Beneath Ceaseless Skies #233

by Marissa Lingen

  “Yes,” I said. I tried to imitate the even tone that Lillian used when addressing the soon-to-be-hanged. “Now we have seen each other.”

  “Now we have.”

  Our compact made, I glanced up at Ellie, ready to leave. But the man wasn’t finished.

  “You’ll be the last thing I ever touch,” he said, stepping up to the bars. His eyes flicked to Ellie, and he smiled. “They couldn’t find me a pretty one, hm?”

  “You won’t be able to look at her once you’re dangling,” Ellie said. She was defending me, thinking that his words had stung.

  “You’re not pretty either,” I said, as though we were simply trading truths. He shrugged and turned away.

  * * *

  When we left the jail, the sun had risen high and merciless over Red Leg. The vendors on the thoroughfare were spreading sloth-skin awnings to shade their wares, and I saw old Hart flicking water over his cart of fruit, trying to keep up the illusion that the apples and berries were dew-spat. Braxton had arrayed his rings and bracelets—whittled from the bones of only the most respectable deceased—into the outline of a flower, ivory blooming against red silk. Others had already packed up for the day.

  My eagerness to greet the T-bird had faded. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected courtesy of a murderer, but Lillian had said that her men respected her, barely spoke to her, sometimes sobbed in her presence. Would I have to snarl back and forth with my condemned?

  The jail sat squat and long on the north edge of town, built far from the gallows so that the sentenced had to walk the full mile-and-a-quarter south. If I looked that way, I could see the cherrywood crossbeam stark against the sky.

  Every small town brags about its gallows, but Red Leg had reason. It was so tall that it seemed a monument. Ellie had told me that the planners had wanted everyone to see the hanged, and so they had foregone a bell tower for the gallows, and from then on no building was allowed to reach beyond that beam in height. The wood was thick, sturdy stock that stopped a fist with blunt sound, no echo. When it creaked with a dying man’s weight, the creak was an acknowledgment, a thanks, never a threat of collapse.

  Our Gallows Girls were likewise legendary, and Lillian was bearing out the rumors. She had departed for Broadcreek three months ago. It was a fine assignment, a crowded crossroads with a steady supply of the soon-to-be-hanged, and our parents had cried proud tears when the letter came. They knew that Red Leg was a birthplace, not a destination. It couldn’t hold on to the girls it raised.

  Ellie and I turned off the thoroughfare and headed down Cratt Street to the stables. I could tell that she was nervous, thinking about how I would fare the next day. There was little hope that I could soothe the man as fast as my sister had soothed her first, but people now knew that there was innocence in our bloodline. They presumed that I would at least impress.

  “It won’t matter if you aren’t as quick as her,” Ellie said. She was halfway talking to herself, but it seemed like she had scanned my thoughts.

  “I know. I’d like to be close, though. I think I can quiet him quick. I’ll try.”

  “Are you scared of the pain?”

  “Can’t be worse than when that big ‘dillo bit me,” I joked. It was the wrong thing to say.

  “You know it’s not like that. I’ve tried to tell you. It’s—”

  “You’ve told me. Many times.” I sped up to avoid a lecture, bunching my skirts in my hands.

  Ellie used to be a Gallows Girl herself, of course. She had trained Lillian, and given bits of herself to tens of dangling men. But a tutor can only teach you the rites and the sayings, peppering their lessons with memories. There’s no way to practice—you don’t get the full idea until your first man drops.

  * * *

  The smell of hot meat and hay rushed to meet us as we approached the stables. Packett, the mammal-hand, was ushering a horse into one of the stalls, the sweat on his bald head a testament to the effort.

  “Packett, your west,” Ellie said.

  “My west, your east,” Packett grunted. “Here we are.” He gave the horse a slap on its rump, pushed the stall door shut, and laid down the wooden bolt.

  “We’re here to see the T-bird,” I said. Packett’s face scrunched upwards into skepticism, but it was the friendly sort.

  “Don’t stick your fingers near his face, Kal,” he said. “He makes up his mind about people quick. He’ll be on your left toward the back.”

