The story went like this: Paul had been on the airstrip on the jungle base waiting for a transport helicopter to arrive. He stood watching the sky when a little girl, no more than four years old, came running out of the jungle, her face streaked with dirt and sweat. She was wearing a man’s coat, far too big for her, and it dragged on the ground as her bare feet sprinted and stumbled their way to Paul. The other men on the base had seen her too and seemed to know what was happening. Paul ran toward her, his first instinct; he told Alice he had to grab her and get her away from the jungle, away from the distant sounds of gunfire. His sergeant pulled him back and tackled him to the ground, covering him with his body as the explosion rocked the sky and trees, blowing a hole in the concrete, obliterating the child, leaving only a tangle of gore and bone. It was an old tactic of the Viet Cong, he had told Alice, and the guys who had been in-country longer than him knew the trap. They sent children with explosives strapped to them onto the bases; the men ran to help and were killed in the blast. Paul’s sergeant had saved his life but lost the skin off his back and legs in the blast. The sergeant was taken to Saigon for surgery and died a week later of infection. Paul never spoke of Vietnam again, and Alice had not dared to ask.
As Alice stared at the framed portrait that sat on the gravestone, of Paul in his uniform, she wondered when it had been taken. Had he already seen the horror of a child blown to pieces in the name of war when the camera had flashed? Or had this been before he left for Vietnam? Was the blank stare part of his nature or something learned by violence and despair? Coira stood next to her, one hand tugging on the hem of Alice’s dress absentmindedly and the other clutching her plush bear.
The child still hadn’t cried, spoken of her father, or reacted in any way. Paul’s mother had grabbed her up and held her as she cried, and Coira had simply stared at the woman as though she were an alien. “It’s your doing,” Paul’s mother had spat at Alice days before at the funeral home as they worked out the details of the service. “Your doing.” The woman’s eyes narrowed and her voice sharpened. “You taught her to hate her father. Who’s to say my son was even her father? Lord knows what you were up to.” Alice had stifled the urge to laugh. Between the two of them, to accuse her of being the unfaithful one was ironic in a way his Welsh mother would never quite understand.
Luckily, Paul’s mother and sister had been too overcome with sobs and dramatics to attack Alice since then. Two of Paul’s brothers were there, quiet men who kept their heads down and spoke very little. She had never met them, and she saw no reason to be overly friendly now at this late date. The third brother was in a psychiatric hospital in Brooklyn, New York. No one had filled Alice in on the details, and she wasn’t quite sure she even cared to know why. The news had prompted a mighty harrumph from Mum when she’d found out, as though this explained everything.
Alice was tired of it all. She just wanted to take her daughter and go home. Not to Mum’s little cabin, but home to Glasgow. As the pastor told them to bow their heads in prayer, Alice was hit by a wave of longing for the cottage at the back of Many-Greats Grandmum Moira’s manor house on Cathedral Court, where she had spent many of her early years during the war. She missed the little flat over the shop on High Street and the narrow lane framed by the laundry hung out to dry in the meager Scottish sun. She could smell the rosemary and lavender of the courtyard garden that hung on the periphery of her childhood memory. As the small crowd of mourners raised their heads from prayer and the pastor paused, Alice saw a new path for herself and Coira stretching out ahead of them.
So lost was she in her reverie that she had not noticed that the pressure of Coira’s little hand had released from her skirt. She looked down and was startled to see the child was gone.
“Excuse me, young one… um, someone?” the pastor said kindly as Coira walked deliberately to the grey ceramic urn sitting on the flat board waiting to be lowered into the deep hole in the ground. Alice started to grab her back and then stopped. Her daughter needed to do whatever it was she was going to do.
