Heiresses of Russ 2014

by Melissa Scott

  Hush-oh, stay inside, the pooled shadows breathed. The shadows that had loved her. Or the world will eat your heart.

  The shadows that had told her she could be a girl or a ghost, nothing more.

  Hide safe until it’s time.

  Disguise, came the thought. My love is fond of faces.

  On her dressing table were pearl-tipped hairpins, bright brooches, tiny jeweled scissors. Wyrisa scooped them up, went to her window, drove the scissors under a carved bird’s back, and worked, how she worked! She used her long hard nails and sang to drown out the whimper of the walls as she filled her fingers with splinters, as she bled.

  The wood under her hands pulsed and cried like a living thing, a murdered thing. She shook her head against her own tears, for the place that had cradled her; for the window that had given her the golden skin of the moon. Outside, below, the Carnival twirled on into the afternoon; bright masks as far as the eye could see. None saw her.

  Wrench. Bleed. Carve. With a cry of savage joy, at last, she flung the bird into the air. And it flew! Lopsided and wooden, buoyed with purpose, it flew.

  •

  Have you ever waited alone for a lover as the light goes out of the world? It can make you sick, and how much more so when your blood is still running and your home cooling about you like a corpse? Wyrisa saw the street drying up and slowly lengthening, all the trees along its banks putting out clouds of tiny flowers to hide the retreating city in white. She heard the laughter and life of the day recede into the distance. But she waited.

  And Bue came in the dark, as the tide began to trickle back. Swinging a bundle of dry white flowers, wearing thin wedding garlands.

  “Why are you wearing those?” cried Wyrisa. “Where’s my bird?”

  And this is what Bue told her:

  •

  Your bird! Afraid I’ve lost your bird—but I’m getting this all backwards. I’ll try to tell it right.

  Will you come down? Ah, don’t look like that! I know it’s late, but did you think I’d find you quick? I had to get away from Jerrin first, and then everything was swallowed up in summer smoke and dust!

  You should have seen his face, his fury! He whisked me off on that cursed crocodile-boat—I didn’t ask where he’d got that from—back to the gardens, raging at me all the way:

  “Is this how you repay my friendship? I woke this morning and thought, where’s the boat gone?” he said “I feared for you at first, ha! What if the boat caught the fish-trap, I thought, what if it’s taken Bue off and eaten him?

  “Then other thoughts crept up on me—perhaps you’d given up your task, too scared to see it through, and you call yourself a haunt-smith! Where would you go? I went to your village, all the way, to all that mud and gloom! I’m looking for a lad called Bue, I said. Trap-maker, cocky, clever with death. Bue’s a girl, an old grumbly man said, my neighbor’s bad-luck daughter.

  Someone scolded him then, for speaking ill of one of their own, and for naming someone’s sex on Crossing-day.

  “Well, I came back in a bleak haze, but my luck turned on the Market Square. I’ve got you, and you can be my wife, for I’ve still a bet to win.”

  I felt what he meant about a haze. The air was all heat and haunting and bells and dreams and dead houses and the taste of smoke and splitting fruit. I was off floating, far from myself, had to get back, how to get back? I thought you’d abandoned me, and I still couldn’t think of anything else.

  Jerrin started up talking again, but I stared without hearing until he dashed canal-water in my face. “That’s better,” he said, as my make-up dripped away. So angry, he was, but something lost about him too.

  “You’re a fool, Jerrin,” I said. “What kind of wife would I make for you?” But I knew I was stuck.

  Then I saw we were going under low-leaning trees, and I managed to pull myself up on one. Then what? Walk all the way back? It was all I could do. Jerrin got up on the bank and came cursing after, and though I tried to lose him in the bundles of people walking by the water, he was never far behind.

  But as I pushed through the crowd something flew down to me, a wooden bird, one half of it all pretty and polished, the other cut rough. I knew just what it was. “Hop on my head,” I said, and it did, just as Jerrin caught up.