  I jogged to the stall, grinning so hard that my bottom lip cracked. Packett could cheer me up just by saying my name. He wouldn’t have let Lillian back here, or Neal, or Jessa, or any of the jobless ones who were the same age as me. But I had helped him snap the antlers off of a stag-moose last winter when its shedding was delayed, heaving my entire body over a bough while the animal huffed. And I was unafraid of Big Meg, the town’s only ground sloth, who ate tree leaves broader than my head and ploughed the farmers’ ditches with her massive front claws. I wasn’t yet strong enough to file those claws during digging season, but Packett allowed me to climb up between her shoulders and brush out ticks. He trusted me to work with them, saw that I had a knack and let me test it.

  A T-bird was no plodding draft animal, though. A T-bird was speed and snake-quick cunning. The sight of its hatchet beak above the grass was an omen of rancher’s loss, and to steal an egg was to outrun your death. The art of taming chicks left most wranglers short a few fingers at the least.

  This one was a young adult. The feathers about his neck were still maturing into a ruff.

  “Hello,” I said, and it was more of an awed breath than a word. I had never been this close to a T-bird before. Big Meg dwarfed me, but standing next to this predator—far above my head but still so close, eight feet at his bright orange eyes—was more intimate.

  He looked at me dead on, which was strange. Most birds, they turn their heads and favor one eye to check you out. But a T-bird stares in a straight line over its beak, so everything on its face points right at you. I felt sighted, as if by a pistol.

  He made a deep clucking noise, and I saw his throat pulse in and out. He sounded curious. I searched along his side for the vestigial wings and found their outlines, small and almost silly, against the bird’s bulk. I desperately wanted to reach out and stroke the deep-blue feathers on his long neck. But Packett had told me not to, and by now Ellie had caught up and was glaring at the T-bird, looking angry that he had deigned to grow so big and deadly.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “You’re scared?”

  “No teasing. Your parents expect you home soon.”

  I glanced from her face to the bird and back again. The sooner the man was hanged, the sooner the bird would be without a claimant. My parents had bought Lillian new shoes and a cavebear skin cape after her first man. Now I knew what I would ask for.

  * * *

  Supper was a quiet rhythm of passing bowls from person to person. Mother and Father were skittish. They wanted to let me know that they were pleased, that my relative mediocrity was still a boon, but they spent the whole meal fishing for words without dragging any of them up.

  “I’m not that nervous,” I told them. It seemed to smooth out their faces a bit.

  I had spent so much time with Ellie that I had forgotten to think on my parents. And they hadn’t asked me much, throughout my training. The truth was that they were already screwed into their place in the town, and I was an extra piece that could go anywhere. They loved me fine, and I loved them back, but we had little to offer each other.

  “You met him today?” Mother asked. I nodded.

  “He was big. He murdered some folks a short ride out north. That bunch of houses, they didn’t have any gallows, so they brought him here.”

  “A murderer, that’s nothing petty.” Father tried to kindle my ego, and I shrugged. “Think you can send him on his way in a minute?”

  “Probably. Ellie thinks I’ll do well. It won’t be as fast as Lil’s first, but that’s fine with m
e. It means I get to stay here.” I bit into my cornbread as they both settled further into their chairs, appeased.

  Later, as I stepped out of my skirts and prepared for bed, I relished the silence of my room. It was exhausting, reassuring everyone that I didn’t covet Lillian’s talent, that I wouldn’t throw myself into a long sulk once I emerged as the lesser Gallows Girl. But it would have been more work for me to deny the title, or to let them know that I wouldn’t make it my life’s center. Once a Gallows Girl is found, her sisters must also wear the gray hood.

  Innocence is dwindling, Ellie had said. And so we must share.

  I would quiet the man, I knew, with all the adequacy I had come to expect of myself and a bit of the natural talent instilled in my kin. I had no desire to excel in my role, and no fear that I would fail. My future looked to be a comfortable one: I’d have as much time between hangings as I would need to sample the town’s small joys.

