The Forgotten Woman of Brez DuŠa
SOPHIE POREDOS
The pregnant woman sat staring through the broken window, watching the clouds pass by on a clear day. An emptiness had taken root inside of her, the taste of soil thick on her tongue, as thickets stretched inside her swollen belly. Eyes glassy, the woman began humming. It whispered from the memory of a lullaby her mother had sung to her many moons ago. But her performance was flawed, the words falling like foreign syllables.
Her hand rested atop her belly: her fingers hot against her icy belly. She felt the beast grasp and grope inside, contorting her womb. Doubling over in pain, she hit her stomach violently; the kicking stopped. Most days the woman had so much pain she didn't know where to put it.
Her days were spent alone and in half-dazed bouts of madness. She lived in the woods of Brez Duša, where dark magic thrummed in the air from the burnings so long ago. Mice kept her company most nights, scattering across the scratched floors and hiding in the cracks of darkness. Often she spoke to them in whispers, her voice dusty from months of unuse. Everything was grey and grim in the woods of Brez Duša, where men didn’t dare dwell after darkness fell.
The nameless woman once remembered a time when she wanted to be pregnant – a time before this foggy reality where a husband walked the wooden rooms. He was a simple labourer, and Protestant man – travelling days away to find work in the neighbouring towns of Prekmurje and returning with dried meats, wool and new books.
But trying to remember that was like grasping at sunlight, her fingers never able to catch its last rays. When he didn’t return, life became much more difficult after that. Nobody wanted a Protestant widow after Thomas Chrön terrorised her country and burned all of the women. The forbidden knowledge of plants was traded with crosses scorched into flesh; the village abandoned.
A child was something she could never grow to love. Since his departure, the ache had grown so violently that she had known a parasite had taken refuge inside her body.
Jolted from her daze, fists began banging on her door and glass rattled viciously; a violent storm had swelled outside her home. The banging intensified, dust rising from the cracks in the floorboards as the vibrations rocked the room. Smoke began to waft under her door in thick plumes, carrying with it the smell of charcoal and singed flesh. The woman sputtered and coughed, embers singeing her lungs.
A familiar voice wailed out to her outside the door, crying for help. It was Katarina, the baker's wife who she hadn’t seen since John’s departure. Then more cries joined. More women from the village shrieked as the smoke thickened and the flames climbed higher.
She could feel the women screaming within the living room, reaching out with their outstretched hands. Shutting her eyes, she imagined them standing before her: hair falling out in clumps, reddened and blistered skin and their eyes, half-lost to madness.
‘There’s no one there. No one there.’ Maria spoke in whispers, rocking herself in the wooden chair. She clamped her hands over her eyes until the whites of her knuckles showed. Nails sliced across her skin to prove she was real, that this was real. Pain lanced her thoughts and brought forward clarity amongst the growing smoke.
‘You’re all dead!’ Maria screamed at the door.
But the voices had stopped and the room smelled musty once again. And the forest beyond lay silent.
*
Creeping past dusty mantels and cracked mirrors, the woman peered at herself
from above.
‘When did I grow so old? Little Babica.’ Her hair was woven with fine
silver-spun thread, and though thin, a pudginess grew as she began to metamorphose into an ugly beast.
A half-crazed laugh left her before she turned to her empty cupboards. A rumble had erupted from her stomach and she almost hit her unruly beast once again, before she realised it was her hunger.
The meat was strange, and she ran out of spices months before winter gripped her cottage. For a while, the meat groaned strangely too – until she kicked it to be quiet. Limp carrots, spoiled onions and shrivelled porcini mushrooms were her staple these days, and they made a rather delicious stew when the stove was lit. The woman turned to her phantom child at the table, setting a steaming bowl down for two before she realised – she hadn’t given birth yet.
A mouse squeaked from underneath the seat. She scraped her wooden bowl with a spoon and smiled at their wordless conversation.
*
The final weeks were painful for the woman, as she doubled over and vomited up all the spoiled meat she had eaten. There were various times she stared down at her staircase, envisioning what her body would look like crumpled at the bottom of it. As the last woman in Brez Duša, there wasn’t any life beyond her doors and even men from far away feared the haunted forest. She didn’t dare walk beyond where the cottage path ended, for cries were heard at night begging for a mercy that was never delivered.
She hung on the frail wooden handrails atop her staircase, practising the motion of swinging her torso down the stairs repeatedly: shoulders up, head down and legs forward. It was calming, the methodicalness to it all.
But then she smiled and pushed a hand down hard until she felt its kick. Perhaps over time, she could force herself to love the child.
