by Lyndsay Faye
“Oh god, by myself?” Fresh alarm set in. “I can’t!”
“You surely can.”
“Please don’t ditch me, I—”
“Don’t fuss, baby girl. We ain’t ditching you, we need you while we’ve business elsewhere, and you on our team, right?”
“I, well, of course, always,” Lia stammered. “But what the hell just happened in—”
“The harvest is swollen,” Moma whispered fiercely. “Ready to fall.”
And then the sisters drove away.
Not knowing which was more frightening—Moma quoting Maw-maw, or the fact that Lia highly suspected they were off to deal with Robin in some fashion—Lia said nothing. Despite the humid funk of summer, she felt a cold thrill.
For all that events were unfolding so rapidly, they seemed planned somehow. Fated. So Lia did as she was told and returned home. She studied her sketch, pored over their design notes, readied all her ingredients in the basement workshop, and set to work.
PENNYROYAL: While used primarily to foster peace and protection during a journey, combined with other ingredients useful for removal of curses.
BUTTERFLY WEED: Not as potent if employed alone, but indicates “go thy ways and leave me in peace,” which when combined with more powerful flora will come to pass.
CHESTNUT FLOWER: I seek justice for a wrong to be righted.
The air filled with scent until Lia could practically taste it, then vanished when her olfactory sense tired. A dusting of red pepper powder on the blooms was involved. Greedy stems drank essential oils. At first Lia’s hands shook with the importance of the task—but that soon receded. She was sharply focused and mindless at once, the way she always felt weaving flowers into shapes. This act always soothed her, the way Maw-maw would spend hours muttering in the kitchen or Moma would twist herself into pretzels at the ballet barre.
When Jessica’s bouquet was finished, Lia surveyed it in the lamp glow. It took her all night to complete and was a spectacularly odd wonder. Sprays in all directions, perfumed, a firework of texture and aroma.
Lia adored it in a way she’d never adored anything.
When she texted Mam’zelle, the sister, despite the early hour, immediately answered to wrap the bouquet and meet them at the flower market. One final ingredient remained to be added. Mam’zelle wasn’t forthcoming about where they’d gone, but Lia didn’t feel like pushing. They hadn’t come home—but then, they often didn’t. Her spine felt straighter after finishing, the thrill of completion making her movements deft and sure as she folded the gold paper. Tied the twine.
Tonight she’d be at the New World’s Stage gala delivering this to Jessica. She was certain.
Which meant she’d see Benjamin again. Something complicated happened in her belly, a few organs readjusting. But nothing like panic—only anticipation, a clock ticking down to an alarm you’d set yourself.
Lia swept up her clippings and encased the bouquet in thin cardboard. Added a small rose quartz in a velvet pouch for lagniappe. She had no notion of what was going on. What the dreams meant, how Robin and the sisters were involved, where the hell her strawberry scarf was, or what would go down that night. But as she spared a last glance at the altar and the endless five-pointed symbol, she thought that time had wound to some sort of crux. And she was goddamn ready after two years to be back in the game of life again. Find out where she landed on Robin’s and the sisters’ opposing sides of the circle.
Now Lia stands, flowers in her arms, waiting on the corner. The market is in full swing, hoses spraying, corn palms being off-loaded from truck beds, lopped apple branches grasping at the clouds. The skies bleach their way toward a paler blue. Exhausted dog owners stagger past coffee shops.
Tap, tap, tap come jaunty fingers on her shoulder.
Lia gasps when her head turns, greeted by Robin’s gleaming teeth. Lia doesn’t like people who pry, or people who crowbar for that matter, and everything about this dapper, dashing older gentleman makes her stomach churn.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lia clutches her bouquet tighter.
Robin Goodfellow makes a little bow. “Tip-top morning, wouldn’t you say, my dear?”
Something odd happens to her eyesight. Lia blinks as hard as she can. For an instant, all the people on the street turned a horrible flickering monochrome.
But it’s gone now. Everything is fine.
“Not anymore.”
“There’s the spark I like so much!” Robin clasps his hands. “Oh, just smell that! Bouquet construction completed without a hitch, I take it?”
Lia feels like she’s baring her teeth, though she can’t be sure.
“Masterfully accomplished—can tell without even a peep at it, if you know what to sniff for. And I do.”
Lia glowers. “What was all that bullshit yesterday? My bag, my portfolio, my—”
“Illicit photographic proof of adultery?” Robin chuckles. “Clumsy of me, I know, my darling duckling. Apologies. Had my reasons, and I’ll tell you all about them, too! Under one condition.”
“You knew where to find me just now.” Lia steps away.
“If you’re of enough interest to me, I know where you are at any given moment. Just finished breakfasting with our sisters, in fact! They’re a block and a half distant.”
Lia’s eyes slit at him.
