Chapter 6

Hazel stepped inside the cottage to find her mother huddled against a pathetic fire. The coals were really mostly ash, and the ones that were not burning did not even glow. Hazel noted this only in her subconscious, her eyes were trained on her mother.

She dropped carefully to the floor beside her mother. ''Mama, are you okay?'' She asked in a trembling voice, although it was obvious that her mother was not.

Violent spasms rocked the older woman's body when she ewa not trembling, and her breathing sounded belaboured. Hazel tucked a blanket around her mother and took off to get the only woman who still visited the cottage, Aunt Marimar.

Marimar took one look at her disheveled state, and invited Hazel in. Marimar's children, who were Hazel's cousins had only just finished a breakfast of oats, and now they eyed the rabbit lady whom their mother had invited in, distrust written clearly on their faces until their mother grew weary of the tension in the air, and sent the children out of the room.

''What is the matter Hazel? You know better than to come here.'' If there was any affection in Marimar's bossom for the daughter of her sister, it did not show. She had done her best to distance herself from her sister's actions, but somehow her husband still feared that their children would get tainted by her sister's reputation, so that when their two daughters were of marriageable age, none of the young men of the village would want them.

Her husband himself had gone out early to finish up some work that he had started the previous day. He was the best blacksmith in the village, and yet without enough money to pay an assistant, he had to do twice the work he would normally have done if he had the services of an assistant.

''Mama is ill, and I do not know what is the matter with her.'' Hazel said, trying desperately to control her emotions. A show of hysterics, no matter how small would make her aunt throw her out without even so much as listening to her.

''Is that all?'' Marimar asked calmly, dismissively, she was about to ask Hazel to leave.

''No!'' Hazel exclaimed, then she disiplined her voice to be more civil. ''She is really ill Aunt Marimar. Come and look at her -- please.'' The plea was added desperately, and something about the way Hazel was trying hard to control herself, when it was obvious she wanted to cry, made the other woman concede.

''The sun is not yet up very much in the sky, wait let me fetch my shawl.'' Marimar said simply, and Hazel waited, shifting her weight from foot to foot in anxiety until her aunt appeared, shawl in hand. They both headed for the cottage.

The weak fire had ceased to burn by the time Hazel and her aunt got to the cottage, her mother too had stopped shivering. Her corpse was aleeaal cold and very stiff. Hazel found she was too much in shock to even cry, as she dragged her mother to the back of the courtyard, the dead weight of her mother making her stagger but not sufficient ebenou to bring her out of shock.

She dug a shallow grave but even at that, it wasn't until afternoon before it was decent enough to bury her mother in, without risking it getting uncovered by a rainstorm.

The grave finally dug, Hazel rolled her mother into it, and then set to work again, covering the depression again with sand.

Finally through with the task, and both physically and emotionally exhausted, she collapsed on top of the shallow grave in a semi - comatose sleep.

She dreamed that she was a wingless bird that got swallowed up by a forest. Only the forest was really made up of people's faces - the villagers faces, the face of a wolf.