The hallway remained silent.
She turned the oven to 350° and cut out an irregular circle about four inches across. Noting the time on the wall clock, she slid the greased cookie sheet into the oven.
When she checked ten minutes later, the cake was still pale and felt pliant under the pressure of her finger. Ten minutes more and its edges were beginning to tan, and after another ten it was an even, golden brown. She thumped it with a knuckle, feeling a bit like a contestant in the Great British Bake Off, then grabbed a potholder and pulled the soul cake out of the oven. It smelled delicious. She was tempted to taste it, just a crumb or two. No. No such thing as a ritual nibble. She left it on the counter to cool.
As the light outside began to fade, Phoebe dressed in her favorite black sweater and jeans. She put the soul cake in the center of one of Mother’s scarves, tying the corners together at the top. She added that to the basket, along with the funereal gold can, four votive candles, and a box of kitchen matches. She poured red wine into a glass, filling it nearly to the brim, then clicked off the kitchen light. She slid the patio door open with her foot, stepping out into the crisp, salt-scented air of twilight.
The sun was a Fiesta-red ball just above the horizon, flattening slightly as it descended, its surface veiled by a few wispy clouds. Phoebe watched it sink into the pewter sea, then took a deep breath, shifted her basket, and headed toward the dock.
She sat, six feet above the water. Small waves broke in front of her, scattering the surface with undulating lines of orange from the neon-sunset clouds. The basket beside her, she watched the surrounding colors fade. Water lapped softly at the pilings and she heard steady creakings from a few boats moored farther down the shore. Lights came on in houses on either side, reflecting like tiny amoebas in the dark water.
Phoebe set the scarf down on the white-washed planks and untied it, laying it flat. Votives anchored each corner. The night was still and when she lit the squat round candles, the wicks barely flickered. The light illuminated the rich colors of the scarf—butter yellow with emerald piping. The glass of wine cast rich ruby shadows.
She encircled the cake with Mother’s pearls.
Around the periphery she set the icons of her mother’s life: an unopened pack of Salems; a silver dollar from 1943, Mother’s birth year; the porcelain shepherdess; a deck of bridge cards with the queen of clubs face up; the small stack of photos. Above the scarf, the bundle of letters. Below it, the glass of wine.
She had just finished arranging everything when the full moon rose above the row of palm trees behind her, a line of white light dancing along the dark water like a path leading to the now-invisible horizon. Phoebe Morris dangled her legs over the gulf and tried to say goodbye.
Taking a drink of wine, she picked up the silver dollar and turned it over and over in her hand. What should she say? “Safe travels, Mother.” She threw it far out into the gulf. It sank soundlessly and felt like an empty gesture.
Emptiness. She was at a loss for words. She touched a finger to the soul cake. Prayers. That was the tradition. Beggars said prayers for the souls represented by each cake. She hadn’t prayed in years, wasn’t sure who or what she was praying to, but—She picked up the cake and took a bite. Bitter. Not sweet at all. Well, that was fitting. The spiced cake dissolved in her mouth, crumbly and a little gritty. She washed it down with a sip of wine.
“Our Father—” she began. No, wrong prayer. This was for Mother. Phoebe sighed and started again. “The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” It was a psalm, not a prayer, but she knew it by heart. She closed her eyes and recited it slowly.
Pulling another piece off the cake, she ate it and, after a moment of hesitation, picked up the letters. She read few lines from each of them and thought of all the replies she’d wanted to send back, but had never written. A lifetime of unspoken bravery. “Mother, you never—” she started to say. “Mother, I want—” Her words trickled away into the night air. Even now, the idea of talking back made her stomach tighten. After last night, she half expected Mother to appear, glaring, walking on water.
Another bite of cake, a sip of wine. Then, hands unsteady, Phoebe struck a red-tipped match against the wood of the dock, smelling a wisp of sulphur, and burned the first letter, holding the monogrammed page by its corner until the flames neared her fingers. The ember-rimmed fragments drifted over the side, hissing when they hit the water. They floated for a few minutes, pale against the darkness, then grew soggy and sank below the surface. She burned the others, one by one.