“Oh, fine. Step under this awning, dear, we’re frightfully underfoot. Over a lovely breakfast, I managed to steal a look at Mam’zelle’s mobile phone by lucky chance, so knew just where to run into you.”
“Why?”
“Business proposition.” Robin nods his white head toward a diner. “Coffee?”
“Not on your life. Talk.”
“Delighted. All is in readiness for the gala tonight. I take it you’re quite . . . intimate with the family? What a remarkable circumstance! To think that you were once affianced to the son and heir.”
“Tell me what you’re up to or fuck off instantly.”
“Can’t be done, dear girl.” Robin affects a look of sinister regret. “As I said, it’s conditional.”
“On what exactly?”
“On your defection, pet.” Robin’s lips make a pleased V. “To my side of the circle, as it were.”
A dolly stuffed with hothouse tulips clatters past, violet, yellow, pink. Horns blare the instant the light changes. Lia thinks about being afraid and supposes she might have been before finishing the arrangement for Jessica. She isn’t now. She doesn’t even want a sip of something to take the edge off.
She’s furious.
“Is this some kind of sick chess match between you four?” she growls. “Those women saved me, they care about me. They’re like my family now.”
“Canny choice of words.” Robin is entirely unfazed. “Because there’s a very great deal they aren’t telling you. But isn’t that what families do? Stay silent? Tell each other fibs?”
Flecked within the amber glow of Robin’s eyes, Lia sees for the first time, are grey glints. They ought to be charming, but they’re the color of something cold and ancient, like dessicated fog. They make her glad she’s on a public street.
“Oh! Silly old bugger, me, nearly forgot.” Robin whisks a piece of fabric from his inner jacket pocket. “Found something of yours. Wanted to return it in person.”
It is Lia’s mother’s scarf, freshly pressed, its wild strawberry population altered. Where once were only berries dangling from their stalks, lush serrated leaves have been added in botanically accurate triplicates. A needle with poison-green thread still trailing from its eye pierces Robin’s lapel.
“How dare you?” Lia snarls, snatching it away. “This was my mom’s, you bastard!”
One hand flutters over where Robin’s heart ought to be. “Had fallen on the ground, hadn’t it? Might as well have rescued it, eh? Added a few of my
own design improvements for you! My entire line of work, isn’t it, improving designs?”
“Fell where? In my room, wasn’t it? You searched my portfolio, you son of a bitch. My bag, my . . . that’s where you saw the photo of Trudy and Claude, why you dumped it everywhere—”
“It may have crossed my mind to better acquaint myself with the new ally of my very old friends.” Robin delivers a cheery grin. “Who really ought to be sharing more with you than they have done. Look, decide at the benefit this evening? I’ve a feeling it’ll be a smashing success, and really, as an event planner, there’s so much more opportunity for travel, exotic locales, pay’s spectacular, and—”
“Outta her face or you will learn just what I’ll do,” Moma snaps.
All three of the sisters have appeared. Mam’zelle has her fists on her hips, Moma has a finger in Robin’s nose, and Maw-maw holds a small garden spade like it’s a lance. Lia twists her mother’s kerchief. The strawberry leaves seem to glint at her, poisonous and alive.
“Ladies!” Robin throws his arms wide. “And so soon after our repast! Here for a touch of specialty shopping, I imagine?”
“Is this sac à merde bothering you, chère?” Mam’zelle growls.
“Yes,” Lia replies.
“Can’t deny it,” Robin coos. “But she held her own.”
“She’s a lil’ piece of leather and well put together,” Moma says. “Best not to cross her, you want your balls to still keep you company.”
“Adieu, adieu,” Mam’zelle shoos him. “There’s a bad smell lingering on this street.”
“Begone.” Maw-maw lifts the trowel, which has a tag dangling from it.
Rubbing his hands as if surveying a delicious feast, Robin laughs. “I’ll pop off, then. Plenty to do before this evening! Pip pip! Enjoy having your scarf back, my dear, and do give a think to what we discussed?”
Robin swans off, a spring in his step.
“That Robin Goodfellow is on my last nerve,” Moma announces.
“Mange tes morts!” Mam’zelle yells, which Lia knows is extremely foul language for her and means go eat your dead ones.
Maw-maw spits, hanging the spade back on its sale hook.
“OK,” Lia says. “The three of you are taking me somewhere comfortable. With good coffee. And then you are going to tell me what the fuck is going on.”
* * *
• • •
It’s too early in the day for the Oscar Wilde restaurant to be open. But weird things happen around the sisters, so after Maw-maw pushes her tongue out and taps a text message, they are greeted at the door by a happily waving man wearing cleaning gloves. And ushered into Oscar Wilde immediately.
