“Motherhood, (or the Stranger and the Cave)” is the Third Place winner for Room’s 2024 Fiction Contest.
Of this piece, judge Sarah Bernstein writes: “This exquisitely-written piece about a being living at the mouth of a mysterious cave has shades of Angela Carter. Strange and baroque, with lush descriptions of landscape, the story follows the protagonist’s journey into the once-silent cave that has begun to return her offerings of pebbles and bones. The boundaries between self and other, body and world, animate and inanimate are made nebulous in this compelling story that doesn’t yield its secrets easily.”
You can find the full winners list, here.
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I was born at the tit of spring, just before sunrise, at the mouth of a cave with no end. It was unfathomably vast and deep; every sound echoed, every light devoured. Eerie as it was, I learned quite young that the cave held no malice. Where the bedrock petered off, lush green grasses and perennial flora opened themselves up in brilliant, exalted patches. Wildflowers and ferns and dense, soft mosses rolled over one another in an amorous dance. When I was a child, my unwashed hands would dig into the soil and hold the wet, cashmere dirt to my nose: washed cotton, tree bark, oiled leather, warm wild rice, tarragon. And in the night, when the cave’s pointed eternity should have scared me most, it would send me comfort; Close, living breaths from the cave’s hollows would caress my near-sleeping forehead—like a kiss that warms the skin before the lips do. There, in slow and certain sighs, I heard my name whispered to me for the first time, given to me from oblivion.
Oblivion I mean in a literal sense. Each time I threw a stone into the emptiness it would be swallowed swiftly and without ever hitting the ground, like a sharp inhale had pulled the rock straight into the gut of Mother Nature. I tried other things too—animal bones, acorns, bits of clay—nothing ever made a sound once it was hurled into the dark. The cave itself was all stone: heavy, cold, and serious. Its entrance sat level with the forest floor and was surrounded by a blockade of huge and unforgiving boulders, the depth of which spanned no less than three times my height on every side of the open mouth. The cave’s jagged teeth provided no clear path (no living creature, it seemed, had ever dared cross the threshold) and it was decidedly unwelcoming. No, I decided early on, I was not to go inside.
So, my childhood was spent alone before the gaping jaw of the Earth. I played at its feet; singing songs, bolting around it like a mother’s legs, burying secrets in its gravel, scraping my knee. I was lonely, but protected—I was never left alone. When I cried, I wailed into the cave’s hollow until my sobs and their echoes became one booming voice. No insect ever dared bite me while the wolves and cougars and I danced around bonfires until dawn. And the day I started to bleed from the centre of myself, I laid down on a rock like a lizard and let my fluid run into the dark stone walls. And like the bones, like firelight and my cries, like everything, the shadows swallowed up my empty self and sighed with great love for me— and I for it. We had no shame together, no animosity. These are among my earliest memories.
Some few or several springs passed like this, naively, in my great and wide and unknowable love, before the first stone was thrown back. As I often did, I tossed one in while passing by, as casually as waving hello. Hardly a second passed before it came soaring back to me from the purgatorial middle of the cave’s walls. It fell where the bedrock met the gravel and rolled towards me, lazily, stopping at my bare feet. The shock froze me in a living rigor mortis, my body stuck mid-stride. My eyes were trained on the rock; I feared that it might break open or twitch or speak to me, but it was still as darkness. Dead— just as rocks should be.
A fluke! I thought. I simply hadn’t thrown it far enough, or maybe it ricocheted off a wall somehow? Or, perhaps, the cave had decided after all these seasons past to play with me. I smiled, my solitude spilling over into joy: a game! I picked the stone up again and pitched it back into the void. My hand balled into a fist, I watched the rock fly and heard no sound as it descended past the light of day. This time, the rock stayed in the nothing. My smile faltered, my grip loosened, but I was satisfied. A fluke, yes. A simple mistake in nature’s order. I continued my walk, watching newly sprouted barley shudder as I passed, noting how the sparrows’ songs sounded different today—more like laughter than before.
The rain came soon after. Night began to fall as soon as the day broke, the once humble moon shone brighter than the sun could muster. My breasts had been aching for days. Tenderly, I held them in my hands (they had become a heavier burden than I was used to) and as the weight of myself settled against my palms, an unexpected sorrow bloomed in me. I thought suddenly of a black bear I had seen a few days before: She was sturdy but slender, carrying the limp, misshapen body of a newborn cub in her motherly jaw. With her huge teeth bared, she was gnawing on its little head as she moved, swaying gently and shaking her wet nose back and forth, moaning. My swollen chest heaved, saliva pooled around my tongue—when had I started to cry?
