Sunspot Jungle

by Bill Campbell

  Once after saying this, or something like it, I remember getting sick into my glass and throwing it at some other boy’s head. We had a fight, and then I kept on drinking.

  We were there for about a fortnight before I became a donkey. I remember that very well. I was sitting at a table, scoffing soda bread and sausages with my hands, laughing at something or someone, ha-ha-ha-ing with my mouth full and open. It must have been a good joke because I was still laughing when the change began. It was not my ears that grew first, but my hooves.

  My toes went numb, and then it felt as though there was a crust over my feet, hardening and setting like melted wax when you dip a finger into it and let it cool in the air. Then the strangeness was in my hands, and I saw what must have happened to my feet; my fingers stuck together, and my nails grew right over them and over the backs of my hands, swelling, darkening, setting themselves into little black hooves.

  I screamed and screamed. My backbone stretched, and my knees twisted unnaturally until they were on the wrong side of my legs. Then my ears grew. They pushed themselves up my skull to the top of my head. Hair burst from everywhere. I shrieked and howled and had broken the table already, smashing food to the floor, sobbing at the faces around me that looked on, blurrily astonished and idiotic.

  By then of course, it was far too late. But I was still screaming.

  “Help, help me! Please, please, please. Help, help, heeeee—heeeeee—” and as I drew my breath in, my vocal cords must have changed, too, for I brayed a dreadful “Heeee haaaaaw!”

  And then I could speak no more. I cried and cried, frightened by my own unrecognisable noise and by the realisation that donkeys don’t cry tears.

  The puppet was flailing his limbs around and shouting his babble, but he was mostly ignored. The same transformation had begun to take hold of some of the other boys in the room, and the rest ran away. A few, high on a cloud of opium, sat in a corner and watched it all, no doubt thinking that this was all just part of the dream.

  I shivered out my shock in a little wooden pen that was full of other newly-made donkeys. We had been swiftly rounded up with whips and cattle prods. They must have been ready and waiting.

  I stared at the planks I was pressed against and saw that there were teeth marks in the wood and clumps of grey donkey hair and blood. Some men came in and shouted and jabbed sharp sticks into the sides of the more hysterical donkeys.

  “Ouch, would ya stop!”

  I shivered when I realised that one of the donkeys could still speak.

  “Ah, here! We’ve got a chatty one!” said one of the men. They opened the gate and grabbed him.

  “Please!” the donkey said, all wild and white-eyed. “Please—let me go home!”

  “Home?” One of the men holding the donkey laughed. “Like this? You’d give your ma a shock!”

  “My ma!” The donkey shook beneath the men’s rough hands and cried, “Mammy, mammy!”

  The men dragged the talking donkey away. I don’t know what they did with him.

  I don’t know what happened to the puppet either. He hadn’t turned into a donkey; he already had a spell on him. Wood could only take so much. Most likely he got away. He was so stupid he was probably fine. Stupid people can get on remarkably well in life.

  And now as I feel my breath fall out, I think the curse is loosening its hold on me. My hooves are pinning and needling me, and they are softening, splitting apart to form fingers and toes again. My dusty, grey hair falls away. I am shrinking. I am becoming a little thin figure like the other people I see. I fear I may blow away.

  There is a figure over me. Not my master. Some boy. He puts a hand on my arm. His skin looks very pale against mine. He’s got a round, stupid face. The puppet, I think. And then no, it couldn’t be. This boy is too young. He’s not the puppet. Just a boy. Firm flesh and unbroken bones. He stands and looks down at me. Wipes his hand on his trousers. Walks away.

  Is he leaving me? I try to raise my head a little. That’s too hard to do, so I rest it back on the ground again. But my voice must have returned to me, like the rest of my human parts. I want him to come back. Give me help or pity or mercy. My mouth hangs loose, my tongue moves, trying to cry out, but nothing happens. I want to say that I’ve been good, but I’ve forgotten how to speak, that I’m a boy, really, but I don’t know how to say it.