  Lillian had outgrown Red Leg in one swift sprouting. But I still felt like the perfect size for the place. I loved how I could nod to folks while I was on a walk, not saying anything, and still get my own name back in response. I knew which alleys shot upwards into walls, and which opened up onto streets. I helped to herd the big armadillos—”walkin’ houses,” most called them—to slaughter each year, and polished their shells into tents for children to huddle and play inside. I could draw what Red Leg looked like on the approach from any point on the surrounding grass plains. Sketching from the south was easiest, because the town was framed by the gallows, and all the buildings looked like they were bowing to the wood.

  * * *

  The hood was so large it almost hung in front of my eyes. I shifted my weight, testing the bounce of my platform, which was a skinny jut of planks attached to the east side of the gallows, yearning towards the middle. They had to measure the man and the rope several times. Too short, and he’d hang above me, out of reach. Too long, and I would have to clamber down the rope until I came to his scalp. I should be at the level of his chest, and close enough to pull him towards me without falling off the platform’s edge.

  I could hear the group speak from the stage over my head. The seams of the trapdoor disrupted the grain of the wood, so the door itself looked out of place, a perfectly wrong square.

  I preferred not to look down. Lillian had invented a rhyme to help with the dizzying height: 80 feet up means 80 to fall, grab his hands and let him call. When she shared it with me I thought it childish, but now I recited the first part over and over, wheezing it into the wind.

  Most of the town had gathered on the thoroughfare, but I was too far up and away to discern faces. They all looked like stalks of grass stuffed into clothes. Jessa had told me once that people placed bets on how long a Gallows Girl would take to soothe a man, and I wondered, irritated, who had done that today. I wanted no one to win. I placed no bets on their livelihoods, on how long it took for the mammoth meat to cure or the bullets to sell.

  Above me, they were reading him his rights and instructions. Soon the trapdoor would open, teasing a view of the sky behind the darkness of a falling body. I recalled lines of advice from Ellie and Lillian.

  Dive into yourself. Feel the gleam in your bones, the light left by lack of sin, and shine, shine like shouting. It helps to close your eyes once you have him in your hands.

  Two steps sounded from overhead, and he was standing on the trapdoor, that warped portal in the wood. I could feel every part of my hands in isolation, the slight bends in each knuckle on each finger, the tendons strung over bone. Both hands began to itch, terribly. And then he dropped.

  Many sounds occurred in succession: the trapdoor clattered open, the fabric of his clothing hushed past the wood, the trapdoor swung so violently that it rapped the underside of the platform, the rope whined, and he choked, awful swamp sounds filling the black bag. No more singing, I thought.

  He was huge, a suspended whale that blotted out the sun, but my hands were eager. I reached for his arms. When I gripped them, his fingers found my wrists and tightened, trembling.

  I closed my eyes and willed my bones to gleam.

  Memories from when I was little. Simple games. Chasing Lillian, being chased, her hair a dark streamer behind her. Tasks I loved, like sifting through the thickness of Big Meg’s fur, or beating cream until the waves in the white sea curled and froze. Ellie had taught me to think on such things, those that were easy and cherished. I imagined them trickling along my bones, bringing a glow, and it worked: the shine branched quick, like lightning. Each vertebra became a beacon. My teeth ached from holding light.

  It made me feel trapped, like I needed to burst through my skin and join the brightness outside. I wanted to run and jump until the light exhausted itself and went dim. Standing here was maddening, impossible.

  Straining to keep my bones contained, I was all the more unnerved when he began to grope at me for purchase. He swung and grasped, pulled, slid away, then returned. The hands he used inside ourselves were slick with something oily. I felt them trying to twine my light about them, and knew I was supposed to let it happen, to help, so that he could have hope as he passed.

  But Ellie and Lillian had not prepared me for this. The pain, yes, I had expected. Even these unsuccessful swipes at my bones were agonizing. The feeling swept through places deeper than my body; there was the sensation of pulling, unraveling, and the knowledge that whatever went with him would always trail a thread, his clenched fist at the other end.

