—
The ceiling of the cave rippled and stretched and fell away from her face.
She barked in pain. She had thought it was only a rock but he had punched her with a harpoon somehow. Salt filled her mouth.
Ma’a! Where are you, Ma’a?
Shit and death and the smell of Ma’a, Ma’a skin.
Omanu tried to find the hole in her side but she could not raise her head enough.
The man grunted, his head on the wall and his arms in front of him. He had blood on his mouth and the rock under his far hand. It had not removed his skin, not at all.
He lifted his hand from the rock and coughed, more blood from his mouth, then leaned forward with his hand in front of him. On the bed was something dark and shimmering and heavy.
The moon loved it, the way it loved the sea, and it was Ma’a’s skin, her fur shining in the light.
He pulled it onto his legs, then onto his belly, and onto his chest.
Omanu rolled onto her knees with one hand on the spongy floor but she was too slow.
He lowered his face under the fur and coughed and fell onto his side, slapping the floor with his flippers. He coughed more blood onto the white floor, then charged at her.
He crushed into her chest and tried to snap her backward, the way the males do to each other in mating season.
She threw her shoulder back, and his weight tossed her aside, against the wall.
Part of it broke from her weight and part of it was a piece of sharpness across her back. She rolled to the floor and lay with her mouth breathing grit and salt.
Further and further away she could hear him thumping and crashing and barking.
Ma’a’s hand touched hers, under the bed, and Omanu grabbed it. Ma’a coughed.
He has more skins in the secret cave.
Ma’a!
He has my skin.
I will kill him for you.
Look behind the door. Ma’a’s hand relaxed.
Ma’a!
Her voice flowed to sea. If you let my skin get away I will never forgive you.
Omanu crawled backward until the bed was out of her way. Ma’a’s smooth white legs lay straight and spread open, like a flipper ripped apart.
On her chest was the place the harpoon had been ripped out of her, but Omanu could not see the harpoon anywhere. A black pool of blood rippled as the tides went out to sea, across her breast, over her teat, down the fold of her shoulder, and into the white, white floor.
She coughed and the blood crashed against a rocky shore, splashing high, throwing spray.
Ma’a!
Behind the door. Your skin is behind the door. Her words pushed blood faster. Omanu looked at her sister and knew that her sister would be dead before the sun rose again. To stay by her side, to bellow and wail while Ma’a demanded her skin, then begged for her skin, then fell still with her mouth open and sagging and monstrously white, still longing for her skin, Omanu could not do it.
She crawled away from Ma’a, not trusting her feet.
The blood coming from Omanu’s side was a thin stream that neither whispered gossip nor tossed seals on the rocks, a stream without tide or any other urge than to flow.
Behind the door.
She pushed the door aside with her nose.
There was another door inside the small room, stronger, and secret. A crack in the secret door breathed out the scent of seals, of home, of warm pebbles hollowed out on the shore.
She nosed it further open.
She did not know what she herself smelled like but skin upon skin upon skin upon skin she found.
She grabbed one with her teeth and backed away from the door.
The skin followed her and thumped on the floor.
The moon did not love it as it had loved her sister’s skin, but it smelled fresh, a bull’s skin sharp with strength.
She crawled next to it, lay down on her stomach, and slid under one edge. It curled around her back, it rolled over her legs, it pressed her arms to her sides until only her fingers could move. It gave her strength.
She bellowed as the face sealed over her own.
Ma’a!
She flopped onto the door, toppling it closed then knocking the trash into flinders.
Bobby stood naked at the red door to the outside with Ma’a’s skin in his fist. She would reach him, he was moving so slowly.
One leg outside, his head gone, his shoulders, the skin dragged behind him.
The door bounced open, then slammed shut and caught her whiskers.
She bellowed and slammed into the door. The metal of it bent but not burst. She bellowed again.
Her hands slipped out of her flippers and clawed at the inside of the bull’s skin.
She screamed her seagull scream and shook the skin away from her face. She shrugged and tossed and thrashed until the skin slid forward off her shoulders and slumped on the floor.
She could hear his feet slapping on the flat rocks, then go silent after the end of them.
She squeezed the latch of the door and pulled it with the whip of her arms like she was trying to break the neck of a fish.
Then she tangled the skin in her arms and ran with her bare feet past the flat rocks.
They both knew the way of it now and neither would use the skins until the water.
The arms and the fingers and the hair of the trees tangled her arms and her fingers and her hair and scratched her and tried to take the skin from her and make her fall. They were his trees.
The crash of Ma’a’s skin filled her ears and her teeth and she shrieked at the man who had filled her sister’s skin.
Yaaaaaah!
The seagulls shrieked overhead, not laughing now, because she spoke of their language.
Turn toward us, toward us, go this way to the sea, we will lead you to the sea!
Yaaaaaah!
She threw the skin at a branch and the branch broke under the weight. She climbed the skin then ripped it free, the tree subdued and bleeding.
No, no, not that way, the seagulls cried, even though she could see the moonlight on water. She followed the seagulls instead of her sense.