She slid the queen of clubs under the edge of the pearls and picked up the deck of cards. It had taken her a while to decide which queen was most evocative. Spades seemed overly wicked, diamonds too Gabor, and hearts just inappropriate. But clubs? Mother was the queen of clubs. Golf club, bridge club, luncheon club, Wellesley Club. A member instead of a mother.
It was unthinkable to think of her spending eternity without a deck of cards. Like warriors taking their shields to Valhalla. She took another bite of cake, half gone now, and held the deck in both hands.
Muscle memory kicked in. Without thinking, she divided the cards and began to shuffle. Whirr…, snap. Whirr…, snap. Her hands jerked at the sound, scattering the cards across the dock. They fluttered and sailed off into the water. Phoebe watched them disappear and picked up the queen of clubs, still lying on the silk scarf. “The queen is dead,” she whispered. She ate a bit of cake and tore the card in half, sweeping the pieces into the sea.
“I loved you once,” she said. “It hurt. I wanted to be just like you, but I wasn’t good enough.” A long silence until she spoke again.
“Then, you know what—I left.” Her voice grew stronger. “I survived. I made friends. And somewhere along the way, I realized that being like you was the last thing on earth I wanted.” She drained the wineglass, washing down the final morsel of cake.
A ragged sob surprised her, doubling her over. For several minutes after, she sat with her arms wrapped around herself, tears running down her cheeks, the wind now cold on her face. Time to go in. She felt a bone-deep weariness and a need for this to be over.
Without further ceremony, she pried off the plastic lid and tilted the gold canister toward the water. “Goodbye, Vibby,” she said. A small vortex of gray dust swirled away. Phoebe angled the can down and poured out the rest of the ashes, watching in stunned surprise as the small yellow measuring cup tumbled out and bobbed on the waves.
“Oh, no.” A gingery bile rose in her throat. “No, no, no.”
The cup disappeared from view. She looked down at the canister in her hands as the significance of what she’d done began to sink in.
“I’ve eaten Mother,” she said.
Not even in a metaphysical way, like the body of Christ that was actually a cracker. She had actually consumed bits of her mother.
Phoebe didn’t scream. She sat for a very long time, oddly calm. Shouldn’t she be horrified, disgusted? She tried to summon those feelings and found them missing. Maybe she was in shock? Likely. Shock was rather pleasant. She finally felt the kind of tranquil acceptance she’d hoped this ritual would bring her. Closing her eyes, she lay on her side, her cheek against the rough wood of the dock, her mind drifting farther and farther with each rhythmic swell of the waves.
When she woke again, the full moon was high in the starlit sky and the candles had all gone out. Phoebe sat up slowly, light-headed, her body leaden. She tried to stand, legs all pins and needles. Minutes passed. Soon she would gather up the objects that remained, damp from the sea and the night air, and return them to the basket. She smoothed a hand over the silky scarf and picked up her pearls.
With a little half-smile, she reached behind her neck and fastened the clasp with a practiced click.
“Mine,” she said.
* * *
Ellen Klages is the author of three acclaimed historical novels: The Green Glass Sea, which won the Scott O’Dell Award, and the New Mexico Book Award; and White S
ands, Red Menace, which won the California and New Mexico Book awards; and Out of Left Field, which is a finalist for the Children’s History Book Prize. Her short fiction has been translated into a dozen languages and been nominated or won multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. Ellen lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.
A Strange Uncertain Light
By G.V. Anderson
Anne twirled the thin, dull wedding band around her finger, quite loose. In their rush to be married, they’d failed to have it fitted properly. And there were scores layered in the metal, old scrapes and nicks from its previous owner that appeared when the light from the train window hit it just so. No one else sitting in the compartment noticed its poor quality, or they simply pretended not to. They hid behind the latest broadsheets instead, the front pages still reporting on the Munich Agreement despite it having been some weeks past.