The child stood in front of the urn for a long moment and then lifted her arms into the air, her teddy bear still firmly in her grip. Alice felt a stir in the air, and she exchanged a glance with Mum. Aunt Polly seemed perplexed, but despite her blood, Aunt Polly had never been sensitive to such things. Paul’s family stopped their incessant wailing and watched, unsure of what would happen next. The bleary-eyed brothers raised their heads and watched as Coira brought her arms down in a swoop, and with them an icy wind blew through the stretch of land. It carried bits of snow and sharp ice; it pushed the onlookers forward with its strength; and the grey ceramic urn tipped and cracked in half. Paul’s ashes lay spread out on the board, and his mother gasped in shock. Alice stood stock-still; she had never seen any manifestation of her family’s talents in Coira, and she had secretly hoped that she was as ordinary as Aunt Polly, who led a decidedly less complicated life.
The little girl flicked her wrist, and the jagged pieces of ceramic fell apart and Paul’s ashes swirled into the air like a cyclone. The bits of dust and ash danced and intermingled, twinkling like stars and catching the light. Alice held her breath and the pastor fell to his knees, his eyes locked on the unimaginable sight before him. The cloud of ash grew higher and higher and then fanned out in every direction, and just like that, the mortal remains of Paul Coslet were scattered to the far ends of the wind.
“He didn’t want to be in that hole,” Coira said softly, turning to face her mother. “It was dark there and he hated the dark.”
The next few minutes were filled with an overwhelming explosion of emotion and angry words. Alice rushed to her daughter, followed by Mum and Aunt Polly, who folded the little girl into their protective arms and blocked her from the rage of Paul’s mother, who unleashed a torrent of curses that made the pastor cringe. The sister’s passive state had broken as well, and she threw herself at Alice. She screamed that this was all her doing, that Alice was behind this and it was evil, Satan’s work, and they would rot in hell. The pastor sat on the ground, stunned and speechless.
Later, after Coira had been fed a plate of liver and onions by Mum, bathed, and tucked into her clean bed that used to be Alice’s, they all sat around the great dark wood table and Mum poured a length of brandy into each of their tea cups. No one had much to say; even Aunt Polly was speechless. Alice sipped the dark liquor and unconsciously ran her fingers over the ink mark on her left wrist. Mum was doing the same, staring into her cup.
“I spent a good part of my life trying to figure how to shield you from this,” Mum said finally. “I thought by bringing you here, away from the old country, that you would grow to be different, ordinary.” She glanced at Aunt Polly. “No offense intended.”
“None taken,” Aunt Polly said with a slight smirk on her lips. “The lot of you are creepy enough without me adding to the mix.” Despite herself, Alice smiled at her aunt’s plump face, which was starting to show an elaborate cross pattern of wrinkles.
“I thought that if I never taught you about the old ways, the things your Great-Grandmum Muriel taught me, then you would be safe from it all.” She paused. “I’ve known since you were Coira’s size that I’d failed, and then I failed doubly by not stepping in later on.”
“Mum—” Alice began, but Mum cut her off.
“No. Let me finish. There’s a thing we’re meant to remember in our line, something that has always felt just out of reach for me and something that seems to be getting stronger with each one of us. My Grandmum knew it, and it was just outside her grasp. That little one in there is stronger than all of us put together.”
And just like that, Alice found herself and Coira back on a plane for another seven-hour journey, to be followed by another eight-hour journey. This time there were no tears. Mum sat next to them, helping Coira arrange her colors on the airplane tray. Aunt Polly had taken over the cabin in the woods; she might sell it, she told them, buy a condo somewhere it doesn’t snow. She had kissed
them all goodbye, and Mum had left knowing her baby sister did not need her protection any longer.
In the blackness of her cave, the Cailleach raised her head to listen to the still air and rustle of insect legs on the stone walls. The dark waters of the Lethe splashed along the banks, and she knew her daughters were finally arriving home.
CATHERINE FRASER HAS BEEN suspended from the primary school for one week. The incident started as a fuss over nothing, in her opinion, but Mum and Dad have not seen it that way. She had fallen asleep during arithmetic—not on purpose—but the instructor, an old man who spoke with a lisp and smelled of tuna fish, had been droning on and on about long division, and she had nodded clean off.
