Page 73 of The Strawberry Thief
Time passed. The priest grew old. His flock of crows deserted him. Except for one, a sad young boy who was not like the others. And the old man taught the boy all he knew; poured all his rage and hatred into the boy’s receptive ears; to turn him into a crow, like himself. And when one day the gypsies returned, he sent the boy out in the form of a crow to bring disaster to their camp, and rubbed his hands in rejoicing.
For a moment I opened my eyes again. Reynaud was standing rigidly, his head turned away from the needle. The design was nearly half finished; the lines as soft as eiderdown.
But the boy was not yet fully a crow. At the last moment, he felt afraid. He lit a little fire on the bank near where the riverboats were moored, but did not stay behind to observe. Instead he ran, and the fire went out, leaving nothing but scarred grass.
But the old man was watching him. Through his telescope, he saw that his disciple had failed. And when night fell, he went to the place where the boy had lit the fire, and set fire to the boats himself, and watched them burn from his hiding-place. And when the morning came, and the boy came running to him with news, the priest – perhaps to punish him – allowed the frightened boy to believe that it was he who committed the crime.
I felt Reynaud flinch again.
‘Shh,’ I said. ‘I’ve nearly finished.’
And though he too became a crow, a single pale feather set the boy apart from all the others. The pale feather marked him as different. Throughout his life he had tried to become just as his mentor had wanted, but time after time he failed in his task, weakening at just the wrong moment. Every time the travellers came, he failed to do what he set out to do, and finally he understood that he would never truly be a crow because of that one pale feather.
And so he resolved to pluck it out, and be like all the others. But the more he did so, the paler the single feather grew back, until all the other crows saw it, and drew away, knowing that he was not one of them. The crow who had once been a boy took this as a sign of his guilt, not knowing that it was the opposite. Until one day a girl came along – a young girl of the travelling folk. And she told him a story about a boy who grew up to think he was a crow, because an old enchanter had put him under an evil spell. And at last, when he came to realize that he had never been a crow, he shed his feathers one by one to reveal the man he had always been—
I opened my eyes. It was finished. There was hardly any blood. ‘Do you want to look now?’
Reynaud nodded. His eyes were wet. And at last his colours had started to change – the muddy greys and dismal browns shifting to something like the dawn. ‘Your story,’ he said.
‘Notmine,’ I said. ‘Yours.’
3
Friday, March 31
That child is not my daughter, I thought. Shelooksexactly like Rosette, big dark eyes and mango hair, but her voice is that of a stranger. Or maybe not a stranger: her voice is that of Morgane Dubois, and of Zozie de l’Alba, and of theHurakan, and I know that I cannot keep her safe, or even keep her, ever again.
I know a story, she tells me. Then she tells me about Reynaud, and scrying in the tattoo ink. I feel surprise at my surprise. My daughter has skills. I knew that, of course. But the depth of her vision is something that I had not really recognized. She was always good at drawing, even when she was a child. I’d thought that talent came from Roux. Maybe that’s why I overlooked it for so long. But now I realize that all the time, Rosette was speaking through her art; showing us the things she saw, silently, in colours.
‘I’m glad you were able to help Reynaud,’ I said. ‘I tried, but I couldn’t.’
‘He needed more than chocolate.’ There was no harshness in her voice, and yet I felt it in the place where only our children can reach us.
And who will give me what I need?I did not speak aloud, and yet I knew Rosette had heard me. I even knew what she would say next, in that strange new voice of hers, which is also the voice of my mother, and of Zozie, and of Morgane, and of everything and everyone that returns to remind me that life is on loan, and that all the things we find on the way – lovers, children, happiness – have to be given back in the end. But instead she turned to me and said:
‘Morgane left something, else,Maman. Here. Come see.’
Rosette stood up. I was stiff from sitting on the floorboards, and she held out her hand to help me up. Thus, with a gesture, the balance of power shifts from mother to daughter, without either one even noticing; and the world shifts imperceptibly on its axis and settles back into its new position.Change.
‘Here. In the back room,’ said Rosette.
I looked back at the tattoo kit lying on the wooden floor. I could see the last of the light shining through the slats in the blinds. The room smelt of sawdust, and incense, and ink, and the ghosts of flowers long dead, and I already knew what was coming. I’d seen it before in my mother’s cards.Death. The Tower. Change. The Fool.
I followed her into the back room – a room I had never seen before, not even in Narcisse’s day. It was very like the back of thechocolaterie, but with ancient wooden work surfaces instead of my worn granite ones, and it was perfectly clean and bare – except for something standing there on the counter by the door. Two things, in fact; a matched pair: gleaming darkly in the light that filtered through the window. It was Morgane’s prosthetic feet, now looking nothing like feet at all, but more like an ugly pair of shoes out of an ugly fairytale, left for someone else to wear, while their owner took wing and flew away—
I gazed at them stupidly. ‘Her feet. Why did she leave her feet behind?’
Rosette shook her head. ‘Maybe she didn’t need them,’ she said. ‘Or maybe it was a message.’ And she told me about a dream she’d had, a dream in which Morgane had told her to cut off her feet so she could fly …
AndnowI knew what she was going to say.Death. The Fool. The Tower. Change. The cards never lie. They simply say the things we know, deep down, to be true. That everything in life is on loan, and must be given back in the end. Roux. Anouk. And now Rosette, now that she has found her voice, she too will be moving on. Nothing – no-one – can stop her now. She is like the strawberry runners growing away from the parent plant, hungry for new soil, hungry for change. If left unchecked, the strawberry plants will reclaim their wildness; their leaves growing small; their tiny fruit sweet and shrunken.Change. The Tower. Death. The Fool.Fool to think I could hold her back. Fool to think that Morgane Dubois was my only enemy.
She looks at me. ‘Maman, it’s time.’
‘Yes, I know.’ My changeling. You have grown so brave and sweet, curious and powerful. I will miss you, but I know that you too must move on. I tried to keep you. I was wrong. Children are not ours to keep, but ours to give to the future.
I roll up my sleeve to the elbow. The inside of my wrist is a paler shade of brown. There are veins here, blue as a bruise, a scar from some long-ago accident. I am marked in so many ways: stretch marks on my belly and hips; scars on my knees and knuckles. Marks from the sun on my arms and face; still pale, but growing darker. Wrinkles in my forehead; laughter lines around my eyes. Like the table in thechocolaterie, I bear the blemishes of time. I do not begrudge this. It means I have lived. It means that I have lived well.
But now, I will have another mark. One that my daughter will give me. Here, on the inside of my wrist, between the blue vein and the scar. It will remind me that I have a child, somewhere in the universe. What will it be? A flying bird? A blue sail, heading out to sea? Blossom on the wind? A golden monkey? A broken heart?