  I sneaked a look at my reflection in the water and saw a face like a puppet’s, my hair in ripples, and the bird floating there like some mad new comb for fine merchant-women to envy. It made me shiver, my skin all glazed like that and eyes turned to coins. And more of a lady than I’d ever looked in my life—but then, I hardly looked like me at all.

  Jerrin stopped and cried: “Oh! What goddess are you, come to walk the festival among us!”

  “No,” said I, and it was the bird’s voice I spoke with. Had to fight in my throat to get my own voice through, and I spoke in my regular low tone: “I’m no goddess.” Oh, and he didn’t know if I was man or woman then, but I could see how he wanted me.

  It was a fine idea of yours, but the bird’s ghostly little heart wasn’t so strong as when it was stuck in your window-frame, and its power flickered over me. So Jerrin chased, and saw my true face, and said he’d leave me be if I could help him find this strange new beauty he had seen. And Jerrin chased, and saw my mask, and claimed such love I’d have blushed if my cheeks weren’t false and frozen. I led him along until I couldn’t keep it up and fell over laughing. He tried to kiss me, and saw my face flickering, and oh, poor boy, he didn’t know what to do.”

  “What are you?” he howled, and then shook his head and said, “no matter, just let me go and face my ruin.”

  Well, I’d been cruel enough, and to one I’d called a friend.

  So I told him the whole thing, and made him a deal. After all, I figured his silly bet had given me a new shot at the world, even if he never meant it to. So I went with him to his brother, yes, wore the wedding garlands, even sang the promise-songs, in my ghost face. How the little bird struggled, to keep me frozen for long enough—but it did. And I made certain Jerrin knew it was the ghost he wed, and the bird knew it too, and ah, you should have heard it sing! But it was a broken thing, and I made him swear he’d burn its spirit free, eat salt-plums in its honor.

  I left him a widower, but he kept his inheritance. If there’s a thread of sense in him, he’s learned his lesson.

  I walked all the way here; no clever boat to carry me, no incense-trees to beckon, only my luck to feel the way. The city stretched itself out, streets dried to hot clay and grown so, so long, but I walked them.

  And I could turn back around now and go home; I will if you tell me. But I’m no-one’s wife, if you’ll believe me. I’d be yours, your husband, your anything, but just come down out of there!

  •

  In anger Wyrisa came down, the anger of ruined fingers and long cold hours and marriage-games. Or perhaps it was boldness, the boldness of shaking off old faces. Or—and I think this is the truth—it was both. They stood in the deepening street, and realized they knew where they were: they place where telling stories to each other was no longer enough.

  What follows is their own affair.

  •

  Isn’t that satisfactory? That’s the way of the city—it doesn’t tell complete tales, but you might find pieces of this one in fragments from other tellers’ tongues. Like those who write accounts of all the strange fish you can find there, all their blessings and curses: the crowfish that scream at dawn in bedside jars, or the long leathery eels that were once men and should never be eaten by moonlight. And the most talked-of these days, the basket-fish: scales so very much like weave; hollow of meat and pebble-eyed. There’s a tale told about how they came to be, woven with wood and death and boldness into a sort of life; empty as wishes, hungry as love.

  They also speak of an alley-gliding monster, a red boat with fine latticed screens and grinning teeth, forever chasing basket-fish. And why not? Perhaps it wants the chance to become something new, too. Because that’s the blessing those
basket-fish bring, as the stories have it—if you manage to catch one as they flash fleetly by.

  •

  The

  Raven

  and Her Victory

  Tansy Rayner Roberts

  I recognised the woman in the poem. Perhaps no one else would have done. My name (for once) was not present, carefully couched in floral language or complex metaphor. There was no Victory or raven-haired Viceroy, no grey-eyed Victoire in russet skirts, not even a sly dig at Victoriana.

  Still, I knew that the woman in the poem was me. The woman in the poem is always me.

