After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  All know it when the boats return. The streets fill with boot steps and chatter, and I too throw on my coat and head down to the dock to help offload the catch. They have been absent, this time, four days. One more sailing and the eldest sea dog from Horrocks’s boat, a fellow with half closed eyes and leathern skin, will be done; I am promised his place.

  I heft crate after crate of still-squirming silver to the quayside, where the women wait with their curved knives, their trestle tables set out ready. Gulls circle overhead, wailing, ready to snatch whatever they can with bladed beaks. Most of the town is here, I realise: the grizzled men, the soft-skinned maids, though few children, unless it is only that I do not see them.

  The women’s movements are quick and sure as they grasp the slippery fish. Syl is among the rest. She guts them one by one, her hands gored and shining, and she cuts slivers from the edge of their flesh and swallows them whole. She catches me watching, freezes for a moment, gives a small nod in return for my smile.

  Unnatural, they had said. My cheeks colour with shame at the memory of their words; the way they condemned her, forgetting, as perhaps her husband had himself, how he must have stolen her skin, kept it from her, made her what she is.

  When the catch is done, the menfolk head up the narrow cobbled lane to the Anchor, but the women walk away, down to the shore. After a moment, I follow them. The sea has by now retreated, smudging the line where the earth meets the sky, and the beach seems a vast stretch of mud. They do not walk towards the brine, however, but to where the river meets the sea. They do not turn and I stand behind them as they look at the swans out on the water, gliding, their necks bent into hooks.

  I cannot see the women’s faces. I do not know if they are remembering or dreaming, or perhaps both.

  After a time the swans beat their wings and skim along the surface, forming a noisy trailing procession before they lift from the water. Their flight is hard-won and the sound of their wings is like applause, as if they are glad to be in the air, rejoicing at their freedom. I wonder if they tell their own tales to each other – stories without words, warning of the wiles of man.

  The swans circle around once more. The women exchange not a word, only watching them, tilting back their heads; then they hold out their hands. As I watch, the swans let fall their feathers: gifts for their skinless sisters.

  * * *

  The Anchor smells of burning. The air is acrid and dense and I almost don’t go inside, but through the haze I hear the rumble of the men. I step across the threshold, blinking against the sting of it. I collect a tankard and the ale is mercifully cold at the back of my throat, though I still want to cough. No one else does, however, and I swallow it down.

  They are seated in their accustomed places, Horrocks at the centre, his eyes already glazed with liquor – or perhaps that too is from the smoke, which rises in front of him, obscuring his features. He tips a little of his ale onto the table, which extinguishes something with a hiss. He holds up what remains – a blackened quill, the filaments burned away, not a trace of white left.

  They all laugh, turning to look at me, this newcomer in their midst, not yet certain if I will be a subject for further laughter or if I will swell its volume. I force a grin, wave my tankard in their direction.

  “Sit, boy.” Horrocks surprises me with his words, which fly from his mouth in a cloud of spittle. They move aside for me, scraping their stools across the floor. I sit between their bulky warm bodies.

  “See this?” he throws down the quill onto the upturned barrel between us. Other burned feathers are scattered there, scarcely recognisable, the source of the stink. “Know what that means, boy?”

  I don’t know what I’m expected to say, so I simply shrug, then nod.

  “You will.” Horrocks grasps his crotch and makes a thrusting motion, and guffaws rise into the air.

  I gulp at my drink. Then, buoyed by the ale or their sudden silence, I say, “Where is it you keep the skins?”

  Horrocks is suddenly motionless. All traces of humour are gone; his eyes are tiny points of light. They pierce the gloom – pierce me. “Be careful, boy.”

  The quiet stretches out. I’m not certain what it will become, but then the fellow at my side nudges me in the ribs. “I take mine to sea,” he says. “Use it to line my hammock. Keeps me warm.”

  Glances flit around the group. They still aren’t sure, but Horrocks’s shoulders relax and amusement ripples between them.

  “Feel this, lad.” Another offers the edge of his jerkin to my fingers. I notice that its surface is pocked with little dimples. “Plucked and tanned,” he says, and they roar. Strike their tankards against each other. Drink spills across the table.

  “Buried,” another mutters.

  “Burned.”

  My smile fades. I sit in the midst of their noise, their movement. I have no words. I think of them sullying the pure white skins, the things they must have craved, once; loving and yet fearing them, coveting them even as they tear them to pieces. I stare down at the scorched feathers, abandoned now; in them the wrecked hopes of the women who had stood on the shore and snatched them from the sky.

  Horrocks suddenly leans across the table, grasps my arm. His grip is hardened by years of working the wet ropes, hauling in the nets, the constant scrape of salt. “We saves ’em, boy,” he says. “Never forget that. Not if you want to stay.”

  The others watch, intent on his words.

  “We save them from the spell,” he says. “Enchantment. The trap they’re in. It’s against nature. Remember that.”

  He waits for my nod before he releases me. I refrain from rubbing at my arm. I can still feel the bone beneath the skin, as if his fingers remain wrapped around it. Does he really believe he has freed them – saved them from what they are – from magic? Does he think he has remade them, shaped them as they could and should have been? And yet how he must value the memory of that magic: the grace of her, the sinuous form, her loveliness beneath the skin.

