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There is an obviousness to the jaw. You chew it to the bone in seconds, and are struck by a sudden, sharp pain in your tooth. Growing out, just as Master had predicted, and eager to fall; it is what is first, in this cycle.
First would be the tooth, its glinting enamel balanced into a happy thing set in the dying woman’s jaw, and then your hands and your head and everything all chopped off in fear of frostbite in this blistering cold. But you find that you don’t particularly mind, because she with her fur coats and sickly smile had clutched at your elbow long ago and threaded something into your hollow joints and made them laugh into a wooden, wanting warmth.
Perhaps a year earlier, a little less or more, Master had called you over and pointed out the shapes of bones traced onto textbook pages, before the paper had boiled itself alive with its owner in that drowning heat. The shapes of skulls, with decaying teeth and obvious jaws and all kinds of shining braces; human skulls and the lean hungry skulls of dogs. You know their shapes, even if learning was only a brief moment, and never ever phrased as learning at all. She understands that you are clever.
Before dinner, you drain the meat of its bones and put it on a side plate. She has trouble chewing. She has trouble going to sleep. She is dying, after all. In a year, a little less, maybe more, the house she has given her life to will be yours. You’ll hook up your bow after the hunt, and roll up the stringed curtain and look out (a wry smile at your lips, old and wise and funny) and cushion yourself up in a fur coat and breathe in the death of it.
Some animal who had died, but her fur coat. She would have passed, by then, and you know she wants you to grieve her, that she demands it. You are sometimes frightened by that strange look in her eyes, as if she is indulgent of your urges to lie. There is a light in them that you are familiar with, the kind of madness only possessed by someone aware of their own death. But you have learnt madness from your mother, in various brief moments. And she understands.
You hasten the pace of your meal — the cabin is far too warm, and the meat rots, if you leave it too long; flesh goes loose on the bone and your pinched skin becomes failing rubber. When it all comes off, she will find in you a perfect thing. She has promised it. She does not lie to you.
You cast your mind back to that day in the snow, when the cold was so fierce that you burnt yourself alive and you both learnt (you and that curious woman who found you) that you knew how to grow and grow and grow. You will live, and keep living: that is the point of the devil you harbour in you and perhaps the point of harbour in its entirety. The small cabin with its hesitant fire in its heart, crackling wooden joints into laughing warmth, and all the dog bones chewed to shreds in the corner – bones of dogs, from dogs. You are not sure when you decided that you would live in this house forever and inherit the fine set to the jaw of the woman who had taught you how to hunt.
Perhaps it was all the way back then, back when she turned to you that first day in the snow and said: I could be your Mother, and all you could do was smile helplessly in response. Inheritance is what is last, in this cycle.
The cabin’s walls are made of stacked logs, twelve, like ribs. When you were smaller, you used to race out the door and gather up hailstones to pour ice into Master’s glass. They melted within seconds. But you have grown, the walls are more sensible. They thump and hammer and thrum and make sure that her feet are warm at night. They do not ask for more, they are courteous enough to leave her mealtimes to you.
Did you kill it? She asks.
Yes, Master. I killed it.
Did you cook it?
I cooked it.
Well, then, did you eat it?
Yes, Master. I did.
You slide her her portion, on that plate rimmed with petal prints. She does not eat immediately, says: Did you feel like you took a life?
She has two years to live, perhaps more, perhaps less. You think it is easier to lie when you look her in the eyes. It feels less furtive.
Master lowers her head, and starts her meal.
I could be your sister, she says one day, and you accept it to be true. She runs out of ink halfway through drafting the will. When you fill up the cartridge, it turns your fingers blue.
She lets you turn over her hand and examine the splatters down the lines of her palm. Her eyes are as green as yours when you finally look back up at her, and that is something even your mother could not lay claim to.
But I didn’t feel like I took that life either, you tell her petulantly when she asks her question. I can forget.
You were a child, she says, a soft, painful twinge in her voice.
I’m older now — too abrupt and eager in response.
She smiles sadly and squeezes your hand until it is all just rubbery skin. And I’m dying. So you can remember.
I’ve never eaten a hamburger before , she tells you, with a smile on her lips. She looks almost childish with it gripped between her thin fingers, with that smear of sauce on the skin under her nose.
You feel uncomfortable, being with her in the restaurant — bread crumbs littering her tray. It’s the middle of the day, and the diner swarms with cityfolk, and she seems so much louder here than she ever was. She notices your silence and clutches at your elbow. Hey, she goes, pauses, smiles. You need to be eating too. You wish she would be quiet. But she had fed you, that first day in the snow, and you had fed her since. There is a lot to be given back.
There’s ketchup, you tell her, gesturing.
Ah, says your Master. Do you enjoy chastising me that much?
In another world you would’ve laughed at this. The city is bright, and there is surely much to live for to be found here. But she has always been your Master, so you simply stare back at her. You’ve finished your food already, scrunched it up into empty greased paper on your tray. It really was so delicious.
Was it? She asks. I think that too. It’s everything .
At this, you look up, breathing in the part of you that has entered into her answer. She gazes into your eyes for a long moment, and then her fork clatters on to the table.
I am clumsy, aren’t I? Master says, quietly. You close her hand around her wrist and squeeze it until it is all rubbery skin.
Shh, you go, gentle as anything. Shh. It is perhaps too early to have taken her out like this, or perhaps too late. She could have lived on the food you had carved out of your body. She could have lived. You catch yourself just in time, look at the ceiling — the fan adding unnatural movement to the air, and then at the rambunctious crowd over at the next table. It is not your choice to make, really, but you think: it is like she could be your daughter.
At this thought you laugh, a silly sort of laugh that makes the city brighter and has Master glancing at you curiously. You owe her no answer at a time like this so you pick up the bottle of ketchup on the table and idly examine the ingredients.
The target has been pricked thrice, and the fourth time is lacking, waiting, expectant. Things can be pricked to death; this is your lesson for today. Drained of blood over time, over years, with the edge of nails, with caresses.
And she had asked you. She had asked, and asked, and never stopped asking. And perhaps you were prone to lying, but you had given her the same answer every single time.
There’s a moment in between, your body a hollow wooden thing at the feet of hell, where you think of the fur coat you will never feel skim your arms, that late night in the cabin that you will never own. But dead animals were never meant to be worn, you realise. You pull them into yourself, and you keep them as pets, and tell them that you are family. And you love them, you see?
She had told you it was her last job; she does not lie to you. But she has always been your Master, and without you she is no person at all. You die with the hot shame of guilt in your throat, settling into your stomach along with everything that was once you. It is difficult to feel all that you once imagined feeling, all you once wanted to feel.
It is difficult to ask.