“May I help you?” he called out, noticing her stare.
Xochi hesitated, but the thought of the hill made her bolder than usual. “Sorry to bother you, but may I use your bathroom?”
He stepped aside and gestured for her to come in. Bells trilled as the door closed against the night.
The bathroom was clean and painted black. Xochi ran warm water over her cold hands and fixed her smudged mascara. Back in the reception area, she stopped at a framed photograph of a human skull with an oddly shaped hole, tracing the wound with her finger. The piercer glanced up from the counter.
“Trepanation was one of the first surgical procedures. It was also used for shamanic purposes. This is the oldest example they’ve found.”
That explained the puncture, too clean to be accidental. “Why did they do it?”
“It makes sense for a head injury with brain swelling. And if you’re a shaman, it’s your job to communicate with the divine. Why not open the door and invite her in? They used it for mental illness, too. Crazy out, divinity in. It was practiced for centuries. Some people see it as valid, even now.”
Other photographs decorated the bloodred walls, images of bodies in every shape and shade, perforated a thousand ways. “Is that why people get pierced? I mean, beyond the way it looks or feels?”
“It’s why I do it,” he said. “But what about you? Have you got any piercings yourself?”
“Just my earlobes.” Xochi pulled her hair back. “Done at the mall when I was seven.” She blinked back a forgotten image of that day, her seventh birthday. Ones and fives from her mother’s tip stash paid for the fourteen-carat gold studs. “Don’t want your ears turning green,” Gina had said.
“My first piercing was also an ear. My left.” He tapped the silver dollar–sized disc distending his earlobe. Xochi blinked. She hadn’t noticed it before. “I was nine. My parents were not amused. Afterward, I confined my experiments to less obtrusive places.” He turned to the clock on the wall. It was after two.
“I’m sorry to keep you.” Xochi eyed the dark street through the shop window. “I didn’t realize how late it was.” She walked toward the door, ready to face the windy night.
“Oh, not at all,” he said. A brass ring now hung from the center of his nose, more satyr than professor. “I can’t always accommodate the nocturnal, but I do try, especially around Solstice and Equinox.”
“It’s worked out great for me! You’re a lifesaver. It’s been a weird night.”
“I imagine it has. It’s a long, strange walk back from Hades, young lady.”
Xochi suppressed a smile. “I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I just came from Hayes Valley?”
“Call it what you like. But I, for one, am extremely grateful. It’s not every year Persephone appears on your doorstep the night of her return.”
“Her return . . . from the underworld?” Xochi recalled her childhood book of Greek mythology: a dark-haired princess, ruby pomegranate seeds, endless winters in hell.
“Of course,” he said. “An offering is in order. I’m James. And I’m at your service, if you’d like.”
“You mean a piercing?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know where I’d want it.” Xochi touched the twin hummingbirds at her neck.
Once, when she was fourteen and deep in a phase of hating her own face, she’d asked for a nose piercing. Loretta had called her bluff. “I’ve done ears before,” Loretta had said, brandishing a long surgical needle, “and stitched up my fair share of lady parts after births. How hard could it be?” Xochi smiled at the memory.
“Just ask yourself,” James said, rolling up his sleeves. Bright green snake tattoos curved around each forearm. “I’m sure you’ll know. I’ll go wash up and give you a moment to think. Come back when you’re ready.”
Xochi went back to the waiting area, sat, and closed her eyes.
Crazy out, divinity in. Where do I need some of that?
Once she decided, it happened quickly. She sat on a high table and stuck out her tongue. James touched a spot near the tip with a Magic Marker and held the meat of her tongue with metal tongs. Xochi’s throat burned as her mouth dried out. His hands were graceful as he performed the fluid steps of the ritual, but after a glimpse at the needle, Xochi closed her eyes. Ice shot through her mouth and fire raced up her spine to meet it. The pain was clean and jolted her awake. She tried to stand, but another wave of heat rolled up her body, crashing into the new metal in her mouth.
“Careful,” he said, handing her a pamphlet about aftercare. “You may feel a bit euphoric for the next few hours. Many people do.”