“New bride, are you?” one middle-aged woman wreathed in shabby fur asked her, somewhere past Thirsk. “I can always tell.”
“Just yesterday,” Anne replied, swaying slightly as the train hit a switch track.
Opposite, beneath his trimmed graying moustache, the corner of Merritt’s mouth twitched. He still wore the same dark double-breasted suit he’d put on that last morning in Kent, rumpled now by almost two days’ travel, and there was a trace of liquor about him underneath the smell of bedsheets, cigarette smoke, and coffee. Anne knew she must fare no better: She’d had no time to pin her hair properly that morning, nor smear her usual scoop of talcum under her arms.
She caught the eye of the middle-aged woman again and saw now her knowing expression, the discerning brow. Her face grew hot.
“My husband and I honeymooned in the South of France,” the woman said wistfully. “Lovely place. I’m not sure what I’d have made of Yorkshire—it can be rather grim, this time of year.”
“I grew up in Yorkshire,” replied Merritt, watching the embankment alongside the train fall away. “The best of the season’s passed, it’s true, but we should catch the last of the heather.” He sat a little straighter and held out his hand to Anne. “Darling, look—”
Purple, Merritt had told her when she’d asked him about his home county, and what a poor preparation that was for the bristling mat of ling spread out before them. Anne sprang up and unhooked the catch on the window, sending the men’s newspapers flying.
“For Heaven’s sake, young lady—”
“My hair—!”
But Anne wouldn’t shut the window on that patchwork of heather and cotton grass, those banks of soft green bracken. She slung one arm out of the window and let the vibrations of the engine rattle her teeth. It hardly felt real that, until yesterday, she’d never set foot outside her little Kent town, let alone seen London. Her whole world had been contained within the walls of the schoolhouse, or her bedroom, or her father’s surgery. And now here she was, almost as far north as it seemed north could go.
“And there’s Rannings,” said Merritt, who’d caught her mood and stood with her, pointing across the moor to the elegant redbrick country house-turned-hotel. His body warmed her back.
“Oh,” Anne breathed, “it’s—”
She jerked away blinking—some grit in her eye, some spark of coal—and looked down in time to see the colorless shade of a man caught between the rails and the wheels, to be sliced through like brisket, splashing his blueish guts up the side of the train, and the window, and her face; and Anne’s own guts turned cold. Please, God, not here, too. The strength went out of her legs and she slumped against Merritt, who hadn’t seen a thing, of course, and who laughed a little as if she were a child who’d overexcited herself. Then he saw how pale she’d gone. “Darling, what’s the matter? Here, sit down, we’ll be arriving soon.”
All along the train, passengers were standing to check their bags stowed on the overhead racks, to put away a book or a bundle of knitting, to adjust their coats and fish gloves out of pockets. Amidst the hubbub, Anne shrank back into the badly sprung seat. Her eyes flicked to the red walls of Rannings before another embankment rose up and hid them from view.
These aberrations had been with her since late childhood. Silhouettes swinging in the orchards at night; shadows lurking solemnly around the churchyard on Sundays. “Brought on by stress,” her father had decided, after consulting the latest journals from London: A nervous disorder resulting from overstimulation, to be treated with ice baths and, later, shock therapy. How she could possibly be overstimulated in a town like Penshawe, miles from anywhere important, he never thought to ask. The intrusions had worsened, passing through London, but that was different. A sudden elopement and its subsequent wedding night would overstimulate anyone.
There was nothing to strain her nerves in Yorkshire, nothing to worry about now that she was free, was there? And yet, they’d followed her anyway.
Merritt was smiling mildly at her. She couldn’t smile back. She’d never found the right moment to tell him, in the two weeks of their acquaintance and their whirlwind departure, and had hoped she’d never need to. He seemed a respectable sort of person. Respectable people, in her experience, recoiled from lunacy. He might wash his hands of her completely and leave her ruined. After all, she was quite mad, and—and this scraped at her in particular—how well did she know him, really?
She picked at the dry skin beneath her new wedding band. It calmed her.
