son. “Come back tomorrow.”
He was there at dawn.
Maria was awake. “What have you brought to add?” she asked.
The son had a small paper bag. “Some of my father’s ashes. A clip of my baby hair. And this is a scrap of material from my sister’s wedding dress.”
She nodded. “That’s good. That’s nice. All right. You sit over there. This will take some time.”
He sat in the comfy chair while the widow kneeled on the floor and stripped the mother naked. She washed the old woman carefully, treating her as she had her own husband.
The water left a fine sheen of clay on the woman’s skin.
The widow mixed the clay with the things the son had given her, kneading, squeezing, squelching.
She layered the woman, took care with her face. She scraped the clay off her fingers into the little opaque pots lined up on her bench. When she had filled twenty and the son had gone out for air, she called out, “Connie! Connie! Some pots!” Connie was still nervous in the workshop. It was so new to her. The Chief Mason had ensured there was no time Maria was alone; he moved Connie in the moment Brin died. “It’s all right. Come in. Wipe the pots clean then get them ready for boxing.”
While Maria worked, Connie cleaned the pots, found their lids, put stickers on them.
“Is it really magical cream?” Connie said. She rubbed clay between her fingertips.
Maria shrugged. “They say so. Glowing reports from the women who use it. They pay a fortune for it.”
“My dad says we should start a factory and make heaps more,” Connie said, packing the pots into a small box. “He says we’ll all be rich if we sell more.”
“We’re rich enough,” Maria said. She scraped her fingers off into the next pot. “It’s the rare nature of it that makes it worthwhile. You tell your Dad to not be so greedy, like a pig in the mud.”
Connie giggled.
Maria worked the clay gently around the woman’s face, smoothing the large pores, filling the nostrils. Then the smell of something cooking made her stomach rumble.
“Brin? What are you cooking?” Maria said, and she jumped up, wiped her hands and walked to the kitchen. She pushed open the door, smiling.
Connie stood at the bench, chopping vegetables. She said, “I found a recipe book, and I’m making something from it. It looks very nice.” Maria stared at her. For a moment, just a moment, she had forgotten. Just for a moment, Brin was alive again. Maria sat down and cried.
“I can make something else, if you like,” Connie said. Suddenly she seemed too wise to be so young. Her eyes filled with tears. “I miss him,” she said. “I’m sorry Maria, but I miss him. He made us all laugh so.”
“You more than most, I think, Connie. That’s one reason you were chosen to be my cook. My helper. You were a good choice to take his place.”
“Some of the younger men thought it might be them.” Maria smiled. The thought stopped her tears. “I’m not ready for a new husband yet. Not nearly ready.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Connie said, blushing.
“But we know what proximity does, don’t we, Connie?”
Connie shook her head. “No, Maria.”
“No. It’s alright, cook what you were cooking, Connie. Eating his food is a good idea.” Brin’s food was always grainy, gritty. Three weeks of dinners. Twenty-one meals he cooked for her.
* * * *
The son slept, to her relief. His gaze was very intense. Her child slept, too, growing so quickly she wondered the son didn’t run in fright.
Connie whispered at the door, “Are you okay? I’m sorry about the recipe book.”
Maria smiled. “Come in, Connie. It’s okay. It just made me think of him.”
Connie hugged her. “We have an order for four dozen jars.”
Maria nodded. “Good. I’ll do the rest this afternoon.”
“Payment in advance,” Connie said. “We’ve got lots of goodies arriving soon. A feast is planned.”
“Bring me a plate,” Maria said. “I’m not quite up to celebrations yet.”
“No. I’m sorry. It’s not a celebration, really. A welcome back for the men returned.”
* * * *
Three masons came to her workshop. “We have the tourist who killed your husband,” the youngest mason said. It was not until he spoke she realized who he was. The men had aged dramatically. Far more than she had envisioned.
Maria felt a chill. “You have made a great sacrifice in leaving the walls of our town,” she said. “Thank you. I have a woman here ready for the Kiln. Can you keep him till she’s done?”
