“Utterly useless,” she informed me. But she said it fondly.
“Is there a reason we’re here?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gertie said, and squat walked over to another little indentation in the sand, the tell-tale breathing hole of her next victim.
“And that would be?”
“So impatient,” she tsked. “Here, hold the bucket.”
I did as I was told, since she was my only way out of whatever this was, and she dragged a long, tube shaped thing out of the sand with her bare hand. It looked nothing like a clam, and poked a white tongue—or something—out at us defiantly. But into the bucket it went anyway.
“Razorfish,” she said. “Best type of clam there is. Makes a damned fine stew.”
I didn’t answer. Gertie would get around to telling me what she wanted when she felt like it, and not before. I’d learned that much during our training sessions over the last month, many of which could have gone faster if she’d just explained what it was that she wanted to me to do. But that wasn’t her style. Or maybe she just like watching me fumble around.
She also liked digging clams, I thought, after squatting after her for what felt like half an hour. But, finally, we had enough, or maybe her thighs had started to hurt, too. Because she stood up, and tried to take the by-now heavy pail.
“I’ve got it,” I told her.
“Very well. Come inside. It’s getting darker.”
I didn’t know how she could tell with skies as overcast as these, but I didn’t argue. I followed her into the little stone house, and then stopped dead in the doorway. I hadn’t been able to tell from outside, but it was now clear: somebody was moving around in there.
I couldn’t see them, but there were sounds of footfalls and metallic clinks and other indications that someone was inside. Not that I needed them. Because the dog ran through the open door behind me, almost knocking me down. And then sped ahead into what I guessed was a kitchen, judging by the smell of fresh baked bread filtering through the house.
“Gertie!” A woman’s annoyed voice called. “Come get this animal. It’s filthy!”
Gertie went off to get the animal, I presumed. I didn’t see, because I was too busy looking around at white plastered walls decorated with sturdy wooden shutters, a spinning wheel in a corner with a basket of wool at its side, and a couple of hard-backed wooden chairs by a fire. I would have expected rockers, it was that sort of place, but wasn’t sure whether they’d been invented yet.
I also didn’t have time to dwell on it, because Gertie was back.
“Come on, then! Why are you standing there?”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the next room, which was a long one with a small dining area in front and a kitchen in back. And a tall, rawboned, elderly woman who bore no resemblance to Gertie at all and who was waiting for the clams. I handed them over, and she eyed me up and down without a smile.
“Always dragging someone back for dinner,” she said. “Well, if ye’re going to eat, gel, you’re going to work for it, first.”
She handed me a knife.
I looked around the room, which was even more stark than the outer one, with just a wooden table, some shelves, and a fireplace with a deep vee of soot marking the path from the logs to the chimney. I wasn’t clear what I was supposed to do, having only woken up a little over an hour ago. Things usually didn’t get this weird until at least lunch.
The woman’s pale blue eyes narrowed, and her high forehead developed a crease down the center. Okay, I could see a resemblance now, I thought. “Is she slow?” she asked Gertie, who sighed.
“Only sometimes.” She grabbed me again. “Come on!”
I came on. Out a side door, and back into the little courtyard with the vines, where I’d come in. The overly excitable dog
was running around the well, almost but not quite clipping an old bench as he passed, which had been shoved up against the side of the house. I hadn’t noticed it before because its weathered boards were almost the exact shade of the rocks.
We sat on the bench and Gertie spent long minutes showing me how to shuck clams, including the long, weird looking ones.
“You know, when I said I needed lessons, this wasn’t exactly what I meant,” I told her.
“You should feel honored,” she said, jimmying open a stubborn shell. “I don’t bring many people here.”
“Where is here?”
“What did I say?” The clam came open and she handed me a wooden tray, where she put the lower shell with the pink and white flesh inside, and discarded the upper back into the pail. “This is my grandmother’s house. That,” she pointed at the figure just visible inside the window behind us. “Is my grandmother.”