The moon, I reasoned, was calling me to join its cycle. I prepared as I had for years: Moss and slimy, fallen leaves were fashioned into a makeshift bed. I collected what food I could, a handful of tobacco leaves to chew, sap from the maple tree, and I laid in an elevated crook between two boulders just outside the yawning hill’s stone run—like a lizard, flat on my back, waiting to bleed. The moon flashed her milky face, the feeling of nothing leaving my body became more palpable by the hour. The mouth of the cave, curved in its perpetual grin, radiated no kindness, no sigh of compassion. But I stayed there, shivering in a wet mess of leaves until the pale sun rose. And still, I waited in vain for my comfort, for the cave’s bated breath to rise from its core and kiss my cheek. I waited, with growing anxiety, for my own body to spill over. But no warmth came. Not from the cave, and not from me.
Days later, I woke to the sound of laughter. The birds! I thought again, what a bizarre sound they’ve started to make! Dreamily, I surveyed the treetops for the culprits, but saw nothing except for nearly naked branches holding empty nests. I bolted upright, squinting into the distant firs; There was not a sparrow in sight, not even a feather had been left behind, and yet—there it came again—! My neck craned towards the sound and I found myself looking blindly into the centre of the Earth. Standing now, I reached for a piece of granite. With both hands I hurled the heavy chunk of stone as hard as I could into the cave’s abyss and prayed for nothing to happen.
With a thundering clunk, the granite hit the obscured cave floor. I threw another. And another, and another to the same unfamiliar, noisy effect. I threw a handful of pebbles and they hurried to meet the bedrock, rumbling like an impossible storm. Finally, I cupped my trembling hands around my mouth and shouted. I wailed and screamed into my hollow home until my voice went dry, and then I howled a little longer. A pathetic sob coated my throat—I heard no echo, but there it was for the third time: laughter. Not birdsong, but a soft, warbling giggle from deep inside the great endless well. Laughter, and then a single pebble came drifting out from the dark, rolling across the stone as if a soft wind blew behind it. In its wake came a second pebble, then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. One by one, rocks and stones and bird bones and nuts and berries and branches and a rabbit foot and old teeth and clay and acorns—everything I’d ever offered rolled out into the stark, blue daylight. Every piece of life I had given was being returned, and in place of my love sat this strange new voice, mocking me.
It was unfathomable. How was it that something had gotten inside? The entrance was enclosed by deceptively impossible boulders, too dangerous for even myself to cross. And I had tried: One summer, at the height of a suffocatingly hot afternoon, I’d decided to shelter myself in the cave’s cool shadows. Nearer and nearer, I crawled towards its open mouth. An immense and perfect horror began to take me as I crept, a feeling that I was trespassing. But this was my home, I thought, I had known it all my life! Not to mention, the skin on the back of my neck was boiling, so I reached for the top of the boulder closest to the Earth’s opening, whose peak rested in the shade. My hand met the cold stone and was scorched in less than an instant. I tumbled backwards, falling over myself as I rushed to the brook, the smell of flesh attacking me. The pads of my fingers had been branded by a rock sheltered from the sun—so how could something which sounded so small make itself a home there? How could it laugh at me with blistered skin? How could it be granted refuge while I was left to burn?
Well, I thought, it could come from within, of course.
As the weeks lingered on and the frail laughter grew louder, I began to notice the lush woodland that raised me was becoming hostile. Twigs snapped sharply and easily under my feet, ants and termites rushed out from under fallen logs and into my hair, the tobacco plants died—their dried up leaves began to make me sick and dizzy. All the beautiful things I once loved, that once loved me, had grown hard and bitter since the intruder arrived. Even food, once plentiful, became few and far between—scarcely a worm could be found crawling through rotting logs. Anything I could forage was on the verge of decay and, more often than not, food had begun to make me ill rather than full. And yet, empty berry branches and tree nut shells, even pheasant carcasses, were regularly thrown onto the starchy grass from inside the cave walls. Satiated burps and hiccups travelled from the shadows into my clearing; the sounds of smug satisfaction sent rage growling through my body. There wasn’t enough for both of us. Much dizzier with heartbreak than with hunger, I allowed betrayal to settle in my stomach: My sanctuary had chosen another life to protect, I was merely collateral now.
It was unusually warm for the late winter season. The rain was, once again, impenetrable all night. The morning air was damp and crowded with steam, leaving the afternoon sticky, empty, and restless. The sun was already lowering past the horizon as I wrapped my hands and feet in bandages of maple leaves and cattail moss—it would be cold again before the night fell. The smell in the air was purifying: soggy dirt and old pines and washed cotton, tarragon. The crickets, long silent, were chirping softly as the evening broke, the bullfrogs were quick to join. Spring must be coming early this year, I thought, the sole of my foot pressed firmly against the first stone step towards the cave, its armour still shining, darkened by the downpour.