That was not what led to her suspension, however. The suspension came somewhat later as the old man was making Catherine clean the chalkboards and sweep the floor of the classroom as punishment for sleeping through the lesson. The other students had left for the day, and Catherine knew her Mum was expecting her at the college any time now. She normally walked from the primary school to Queen Margaret’s Medical College for Women, where her mother was a lecturer. The old man knew this and highly disapproved, as did many old men who encountered her mother; they believed that she had greatly overstepped her boundaries by becoming a teacher in what was traditionally a man’s field. Catherine suspected that her punishment had less to do with her sleeping and more to do with a grudge held against her on her mother’s behalf.
Even now, as she pounded erasers in the open window sending clouds of yellow chalk dust flying, he was sitting at his great wooden desk that was said to be modeled after Prime Minister Baldwin’s writing table and muttering half to himself and half to Catherine about what exactly her problem was. It was, according to his sputtering rant, a lack of direction at home, two working parents, and no one at home to teach her the proper ways of discipline and manners. And don’t get him started on her grandmother, and don’t think we don’t all know about where you come from, young lady. Catherine set down the newly dusted erasers and picked up two more, creating a yellow chalk cloud to block out his words.
We all know what goes on in that shop, he was ranting. Selling snake oil and spitting in the eye of the Church is what goes on there. He slammed down a geometry book in the guise of straightening up his papers. Catherine had heard all this before and was still largely tuning him out. Her Grandmum Muriel ran the apothecary that had been owned by her great-grandmother, everyone in town knew that. Everyone also knew that Many-Greats Grandmum Moira’s grand house had become a girl’s boarding school when she passed away at the grand age of ninety-eight. The boarding school was extremely selective and taught the girls unheard-of things such as science and the medicinal arts. Catherine and her mother were often the target of much ire from the more traditional crowd who believed their family was destroying the very structure of things. Mum laughed at such talk; she was quite used to it. She had spent her entire career being an exception to the rule, and the crass comments rolled off her like water off a duck’s back.
Catherine was not quite as accustomed to it all, though. The old man stood and crossed to a stack of student papers on the sideboard. If the authorities had done their job, he continued, they’d have run your line out of town in accordance with the witching laws. You do know about the witching laws, don’t you, girl? he asked with a sneer on his thin lips surrounded by shoots of grey mustache hair. Tell me, Miss Fraser, what exactly are the witchcraft laws? He was assuming she didn’t know. Catherine sighed. She knew the laws well; the old man was not the first instructor to bring them up in a lecture in the name of history and then spend the lesson shooting challenging looks at her. She had been told about the Witchcraft Act of 1735 by her Grandmum Muriel and Great-Grandmum Catriona. She knew that the shop where they worked and lived was officially an apothecary that sold teas and herbs for the bath and whatnot. She knew that the officials largely looked the other way, and when they did not, bribes had been known to be paid. She also knew that there was much talk about dropping the Witchcraft Act from the books, and that no one had enforced the law for so many years that most didn’t even know it existed. The old man, however, assumed strongly that she did not know any of this and that the mere mention of witchcraft laws would make her quake in her Mary Janes. The assumption angered her.
And your sister, the old man continued. Don’t think that we don’t know exactly the cause of that calamity. At this, Catherine began to feel the water stop rolling off her back and begin to saturate her skin. The devil’s work if ever I’ve seen it, he continued. Catherine stopped wiping the chalkboard with a damp cloth and stood facing the green scratched surface, trying to breathe as Mum had taught her to do when she became angry. Polly had been born in a caul, an suspicious sign if ever there was one among the older and less educated circle in town. Mum had been at the NHS hospital where Dad worked in the children-and-family ward. Catherine and Dad had sat in the waiting room while the nurses and doctors ran back and forth, so the story that came to them concerning Polly had been secondhand.
