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The Grief Doll

Lily Chrywenstrom

Tathie's mamma was still warmer than the snow she lay on, her skin smooth and soft, when the patchwork doll spoke.

Tathie's sobs subsided for a moment. She looked at Gittel, her seventh birthday present. Gittel's tiny, diamond-shaped mirror-eyes sparkled at her. Her scarlet ribbon mouth curved into a wry smile.

"What did you say?"

"Tathie, you need to stop crying now."

Tathie wiped her running eyes with her woollen scarf, blew her nose.

"Good little girl. Now take the bag from her shoulders."

"Will Mamma be alright? How come you never spoke before?"

"Your Mamma's dead. The fall killed her. That's why I can talk."

How could Mamma die? Didn't she know Tathie needed her? They were halfway across the mountains. Now Tathie would have to walk the rest of the way alone. How could she finish the crossing, reach the safety of her Aunt's house, without Mamma?

Tathie began to scream, but the Grief doll stopped her with a grubby patchwork hand.

"Night comes sooner than you think out here. It'll get colder. Your Mamma wanted to keep you safe more than anything. You want to please her, don't you?"

Tathie nodded.

"Good. Cut the star off Mamma's dress, and sew it to me. Then lift the pack and I'll take you home."

Tathie took the knife, the needle and thread out of the rucksack. The knife was cold, even through two pairs of woollen gloves. She cut the yellow star off the chest of her mother's blue coat, where Tathie used to rest her head. She wanted to lay it there one last time, but her mother's neck was all crooked, and her once-comforting chest no longer rose and fell with each breath. It wasn't a safe place any more.

There were no safe places.

Her mother's eyes gazed up at the sky, but Tathie knew they didn't see her because her mouth didn't smile. Her hands didn't stroke Tathie's mouse-brown hair. Mamma didn't call her darling dormouse. Mamma was gone.

Tathie pulled her gloves off. Hands shaking from the cold, she threaded the needle, pushed it through the yellow cloth and the silver patchwork of the doll's chest. Once, twice. The doll was still as only dolls can be. Tathie put her gloves back on, shaking her arms to get the blood flowing. Another two stitches. The cold needle pricked her finger. Drops of blood stained the yellow cloth.

Warm her hands under her armpits.

More stitches.

After seven stitches, the Grief doll said it was satisfied. "Now the bag, Tathie." Gittel's voice sounded soft like Mamma's now.

The rucksack was heavy. It was hard to loosen the straps from Mamma's stiffening arms. Tathie was scared she would hurt Mamma, but Gittel told her Mamma would rest quieter this way. She took the green leather flask of water that hung round Mamma's neck, and tucked it underneath her clothes.

Tathie bundled Gittel under her jumper, against her skin, like the doll told her. Only the doll's head and arms stuck out above her collar.

The mountains were beginning to cast shadows. They left, Gittel telling Tathie the way to go.

*   *   *

Tathie walked until her feet were heavy, aching with the effort of lifting her short legs out of the snow with each step. She walked until she couldn't feel her toes anymore.

"Left," the Grief doll said. There was a hole in the side of the mountain, big enough for a small girl to get through. Tathie pushed her pack in and squeezed through after it.

Inside was a cave, lit by candles. It was as big as the ballroom in the old house, before they'd had to leave. Milky stalactites wept into pools, which reflected the candle flames. She could smell the cold stone.

At the back of the cave something shone in the light. Tathie picked her way around the pools towards it. It was a transparent casket of clear crystal, flanked by seven branched candlesticks shaped like trees, with bark of gold and silver. The leaves were made of shiny stones like Mamma's necklaces.

She tried to warm her hands near the candles, but they burnt coldly, without scent. No wax ran down their sides.

Inside the casket was a beautiful lady, pale skinned with hair the colour of coal. The lady looked kind, but sad. She was dressed in white and silver, lying on a bed of blood-coloured roses and pale lilies.

"Who is she?" Tathie asked.

"The people who loved her denied that she was dead. They refused to bury her and brought her here, hoping that death would forget about her. While they waited, the people turned to metal in their grief."

"Did death forget about her?"