  But they had not mentioned the trespass. All of my bones were screaming at him to get out. Each second he pried at me was counter to what should be, and I resisted despite everything Ellie had told me, trying to turn away from the hands that plunged in the darkness we shared.

  There was nowhere to go, latched together as we were, and he finally managed to snag some of the light, to stab and hook part of himself through it. I screamed as he wrested it from me, a small piece of glow, a pittance, and yet at the moment it tore away it seemed the most essential kernel of me he could have chosen.

  The snap of its separation shocked me into opening my eyes and pushing him, hard. I was sobbing. The hinge of my jaw was a knot of flame after screaming for so long. The rope keened as he swayed back and forth, all motion gone from his body. And there were creaks from below as Ellie climbed the ladder to the platform, hissing at me, “Kal, don’t faint! Don’t faint!”

  * * *

  I shuddered for days. Watching my blankets shake, it seemed as if they moved on their own, that they were jostling me.

  Ellie sat with me and cajoled me into eating. Both of us knew that taking as long as I had, and wailing besides, was the worst thing that could have happened. Pity swam in her eyes like worms.

  Jessa came to see me, held me and kissed my cheeks. We shared an odd picnic on my bedspread and entertained the idea that I was sick with something anyone could catch. But then she asked “What happened up there?” and I knew she had told people she was coming, had promised them news, and if I didn’t give it, she would say I was a stricken mess. Talk in Red Leg would spiral on either way. I shook my head, told her to get out.

  My parents, blessedly true to their cowardice, brought me food and empty chatter.

  I took to counting my bones. It wasn’t an exact art, but it helped me to breathe slow and recalled the welcome chore of counting heads in Packett’s stables. Taking stock of myself, feeling the slight hills under my skin where my joints connected, I came to a quiet appreciation of my body’s machinery. He had taken a piece of light from me, but what did that matter? My hands reported twelve ribs on each side, a cragged but sturdy spine, a laughably large number of small parts in my feet. I’m swimming in bones! I thought, only to shy from the image that the thought carried.

  * * *

  One night, weeks from the day when my first man had dropped, I made my bones gleam again.

  I had started to visit my memory of the hanging more and more frequently. As much as quieting the man had hurt, fill
ing myself with light had not. It had felt miraculous, and powerful, though these were words I could not touch at the time. I kept searching for the root of the feeling, and on this night, I picked at the first moments like they were stubborn weeds.

  The light came back in a hesitant tide.

  I closed my eyes, saw my bones shining. Again, I yearned to run and leap and swing my arms, to use up the light until my marrow emptied of it.

  Just running—that wouldn’t do it. There was something else, some nameless action that would be perfect for the light, that would channel it and diminish it and satisfy me. I didn’t know what it was.

  And there was an emptiness here, too. I ached for the light to reach every part of me, but it fell just short into a blank, throbbing sliver, the scar left by his thievery.

  I counted bones as a way to ignore that gap. I had numbered them in each leg when Ellie knocked and entered.

  “Kal, your north.” She sat at the foot of my bed, and I reluctantly let the light seep away.

  “My north, your south. Here we are. Hi, Ellie.” I opened my eyes to read dread in her face. She placed a hand on my shoulder and waited, silent, for me to realize what it meant. When I did, I sat up and yelled.

  “No!”

  “Kal, there’s no one else.”

  “I won’t do it. I won’t quiet another one.”

  “He killed—”

  “I don’t care what he did, you can quiet him, you know how!” She shook her head and I yelled louder, suddenly aware that I was furious, had been furious, and was just now allowing my fury to breathe. “It’s not like you said it would be!”

  “We can never truly prepare you.”

  “No. It’s not right. You said it was right, Lillian said it was right, but it’s not. The glowing means something, something I can do, and it’s mine!”

  Ellie was close to crying, reaching for me. “Every man deserves to pass with some purity. You know this. This man, now, deserves it.”

  I slapped her away. Her patience was an insult, an arrow through me. I aimed to shatter it. “I made my bones gleam because I wanted them to. Just now, I did.”