Read Online Dagmars Daughter by Kim Echlin - Free Book Online

fine?
    Dagmar said, I tossed him out.
    And his clothes too, said Norea, lifting her cane and twirling the shorts on it like ribbons on a maytree. She flicked them off onto the table and asked, What did he say?
    Kill and bliss me, but first come kiss me, said Dagmar.
    Even in her rage the young woman was charmed by his words and took pleasure in repeating them to her mother. She did not tell her that she had dragged her ring in a long cut down his cheek and left him bleeding.
    And where would the wanderer be? asked Norea.
    In his grave, for all I care.
    He’ll be back. This is his drowned father’s house. He’ll want his clothes, she added practically. Will you open the door to him?
    Dagmar sobbed.
    Colin sent home letters asking Dagmar to come to him, to find someone to look after the little boy. He wrote: Remember our single self a month in a bed of roses. Put your lammie on and pull back your hair. I’ll be waiting for you with the first boat.
    Dagmar crumpled up the letter and wrote back: And who’s going to take care of the baby? Get rid of whatever dancer or singer it is this week and come back to us.
    Norea opened her ear to her daughter’s gaunt words and said, I left something like this a long time ago across the sea.
    Don’t start, Momma. I’ve heard it before.
    I can’t let you starve.
    We’re hardly starving.
    He’s the nevers.
    Salt tears fell into Dagmar’s weak tea. Look, she said, waving his last card above her head out of the way of the baby’s sticky fist, He says he’ll be back soon.
    You opened the door, said Norea. A man should die off after the first romance like mine did. Is mór an trua é .
    That’s my father you’re talking about, said Dagmar, smiling through her tears.
    Norea sniffed. I loved him but you never knew him, she said. No need for sentiment. Colin’s dazzled by his own concern and you’re just another cut-tail. Bring the child back home. I’ll give you the farm as it was given to me. You’ve a gift with growing things. I’ve never been able to grow things the way you do.
    You won’t be able to stand living with me, said Dagmar. I barely can.
    I can’t stand seeing you wasting away like this. Come, Dagmar. You have so much more than I did. Make your own decision.
    Dagmar tore up all of Colin’s letters except one, which she hid at the bottom of her trunk: Dagmar, my dear love, cry in dark hours. It’s wicked to hurt each other like this simply from too much loving. Then she closed the door behind her and moved back to her mother’s house.
    And so it was that Dagmar and Colin never lived together again. When Colin was home he came and tapped on Dagmar’s window and she led him to the greenhouse where they made love under a moon shining through glass. Over time they thrived apart. Seasons became years and they achieved satisfaction in their separate talents.
    Colin became the unequalled source of the music of Millstone Nether. The people on the mainland were thrilled by his tunes and his playing. They came to visit and Colin toured them around to hear the old men and women play songs others had forgotten and he spoke of his native music as part of the great traditions of the world. His travels made him renowned as a musician who kept to his roots. He was a sponge that never filled and his knowledge was vast. Like the ocean he absorbed all that entered, and when there was a difficulty he flowed around it.
    For her part, Dagmar’s fields and greenhouse were known in the settlement for their dependable abundance. In the early years after Colin left, she suffered much bitterness, and storms tossed up many a ship and men died below the waves. But time wore it away. Her strong mind was absorbed in the cultivation of things that shouldn’t rightly have grown in that thin soil and for a long time there were fewer storms and no more droughts on Millstone Nether.
    Dagmar raised her son Danny like a plant, watering and feeding and pruning, until one day the boy asked to live