  My thoughts are lost in their mirth, released once more in gulps of amber and guffaws. The volume of it gathers, a rising tide that carries everything with it, so that I only dimly hear it as he says, “A feather bed. I had it stitched inside, right at the centre. We sleep on it every night.”

  * * *

  They are gathered in the street, just back from the quay, not far from where the Anchor hangs its old painted sign. It is not the day for market, or for sailing, or even for church, which anyway, few here trouble about. They are bending over an object made of wood. I cannot see or guess what it is but a great rustling and struggling comes from within, and they step back, snorting with laughter or mockery.

  At last, I can see. The object is a wooden cage made of old crates and lobster pots, and inside is a folded, cramped, crushed creature. A golden beak, tipped with black, stabs at the bars. Momentarily it opens its mouth, revealing a long thin tongue as it hisses. Its feathers no longer appear white. They are damp, soiled, stained. I cannot make out its eyes against the dark sides of its skull.

  Another ripple runs through the gathering as someone pokes a stick into the cage. The action is that of a child, but it is Horrocks; he turns, scans the crowd, and I see that Syl is standing there, at the back, looking on; seeing everything.

  He nods, as if with satisfaction. Then he calls out, loud, so that everyone can hear.

  “A witch.” The word, spoken at last, cannot be contained. It runs about the street, touching all, lingering on their lips as they echo it.

  “This creature would have beguiled a man. Inflamed his senses. Trapped him.” He slaps his hand down on the top of the cage. “But we trapped it first, hey?”

  They cheer. Fists assault the air. Someone kicks the cage. They are grinning, slapping backs, congratulating each other. The women stand by, watching, silent. They are cowled in their hoods, perhaps to cover their dangerous forms, their
sinuous curves, lest they inflame a man; lest they bewitch him.

  The swan in the cage does not make a sound. I do not know what they will do to her, but I cannot help her now; no one can. At least it will soon end, I think, and then Horrocks’s voice rises again.

  “A cull.”

  Now they have purpose. Now they know what to do. They gather behind him. Some are carrying guns, I realise, or sticks, or cudgels. They were ready for this. Primed. Someone releases the door of the cage and the swan stumbles out, clumsy on land, its webbed feet sliding on the cobblestones.

  “A head start,” Horrocks jokes, and they give chase. The swan never did have a chance. It vainly spreads its wings but there is no room for it to take flight. It goes to the ground and one of the men sets his boot on its long and shapely neck.

  They begin to chant, others taking it up so that the words become something different and strange. “A cull, a cull.”

  I try to interject, grasping shoulders, calling out that such a thing is not lawful, that they cannot take it upon themselves. It is no use; my words are lost. They brandish their weapons, pounding the ground with their sticks as they go, stamping their feet. A cull – as if it is something scientific they do, something necessary.

  They march away towards the river. The women follow, able to do nothing else. Will they fight? They have nothing but the clothes they wear. They trail behind, their gaze fixed not upon the sky but the earth the men have trodden; upon their duty; their destination. Will they watch as their sisters are torn and trampled, their feathers broken and ruined? Will they witness the snapped necks of their sons and daughters? Perhaps it would be worse, after all, to turn their faces away.

  Still, as Syl passes me at the back of the crowd, I reach out and grasp her hand.

  * * *

  We run, away from the others, unseen, towards her house. She unlocks it using a key kept on a string about her neck and we go inside. I stride ahead of her, as if it is my own. I pass through the living space, not cramped and crammed with knick-knacks and scrimshaw like my aunt’s cottage, but airy and neat. I go to the stair. Syl does not protest at this intrusion in her home, only watches, her dark eyes the only brightness.

  “A knife,” I say, and run up the stairs, not worrying about the noise I make. He will be gone a while yet; there is time. There must be time. I wonder for a moment if his boasting words at the Anchor were really the truth as I pull back the embroidered sheet of their bed, wondering if she made it by her own hand. I wonder if the knife she passes to me is the one I saw her wielding by the quay, sliding in and out of the belly of a fish. It is slender and sharp and I plunge it into the mattress.

  Feathers: white feathers, downy and soft and choking. They fly into the air, floating down once more, and at first she grabs at them – whether to conceal them or take them back I do not know, but I do not think these are a swan’s. I thrust my hand into the rip I have made and feel inward to the centre, trying not to imagine Horrocks on this bed, sweating on top of her.

  Then I touch something that does not give, does not slip through my fingers like the other feathers: something that is as soft as they, yet supple, pliant as the finest leather.

  I grasp hold of it and pull it towards me. She gives a harsh, choking cry – the first sound she has made – and snatches it from me. It is almost liquid, that brush of feathers against my skin; then it is gone, though I turn and see the glow of it, pure and shining, spilling from her hands.

  I almost expect her to throw it over her shoulders at once, but she does not; she turns and runs for the stairs. But of course, there would be no room for her here to fly. The space she leaves behind feels cold and empty and the thought rises: I had imagined she might have spared a word for me.

