Dagmars Daughter Read Online Free Page A

that, and that’s a promise.
    Norea was only twenty, but she had travelled an ocean and married and buried a man and given birth to a daughter. There were still appetites. When her daughter was asleep at night, Norea sometimes stole out to meet a fisherman whose wife with five children was too tired for him in her bed. That was how, under an overturned dory, Norea got pregnant with a child she feared the island people would not abide. She decided she wouldn’t carry a child whose father did not want to be known.

    T hat droughty spring dry weather threatened all the meagre crops. Small forest birds, foxy-Toms and striped-heads and mopes and purple finches, kept flying against the settlement’s windows. Norea and Dagmar got up at dawn and found them lying, necks broken on the ground, and gathered them up. Together they examined the coloured feathers, the staring eyes, the stiff, still feet. Norea delighted in watching the sun come up behind her daughter’s curly dark hair falling over the dead birds. Dagmar examined the airiness of each wing, touched through the feathers into the birds’ fine bones across their breasts. Mother and daughter dug little graves at the back of their farm, a row of bird-filled mounds to remind them of this hard dry spring of strange winds. Together they tore bright strips of rags and hung them against the windows of the houses to warn the birds away from their own reflections. When the work was done, Norea held young Dagmar’s face between her large palms and tried to memorize the brightness of her eyes. She wrapped her gaze around this beloved one and worried about what to do about the baby she did not want.
    As she pondered, she walked out in the field with Dagmar’s hand in hers, looked at the parched apple trees and said distractedly, If we don’t get some rain soon there’ll be no apples this year. Dagmar stared gravely into the sky. Smurry clouds moved in from the horizon and a great rainstorm soaked the island with fresh water for two days and a night. When it was over they watched the fragrant apple blossoms open before their eyes.
    Later in that month of odd weather, Norea remarked, It’s hot for the wild strawberries this year, and the child said, Don’t worry. Something will come of it.
    By evening the temperatures had dropped and the low plants on their farm were thick with delicate fruit. After that, Norea tempered what she said about the weather in front of the girl. It was one thing to have a green thumb and another to reshape the sky. Norea watched her free-hearted daughter as if she were a foreign creature and she said to her, You won’t have to run away as I did. All this place is yours when I turn into honey. She marvelled at the girl’s strong mind and averted her eyes when Dagmar planted. It was better not to look, for she sometimes thought she saw new shoots and leaves growing right out of the girl’s fingers.

    N orea nudged the old fishbones away from the path up to Moll’s door with her foot. She knocked and when no one answered she pushed it open.
    Moll was crouched on the floor inside and said, What do you want?
    Norea said, I need to get rid of something.
    Moll looked up with blank black eyes. She said, Best babies are merry-begots.
    I can’t bear this child. These island people.
    Tuck it in a basket, leave it at da’s door. No one has a proper place but makes their own.
    He’ll never claim it.
    Won’t know breath your way.
    Please.
    Moll stood to her full height and said, Bring me boiling water.
    Norea walked back to her house and put the kettle on. She took Dagmar to Meggie’s house and asked her to watch the child overnight. She went back for the water and talked aloud. Rory, she said into the steam from the kettle, if you’d stayed I wouldn’t be at this. She heard the kettle’s whistle and quickly, to prevent the churning of her own thought, she took the boiling water back to the little shack where Moll crouched, sifting through a basket of