*
When the last of winter’s cold kiss left its grip on the cottage, the woman finally
gave birth to the horrid creature. Rags left a bloody trail across her bedroom floor, as the beast clawed its way out of her, completely shredding her belly. The woman howled until she lost all sense of who she was and what she was doing. Sprawled across her tiny bed, blood had already soaked through the cotton sheets and seeped into the mattress itself.
Her lungs screamed with all their might, as though her agony was payment enough to bring her husband back. The child was ferociously stubborn, refusing to leave its host. But the woman was well versed in pain, and it had to leave tonight. Her back arched, feeling as though her body were possessed by the bloody hudič. Pain erupted until it consumed her. She wrapped the pain like a weapon, wielding it to her will, forcing the beast to leave its host.
She knew her life force was slipping, petering out between the waves of pain that flooded her body. Blood had pooled at her legs, and the woman was feeling fearful for the first time in her life, and all so very alone.
‘Too much’, she thought. ‘It’s taking too much.’
Gritting her teeth, she huffed out another scream, begging any God that was listening to release her from this cursed pregnancy. Collapsing into her bloodied sheets, the woman’s frail legs trembled with one final push. She held the bloody beast to her chest. Its howls and cries were daggers in the silent room. She stared at its horribly beady eyes and sharp talons. She stared at the ugly beast that had stolen her body for nine long months.
She named the thing ‘Mamuna’ – uncaring of invoking the demon’s malicious intent. Perhaps it would be a blessing, to be rid of its ugly cries and disgusting swollen cheeks. A blessing indeed, to have the candles blown out and the door flung open, so that the swamp spirit may take its child back…
*
Over time, the beast grew long and lanky legs and arms that flailed about. She
often took it into the forest, teaching it the differences between the edible and poisonous mushrooms. Pointing to the purple mushrooms, the child’s instinct to taste anything bright amused her very much. The mice had now fled from the house, much too frightened by the screams the young beast would make. But the woman didn’t miss their company; her heart had begun to grow fond of the beast.
‘Mamuna, come now. Let us go eat.’ Its cold, clammy fingers interlocked
with her own as they passed the fallen fence to the cottage. Dried weeds now flitted through the garden, with the occasional burst of new life suffocated by neighbouring roots.
Winter had reclaimed the cottage once more, frost biting at the young one’s toes until its incessant cries would ring out in the night.
‘Quiet Mamuna, before I strike you to sleep’. The crying stopped. The
beast learned her cues, learned to hush when it needed to. The mother was almost proud of it.
The mother held the child's hand as they were crossing the stream. By now the beast had grown into an impish toddler. It began to form unintelligible words, learning its name -
Mamuna. And its mother’s, Maria.
There were even times, when Maria had to squint her eyes, mistaking its claws for fingers and scales for skin. It had grown less beast-like over the months, dark eyes replaced with the most resplendent blue. Even its wails became softer, like that of a child’s; her giggles the only source of light in Brez Druša.
*
Maria held the child's hand as they crossed the stream. Maria had begun to dream again, feeling the lost whisper of child-like curiosity call to her. She dreamt of her life, beyond the cottage and the cursed woods where no man dared to dwell after dark. Her husband's soft gaze entered her mind once more. An intense regret tinged these moments, as she caught flashes of their last memories together: letters, stolen kisses and a wet dripping sound that haunted her in sleep.
But now she dreamed of her child, and its future in Prekmurje or Ljubljana, where she could study and become a doctor, lawyer or poet. Mamuna wouldn’t have to trade her childhood for stuffed rag dolls or an eternally too-shallow dinner bowl.
A manic laugh bubbled in her chest. The child would leave her one day, leave her behind like her friends and her husband for another. She would be alone again, sitting in her creaky chair, facing the clouds passing by on a cloudless day.
But then the child slipped on the stones, wetting the woman’s dress until the hem was stained with mud and leaves.
‘You vile thing. Stupid, wretched beast!’ She scolded it as rage incited
within her. Her favourite dress and last gift of her husband’s, was forever ruined. The child looked at her, its wide innocent eyes metamorphosing into slits.
Anger built like a cascading wave and she wanted to beat the child in, until it resembled the parasite in her womb.
She had grown so sick of its pointed ears, its leathery skin and tufted hands. The woman was so sick of the beast entirely; she let go of its hand and watched it slip into the icy water.
Sophie Poredos is often seen daydreaming with an iced-coffee in one hand and a bad fantasy novel in the other. She loves all things witchy and telling folk stories, with just the right amount of unhinged charm before one is institutionalised.
Follow what trouble she gets up to at:
https://www.sophieporedoswrites.com.au
