Free Breath (9781439132227) by Donna Jo Napoli Page A

hundred forty-four pfennigs. Twelve times twelve. Hell come back for the other schilling she promised.
    In the meantime I am determined not to need Arab medicine. I stand on my hands for long periods, sometimes up to an hour. So I’m keeping my lungs clear. As long as I stay inside whenever it rains, I won’t get sick again. I won’t let myself. I won’t miss lessons with Pater Frederick.
    And I won’t make Melis do my jobs for me.
    And I’ve been singing lately. This is another one of my promises to myself. I am determined that our coven not need a piper in order to be effective. I can sing. We can dance again, to my singing.
    The others have already spread a cloth on the ground by the time we get there. Großmutter addsour pork liver mold and the cheese. Murmurs of appreciation for her generosity surround us. No one else has brought cheese.
    There are seven men, including me, and five women. I wince that we are not thirteen. But, oh, there’s the number twelve again. Like in the schilling that I was just thinking about. So maybe it’s right that we are one member short. I wish it were right. I wish I didn’t have this feeling of being at a loss, a continual uncertainty.
    I look around the group, remembering how Bertram called us riffraff. Everyone but Großmutter and me is dirt poor. And all of us are suspect. One is handsome, but he’s a foreigner. One is beautiful, but she’s a widow with no discernible source of income, yet she survives. One is a woman whose husband beats her when he finds out she’s been to a coven meeting—so she has to put a broom in her bed, to fool him into thinking she’s shut herself up sick for the day. One is a midwife, but she’s different from Großmutter; she’s helped many women abort their babies. The rest of us are wrinkled, lame, deformed, foul, sickly. But when we come together, we don’t seem that way at all. We give one another energy.
    My own impression of the woman in Höxter—theone I brought the hens to—comes back to me strongly. She seemed bleak, though she was young and well formed. I imagine her now with her coven. Does she race around in excitement? Is she attractive? Even fascinating?
    We dig a hole, each of us doing the amount of work that makes sense for our strength. One side slants, and soon enough the hole is so deep the diggers have to use that incline to walk in and out. The supreme head sits, and I know he is about to lead us in a chant, when what we really need hides trapped in our legs. This is the time to act on my resolve.
    I sing.
    At first the others hush in surprise. Then one by one they sing too. Loudly. We move naturally in a circle around the grave, going to the left, facing outward—what we call widdershins. And we’re dancing, at last. Oh, it’s so good to be dancing again. We break into pairs and dance back-to-back, our arms linked. Partners take turns bending forward and lifting the other off the ground. We shake our heads and howl so loud it hurts my ears. If anyone saw us throwing ourselves around like this, they’d think we were mad. They might even be afraid of us, like I was the first time I came. Butthere’s nothing to fear in these joyful jumps. We work for the good of everyone. We’re dancing now to bring milk to the cows, to bring health to the animals. We’re using the dark powers against themselves. There’s no limit to what’s possible. We’re dancing for the unlimited.
    Euphoria fills me. I don’t care what practices may be written on Albert the Great’s list. Whatever we do is in the Lord’s name. Everything here is good. Every last thing.
    After dancing, I fall on the ground, spent. But the others bustle around with the food, and I realize they’re right, for I’m famished. We eat so many kinds of roasted meat. I don’t usually like meat without salt, but we never have salt at a coven feast.