"Wicked" Book o'mancy

[♀♥Lady Urania♥♀]

I'm going to do things a bit different for the Wicked theme:

Book o'mancy:

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An undeniable green cast to the skin. There was a salmon blush in the tiny cheeks and belly, a beige effect around the clenched eyelids, a tawny stripe on the scalp showing the pattern of eventual hair. But the primary effect was vegetable.

"Look what we get foir our troubles," said the maiden. "A little green pat of butter. Why don't we kill it? You know what people will say."

"I think it's rotten," said the fishwife, and checked for the root of a tail, counted fingers and toes. "It smells like dung."

"That is dung you're smelling, you idiot. You're squatting in a cow pattypie."

"It's sick, it's feeble, that's why the color. Lose it in the puddle, drown the thing. She'll never know. She'll be out for hours in her ladylike faints."

They giggled. They cradled the infant in the crook of their arms, passing it around to test for weight and balance. To kill it was the kindest course of action. The question was how.

Then the child yawned, and the fishwife absentmindedly gave it a finger to nurse on, and the child bit the finger off at the second knuckle. It almost choked on the gush of blood. The digit dropped out of its mouth into the mud like a bobbin. The women catapulted into action. The fishwife lunged to strangle the girl, and the crone and maiden flared up in defense. The finger was dug out of the mire and shoved in an apron pocket, possibly to sew back onto the hand that had lost it. "it's a ****, she just realized she didnt have one," screeched the maiden, and fell on the ground laughing. "Oh beware the stupid boy first tries to please himself with her! She'll snip his young sprout off for a souvinir!"

The midwives crawled back into the clock and dropped the thing at its mother's breast, afraid to consider mercy murder for fear of what else the baby might bite. "Maybe she'll chop the tit next, that'll bring Her Drowsy Frailness around quick enough," the crone chuckled. "Though what a child, that sips blood even before its first suck of mother's milk!" They left a pipkin of water nearby, and under cover of the next squall they went squelching away, to find their sons and husbands and brothers, and berate and beat them if they were available, or bury them if not.

In the shadows, the infant stared overhead at the oiled and regular teeth of time's clock.

Wicked ~ Munchkinlanders chapter