  Born Out of the Frost

  Mélanie Fazi

  translated by Lynn E. Palermo

  She was born out of the frost, yesterday, on my window.

  Crystals fanned out across the glass panes. Methodically, inside and out. Like a layer of white lichen creeping from the edges in toward the middle. Filtering milky—even brittle—light. Seemed like I should be able to peel it off. A harsh, glacial light that made the hair on my arms stand on end.

  I’d swathed my body in layers of wool, but still it shivered. Shoving up the heat made no difference. Cold was taking over the whole apartment. Seeping into my bones.

  Then a face on one of the panes … took several hours to gain definition. The frost spread out in arabesques too regular to leave room for chance. To melt them I blew on the glass with no result. An outline emerged around a still-empty face—a hollow through which I could still make out the street. Light sculpted the raised contours. I hadn’t known that frost could hold so much nuance in silver and white.

  The street disappeared as features completed the face, one by one, in relief. It was a sculpture carved in ice more than a painting in frost. As if its traits had grown out of the glass itself. Fine, precise, translucent. Silver filaments for hair. A frigid gleam in the eyes.

  She looked like me.

  I thought it was my portrait, that the panes or maybe the winter were talking to me. Which would have been flattering: she was magnificent, everything I’m not.

  Then at last, in the center of the tableau, I saw her mouth emerge. Lips pulled back to expose teeth of glittering frost.

  As she watched me, she laughed. And her laughter was biting.

  She’s living in the mirrors now. Because of me, I think.

  For a long time, I looked myself over from head to foot in the mirror on the armoire. Compared features she’d formed on the window, searching for some resemblance. But I could see only my pale skin and dull, messy hair. Nothing to equal her grace. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  Blowing warm air on the mirror, I covered it with my breath. A hazy pool of mist shrouded my face. I tried to trace her face with my finger the way I’d drawn on the car windows when I was little.

  But my sketch was crude, clumsy. Not even close to her or to me. Not even approaching the delicacy of her features. The mist faded—the mirror drank in my breath.

  I think that’s the moment when she passed through to the other side: when I blew her into the mirror.

  The other face, the one on the window, faded. First the contours, then the hair, until all that remained was a face carved in the ice or in the glass itself and losing its mass. Her laugh was the last trait to dissolve from her hollow, dripping face, just after her eyes. Which had never left me for a single moment.

  When I awoke this morning, I found her in the mirror. As if cut right out of the windowpane and deposited there on the other side while I slept. She has devoured my reflection. If I stand in front of the wardrobe, it is she who stands before me. With her winter-colored dress, her long, translucent fingers, and her hair full of icy flakes. Her eyes like frozen pools. Her skin dusted with hoarfrost. And as always, the sharp teeth revealed by her laugh.

  She starts by my movements. Then gradually she disengages from them. I watch her acquire a life of her own with an elegance that ice should not possess. An elegance that flesh never attains.

  Her movements are growing more fluid. Her gait, less stiff. Her skin is slowly taking on color. She has shed the winter like a molting bird.

  On the pane where she first appeared, frost has veiled the window entirely. The street no longer exists.


  I should probably be frightened. But I don’t know how. My mind has been numbed by the cold.

  She plays at being me: a doll of frost, a doll of blood. In the space beyond the mirror, I see her touching the books, furniture, and knickknacks, learning their shape and texture. Her fingers are still ungainly. She leaves glinting droplets in her path, sowing a trail of glitter and scales that melt as they touch the ground. Under the layer of frost, her skin is a faint pink. She cocks her head with curiosity, shakes the objects, smiles at the rattle of a jar filled with needles or a box of jewelry. When she sits on the bed and sinks into the quilt, I could swear I hear snow crunching under her feet.

  Now she’s pulled off her dress with its texture of evergreens hanging heavy with snow. She’s trying on my clothes. Clothes I haven’t worn in years as the colors are too bright. The cherry red and bright orange stand out against her pale skin. Now that her fingers are more limber, she digs into my makeup. Dabs her face with autumnal golds and browns that turn her face into a clownish mask. Grotesque blots of my nail polish dot her fingertips.

