Read Online The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales by Imogen Rhia Herrad - Free Book Online

she was sweet and simple and happy not to have to steal any more? And still I wish, oh how I wish I had spoken; she might have heard me turning my cheek to protect her, she might have known that there was someone on her side, someone who knew her. She would have known that I was sorry I had beaten her. You shouldn’t hurt something that wants to be free if you have no need, she’d once said when she let the rabbit in our snare escape. I’d beaten her for that too, but not very much because I knew that she wanted to be free and she thought that I did too. She didn’t know that it was too late for me.
    So I stood there doing nothing until it was too late for her and she was dead.
    I was still standing there when all the people had left, the excitement being over.
    I couldn’t bear her being dead.
    She was the only one who’d ever looked at me as if I was somebody.
    She couldn’t be dead.

    I went back the way she had come, stealing a chicken on the way. I didn’t know if she’d been taking the one she’d held in her hand to her new lord’s cook, or whether she’d decided to run away and had taken it with her.
    I stole a chicken and took it back to her lord’s cook; I didn’t want them to think she was a thief. I was going to tell them that she wasn’t.
    But the man didn’t even look at me; he snatched at the bird and cursed because I was late and boxed my ears.
    He thought I was her; he didn’t know what she looked like. He’d not even looked at her and he didn’t look at me.
    So I stayed, because for as long as I took her place and did her work, people wouldn’t know that she was dead. She wouldn’t really be dead, because I was the only one who knew.
    So I stayed; but then after a while I couldn’t bear it when people saw me or looked at me. I heard more about her god and the stories people told about him; and I thought there must be a sign on my forehead like on the forehead of Cain who killed his brother Abel in one of the stories; because I had stood and watched and let them kill her. I had beaten her although I know that she would not hurt anyone.
    People’s looks began to hurt me like blows. I would cower down and cover my head in my hands the way she had.
    Finally I went to the holy man in the clas and told him I had heard told stories of other women and men who’d wanted to devote themselves to the god and gone to live somewhere in the wilderness all by themselves; and how I wished I could go and live in the wilderness all by myself too.
    He looked at me long, and then he went and talked to the lord of the llys and came back to me and said that I could, only I’d have to build my own hut and come to the llys gates every midday for my bread, to learn humility.
    I am doing what I think she would have wanted, because she always said she wanted to be free, even if I think she sometimes didn’t know how to.
    I can almost feel her next to me, every day, her ghost haunting me and being company; because I must never forget what I have done.
    Maybe that’s her feet now I can hear rustling in the grass, snapping twigs.
    But it’s not her; I can see it’s a man on a horse coming towards me, and all of a sudden I am running, stumbling down the hillside while behind me the horse’s hooves are thundering on the dry earth and I can hear it coming, closer, closer, closer.
    The man is calling her name, my name now, Eiliwedd! Eiliwedd!
    There’s the ford across the stream; once I’m past that, it’s not far to the llys gates. But the horse is much, much faster than I am.

    I’m in the water, breathing in gasps because I am so afraid; my feet are slipping on the pebbles in the water and the current is tugging at my legs; and behind me I can hear the man’s voice.
    Eiliwedd! It’s no good trying to run away, I always told you. I always told you I’d come after you, and I’d get you in the