“Yes. We’ll keep him.”
They took the woman from Baristone to the Kiln.
“There’s so much waiting,” the son said.
“This gives us time to say goodbye,” Maria said. “We can’t rush it.
“You can eat now. Join the celebration while you wait.” She led him to where the others had gathered in the Chief Mason’s house. Connie paid the delivery man, who brought the food, wine, clothing, all the things ordered for the celebration. He arrived with his smell of the city, his big, loud truck and his air of superiority. He took the money and said, “I know you must like it here, and it brings in the tourists, but those statues give me the creeps.”
“Is anywhere else better?” Connie asked.
* * * *
When the old woman was done, Maria led the son to the wall, the procession following behind them. The son coughed, his throat dry from the clay dust. “How do you breathe with all this dust?” he said.
“We get used to it,” Maria said, though she wondered as she spoke if it was normal to feel the air in your lungs, to be aware of the tight filling of the chest with every inhalation.
Maybe other people didn’t feel that.
The son said, “Oh, my god, all those faces staring at us. It feels like they’re watching everything. Who was the first one covered? How did it start?”
“Many hundreds of years ago, one of the great men of the town disappeared. It was thought he’d left for the city but there was no word. Three years later, when it hadn’t rained for most of that time, someone noticed a clay face in the dry creek bed.
“They dug it up. It was our missing man. Set solid.
“No one wanted to crack him open and nobody wanted to bury him like that, so while they decided they placed him upright on the town’s limits. Already strange statues stood there, placed before local memory began. A woman died before they decided what to do. Her husband said she was just as important, so he had her covered in clay and set beside the man. They clayed the cracks to keep the statues standing, then an old man died, then a child, and already the wall was emerging.”
She left the son trailing his fingers across his mother’s face in the wall and went home to her baby.
* * * *
They brought her the killer. Every centimetre was bruised or cut. His hair was all pulled out; his cheekbones shattered; his genitals cut and scabby; his shoulderbone exposed and his ears sliced to the skull.
They stood there silently, all of them, presenting her with their great gift. The man could not stand. He whispered, “Help me.” Maria bent to him and stroked his hair back from his forehead. She looked into his face and said, “Take him to the Kiln.” The masons nodded.
It took five days for the man to die. After the third day all they could hear was a scrabbling noise, like a mouse trying to break through into a food cupboard.
The masons carried him to Maria.
“Thank you,” she said. “Would anyone like to stay to honour this man into the clay?” They all backed away.
She stripped him naked. He was blackened. His fingers, the ones that held the knife that killed her husband, were all broken.
She didn’t wash him clean. She walked outside the wall, through the gateway made of brick. It was her wall, her family’s wall. They had made it. And she was so proud of it. It was raining a little and tears ran from the eyes of the clay people. Rain pooled like piss at their feet. But the clay stayed firm. The mix of cement, gravel and a little fatty soap kept it strong.
Her buckets were light as she walked past the wall. The flowers in their pots were blooming, sending their perfume to her like a generous gift from a stranger.
She swung the buckets. She couldn’t help it. Her step bounced, lifted by the warm air like a balloon. She started to skip, the exuberance of the day filling her with lightness.
She passed the masons, resting on this day with nothing to do but repairs. The people believed the wall kept them safe from all evil. And there had never been a calamity. Evil still occurred but it was blamed on external things, or a crack in the wall.
They were always finding cracks in the wall.
“Good to see you looking happy,” the Chief Mason said. “You’re like a young girl, bouncing along like that.”
“She is a young girl,” the oldest mason said. He was a friend of her father’s. “A young girl with heavy responsibilities.” She looked at him to see if he was serving her notice to behave, but he was smiling. “It’s good to see you happy,” he said. “Here, have some cheese. It’s a good one. Imported.”
She sat and ate the cheese with them, laughing at their teasing. It felt good to be teased, to laugh.