  Despite the caricature, she’s divine. Beneath her disguise, she’s almost me. Me, if I were beyond human.

  Since she has no name, I give her my own. We have to name things. It’s the only way to hold onto them.

  Spring has arrived in the other bedroom, the one deep in the mirror. Her skin is now pink and warm. Must be where all the heat has gone. On my side, the frost has worked its way into the locks, jamming the front door. I’ve spent long hours probing the mirror for the crack that absorbed all the heat.

  Last night, she slept in a bed that was the twin of my own. I could hear her breathing over there under the other quilt. For most of the night, I tossed and turned under my covers, not wanting to give in to sleep. I was too afraid of having her dreams. I didn’t want to know what images turned round in her head. She might be dreaming of me.

  If she stays, I’m afraid she’ll end up possessing me. I don’t know how to exorcise her.

  Her arms are now bare. Her skin more soft, supple. Meanwhile, mine has lost its color, and my lips are turning blue.

  Her face is almost mine. But I can still see hints of frost in the depths of her eyes. And a harshness in her smile that mine has never had. She’s taken every part of me and crafted it into something else: she’s turned a mouse into a wild animal.

  A little while ago, she was studying herself in the mirror before putting on makeup. I reached out my hand to catch her attention. She imitated me. Our fingers joined, mine thrust into the mirror up to my knuckles. Hers sticking out, free. It felt so warm in there; the contact with her fingers slowly warmed my own. Her ring with its sharp corners dug into my flesh. It looked like a silver scorpion.

  Then she pushed my hand away. A drop of blood formed at the base of my index finger. It had no taste at all.

  She disappeared into the living room. I could hear her moving about in there. I heard muffled music through the mirror. It was one of my albums, but I couldn’t remember which one. She seemed to know: I could hear her humming along.

  Ever since then, my fingers bear the mark of her touch. Like an infection. Everywhere I lay my hands, colors grow faint. Textures harden. It spreads before my eyes. Sheets of ice cover the walls. I can still make out the paint in a few places. Not many. I’ve already almost forgotten the color, anyway. The floor crazes under my feet. I’m walking on a frozen lake with a shadowy floor beneath the surface. Going into the kitchen, I leave a tracery of spiderwebs in my wake. The food in the refrigerator is covered with mold. I’m not sure if that’s my fault or the scorpion’s. But I’m no longer hungry. Or cold. My fingernails are blue, but I feel nothing.

  It’s better that way. The bedroom is freezing. The world has turned white. Everything is covered with frost. A book just shattered when I knocked it off a shelf. It split into two sharp-edged pieces. Now I don’t dare touch anything: I’m afraid of breaking it all. Objects that don’t yield might snap off my fingers, leaving my hands with frozen stumps.

  Once again, I take refuge on the bed. I can’t worm my way under the quilt: the frost has fused it to the mattress.

  I gaze into the depths of the mirror at summer. A square of sunlight on the floorboards under the window. Colors that grow more brilliant as my own fade away. Over there, the walls are salmon. The bedspread is red. The curtains hang in vivid colors. She has decorated it all in her image. She’s dyed her hair a shade of copper. She flaunts her grace as she parades back and forth in front of the armoire.

  Sometimes she raps on the mirror to remind me that she hasn’t forgotten I’m here.

  There are people over there. I hear voices and laughter in the summer apartment. Music and the clatter of silverware. But I can’t see them. They’re in the other room.

  My bedroom has turned into a closed-up box: a white box. The keyhole has frozen over, and frost has veiled the last window. I no longer leave my bed. Huddled atop the quilt and on the pillow with its frozen wrinkles, I can no longer feel them against my skin. Nothing but the exhaustion pressing me to the bed. I can’t close my eyelids. Immobilized, I listen and watch.

  I thought the frost would make my body hard and brittle, but instead, I’ve lost substance. I don’t dare lift my arms for fear that my hands will stay stuck to the mattress, pull off. My fists have less mass than cotton. I’ll no doubt end up completely dissolved. I no longer have a body. I’m a quilt and some clothing. I’m the winter and the bedroom.

