Read One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries for Free Online Page A

rich, rusty brown. Brona crouches, groaning, knees popping, and ladles scalding water into the bath, basting the contents.
    Souls too , she thinks, fingernails tracing concentric lines onto the soaking leather. Round and round, she gouges targets for the leeches to grasp and suckle. Souls are definitely circular. Here and gone and back again, never-ending.  
    She sings under her breath while kneading the skin, keeping it supple and loose. The ladle dips in and out of the pot, splashes, washes, but does not clean. Brona wipes a grimy forearm across her brow, looks up at the dusty handprints smacked all over the walls. Tiny markings, so tiny. Evidence of a toddler’s gumption and stubbornness. If I can’t go outside to play in the mud , those handprints said, then I’ll make a sty in here .  
    How many times had she slapped his greedy palms? Rapped his knuckles? “No, a chuisle . It’s raining. No, my heart. It’s too cold. No, my Cavan. You must remain with me.”  
    Cavan , she thinks, splashing, scooping. Cavan, my little hollow one .  
    Maybe tomorrow he’ll help her to scrub it all away.
     
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    Nightjars squawk above the Grumnamagh. Pestering, scolding the maids for disturbing their slumber. And for singing so off-key.
    “ We’re going to have scars. Hundreds of them,” M’Amie moans, yet again, between verses. The old hag’s song sloshes in her mouth, the words nonsensical slurping. Brona had said it wouldn’t hurt a bit, but M’Amie knew she lied. Some swore the leeches of the Grum had tiny, tiny teeth. She winces at the sting of them on her legs, at her unwilling companion’s splashing and scowling. The leeches must be paining her, too.
    “ I’m sure she could get rid of them — who knows at what price, though. You keen on asking?” Cora sounds both sly and aggrieved, as if what they want should be given free of charge. That’s Cora all over.  
    M’Amie curses as she slices a toe. For a minute, she concentrates on placing her feet carefully. Hard somethings bump against her shins, scratch her calves. Twigs, maybe. Weeds. She plunges a hand into the blackness. Withdraws it, clutching tiny, naked bones. Evidence of drowned rabbits, she hopes. Stupid, innocent rabbits.  
    Released, the sepia-stained fragments land with a plop .  
    Moonlight makes M’Amie and Cora’s white, white legs glow, beacons for the leeches. With her petticoats drawn up between her thighs, plump knees bobbing in and out of the bog, M’Amie clinks with each step. The empty jars in her satchel must be filled before dawn. Before she has to get back to stoke the kitchen’s fires, and Cora has to make sure she does it. One night’s gathering, Brona had said, and they’d be square. The witch happy with her worms, and their own troubles gone. One night’s gathering, but a lifetime of tiny scars…
    “ Matthew will see them. He’ll know ,” M’Amie says absently, eliciting a sound from Cora that’s half spit, half angry air. “He’ll know why.”  
    “ Keep your skirts down for once,” Cora snaps. “Don’t present yourself so openly. In broad daylight, even. Every time he finds you bent over the luncheon plates… Do it in the dark, for God’s sake, and milord will be none the wiser.”  
    M’Amie rolls her eyes, wanting to laugh at Cora for calling scruffy-cheeked Matthew milord . She snorts, pretending a midge has got up her nose when Cora’s scowl deepens. It’s only right, she supposes, that the housekeeper use his title… After all, Cora’s not close to him the way M’Amie is, and she’s a shrew besides. Nearly thirty, her stomach still flat and her chest not much better — and no chance of either changing. Cora’s too old. Too stiff and formal. Married twelve years, womb ever as clean as the manor she sweeps, but still she claims she’ll give that peat-farmer husband of hers a second pair of hands to wield spades. But if he hasn’t managed to sow that quagmire by