The man wearing her sister’s skin, he ran between two boulders down a line of tangle and dirt toward the beach.
He slipped and landed on a boulder, and over the side of the boulder sliding on top of Ma’a skin like her skin was a boat on the ocean of rock.
She climbed the rock and leaped, the skin flapping like crow wings on her back.
Yaaaaaah!
Her feet landed next to his head and she kicked at him.
He slipped and she missed.
And her weight took her off the rock to the place he had been, but not on her feet.
Her head bounced against the skin, the folds between her head and a rock. She grunted and vomited, then slapped the rock to push herself away.
The beach was close. He was already on it and running toward the water, one leg not as fast as the other, his white legs churning like long fish.
The wave is coming. Shh.
She screamed at the beach in the language of gulls, don’t tell me your secrets! Tell them to my sister!
He fell into the water on top of the skin. The pebbles scattered under his weight, chattering with anger.
The traitor skin wrapped around him.
His dark sleek head turned into a ripple, then less than a ripple.
She reached the water, threw down the skin, and left it there.
The water sank under her, the pebbles popped and spat and sucked as the water lowered.
A bull called from the land, the bull of the men.
She did not believe in the language of the pebbles or that they could gossip to her, she did not know the language of the seagulls. But they guided her to where the sea had left the man on the beach, flopping to reach the water but not as quickly as she could run on her feet, the pebbles chanting justice and revenge with every step.
The tangle had found him. It could not ho
ld him long, but it found him and kept him from the sea.
The wave was coming.
She grabbed her sister’s skin and tangled it tight.
She did not believe in these things but she would let herself be used, for Ma’a’s sake.
The man bucked in her arms but she was no woman. Under her woman’s skin was something else, and her arms held him.
He tried to open the skin and come out but she trapped his human arms at his sides.
Even her hair tangled into his mouth to choke him.
The wave shook the ground, it was coming.
The pebbles shook in fear and said their goodbyes.
Ma’a!
Woman, let me goah! We have to get out of heah! Itsa sunami!
Ma’aaaaaaa!
She could not hear anything but death.
The pebbles hushed, the seagulls fled.
Water washed her skin and Ma’a’s skin together. The man inside froze.
The fat of Ma’a’s skin lifted them with the wave together, up, then over, tumbling down the side of the wave, over and over, rising as they fell. Omanu saw the moonlight, the depths of the sea, the moonlight again.
And then they hit the rocks.
The man in Ma’a’s skin hit first, arced his back, and flung his arms free of her and the skin.
The water carried her further, took her by the feet and turned her the long way around, then pressed her against another rock. Her arm slid against the rock until another rock joined it and the water drove her arm into their vise.
Her body flopped with the water until her feet felt as though they would go where the waves willed, even if it meant her arm ripped off.
She could not see except for greenness. She could not breathe, but only taste the salty water as it drove into her mouth.
Unknown tangles hit her body, clung to her.
A white monster flashed by her and tore her foot. She kicked and kicked, and it was ripped away.
With the last of her breath she screamed. Yaaaaah!
—
She coughed and spat out her hair but no blood came. The seagulls shrieked and the waves flipped the pebbles at the tideline, end over end, a clatter that said nothing to her anymore. Dull gray light coated the pebbles, and she was a man.
She curled her fingers in the pebbles with one hand, but the other hand shrieked in pain when she tried to move her fingers. She screamed and the seagulls laughed at her. That she could still understand.
She barked into the pebbles.
Ma’a!
Ma’a!
A wave lifted her up and pushed her toward the shore
I’m going, I’m going.
She pulled her legs under her chest, rolled back and stood. Her toes felt the rocks more widely. The tangle fell away from her, fishing line and sticks and seaweed and other trash.
She did not recognize the beach, and the corpse of the dead fish on the hill above her might have been the man’s dead fish house, or it might have been some other house.
In the rocks above her a white monster from the deep, deep ocean lay broken, speckled with leaves. The man’s white leg jutted from its teeth. Ma’a’s skin was nowhere to be seen.
She felt the tug as if from a downward current below her. One current toward the ocean, one current toward the land, and one current that would pull her down into the cold and the blackness. She could balance here forever, or at least until the tide went out again.
She use the tangle to wrap her arm to her side and found a place where she might, by pulling herself upward, climb to the top of the hill, to see what was left inside the dead fish house that had been broken by the wave.
The wind still stung her eyes, but not her skin.
She was used to all kinds of skins now.
* * * * *
In a sense, I pity you. I am grateful that you chose not to answer the knocking at your door, not to let the darkling in. And I am, of course, happy that you listened to my stories, and that you told me your own. I will remember it, for as long as I have a memory, and I will tell it to others, although I will never say that what you have done is justified.
It is your fault that the best of my flock is dead, leaving behind little more than chicks who have hardly heard our stories once or twice, at best. I suspect that even Zubalo is dead. Much will be lost; many stories will never be told. At least there is the girl. She has an ear for it. Someday she might write down what stories remain, and help us remember.