* * * *
There was good rich clay around the sewerage plant. She never used it because it stank. It reeked of waste, and she would never use it for good people. She collected three bucketsful for the murderer. The smell made her retch. She carried the buckets back with her nose pressed against her shoulder.
In all her career, she had never been disrespectful. Maria added nothing to the clay. He didn’t even deserve her piss. She didn’t prepare the clay as she usually did. Let the small rocks dent his flesh. Let the sticks scratch at him. The baby had awoken and sat up, watching her. They grow so fast, she thought. She gave the baby a piece of good clay, not the foul stuff she was using on the murderer.
The baby ate it. The widow laughed, tears coming. “Funny baby,” she said, but the sight of it brought the taste of clay to her mouth, and she thought of her clay husband’s kiss.
Maria’s mouth felt so dry she could barely close it. Water quenched her thirst, but she had a sudden, intense desire for strawberries. She washed her hands and carried the baby over to the farming district. Here, they carted in dirt from outside, fertile dirt, rich and loamy. They piled it into large flat boxes, like giant’s bed bases, and they raised these off the ground, as if the clay would suck out all the nutrients like leeches do.
Beautiful things grew there, tended by talented farmers. Greens, reds, oranges, food which nourished you even by looking at it. Here they kept the clay wetted down, not wanting dust to land on the produce. Things seemed more in focus.
“Maria, Maria, my dear girl. My poor dear, darling, little girl.” The farmer held her in a bear hug from which she struggled to be released. The baby squirmed between them.
“No woman should be a widow so young,” he said. “It’s wrong. It’s against nature.”
“It is,” she said. His sympathy made her cry, and she was caught up again in the bear hug.
“What will make you feel better? Anything. It’s yours.”
“Just some strawberries,” she said. “Do you have any?”
He winked. “Wait’ll you see them.” He plucked a dozen, deep, dark red, dripping with juice.
She sunk her teeth in, unable to wait. The sweetness brought a bitter thought. Brin. Brin loved strawberries. He would have loved these. The baby clutched at her and Maria fed her a strawberry. The baby cooed in delight.
* * * *
Back in the workshop, she gave the baby another piece of clay. The baby squeezed it, gurgled, played with it happily. She was already sitting up, getting ready to crawl. Maria thought of her own easy tiredness, her deep weariness, and wondered if this rapid growth did not leave time to build endurance.
She covered the killer with one layer. Then another. She built feet where his head was, a leering idiot face at the feet. Let him spend forever on his head.
If it should be these clay people were resurrected, she liked the idea of him heading down into the dirt.
She called to the mason waiting outside, “He’s done.”
The mason came in, wrinkling his nose. Politely, he said nothing. Maria laughed. “It’s not me, you idiot. I used the sewerage clay for him.”
The mason smiled. Maria didn’t tell him the killer was upside down in his casing. They took the case to the Kiln and when he was done, the Chief Mason called the mourners.
This was a very different procession. There were jeers and snarls, no tears. There was laughter and chatter.
He was placed in the wall beside the woman from Baristone. “Good he’s not next to my son,” Maria’s mother-in-law said. “Curse you on your clay walk.”
There was a celebration afterwards, wine and beer, food and laughter. It was always like this after a procession, even a devastating one. Maria’s mother said, “There is a certain satisfaction in what we do. It’s like we have settled the answer of death. We’ve got it sorted out. It’s comforting.” People stopped to listen and Maria wondered if people would ever listen to her in the same way.
“But will it really happen?” Connie said. “The Great Clay Walk? The Resurrection?”
“It will be many generations away. You will all be safely in the wall, and many more beyond,” Maria’s mother said.
Connie shivered. “I don’t know that I want to be awoken. It sounds terrifying.”
Maria’s mother smiled. “Frightening, yes. But for the chance at eternal life?”
“Here’s to the Great Clay Walk,” shouted the Chief Mason. “And here’s to the clay, and the great Clay-Makers.”
Maria watched them all, the clay dust in their pores, broad smiles on their faces, and she wondered which of them would be able to break free from their clay case on the day of the Great Clay Walk.