Twelve
Solma only remembers seeing Bell cry once. When Ma died. A lot of people cried that day, Solma included. Ma’s death was ugly and sudden. Gored under the tusks of a boar, she’d held on until they carried her home, then succumbed in front of her children, the wreckage of her body seeping into the bedsheets.
Solma remembers that, more disturbing than the blood or the way her Ma’s body twitched with pain, was the way that Bell had cried. It hadn’t been pretty. Bell screamed as if she was being gutted, cradling the body of her elder sister and refusing to let go. Solma ran at that point, not to escape the death of her mother but to escape the way Bell’s grief permeated every timber of that house. Even though she ran right out of the village, to the furthest orchard, and cowered amongst