5
Witches’ Song
Xochi trudged up the servants’ staircase. The etched metal bar weighed heavily in her mouth, unfamiliar, yet already a part of her. It was too early to know how much the piercing would hurt. In the moment, it had been like flying from a rope swing into an icy river. She’d emerged alive in her skin. Heroic. A punk rock Joan of Arc.
The attic door was unlocked, the sitting room dark. Pallas sat hunched on the window seat, feet tucked under her long white nightgown, a lit cigarette in one hand, a teacup in the other. A real, live smoking twelve-year-old.
Xochi switched on the light. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” Pallas dropped the barely smoked clove cigarette into the gilded cup. It hit the liquid inside with a hiss.
“Are you okay?” Xochi came in slowly and closed the door.
“Great. Perfect. How about you?”
Pallas’s voice was a dare and a plea. Xochi thought of her old stray cat the second time that night—his plaintive cries and threatening growls as Gina had dealt with his wounds. She kept her eyes averted, her voice even.
“Me? Fine. Tired, though.” So tired. Xochi forbade herself from glancing at the door to her room. Her bed was so soft . . . She yawned, opening her mouth wide.
“Oh. My. God.” Pallas stood, fists clenched. “What did you do?”
“Huh?” Then Xochi understood. “This?” She stuck out her tongue.
“Why does everyone insist on maiming themselves!”
“It’s not permanent. If I take the stud out, James said it will close right up—”
“JAMES?” Pallas stomped her bare foot. Hard.
“I left the party to take a walk. It was the middle of the night, but he was opening up his shop. ‘For the nocturnal,’ he said. Maybe he meant vampires.” Xochi smiled, but Pallas just glared. She wouldn’t be able to distract her with a joke, that was clear. And this wasn’t about her new piercing. It was three in the morning, late even for night owls. A badly made fire sputtered in the grate. A few books lay open on the coffee table. “Was the party too loud?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Pal. Why don’t you tell me? And why are you so mad about my tongue?” Xochi went to the mirror over the mantel and stuck it out. “I think it’s cute.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not even legal,” Pallas said. “You’re supposed to be eighteen.”
“James never asked,” Xochi said. “Anyway, I’m close enough.” She plopped onto the sofa. “Also, hello—you’re supposed to be eighteen to smoke, too.” She unlaced her boots, wincing at the blister where they had rubbed at her toes through her fishnets.
Pallas was quiet. A siren howled.
“I’m sorry,” Pallas said. “About the cigarette. I didn’t enjoy it.”
There was a smallness to her voice Xochi had never heard before. Xochi’s stomach clenched. “Did something happen? Did you go downstairs?”
“No!” Pallas said, too quickly. “No. I’m just sick of it. I used to think the parties were fun. I didn’t get what people were doing. Now I stay up here.” She blinked, too stubborn to cry. “I’m not trying to ruin your night. I know I’m luc
ky.”
“It’s okay to be mad.”
Sloppy laughter drifted through the open window. Car doors slammed, music blared and faded.
“Xochi?” Pallas raised her head, gaze finally meeting Xochi’s. “It’s hard to stay mad at them.”
“I know,” Xochi said. “Curse of the charming parents.”
“Are yours charming?”
“I only had my mom.” Gina did a lap inside Xochi’s brain—there and gone, just like real life. “She was charming, all right. Charming as fuck.”
“Xochi!”
“I’m just being honest. I know from experience—you can love them and also be pissed.”
“I guess . . . I mean, yeah. But the concerts and parties and everything are kind of their job.” A single tear escaped. Pallas brushed it away. At that moment, she looked far younger than twelve.
“I should have stayed,” Xochi said. She grabbed Pallas’s hand and squeezed.
Pallas pulled away. Not a hugger, Xochi reminded herself.
“I told you to go to the party,” Pallas said. “I wanted you to.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have listened.”
“Maybe.” Pallas blinked hard.
“As your nanny-companion-governess-thing, I promise to do better. Okay?”
Pallas nodded. “Me too.”