  •

  I first met Ida May at a charity dance benefit for war widows and children. My aunt, Mrs Grayson introduced us, as young ladies with something in common. “Victoria, my dear, have you met Miss Midas of Baltimore? She’s a writer, like yourself.”

  Miss Ida May Midas was an intense sort of woman, not pretty, with a pronounced brow and twitchy fingers. She wore brown, a striking gown if rather out of fashion, and she spoke in bursts, not used to polite company.

  “Mrs Grayson exaggerates,” I apologised. “I pen the social pages in our local paper. Hardly a celebrated poet like yourself.”

  Miss Midas gave me a dark, almost angry stare. “But you want to write. Real words. Real stories. You have a passion for the craft?”

  I was unaccustomed for young unmarried ladies like myself to talk about passion, or indeed much of anything. “I have a great desire to write history,” I found myself confessing. “But no one will let me do that, will they? I suppose I’ll teach.”

  “You can do better than that,” said Miss Midas, and something inside me unfolded like a crepe paper rose.

  •

  It was a mistake, I know that now. A scandalous, ridiculous mistake. And yet I hardly noticed it at the time, hardly thought about anything except the light in Ida May’s eyes as she explained a particular story of genius, or took apart some lesser work with scathing, critical words.

  We went about together for weeks, arm in arm. Visiting museums and tea houses, talking of history and politics and all manner of grand things. Words, all words. We filled the world with them. And then, in my aunt’s garden at the end of a long and vibrant day, we dropped the pretence that we were merely girls being chummy with each other, and I let her kiss me.

  Her mouth on mine was warmth and sunshine, even as the light faded in the garden. We clung to each other like trembling leaves, and then parted. I wanted nothing else in the world so much as her, that night, in my arms.

  I opened my eyes for a moment and saw the lawn behind us flare up for a moment in so many colours that I was dazzled, and afraid. The world was all of a sudden a daunting and overwhelming place. So I ran from her.

  It has been many years now, and I am still afraid.

  •

  Ida May sent me letters at first, scolding me for cowardice and scorching me with all manner of rebukes. Sometimes she enclosed downy white feathers in accusation, or dried flowers that fell to powder in my hands.

  Every letter made my skin prickle with fear, for with it would come a dreadful portent of some kind. Draughts might blow suddenly behind my neck, or water might drip through the ceiling to wet my hair. Once, the fine Persian rug beneath my feet unaccountably burst into flames, and smouldered for hours no matter how much we soaked it with water.

  After that, I left my mother’s house for college, determined to train as a teacher and to leave my fears and Miss Midas long behind me.

  She found my address soon enough, and though she no longer bothered to write whole letters to taunt me with, she continued to send feathers and flowers and occasional locks of her hair, each of which tormented me anew with small but impossible horrors.

  If this was love, I wanted none of it.

  •

  Eventually, the letters stopped arriving. I learned to breathe again in a world without magic. There was a gentleman who courted me for a short time, though we parted as friends before our names were joined upon the tongues of our acquaintances. He was not for me, nor I for him.

  Then in the third year of my studies, before we were released as qualified women of the world, there was Amy.

  We were both so coy and bashful that I am sure no one knew that our friendship had turned to romance—even we were slow to admit that to ourselves. But we both loved poetry, and read it to each other in the spare hours, blushing all the while.

  She read me one that she had cut from the newspaper, of a raven-haired princess in a magical land of many-coloured grass, and was surprised that it made my hands shake.

  “Why, I thought of you when I read it,” said Amy, so startled at my reaction that she forgot to blush. “Because of the title, see? And your hair is so lovely and dark.”

  The poem was “Victory,” by I.M. Midas. It was the first of many. I should have known that nothing would quiet her pen. She would never release me from the burden of that single, fleeting kiss.

  I could never kiss Amy. I did not fear society’s condemnation so much as a woman in my position should, perhaps. My fear was wilder, that again I might ignite that dreadful power that had sparked between myself and Miss Ida May Midas.

  My love for Amy was so much more than what I had felt so briefly for Ida May. Surely our kisses would set whole forests aflame. It could not be risked, and I could never tell her why.