The nurses cut the caul from the baby’s head to find her blue and devoid of breath. A slap to her arse did nothing, and it was all the nurses could do to wrap the poor wee thing in a blanket and hand the dead infant to Mum. The rest of the story came from a young Red Cross volunteer who paused to look back, as the rest excused themselves from the tragedy. The girl, who would later tell the story to the whole of Glasgow from what it seemed, was shaken: it was the first stillborn infant she had seen, and she was trying not to cry, as it might upset the mother. But the mother of the dead infant wasn’t crying; instead, she sang a song in a language that the Red Cross girl didn’t recognize. It was less song and more chant, and as her voice droned on and on, the young onlooker found herself locked into place as though by witchcraft.
What happened next was most certainly the strongest evidence of ill deeds and dark spirits (as goes the story that spread across town). The tiny blue-grey corpse lying in her mother’s arms began to move, and then the skin began to change. No more was it the color of death itself, but a healthy pink. The tiny face, frozen in death, came to life, and a mighty scream broke from the infant’s lips. The mother, who should have been terrified and fearful, instead lay there as calm as though she were knitting a sweater. She held the baby and whispered something the Red Cross girl could not quite make out, but it most certainly was not English and without doubt was the devil’s work.
The doctors rushed back in to hear the crying baby and declared a miracle. Later, after Polly was safe at home in their cottage set back in the woods a distance from the manor house on Cathedral Court, lookie-loos peeked through the front window, already full of the story the young Red Cross girl had told a dozen people. Those dozen had each told a dozen more, and soon it seemed the whole of Glasgow knew the strange story of how Mum had brought baby Polly back to life. Mum chuckled and ignored the curious eyes and questions. Dad bristled and ignored the attention, but Catherine felt a surge of protectiveness toward her little sister, born in a caul and never meant to hold breath. She would not let her be marred by such ugly whispers and thoughts.
The old man continued on. Witchery if I’ve ever seen it, and no better than the ones that came before you. Wouldn’t be surprised if the lot of you end up on the pyre. Catherine felt a slow boil starting in her toes. It rolled up her calves and knees, up into her belly, where it settled and shot like a dart to her temples. Back in the day, they took witches to the edge of town and collected a pile of stones and you can guess what happened next. The old man spat out the words as he slammed textbooks down on his writing table. They’d start with your witch of a grandmother and torch her snake-oil shop. Catherine spun around, locking her dark eyes on the old man’s watery blue. He paused, but seeing her anger, he lifted his thin upper lip in a sneer of victory. Next they’d haul your witch of a mother out into the street, tie her to a stake, and light a match. Catherine felt her fists balling up; the old man was waiting for her to scream, to c
ry, to insult him. If she did, it wouldn’t be pounding erasers and sweeping the floor, it would be far more serious, and a voice in Catherine’s head warned her about taking the bait.
Next they’d march to that witch house and throw all those young ghouls out by the napes of their necks. Nothing but trouble, educating girls, and they’ll all grow up to be exactly like the rotten lot that you call family. Catherine closed her eyes, counting to ten as her mother had taught her. The voice droned on and on from behind the writing table. You and your sister would be sent to the workhouses; see if that weak little sack of a girl can lift and pull, or if God would take back what was never meant to be here in the first place.
Catherine’s eyes snapped open, and she felt the pulse in her temples flowing down her arms. Her eyes fixed on the old man, and instead of a sneer, she saw fear in his aged eyes. The papers and books flew from his desk as though they had a mind of their own. The writing table overturned, spilling a teacup and a metal ruler that he used to smack the hands of lazy students. The old man let out a sound that would’ve been a scream if he had had enough breath. It was Catherine’s turn to smile.
“I’m done cleaning, sir,” she said quietly in a voice she did not quite recognize and walked out the door.
Mum had listened to the headmaster’s story of how Catherine had thrown papers and books around the room and flipped a desk with her bare hands. Catherine had managed to suppress a laugh at the old man’s version of the story and at the fear in his eyes as he avoided her stare. Catherine would not go back to the public primary school; instead, she was enrolled in her many-greats grandmum’s academy even though she was the youngest student in the crowd. It was, strictly speaking, a secondary school, but the headmistress didn’t bat an eye. I’m sure that a girl of your talents will make your family proud, was all she said.
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