  When I step out of the door she is standing there, staring down the steep little street towards the glimmer of the sea. The swanskin is still in her hands. A muscle twitches in her cheek – it is as if she is tasting the air, a savour she had almost forgotten. She half closes her eyes, then whirls the feathers around her and she runs.

  She moves away from me, fast, faster – and I see the stretch and curve of her wings, spreading wide, finding the air, finding their rhythm, feathertips spreading as she casts it all behind her. She is flying, I realise, her feet lifting from the ground, and still she does not look behind her, and still she has no word for me. An image: all the beautiful swans, her sisters, gliding upon the water, and yet separate from it; their feathers, with a simple flick, always remaining entirely dry.

  But her transformation is not complete. Beneath the white is the merest suggestion of an arm, a hand, of weight, of darkness. Then a single shot rings out.

  At first, her movement does not change. Then she begins to fall.

  I cannot do what she would have done; I cannot watch, though I hear her bones shatter on the stone, the sound of her body breaking. Then they are there, the men, blooded and blood-hungry, the red light of it in their eyes, and it is not enough, will never be enough. They are all around and still they do not stop but raise and lower their cudgels and their sticks and they go on and on stamping with their feet.

  Then they turn to me.

  * * *

  When the boats have sailed, there is time to mend. My arm is still in a sling, and I walk with a limp that I suspect will always be with me. I shall not now go to sea. No one has told me this; they do not have to. The knowledge does not lie in the way they look at me, but in the way they do not.

  The women say nothing of what has passed. They clean and they cook and they wait for their men. They sit by the shore, dutifully mending nets and sails, always busy with their needles.

  I stay with my aunt, doing whatever tasks she requires of me. Mostly she requires nothing; she sits in her rocking chair, smoking her pipe, staring into space and saying nothing of my failure.

  After she fell, the thing that Syl had become was given to the fire. No one wished to look upon it too closely, that mangled and twisted form: fingers, beak, feathers, hair.

  * * *

  Outside the window, I hear the pattering of steps. I look out to see hooded shapes hurrying by, heading down the hillside towards the quay. This time there is little conversation, no excited calls ringing into the air, but still I know what it means.

  The men have returned from the sea.

  At a glance from my aunt, I don my coat and slip out of the door. The cold air in my lungs feels like a relief after the closed rooms and I limp along in the wake of the women, scarcely knowing why.

  The tables are set out along the quay, shining knives waiting there like smiles. Waves gently tap the hulls of the boats, lined up against the harbour wall. There is a stink of bladderwrack and brine; the sky is not grey but a fresh clear blue scudded with white, and a firm breeze is blowing from the north. I realise something strange. There are no gulls, not today; no wailing cries ringing across the water.

  The women are not seated at their tables, are not waiting for the catch. They stand a short distance away, together, still wearing their hoods. I can barely see their faces beneath them; I cannot see their hands. Then, as one, they cast off their capes.

  Beneath, they are naked. They do not wear the clothes their men have given them. Their hair is loose, rippling down their backs. They stand tall. They are unashamed of their bodies, of their bruises, the useless stubs of their wings.

  Each is holding a mass of white feathers. They have made new skins, I realise, though not of swan feathers; the men have burned or broken too many for that. I peer into the air once more, cold suddenly, searching again for the gulls, listening for their rapacious cries. The sky is empty.

  The women’s faces are solemn. I cannot tell by their expressions what they are thinking. It only strikes me then that swans do not cry. They keep the brine inside them; the salt permeates their bones, their blood. It changes them. They, too, can adapt; after all, the river alwa
ys has flowed into the sea.

  The women are ready. And when they take their new forms, red of eye, sharp of beak, gulls sinuous and quick, feathers slick and shining, it is plain for anyone to see that they are very, very hungry.

  That’s the Spirit

  Sarah Lotz

  Brendan made a show of breathing out, and opened his eyes. “Spirit is letting me know Percy’s here, Mrs. Wilson. Right here in this room with us. I’m getting… I can sense his essence.”

  Mrs. Wilson let out a yip of joy. “I knew he wouldn’t let me down. Can you tell him I haven’t moved any of his things? His toys are still where he left them.”

  “He can hear you.”

  “And he’s still happy? He was always so happy.”

  Brendan surreptitiously checked his watch. Ten minutes to go. Christ. Mrs. Wilson’s consultations always felt like they lasted for days. And where the hell was Helen? It wasn’t like her to leave him up to his own devices. “I’m getting…” He frowned slightly, then touched his gut, which, he had to admit, was larger than he’d like. “I’m getting… I’m sensing there’s a slight blockage of some sort. Did Percy ever have stomach issues, Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Brendan, no,” Helen’s voice hissed through the earpiece, backtracked by the wet wheeze of her battered lungs. “Stick to the bloody script.”

  He hid a smirk. Bingo. He knew that would draw her out.

  Mrs. Wilson sighed. “Not that I recall. Well… he did get an icky tummy once when I gave him too much bacon.”

  Brendan leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think they might be spoiling him on the other side.”

  “For the love of God, man.” Helen was getting really irate now. “She’s one of our few remaining regulars. Do you want us to be out on the streets?”