  •

  The years passed. My friendship with Amy turned into a long and heartfelt correspondence as we taught in different schools, in different towns. Her letters soon became more friendly than passionate, and eventually I learned that she had chosen a conventional path, accepting the hand of an earnest young gentleman called Edward. I had never expected otherwise. She was too pretty to be a spinster.

  Meanwhile, I.M. Midas grew in reputation, her dark and threatening mode of poetry capturing the imagination of the time. She moved to Boston and then New York, taking up with a bohemian set that only added to her literary stature.

  One poem, about the ill omen of a raven, was published in over twenty newspapers across the country and for one brief season made Miss Midas a household name.

  I found myself in that poem, as I always did. The raven croaked its chilly message to a woman who searched for victory in dusty old books, who craved a career as a historian (something I myself had ceased to yearn for years before now). A woman who desired to be forgiven by her lover.

  Nevermore indeed.

  After that, I.M. Midas was often referred to as “the Raven,” even in my small circles. There were a few poets and book enthusiasts in my little town, and we met sometimes to read to each other while taking tea. Mr Oswald, who ran the library and the post office, took a particular delight in the words of “Mr Midas”, and would regularly clip poems out of the newspapers to share with us.

  “Ah, listen to this one, Miss Grayson,” he said one afternoon as our little group sat in my schoolroom with cups of tea and slices of fruit cake. “You will appreciate it, I think.”

  It was not a poem, but a very short story, about poet dying for lack of beauty, and the lost love who had broken his heart.

  “Why is Mr Midas always so sad?” complained Lucille Woodvine who was an excellent seamstress and quite pretty, but not especially bright.

  I closed my eyes, and listened to the end of the story. The poet died, and only then was allowed to return to the land of many-coloured grass he had visited once in his youth, the single time in his life that he had ever been happy.

  I would not crack. I would not. This was no more seductive than the letters or the feathers. Ida May had found another way to torture me for the choices of my past, and I would not go to her.

  •

  As Christmas approached, our little reading group received word of a new literary journal, The Stylus, edited by none other than I.M. Midas. I rejoiced in this news for I truly believed (I wanted to believe) that if Ida May received the acclaim due to her for her best and most powerful work, she might finally let go of the idea
that our never-was love was such a great tragedy in her life.

  I did not have to subscribe to the periodical, because Mr Oswald had already done so, and was delighted to go over the contents with the group. I did examine the crisp pages with great curiosity, I must admit.

  There was a poem by Midas herself, and many other pieces she had chosen from favourite writers and friends—some were beautiful, some banal, and all quite wretchedly bleak.

  Ida’s poem was about me. Of course it was. The poems are always about me. This one for once made no playful pun about my name, not even a discreet letter “v” placed somewhere noticeable, and yet it contained all of the elements I knew to recognise. The woman, this woman whom the poet loved, had a “classic” face, “queenly” stature, bright eyes, a musical voice, a pallid brow and curly dark hair.

  Even when she did not name me, the Raven was still writing about her mythical Victoria, a woman she had constructed upon a few dim memories.

  It was the article published at the back which made me tremble. It was a biography of I.M. Midas, poet-editor of The Stylus. A short piece, certainly, but one that was utterly false and scurrilous. No longer was Miss Midas merely writing under a name that implied she was male. Now she had actually allowed a piece to be written which stated her male identity as a fact. Ignatious Melville Midas had a Harvard degree, parents, enjoyed shooting and fishing, all artifice. A wife, by God, “his” helpmeet and muse, the raven-haired Mrs Victoria Midas.

  Ida May had claimed me after all, woven me into her imaginary history of a celebrated male poet with a devoted wife.

  As I consumed this news, smoke began to pour from the pages of The Stylus, and the journal burst into flames. Mr Oswald shouted, and Miss Woodvine screamed, and there was a great to-do with water and blankets.

  I was not burnt, which they all claimed was a miracle. But I was indeed broken.