After the Eating, the older Sin Eater’s steps take on the heaviness of the walk homeward after a day’s work. In the town square she slows for a newspanto but doesn’t stop, so I catch only snippets. A poppet was found by the castle wall under the Queen’s windows, the newsboys tell. Not a white magic love charm, but dark magic made to curse folk. It was fashioned from yellow beeswax and made to look like a highborn woman. Worse still, whoever made the poppet stuck pig bristles through its belly and nether parts.

I feel a clench in my own cunny just thinking on it. What a dire thing, not just to curse a woman but to curse her baby parts. Of course, the newsboys don’t shy from playacting it. For them, the more terrifying, the better the show. A witch with a devil’s teat on his cheek holds a little poppet in a blue dress. The witch mutters in a stranger tongue and pushes a pin into the poppet’s belly. An actor dressed in blue like the poppet clutches at his belly, for everyfolk knows what’s done to a poppet is felt by whoever it’s fashioned to look like. Stick pig bristles through the poppet dressed like a lady, and the lady feels the pricks. The newsboy playing the lady howls and howls.

Well past the town square, I can still hear the howling. The lady in the panto died just like Corliss, clutching at her guts, I think. The thought gives me a cold dripping feeling in my neck.

Soon the sounds of the show get swallowed up by the bump and din of Northside. My feet are like ants, marching one in front of the other, towards home. I put Corliss and the poppet out of my mind. Instead, I piece again through my moments with the Country Mouse up until the footfalls of the Rooster. I stop just before then.

5. DEER’S HEART

WHEN I WAS a little girl and Maris was Queen, the Makerhall had great stone altars with pictures and statues of the Maker’s son, the angels, and the hagis all around. But the new faith doesn’t hold with decorations, so when Bethany became queen the altars were changed to wooden tables with nought on them but the Maker’s Book in plain Anglish, instead of the old tongue. The Anglish is supposed to make it so we common folk can read the Word of the Maker ourselves. But as I can’t read to start with, it doesn’t make a lick of difference to me.