It is dark now, and the wind has come up, pulling snow off the ground and out of the sky. It will be a long, cold night, and I think that neither one of us will see the other end of it. It has been a long battle between the thing from the cellar and the darkling. The Crouga was right—a fairy is nothing to sneer at, and if that was one of the weaker ones, I shudder to think of what the others might be like.
The darkling screams in pain now, unendurable agony, and then stops. You might tell yourself that it is the other thing. You might beat your hands on the wall, you might think of throwing yourself out the window.
If you do, it will pursue you. Better, I think, to get it over with quickly, than to run and make it catch you again. If it is angry now…
Now the door creaks, the knob clacks as it fails to turn.
While we wait for the door to break and you decide whether you can bear to end it here, and let your daughter live instead, let me tell you what might have been, if you had turned away from your hate, and especially from your fear. The heat from your hand and cheek against the glass are faint, but they still warm me enough for me to finish this one last tale. Your skin is pale, you know. As if all the blood had run out of your veins long ago.
That doesn't have to mean you have lost your heart.
Close your eyes. Don’t look. Just listen.
It will all be over soon.
16. Things You Don’t Want But Have to Take
When it’s time, you know.
I opened my front door. The deliveryman, a guy of about twenty with sun-streaked hair and the musculature of a young god, had his fist up in the air; either he was going to hit me, or he was just about to knock.
“Hey, Joe,” I said. I plucked the signature pad out of his other hand before he could say boo and signed for the package. “Do you want some chocolate chip cookies?” I asked. “I made them last night.” In fact, I’d had such a bad nightmare last night (about the box) that I hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. I know, cookies, right? But cookies are wholesome. And they smell good. I’d eaten about a dozen already.
Joe gaped at me and retrieved the signature pad. “How do you know my name?”
I pointed at his nametag and walked into the kitchen. The cookies were still a little bit warm. “Want some milk?” I yelled into the hallway.
“No thanks,” Joe called back. “Uh—”
I put the cookies on a paper plate and wrapped it with plastic wrap. “You sure?”
No answer. I brought them back out. Joe had picked up the package and was staring at it. He looked like he was about to vomit. Probably from the smell emanating from the box.
You know, Joe reminded me of an old boyfriend I had, who was always trying to keep me out of trouble. Hadn’t worked. Joe looked up at me, and I knew he was going to try to run off with that box.
I hate it when people try to be noble.
“Trade you,” I said.
Joe hesitated. “I—”
Damn it.
“I know,” I said. “It smells. It’s some really stinky cheese.”
“It isn’t cheese, ma’am. Let me get rid of it. Nobody needs to know.”
I hate it when people call me ma’am. But I’m married to a company man and stay home all day. I wear color-coordinated pants and sandals and get matching manicures. So I guess I can’t complain. It’s what I’ve made myself look like, after all. Protective coloration.
Something heavy in the box shifted across the bottom, rattling the packing peanuts.
Joe jerked the
box away from me and started walking back towards his idling truck.
“Joe!” I trotted after him, my sandals clacking along the sidewalk. “You give that back, or—”
The box slammed him in the gut like a strong man’s fist, doubling him over, then knocking itself out of his hands. The box rolled—flopped—a few turns toward me before it stopped against a step.
Joe and I both bent down to pick up the box. He got there first, but as soon as he touched the box, it twitched out of his hands and started growling. Joe jumped back, breathing hard. The smell must have hit him again, because he gagged. Well, if he thought it smelled bad then, he should hang around until I had to open the damned thing.
I smiled and brushed his hair back, an automatic reaction to the guy who looked like a boy I hadn’t seen for twenty years. I couldn’t help feeling fond of him.
“Ma’am,” he said, breaking the spell. “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to take it.” His teeth were chattering.
“It’s okay,” I sighed. “I had it coming.”
After a few seconds, Joe stood up, walked back to his truck, ground gears, and sped away. Without his cookies.
—
So. The box. It was still growling.
I cooed at it as I picked it up. “It’s all right, darling. I’ll have you out in a jiff.” I brought the box inside, set it on the hall table, and locked the door. The box was heavily sealed with brown packing tape. I rubbed my fingernails along the tape, trying to find the edge. I found one, but the tape split off to the side, and I had to start all over again. I wouldn’t have minded—I like to pick at things—but the phone rang. Doreen from church was calling to let me know that one of the parishioners at the nursing home had died last night, and would I please help serve refreshments after the service, since Annie was next on the list of helpers but her six kids all had the flu at the same time, can you imagine?
Gotta love Doreen.
“And please bring some of your wonderful cookies. Oh, Madeline, it’s so kind of you always to be giving your time to those in need.”
“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I don’t have any children to take care of.”
“That’s true,” Doreen said. I could hear the pity in her voice. What did a woman have to live for, after all, with no kids? Her husband? That’s a laugh. Men didn’t need to be taken care of; trying to take care of a man was like dressing up a cat for a tea party. “But thank you anyway.”
A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre Page 21