“And in my esteemed role as whatever-it-is, I decree we need music,” Xochi said. “No—step away from the stereo. Now is not the time for show tunes. We need violence!” She dug through the clutter of music next to Pallas’s stereo until she found what she wanted. Furious industrial stomped out of the speakers. The bookstore cat shot from under the sofa, ears pinned in disgust. He retreated to Pallas’s bedroom, tail in the air.
“Fates,” Xochi sang, flinging herself to the nail gun beat. “Fates and FURIES!”
Pallas closed her eyes. Clenching her fists, she slammed her feet on the wood floor, swinging her head side to side like an elephant Xochi had once seen at the zoo, finished with gentleness and complacency. They spun and pounded, Pallas in her white cotton nightgown, Xochi in her ripped fishnets and borrowed flapper dress, singing at the tops of their voices. When the song ended, Xochi turned the music down, lit all the candles in the room and turned out the lights.
“What are we doing?” Pallas asked.
“Your family thinks they’re witches, right? But it’s us. We’re the witches!”
“And they’re the bitches!”
Pallas cursing was almost as shocking as her smoking. Xochi saw the opening she’d been waiting for since she’d moved into the attic with Pallas. “We have to make a potion!” she said. “Haven’t you ever done that? With flower petals and crushed-up leaves and perfume and stuff?”
“Please.” Pallas rolled her eyes.
“Right, too woo-woo. Who cares? Run the water!”
Pallas stared at the tub. “I already had a bath today.”
“I know that, Miss Literal. It’s our cauldron, okay?”
“Oh. Okay, I guess . . .” Pallas rolled up the sleeves of her nightgown.
“You need to play, kid,” Xochi said. “They’ve done studies. It’s a proven fact.”
As Pallas turned the dolphin-shaped knobs to fill the enormous clawfoot tub, Xochi appreciated the attic for the little-girl utopia it was. The sitting room was circular, perched in the tower that topped the huge Victorian. Windows arched around the room, studded with wavy stained glass. Cupids danced on the coved ceiling in a blue sky strewn with fluffy clouds.
Crammed bookshelves lined the north wall and continued into Pallas’s bedroom, a large chamber complete with gilded princess furniture and a truly fabulous canopy bed.
In the center of the sitting room was the largest bathtub Xochi had ever seen, midnight blue with lion’s paws for feet, toenails painted gold.
“All you need now is a magic wardrobe,” Xochi said. “Or perhaps a Pegasus?”
“They gave you drugs at the party, didn’t they?”
Xochi didn’t answer the question. “It’s called having an imagination. Watch and learn.” She broke off a piece of aloe from the plant by the window. “Goblin blood!” She squeezed the goo from the leaf into the steaming bathwater and dropped the slimy mass into the tub. “Guts!”
Xochi found her backpack. Grabbing her brush, she pulled out a clump of dark hair. “What’s this?” she asked Pallas, dangling it over the tub.
“Fur of . . . a she-bear killed by hunters?”
“Excellent!”
Pallas snatched her Mighty Mouse Pez dispenser and poured the pellets into the brew. “Teeth of murdered toddler.”
“Nice one.”
Next came the Hello Kitty bento box on the side table with the remnants of Pallas’s dinner. Xochi grabbed the tea basket.
“Demon breath!”
“Mermaid scales!”
“Traitor’s heart!”
“Ferret’s eye!”
Xochi paused, a crusty voice sliding into her mind like an unwanted tongue. Crazy bitch. Psych ward cunt. She unwrapped a pack of Pallas’s scented bath cubes, clutching one in each fist. They broke with a visceral crunch. “Bridge troll testicles!”
“So gross!” Pallas grinned. “We’ve lost it!”
“Never had it!”
“Now what?” Pallas’s eyes sparkled.
“I don’t know. I think we need to meditate. Let the potion tell us.” Xochi sat in the center of the oriental carpet. Pallas followed, mimicking her cross-legged posture.
