Wife is one of those words which we think we understand, but it can surprise us.
Hmmm, perhaps I’ll leave that alone and move on…
At its root, wife just means ‘woman’ rather than ‘female spouse’ which solves my childhood puzzlement over how a housewife could be married to a house. It also makes sense of midwife, once you realise the ‘mid’ is the Middle English word for with, so it’s a woman who was with the mother during labour.
Likewise, there was no marriage required for Medieval jobs like alewife and fishwife to apply. The Old English name for a mermaid was merewif – a woman of the sea. I can’t help but feel that making them maids – young and innocent – rather than wives, diminished them somewhat.
One of my favourite ‘wife’ roles is the henwife. Objectively, she’s a woman who keeps domestic fowl. In folklore and fiction, she is more likely a witch or wise woman. I recommend author Terri Windling’s post on Hen Wives, Spinsters and Lolly Willowes.
I recently reread Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, which Windling quotes in her post. It’s an extraordinarily subversive book for its time (1926) and, I think, still resonant now.
All of which is a very long explanation of where my inspiration came from for my entry in this month’s AWC’s Furious Fiction writing challenge.
It had to be a <500 word story, written in 55 hours which:
- included someone/something being caught.
- included the words OBJECT, WOUND, BAND, ELABORATE (plurals allowed).
- had as the final two words THE MOON.
And I thought… if you can have a henwife, why not…
The Eggwife
“You keep day-dreaming,” my father said, “you’ll get caught by the eggwife.”
“Not me.” I grinned which made Pa scowl.
“Caught and kept. It’s not like you could run.”
My smile froze, lips stretched across my teeth, tight as the jagged skin around my leg where flesh and muscle had been torn and devoured.
Pa told me every day how lucky I was to have survived.
“Why would she want me?” I whispered, but he heard and wheezed a bitter laugh.
“She’s not fussy,” he said.
Could she be so easily pleased to want me? No-one else did.
Not the girls who played their elaborate skip rope games in the square, side glances scorching me as they clapped and sang:
Hoppity skit, hoppity skit,
The eggwife is coming, lickety spit.
Hooked by a song or caught by a smell,
The eggwife will trap you inside of her shell.
Not their mothers who clenched their hands into the sign against evil as I passed by.
Not even Pa, who couldn’t forgive that I had lived when Ma had been eaten by the wolf.
Small wonder, then, that I went looking for the eggwife.
I waited until Pa had sloped off to the pub before I took my stick and left the house. I wasn’t sure which would be worse; if he did object to my going, or if he did not.
With every step, a tighter band of pain wrapped my leg. I shivered as the full moon rose, glowing like the bright eye of a great and hungry beast. The night was thick with scurrying claws and the rush of dark wings and the moaning of the wind in the trees. Tears blinded me when I finally reached the crossroads.
“Eggwife!” I cried. “Will you take me, eggwife?”
A figure stepped into the moonlight, cloaked in dark feathers, with a black chicken held close to her side. I could not see her face, only the shadows beneath her hood.
“Why should I, child?” she said.
I wanted to sink to the ground, but I forced myself to clutch my stick and answer her.
“They say you can catch us with a scent or a song, can tuck us inside one of your eggs, and I thought…”
She nodded and stroked the chicken’s feathery breast with one bony finger.
“I thought there would be no pain inside an egg.”
“No child,” she said, “should bear such pain.”
She bent and grabbed my old wound, above the knee where the lancing agony was worst. I opened my mouth to scream and gasped instead as the pain vanished.
She straightened and held out a yellowed wolf’s fang.
“A gift,” she said.
As I took it a shudder passed over me, like a wave of warm water, like the scent of wild honey. I grew fur and fangs and four legs that were straight and strong.
I raised by head and sang to the moon.
Banner image is cropped from a photo by Алина Осипова from Pixabay.