"Not yet," said Gittel.

She looked like the kind of lady who would hold Tathie well, with gentle arms and a warm lap, the kind who'd listen to her troubles.

Tathie knocked and knocked on the casket until her hands were bruised and sore, she shouted until her throat was dry and scratchy, but the lady didn't wake up. The casket misted with Tathie's breath, and she wiped it clear.

"She's only sleeping," said Gittel. "Lie back against the crystal. The floor's dry here. She'll keep you safe. She'll keep you warm."

The Grief doll told her stories until she slept, wrapped up in the blanket, holding the doll against her tear-stained face.

*   *   *

When she woke up, Tathie was hungry. She ate some of the sugar-coated almonds, dried beef, and candied orange peel from the rucksack.

She filled the tin cup and the leather flask with water from the pools and drank. She started to cry again. Mamma used to hold the cup to her lips, used to brush and plait her hair. The Grief doll shushed her, putting its hands to her eyes and soaking up her tears until she had no more. Until she didn't feel sad any more, only lost and lonely.

*   *   *

"Time to go," the doll said.

The sun was up in a sky as bright blue as Mamma's eyes. A thick, icy crust had formed on the snow, and Tathie walked on top of it. Everything was white. She squinted her eyes against the brightness. Each time she closed her tired eyes the doll pinched her.

The blue sky turned grey and silver and started to snow.

There was a wind now, blowing snowflakes into her face. One snowflake became two; two became four. The snow shut out the sky. She couldn't see the mountains on either side of her.

Snow clung to her scarf, froze to her coat, her gloves, her leather boots. Snow blew in her eyes, stinging them, and she held her arm up before her face to protect it. Her teeth chattered. The wind stabbed her cheeks with invisible knives of cold.

The icy crust broke under her feet, and she slid down into the snow, the cold wetness of it up to her shoulders. The snow was going to swallow her.

"Gittel, I'm scared! Help me!" She began to sob.

The doll reached up and drank her tears. Slowly Tathie quietened. Tears flowed down her cheeks like water down melting ice. Finally, her eyes dried.

The snow felt rough against her face, like bricks, and smelled like ashes. She was lying on it face down, but it wasn't so cold. She could breathe. There was a worn brick floor under her cheek. Something flickered at the edge of her vision, and she lifted her head. It was dark, but there was moonlight coming through a window.

In the fireplace in front of her, a girl about Tathie's age cried in the ashes and charcoal on the hearth. She was dressed in rags. Tathie watched as the girl sobbed herself into silence.

"Where are we?" Tathie asked.

"In an old story," the Doll said.

"Why are we here?"

"It's the only way I could keep you warm, stop the cold stealing your breath."

"Who is she?" Tathie asked.

"She's pretending her grief away, waiting for someone else to rescue her. When her fairy godmother comes to take her away from her suffering, she'll be so glad, she'll never ask what the price is."

*   *   *

Tathie drank the melted snow from her leather flask, chewed her almonds and orange peel slowly.

"Up!" the Grief doll said, and she stood, shouldering the rucksack again. The path grew steep, and she could see the valleys of ice that fell away beside them, and the snow covered mountains they had come through.

She walked until her legs ached and she thought her feet would fall off, and then the doll made her walk further. They were walking down the mountain, into the next valley.

Tathie could see a crowd of people in strange clothes standing by a sheer rock face. They were beating the stone with their bleeding hands. Handfuls of bright coins rested on the ground.

"Give us back our children!" they shouted.

"We'll stop here for the night," said Gittel.

"What happened?" Tathie asked.

"They're full of guilt," Gittel answered. "Someone took away all their children, and there was nothing they could do to stop it."

*   *   *

They reached a stand of low pines, twisted into odd corkscrew shapes by the wind.

"We'll shelter here," said the doll. Tathie lay down. She wrapped her wool blanket around her. Her face was against the rough tree trunk.

She couldn't sleep for a long time. "Tell me a story," she asked at last, thinking of Mamma's bedtime stories. A story in Mamma's voice would be something like having Mamma here.

"Once upon a time," said the Doll, "There was a seamstress who had two daughters who she loved very dearly. She made clothes for her daughters, a dress as beautiful as the moon and a dress as splendid as the stars.