Xochi inhaled, the steamy air from the bath reminding her of the forest she left behind in Badger Creek. Loretta was buried there in a grove of old-growth redwoods. In the mornings, the sun through the branches made an intricate pattern, geometric like the weave of Pallas’s rug, like the quilts Loretta made from scraps, natural and also mathematical.
Memories crashed in, wave after wave: a refrigerator snapshot of freckled Gina and brown baby Xochi one long-ago summer; Loretta kneading bread in the kitchen, the afternoon light shining through the bones of her hands; Xochi and Evan, fixing a flat tire on his ATV with too much between them the day after Loretta died; Xochi’s best friend Collier driving over every morning after the funeral, his Cheerio breath in her face as he tried in vain to get Xochi up for school; the stacks of college catalogs Xochi had finally used for kindling; the shoebox in the back of Loretta’s closet with Xochi’s name on it, stuffed with small bills; the numb terror on the side of the road the moment before a sweet college girl stuck her head out and said, “I’m headed for San Francisco. Want a ride?”
“Fates,” Xochi whispered, the tang of the metal bar in her mouth exotic and pleasurable. “Fates! Fates and Furies! Open, open, open up the door!”
The mist thickened as Xochi pulled Pallas up to dance in the now-silent attic. Their feet pounded a primal rhythm. They were spirit girls, priestesses, fiends. Pallas danced faster, fueled by the coiled fury of twelve, the hope and terror of almost thirteen. A feeling Xochi couldn’t name—not anger, not exactly fear—pushed through her body in a hot swell. Her tongue throbbed. She opened her eyes as Pallas whipped past her, socks sliding on the hardwood floor, skidding to a stop in front of the tub.
“I’ve got it!” Pallas said. “It’s perfect! We have to hover over the bath—I mean the cauldron—okay? It has to be super spooky or it won’t work.”
Xochi grinned. It was already working.
Pallas grabbed Xochi’s hand and began to chant. “Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn! Cauldron bubble!” Slowly at first, they circled the tub. Pallas repeated the spell with unerring rhythm, joined by Xochi’s hissing harmony.
“Fates! Fates and Furies!”
They chanted louder, circling faster and faster around the tub.
“Trouble!”
“Bubble!”
“Fates!”
“Furies!”
“Open up!”
“Open up!”
“Open up the door!”
Xochi and Pallas collapsed onto the soft carpet. The breeze from the open window cooled their faces as they listened to the fading party below, a lullaby of heavy doors and hushed goodbyes. Minutes passed, then half an hour. Blurred voices murmured up from the street as the final party guests hurried to beat the sunrise. When the house was silent and the last motorcycle sped down the hill, Xochi and Pallas drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.
6
Slippery People
Peasblossom woke under Pallas’s easy chair. He yawned and stretched, extending his claws one paw at a time. Why was he awake? He customarily enjoyed a long morning doze in the post-party quiet of Pallas’s home. Today, he needed that more than ever. The pair of amateur witches had woken him up several times in the night with their punk-rock chanting.
He raised his hips, working the kinks from his spine. The windows were purpled and the air was warm, scented like the redwood grove in Golden Gate Park, a deep narcotic perfume. Rest, it seemed to croon. Go back to sleep . . .
Suddenly, his fur was on end.
He blinked.
The room had become dense with fog.
He streaked from under the chair to Pallas. The girl was still sleeping, curled on the rug like a snail in its shell, feet tucked into her white cotton nightgown. The governess snored lightly, her beaded dress sparkling in the unnatural mist. Peasblossom circled the room twice before he understood: something was terribly wrong with Pallas’s bathtub.
He inched forward, pelt screaming alarm. In his youth he could have managed a slow, unsupported rise to his hind legs, allowing him to see inside the tub without getting too close. Now, bravery would have to substitute for agility.
He approached and rose quickly, bracing his front paws on the tub’s porcelain lip. Thicker than water, the liquid inside hissed and spit as it struggled toward a roiling boil. Peasblossom held his ground as scalding liquid splashed his shoulder and every instinct told him to run. The scents of cedar and sulfur filled the room as the liquid gathered mass and two creatures emerged from the bathtub brew.
All of Us with Wings Page 3
