what she lacks in supernatural ability, she makes up for with nerves of steel. For sometimes the strangers come back, accusing her sorcery of being a sham and demanding refunds. The sorceress blames the meddling of evils spirits and offers to sell them antidemon charms. She curses them and slams the door. The sorceress never backs down.
You are Bitter Root, named thus to trick the demons into thinking you are vile-tasting and bad to eat. You are thirteen years old and wild, with never-healing scabs on your knees and your eye-teeth knocked out from falling out of trees. Your hair is filthy and gnarled as roots, and your sun-darkened face grubby and snarling. You are a solitary child. You scorn your pot-bellied little brothers and sisters, whom you call ‘the Runts’, who splash about in the river Mudwash and dare each other to gobble spiders up. You spend your days roaming the Neverdie Forest, toughening to leather the soles of your bare feet. A hunter-gatherer, you steal eggs from nests and trap birds and animals for the stew pot. Stealthy and brave, you part the bamboo saplings and swoop your snake-catching net down on serpents coiled belly-down in the grass. You carry the captured snakes, in a fury of trashing in your net, to your mother. The sorceress kills them and slits their bellies, slicing from fanged head to tail, and extracts the gall bladder and poison sacs for medicinal use.
You are not Sorceress Wu’s first-born. You have an elder sister, whom the sorceress named Brother Coming, to encourage fate to bring her a son. One year older than you, Brother Coming is a mute, and too dim-witted to do even simple chores, such as raking ashes in the hearth or fetching water from the well. Solitary like you, Brother Coming spends her days in the forest, wandering through the maze of trees and whistling with a blade of grass in mimicry of birdcall. But Brother Coming is not predatory. She is a scavenger, not a hunter. She gathers bird skulls and scapulae, dark feathers and jagged stones, and stows her treasures in tree-hollow hiding places. Toads
ribbit
in her tunic pockets and beetles scuttle in her knotty hair. The Neverdie Forest embraces Brother Coming. When she curls up to sleep on a bed of moss, the trees above her shed a blanket of leaves should the air turn chill. The canopy shifts to shelter Brother Coming should some rain begin to fall.
When you encounter Brother Coming in the Neverdie Forest you ignore her. Your idiot sibling is of no interest to you and you pass her without a nod. Then one day in your thirteenth year you catch Brother Coming stalking you through the trees. Whereas you are forest-coloured, streaked with greens and browns, Brother Coming is pale and conspicuous. Twigs snap and leaves rustle under her feet, frightening the snakes away. ‘
Go away!
’ you hiss. You hurl clods of mud, which splatter her because she is too feeble-minded to dodge them. You run over and clobber her until she hobbles away.
But an hour later she is back. Stalking you through the trees. You charge at her and knock her down, and as you roll over with her on the leaf-and twig-strewn ground, you notice the swellings on your fourteen-year-old sister’s chest. Curious, you pull up her tunic. You tweak and peek. You poke and pry and probe her with your tongue. As you grope her, Brother Coming lays beneath you, quiet and unprotesting. As you have your way with her, her eyes register neither pleasure nor pain.
Many cycles of the moon go by. Starry constellations come and go in the night sky. Skinny Brother Coming is fattening up. As you lay together in the forest, you sink your hands into the ever-swelling bump to push it flat. But the mound of belly grows fatter by the day, warning you things have gone awry. The Runts notice the change in your sister too. ‘Fatty Coming! Fatty Coming! Waddling like a duck!’ they tease. At supper the Sorceress Wu serves Brother Coming an extra ladle of rice gruel. She prepares nourishing
You are Bitter Root, named thus to trick the demons into thinking you are vile-tasting and bad to eat. You are thirteen years old and wild, with never-healing scabs on your knees and your eye-teeth knocked out from falling out of trees. Your hair is filthy and gnarled as roots, and your sun-darkened face grubby and snarling. You are a solitary child. You scorn your pot-bellied little brothers and sisters, whom you call ‘the Runts’, who splash about in the river Mudwash and dare each other to gobble spiders up. You spend your days roaming the Neverdie Forest, toughening to leather the soles of your bare feet. A hunter-gatherer, you steal eggs from nests and trap birds and animals for the stew pot. Stealthy and brave, you part the bamboo saplings and swoop your snake-catching net down on serpents coiled belly-down in the grass. You carry the captured snakes, in a fury of trashing in your net, to your mother. The sorceress kills them and slits their bellies, slicing from fanged head to tail, and extracts the gall bladder and poison sacs for medicinal use.
You are not Sorceress Wu’s first-born. You have an elder sister, whom the sorceress named Brother Coming, to encourage fate to bring her a son. One year older than you, Brother Coming is a mute, and too dim-witted to do even simple chores, such as raking ashes in the hearth or fetching water from the well. Solitary like you, Brother Coming spends her days in the forest, wandering through the maze of trees and whistling with a blade of grass in mimicry of birdcall. But Brother Coming is not predatory. She is a scavenger, not a hunter. She gathers bird skulls and scapulae, dark feathers and jagged stones, and stows her treasures in tree-hollow hiding places. Toads
ribbit
in her tunic pockets and beetles scuttle in her knotty hair. The Neverdie Forest embraces Brother Coming. When she curls up to sleep on a bed of moss, the trees above her shed a blanket of leaves should the air turn chill. The canopy shifts to shelter Brother Coming should some rain begin to fall.
When you encounter Brother Coming in the Neverdie Forest you ignore her. Your idiot sibling is of no interest to you and you pass her without a nod. Then one day in your thirteenth year you catch Brother Coming stalking you through the trees. Whereas you are forest-coloured, streaked with greens and browns, Brother Coming is pale and conspicuous. Twigs snap and leaves rustle under her feet, frightening the snakes away. ‘
Go away!
’ you hiss. You hurl clods of mud, which splatter her because she is too feeble-minded to dodge them. You run over and clobber her until she hobbles away.
But an hour later she is back. Stalking you through the trees. You charge at her and knock her down, and as you roll over with her on the leaf-and twig-strewn ground, you notice the swellings on your fourteen-year-old sister’s chest. Curious, you pull up her tunic. You tweak and peek. You poke and pry and probe her with your tongue. As you grope her, Brother Coming lays beneath you, quiet and unprotesting. As you have your way with her, her eyes register neither pleasure nor pain.
Many cycles of the moon go by. Starry constellations come and go in the night sky. Skinny Brother Coming is fattening up. As you lay together in the forest, you sink your hands into the ever-swelling bump to push it flat. But the mound of belly grows fatter by the day, warning you things have gone awry. The Runts notice the change in your sister too. ‘Fatty Coming! Fatty Coming! Waddling like a duck!’ they tease. At supper the Sorceress Wu serves Brother Coming an extra ladle of rice gruel. She prepares nourishing
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