Everything was dead or dying—the huckleberries, the ferns, the evergreens, even, were wilting—but spring was coming early this year. The crickets had come out of hibernation, the seasons were going to change as always. What better reason could there be for one more small sacrifice? What higher justification could exist? My hands gripped each new rock with deluded fervour—I could feel the heat of them rising through my bandages. I moved quickly from one to the next, not stopping, not slowing, not thinking about much besides the bullfrogs’ symphony and the order of things and the smell of wet, hot stone—until I heard it again. Closer now than I had ever heard it before.
Its gurgling voice was sweet but disconcerting, like it hadn’t quite decided on a note before it sang. It cooed its oily tune and, unlike the gilded, bragging laughter I had heard before, it sounded doomed, helpless, and not like a monster at all. Guilt began to sow its seeds: I could not skirt past the truth of its innocence anymore. The leaves wrapped around my palm were beginning to smoke and my momentum halted, but not for long. For resting lopsided on a rock ahead of me was the tiny, warped skull of a baby bear. No, I decided, the guilt would have to come later. Death must come to the dying: I had go inside.
By the time I reached the cave’s plateau, my “bandages” had melted and soldered themselves to the skin of my palm, but the damage was unimportant. I was standing at the door of the big, wide darkness with my mouth hanging open. It was utterly opaque. There was no possibility of light existing there, barely the idea of it could survive. The eternity of it was shocking–I sensed that if I stared into the heart of it long enough, I might forget that things could ever end. I turned quickly to face the now-sunken sun and the deep, aquarian sky blinded me with its glow—daylight grants us that, I remembered: the gift of impermanence. The harsh, glassy air of the night was firmly at my back while everything in front of me pulsed with warmth—I closed my eyes, bathing in the cavernous breath on my forehead, my cheek, my stomach, idly wondering if the cave knew somehow what I had come for.
Distorted, spritely babbling bounced off of every wall as I felt my way deeper. The rock surrounding me was tensing under my fingertips, anticipating my touch, bracing itself. As the small voice grew closer, louder, and more distressed, I felt my own blood thicken. My heart was hurrying to the rhythm of the imposter’s song, my lungs hammered tightly against my ribcage—I hadn’t noticed how out of breath I was until I caught the sound of my own voice in my ear: I had been humming along in perfect time with the melody of the stranger. Faster now, I tripped over the ragged path, following the pull of my chest which was also the sound of the voice. One hand was held to my side, grazing the rocky walls to guide me. The other I kept steadily out in front of me, waiting.
My gut felt it there first, in the brief vacant moment before my skin did. The heat rippled off of it like a fever. Its small body had a magnetism, a familiarity. I hesitated. A gurgling, pained cry rang out— whether the sound came from it or me, I could not say—and I was suddenly wild with terror. I lunged and my grieving hands closed around some part of its body. It struggled in my grip, whimpering and panting, and I realized it had always sounded more like something dying than something alive. It’s skin (was it skin?) was rubbery, soft, and slippery. Like a duck drenched in oil, or—
—I once helped a wounded doe deliver her fawn and I held the little thing in my arms before it met its mother’s tongue. The fawn was alive right away: his bony legs felt the Earth and twitched, the instinct to run fresh and pure, vibrating. His eyes were wide open and searching, his hide slick with his mother’s blood. For just a moment, I held him. Then, damp and glistening, he was off on his wobbly legs, dashing into the brush. And, not a second later, off went his mother, too. Limping after her baby, loving him through her pain, through her punishment; she would follow him until she collapsed.
The image of the fawn, so immediate and beautiful, stretched out across the darkness as I finally clenched my fist and felt a sickening crack boom through the cave’s hollows. A ripe and terrible pain shot through my body—I gasped, doubled over, the feral stench of blood covered me in its sour wash. The thing squirmed in my grasp, writhing against my calloused skin—Pathetic, I gasped again, standing up straight now. An awful crunch, and then another one followed as I sunk my teeth into the flesh, through its toothpick bones and stale tissue, and again through the muscle. With every maceration, the pain in my sides tripled; The walls shook with every swallow but my revenge would be exact. I chewed the fat of it, sucked the marrow, licked the blood from my own numb fingers—I would leave nothing behind, I wept through teeth bared, I would leave nothing here to protect.
The dawn was sprouting green when I emerged from the dark of my everywhere-nothing. Back again, at the tit of spring, covered in blood both mine and not. A warm exhale from behind caressed my hair, the sound of my footsteps reverberated in all directions, honey-tipped wildflowers and wilted barley were just barely visible peeking through the frosted, dewy soil—welcoming me home. And I sat at the mouth of a cave with no end and I cried, and my echo cried too. And together, we had no shame. We had no need for it.
