Sluggishly asleep, churned by too much gin and a shouting match with her drunken husband before bed, Meg was dreaming. A nightmare was riding her hard under a red, scratched sky. She was marching in a great seething tumult of locked bodies. A mixture of known faces and unknown creatures waddled into one another and attacked. The bridge was thick with their conflict, but this was normal compared to the giants who roamed about so slowly, performing rudimentary tasks that had no name or purpose. Things of great beauty lived here alongside horrible travesties, and Meg moved among them, equally large and slow. In the far corner, masked by bare trees and contained within broken walls, was the huge gaping mouth of Hell itself, stupid and built of bricks and plaster. The gigantic Meg shrugged at its presence, knowing she could defeat all the horrid weak demons spewing out in a tide of brown bilge. She looked about, uncertain, not understanding where she belonged or what she should fear.
Her sleepy, tired wonder gloved her disgust until a sound turned it inside out. Behind her a bent, rubbery man in a lewd pink gown was sitting astride the roof of what looked like Der Linden bakery. On his head he carried a boat of squabbling old men, who were throwing giant pearls and plates of food over the side, as if to lighten the craft and save themselves from a catastrophic shipwreck. Instead of a sail, a fragment of a thin glass ball perched above them, and nearby bells rang furiously. Was this some kind of disgusting priest? Then Meg saw what he was actually busy doing: With great deliberation, he was spooning something from a hole behind his back where his arse should be. The hole was bigger than his head, and it was full of sticky black night soil, which he ladled onto plates held up by a crowd of women standing below. One of the most enthusiastic to receive his bounty was Willeke Dijkstra.
A terrible sound and a loud stench awoke her from her nightmare. The dream slid back into the darkness of the bedroom as Cluvmux snored and farted at the same time. Meg pulled the bedsheet up to her face, covering her wet nose. Her husband was not known for his delicacy of manner or his grace of favor, but this was beyond his grossest bedtime insults.
The day had been one of many practice jousts for Cluvmux and his cronies. An excellent excuse to drink all day long, though he needed no excuse; he would have done so anyway. Meg guessed just a little extra might have been imbibed, judging by the condition of his noxious bowels. She twisted out of their small wooden box bed and slid her cold feet onto the colder floor, while he continued to snore, sitting up in his usual sleeping position, oblivious to his odious crimes.
In her kitchen, the night was quieter and cleaner. Meg made herself a drink of milk and fennel. She topped it off with warm water from the kettle, which always hung above the cinders of the stove. Bits of the dream stayed and tried to find a place where they might fit snug in her trench of a memory. But all those spaces were occupied by watery thoughts and unfocused pictures of her lost son. These were her daily nightmares. What business did this other glaringly vivid dream have there? Its colors and events found sympathy with her husband’s stench. She opened one of the shutters for more air and looked at the starlit sky as an owl passed through the frosty trees. The yards and houses out there were the same as those in her dream, or was it a nightmare? It had retreated so far that she could not tell.
A small movement drew her attention to something at the base of the fence—a rat, she thought—and then it made a sound like speaking. She leaned farther out, feeling a chill run along her spine. The sound was becoming clearer, and a child’s small, floppy hat was pushing toward her out of the shadows. She could not see its color under the stars but thought it might be yellow. Then she knew it was the creature she had hissed at on the bridge. The one she hadn’t cut in half. A great and peculiar pity cupped her, and the motion of it worked like a key in an unseen lock, which the being understood and which allowed it to communicate.
“ ’Tain’t like before, Missis, we shan’t come near.”
“Better not,” said Meg, without knowing why.
“ ’Tis just to say that soms of us b’longs you.”
Meg whispered harshly into the shadows, “Show yourself.”
The small, floppy hat shook from side to side, like someone shaking their yellow head.
“ ’Tain’t wise,” the voice in the shadows said. “Our difference gives stigma and malice to your kind.”
“I won’t hurt you,” said Meg, surprised at the emotion of her commitment.
“Can’t be known,” said the shadows.
“What did you mean, ‘belongs’?”
“Soms of us b’longs you.”
“How is that possible?”
“Atachyments, and we will be telling all the other mothers on this night.”
“Telling what?”
“That they must flock together around you as they did on the day of Lady Grietje’s cooking.”
“You knew Grietje?”
“I and others were her family. Now we are yours.”
“Family?”
“You called us that.”
“Never family.”
The voice quieted and said, “You say ‘vertraut.’ ”
Meg gradually understood. “You are saying Hexen vertraut in German. You speak German? Is that where you are from?”
“No, Missis, not there. I am here, in your family.”
“But what you said doesn’t mean family.”
The small hat was slowly drawn into the shadows, and the starlit yard felt the loss of understanding as it waited for Meg to explain.
“You are a familiar, not family.”
“What is the difference?”
Meg carefully explained to the best of her ability. There was a long, quiet pause while, in the trees, the owls listened to the disappointment below. A small sound of creaking wood announced that the pale yellow hat in the shadows had left through a crack in the yard’s fenced enclosure.
Confused and overwhelmed, Meg returned to the familiarity of her snoring bedroom. She climbed back into her side of the crated bed and used the weight of the pungent air to stop being too fast awake, trying to understand what had just happened and anticipating the next morning.