Free The Burial by Courtney Collins Page A

their own silence.
    When the lights went down and the curtains drew back, the men shifted upright and to the edge of their seats. Jack Brown felt the row tip forward with the weight of them. The men broke from their silence, clapping their hands and stamping their feet on the boards. One by one, women appeared on stage dressed in silver smocks that showed off their legs and shoulders. The pianist played a more melodious tune and the women danced, arms linked, around the stage. Each woman took the hem of another woman’s smock and drew it up more and danced in circles, six women in each, revealing the tops of their thighs as they turned. There were three circles and they merged like petals forming a flower. Then the curtains were drawn again and the men stamped their feet and yelled for more, more, more.
    When the curtains reopened, the stage was filled with something like smoke, although it did not smell of burning, and the women pitter-pattered out and formed circles again and merged into a flower. Then they slowly sank down as a single woman in a feathered mask rose up from between them and stretched out two silk wings. The only thing covering her breasts was a sash. A half slip draped from her hips.
    It was Lay Ping.
    The men drew breath as the other women rose up again, concealing her. The women made a line at the front of the stage, their shoulders touching, and then they split to each side and disappeared from the stage as Lay Ping danced, her sash edging slowly from her breasts and slipping down her waist until it was caught by her hips. Her wings were still outstretched.
    Lay Ping fluttered her wings and danced until the other women returned bearing pitchers. Then they stood in two lines either side of Lay Ping and each woman took a turn at pouring water on her shoulders. The water trickled over her breasts in curving streams and a man in the audience yelled out, I’m thirsty , and then all the men laughed as one.
    But they fell silent again as the water soaked into Lay Ping’s slip and revealed the darkness between her legs. She brought up her wings and twisted her shoulders until the wings fell to the ground. Then she turned her body slowly until she had her back to them.
    Jack Brown had never seen Lay Ping’s bare back. But here it was, a perfect back covered in tattoos. From a distance, it looked to him like the window of coloured lights with its sign that said open all day all night, only here, in the clear space remaining between her shoulder blades, was a single word sorrow.
    As he read it the other women ran in and folded around Lay Ping. Then the curtain was drawn and the music reached a crescendo.
    Sorrow.
    The word was on the men’s lips as they sat in the darkness of the hall and it was still being whispered around as the front doors were opened and the daylight swept in.
    On either side of Jack Brown, some men sank into their seats while others stepped over him to get out. He did not move from his seat.
    As the men departed, dust poured in through the open doors of the hall and covered the men who had saved enough money to stay. Jack Brown decided then, like any free man, that at last he should be one of them.

MORE DAYS AND nights passed with the sounds of the storm and the sounds of the dog and the forest and the old man and old woman arguing. Jessie was biding her time. She tended to Houdini when she could but most of her energy was spent keeping out of the old man’s way.
    She could not collect supplies for her escape as there was nowhere to hide them, so she spent nights mapping their location in her head and charting the surest, fastest way to move through the house, to the stable and then away.
    Early one morning she woke to silence. She did not understand why the silence sounded so vast until she realised the storm had finally died down. The cottage was utterly quiet.
    She lay there for some time recalling the map to her mind, knowing the time had come, and she was about to