Dagmars Daughter by Kim Echlin

handed back the bowl and said, I am not afraid.
    Moll answered, You will be.
    The ashes of Moll’s cigarette were long cold on the ground.
    Hungry? she asked.
    Nyssa nodded.
    Moll pulled herself out of the hole and led Nyssa through the woods to a cache in the ground. She removed a pile of branches covering the hole and there were the remains of a newly skinned rabbit wrapped in leaves, head and tail hanging limp. She swept up some dry pine needles with her large hand and deftly placed some larger branches over them and lit a small fire. Nyssa watched Moll throw the carcass into a pan pulled from the cache and set it in the flame, reach her fingers into the fire and stand up bones from former meals that lay hidden in the ashes.
    Nature likes to hide itself, said Moll. It goes much further.
    Further than what? asked Nyssa.
    Further than as if it knew its aims. Do you think it knows its aims?
    I don’t know.
    It doesn’t.
    After cooking the rabbit for a long time she reached her hand into the pan and tore off the rabbit’s back leg with a wrenching and a twist. Nyssa heard the femur pop and took the meat extended to her. When she bit into it, she saw that a maggot had crawled to the inside rim of the pan, slipped down and was getting cooked alongside the rabbit.
    Why do you stay out here? asked Nyssa, wiping grease from her hand on the dirt.
    Out where?
    In the woods.
    Moll pushed the rabbit to one side of the pan as if offering it again.
    Nyssa shook her head. Moll picked up the rabbit and threw it into the woods. She put the pan back into the cache. Then she put out the flames with dirt.
    Not all questions are wise, she said. Too much knowing makes you old.
    I want to be old, said Nyssa.
    Not yet.
    Can I go inside your hut?
    They sat in silence and Moll said, You come back here sometime.

    I n the winters the shores of Millstone Nether got iced in with great shifting ice floes. The young boys jumped from one ice pan to another, daring each other to float up the coast looking for seal holes, playing at being at sea. They leaped from one chunk of ice to another, laughing and wrestling, their backs cold against the ice on the open water. Briny air stung their cheeks and hidden currents taught their feet to submit to the whim of the sea. Nearly always someone fell in and had to race home to get dry, hair freezing, fingertips tingling. The other boys ran in a clump around the wet one and everyone scattered when the old woman or man at home caught the ice truant and scolded, I’ll give you your tea in a mug! Only once in the living memory of the island had a boy slipped and got caught under an iceberg and drowned dead.
    One snowy, bright dawn Nyssa jumped from Norea’s bed and ran out into the cold and down through the settlement to her father’s house. She pushed through the door into the front room where Danny slept and shook him awake. Let’s go jump clumpers, she said.
    Danny rolled away and pulled the quilt over his head, You’re too young!
    I’m not, you slowcome! She tugged at his covers and his arms, jumped on top of him and said, I’m going.
    Too dangerous, said Danny and pushed her off him.
    I’ll go alone then, said the girl.
    Danny hauled himself out of bed, dressed quickly and followed her down to the shore. Nyssa had already found a long stick and was testing it in the water full of small ice pans. She stretched her foot out to rock the thick ice, planted her pole and hopped on her long limbs loose in the cold.
    Swiftly Danny jumped on his little sister’s large pan humming with the swish of cracked ice. He squatted, and stared into the clear sky, letting strong-willed Nyssa test her arms and balance.
    Don’t go away from the shore, he said.
    Why not? she answered, swinging her stick out of the water and spraying cold drops on his face.
    Stop that!
    Nyssa edged to the side of the ice, held her stick across the front of her and jumped to a pan about a foot away. Danny scrambled up and jumped after,