  From this point on, the other one lives her own life. She fills her hours with visits and activities. She’s never alone, never silent. She speaks with my voice. I gave her my name, then forgot it.

  It’s all so far away. On the other side of a mirror that I lack the strength to approach. In an apartment that no longer has the same colors as my own. She moves about in conquered territory.

  Around the edges of this mirror, a fine layer of frost has made its appearance. Little by little, it’s growing toward the middle. Soon it will build a wall between us. And I will no longer even be her reflection.

  The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter

  Angela Slatter

  The door is a rich red wood heavily carved with improving scenes from the trials of Job. An angel’s head cast in brass serves as the knocker, and when I let it go to rest back in its groove, the eyes fly open, indignant, and watch me with suspicion. Behind me is the tangle of garden—cataracts of flowering vines, lovers’ nooks, secluded reading benches—that gives this house its affluent privacy.

  The dead man’s daughter opens the door.

  She is pink and peach and creamy. I want to lick at her skin and see if she tastes the way she looks.

  “Hepsibah Ballantyne! Slattern! Concentrate, this is business.” My father slaps at me, much as he did in life. Nowadays his fists pass through me, causing nothing more than a sense of cold ebbing in my veins. I do not miss the bruises.

  The girl doesn’t recognise me although I worked in this house for nigh on a year—but that is because it was only me watching her and not she me. When my mother finally left us, it became apparent she would not provide Hector with any more children, let alone a son who might take over from him. He decided I should learn his craft, and the sign above the entrance to the workshop was changed—not to Ballantyne & Daughter, though. Ballantyne & Other.

  “Speak, you idiot,” Father hisses, as though it’s important he whisper. No one has heard Hector Ballantyne these last eight months, not since what appeared to be an unseasonal cold carried him off.

  The blue eyes, red-rimmed from crying, should look ugly, unpalatable in the lovely oval face, but grief becomes Lucette D’Aguillar. Everything becomes her, from the black mourning gown to the severe, scraped back coiffure that is the heritage of the bereaved, because she is that rare thing: born lucky.

  “Yes?” she asks as if I have no right to interrupt the grieving house.

  I slip the cap from my head, feel the mess it makes of my hair, and hold it in front of me like
a shield. My nails are broken and my hands scarred and stained from the tints and varnish I use on the wood. I curl my fingers under the fabric of the cap to hide them as much as I can.

  “I’m here about the coffin,” I say. “It’s Hepsibah. Hepsibah Ballantyne.”

  Her stare remains blank, but she steps aside and lets me in. By rights I should have gone to the back door, the servants’ entrance. Hector would have—did so all his life—but I provide a valuable service. If they trust me to create a deathbed for their nearest and dearest, they can let me in the front door. Everyone knows there’s been a death—it’s impossible to hide in the big houses—I will not creep in as though my calling is shameful. Hector grumbled the first few times I presented myself in this manner—or rather shrieked, subsided to a grumble afterwards—but as I said to him, what were they going to do?

  I’m the only coffin-maker in the city. They let me in.

  I follow Lucette to a parlour washed with tasteful shades of grey and hung with white lace curtains so fine it seems they must be made by spinners with eight legs. She takes note of herself in the large mirror above the mantle. Her mother is seated on a chaise; she too regards her own reflection, making sure she still exists. Lucette joins her, and they look askance at me. Father makes sounds of disgust, and he is right to do so. He will stay quiet here; even though no one can hear him but me, he will not distract me. He will not interrupt business.

  “Your mirror should be covered,” I say as I sit uninvited in a fine armchair that hugs me like a gentle, sleepy bear. I arrange the skirts of my brown, mourning meetings dress and rest my hands on the arms of the chair, then remember how unsightly they are and clasp them in my lap. Black ribbons alone decorate the mirror’s edges, a fashionable nod to custom, but not much protection. “All of your mirrors. To be safe. Until the body is removed.”