• • • •
I come upon the moor at dusk and quickly lose my way. A band of moormen point out the path of exposed shale ahead, clutches of auburn-breasted grouse swinging from their fists. They’re curious of me; it’s not often you see a girl in a fine dress traveling alone.
“You’re a long way from home,” one of them jokes.
“Liverpool’s not so far as you think, sir,” I say.
“You don’t sound like a Scouser.” His smile turns to scowl. “You sound right proper.”
The stays of my corset—and this twit—are chafing me raw. I turn away from them and allow myself a grimace.
“It’ll be dark soon and, beggin’ your pardon, you’re not from round ’ere,” another deep voice calls to me as I climb the loose shale. “These moors can be treacherous. You’ll come back with us and set out again when there’s light to see by, if you know what’s good for you.”
From my vantage point, I scan the way ahead. The shadows pool like pitch in the mossy hollows and it’s a cloudy night—there’ll be no moon, no stars. Already, my breath expels as mist and hoarfrost lends its sheen to my coat. It’s tempting to accept their offer. The grouse look plump, full of fat and flavor. But these men are strangers whose stares grow bolder the longer I stay, and I’ve tested my employer’s generosity far enough. I promised to return to Missus Whittock within the week or consider my position lost. I cannot spare even one night.
“Thank you for your concern, sir, but I’m in haste.”
“Then,” says the youngest, quietly but firmly, stepping forward and raising his lamp, “let me escort you.” He peels away from them and joins me atop the shale.
“See you’re back home before chime hours,” the deep-voiced moorman calls to him. The lad nods and leads the way to the path.
The lamplight drives away the shadows, exposing the frost-rimed bog asphodel pushing up through the rag-rug of sphagnum. Somewhere off to our right, a vole startles and darts away, too quick to catch. My guide doesn’t notice. He looks to the horizon, charting the contour of the darkening moors’ silhouette against the bloody sky like a seaman charts his stars. It looks featureless to me, but he must recognize some dale or other because he turns to me and says, “We’re some ways off yet. I’ve heard the house keeps early hours. They might not answer the door this late to someone like—I mean, unless you’re expected.” He hesitates, scanning the cut of my coat, the stitching of my boots. “Are you expected, miss?”
“No,” I admit.
A few steps, and then, “Where’s
Liverpool, miss?”
He’s looking at me like I’ve come from another world. I suppose I have. On Liverpool’s docks, you can hardly hear yourself think. Ships laden with spoils from the West Indies bring free men and officers’ servants with them; and immigrants from Glasgow and Belfast, such as my parents, come looking for work. Lascars and Chinamen haul ashore crates stamped with the East India Company crest—crates heavy with silk, salt, and opium—and for all their labor, their captains often leave them behind.
Liverpool’s rough mixture of language and color and cloth may seem strange here, but it’s familiar to me. It’s this numbing quiet, this cold, the moormen’s slow burr that I will not forget.
But Yorkshire can’t be as cut off as all that. My guide’s coloring is dark and reddish, yet his lashes frame stark olive eyes. Even here, his face is poured from the melting pot of the world.
“It’s to the west,” I tell him. “At the mouth of the Mersey.”
We trudge on.
“Begging your pardon, miss, but what’s your business at Rannings? If you’re looking for a position, I should warn you—”
“It’s nothing like that,” I snap, and then twist my mouth; he’s only being kind. “An old friend of mine called on the doctor at Rannings last winter and hasn’t sent word home. I’ve come to fetch him. You haven’t seen him, have you? He’s tall, taller than you, and walks with a limp.” What a poor description for someone I’d know from the back of their head! God knows I fell asleep facing it often enough as a child.
He chews his lip. “I think I’d remember a stranger like that. But I hope you find him.” He hesitates now, his warm skin giving off vapor in the lamplight. “We hear talk, sometimes, from the groundsmen . . . About the doctor.”
I reach for his arm, grip the corded muscle there. He stops and looks at my hand in alarm. “What sort of talk?”
The Long List Anthology Volume 6 Page 32