But her husband was a seal in human skin, and one day she came home to find her cottage empty, husband and children gone. She was so angry they had deserted her that she burned down her home. She walked along the beach every day for years, calling for them to come home. When she was too old to walk, she used the pieces left over from the dress of the stars and the dress of the moon to make a patchwork doll to keep her company in her loneliness. She cried the bitter salt of her grief into its cloth until she died."

It was such a sad story that Tathie almost started to cry. The doll looked at Tathie hungrily as her eyes glimmered, but no tears ran down her cheek.

*   *   *

Tathie reached the edge of the mountains, the edge of the trees. Each day the Grief doll would not let her rest until she was almost falling from weariness. Each day the Grief doll drank her tears.

They were on the on the lower slopes. They could see a city.

"Almost home!" Tathie said. Her Aunt, she'd find her Aunt!

"Careful, little girl," the Grief doll said. "One swallow does not make a summer."

The city was as large as a mountain. They had not reached her Aunt's house when night came. Tathie was exhausted.

She sat on the cobblestones in an alley. Nothing the Grief doll said could make her get up. There was dirty, melted slush on the street. The air was very cold. Snow started to fall.

"Are you sure you can't walk to your Aunt's house tonight? Its past time you were home safe. This will be the eighth night since your Mamma died. Everything has a price, little girl. If you eat all your wheat, there will never be wheat again. You always have to save some seeds to plant."

Tathie was exhausted.

"I can't get up," she said.

"One more night, then," said the doll sadly. "No matter what it costs, you must go on living," it said, and a small shard of broken mirror fell from its left eye like a glass tear.

As they sat, a coach appeared, drawn by white horses in golden harnesses. Glass lanterns filled with candles hung on each side. At the back of the coach stood a man in brown clothes. Three great bands of black iron were wrapped around his chest.

"Why does he wear those?" Tathie asked.

"To keep his heart from bursting from sorrow," the Doll said. "He has lost everyone he loves, but still he goes on. He doesn't know it yet, but his heart has turned to iron too inside its cage."

When the sun rose, the coach and the coachman were gone.

*   *   *

Tathie walked until she found the street Mamma had told her to remember, Goldblossom Street. She found the white house with the red-painted shutters and the black iron fence.

She hid the doll in the rucksack and knocked on the brass knocker. A round woman with hair the colour of Tathie's opened the door. When she saw Tathie, she pulled her quickly inside. She closed the door.

"Tathie! Where's your mother?"

"Mamma died." Those were all the words she had left. She would have cried, but found she couldn't. Her eyes had no more tears.

The warm air made her cough. Her aunt held her until she stopped coughing, sat her on a chair by the fire. She ladled hot beetroot and potato soup from the pot on the electric stove into a bowl for her. She bathed Tathie's cuts and scratches in warm salt water, painted them with iodine.

She went to get Tathie's uncle, and Tathie pulled the doll from her bag.

"Doll, what do I say now?"

But the doll was silent. Its eyes did not sparkle. Its ribbon mouth did not twitch.

Tathie tried to remember the sound of her mother's voice, the feel of her mother's arms holding her, but she had forgotten. Her mother read stories to her by the fire. Her hair was... her eyes were... She smelled like... Tathie couldn't remember what she looked like, how it had felt to rest her head in her lap, to shelter against her chest.

For the rest of her long life, the doll never spoke again, perhaps because Tathie was never able to feel sad enough to cry again, or happy enough to smile.

Lily Chrywenstrom edits Fables and Reflections, a magazine of Australian speculative fiction and criticism. Her fiction has most recently appeared in Borderlands Issue 6 and Outcast: An Anthology of Strangers and Exiles. Other stories have appeared in The CSFG Gastronomicon and ConSensual à Trois. Her story "Tireki and the Wind" was shortlisted in the fantasy short story category of the 2003 Aurealis Awards. In 2005 she was a graduate of the Clarion South Writers' Workshop in Queensland. Originally from Perth, she now lives in Canberra. She can be found online at http://www.fables-and-reflections.net/