The trio lob sisterly smiles at each other. Their flower shop, the market, the National Arts Club: These are shabby house slippers compared to the glass slipper that is Oscar Wilde. Lia’s friends swoon in satisfaction every time. From the green-patinaed statues lofting electric globes to the Carrara marble bar, Oscar Wilde restaurant looks like a nineteenth-century steamship crashed on it. Every square centimeter is swathed in damask, adorned with mustachioed gentlemen’s portraits, or sheathed in velvet. The dim lighting likewise suits the sisters. If they were costumed, they’d look like they were about to take a foolish coal magnate for half a million dollars by rapping on tables.
Settling into a corner booth over coffees, the women fall silent. Moma and Mam’zelle angle eyebrows across the tabletop. Maw-maw glares holes in it.
“OK, I’ll start,” Lia proposes. “That jackass just tried to recruit me to his side of the circle.”
The sisters emit discreet hoots. Lia imagines them in a lavish bayou parlor sipping spiked lemonade and drowning in petticoats.
Mam’zelle selects a sugar cube. “Oh, petite chou, of course he did, the reprobate.”
“He also said there are aspects that you . . . haven’t told me?”
They don’t say yes, but they don’t say no. Maw-maw tips the uncapped saltshaker over, starts drawing symbols in the grains.
“No, we’re talking about this.” Lia’s rediscovered inner scaffolding grows stronger. She places the flowers on the table. “You three have always been here for me. When I needed you, before I knew I needed you. It’s just as if you’ve always been here, the whole time . . . it must be more than your liking my art, and more than your being kind to walking disaster areas.”
“Nous amions, Lia.” Mam’zelle holds both hands out.
“Can’t love be simple, baby girl?” Moma adds.
“Like calls to like.” Maw-maw nods.
“Nah, nah. Let’s try something else. Simple question: Are the three of you voodoo witches? With a secret cupboard of black cat bones and—”
Mam’zelle’s hand flies to her imaginary pearls. Moma’s cup slams in its saucer, and Maw-maw scrapes an angry fingernail through her salt creation.
“You think we practice that kinda dumbass cruelty?” Moma demands. “My ears are burning, me. What do you think the likes of them type do, baby girl? They take a black cat, a harmless little puss. Throw it into water that’s supposed to be boiling but ain’t hardly is yet, these dumbshit sorcerers is so close bred with their own pigs. Listen to the cat scream out its last wish, which is to die faster. Black cat bones? Get you out—”
“You’ve seen this happen though, to a cat,” Lia confirms. “Thirty years ago, when you were nine? Two hundred years ago, when you were fifty-three?”
The sisters clink spoons against porcelain.
“Never has it been polite to ask a lady her age, chère,” Mam’zelle chides.
“How about the voodoo, then? Is all this window dressing to run a hip boutique, or is it spellcasting?”
Moma scoffs. “Real voodoo ain’t spellcasting. It’s the science of Them Who’s Underneath. It’s a rope back to the top of the mountain. It’s woman knowledge passed down and down and down through the lines, and you’ll learn it all. Because you are apt, and I am practiced. Crossing, hexing, or blessing, I know the ways of it, me.”
“What does apt mean?”
Mam’zelle flirts through her eyelashes. “You’ve been studying ancestor knowledge since you were a girl, Lia.”
“Sure enough, we all the time telling you that you’re gifted, but really,” Moma snorts. “Starting at that age? You’re a prodigy, you.”
“How . . . long have you known me, exactly?” Lia’s lungs don’t feel large enough for air.
“From them gallery shows.” Moma rolls her eyes. “That’s when we first knew. But we done seen all your pictures—school projects, Polaroids. Three-by-fives. You spun funeral barges out of twigs and snake grass and sailed them away praying to your mamma. We got a hundred percent Mozart of root work right here.”
One midsummer day after Laura died, skies yawning wider than Lia had ever seen them, she’d found a patch of buttercups along the riverbank. Lia had always loved buttercups. Shining like fresh yolks, heads bobbing. Her mother taught her the game of holding one under her neck to see if it glowed back yellow, which meant you liked butter, because her mother loved butter and buttercups, too. So Lia picked them all—every last one she could find—while they still shone like sun mirrors, wrapped them up in the strawberry scarf, and carried them home. She flattened their heads between two sheets of wax paper and ran Laura’s hot iron over it. It’s still resting in her portfolio.
BUTTERCUP: In Latin, “little frog.” Symbolically: humility and the freedom of childhood. They bloomed first when a miser refused to share his wealth with the pixies, and they slit his bag so that gold scattered wherever he went.
“Are the buttercups watched over by pixies?” Lia asks.
A stunned silence falls.
“How in hell you know that, baby girl?” Moma asks incredulously.
“My mother always said so.”
Maw-maw coughs, tapping the ta
ble.
“Ça alors,” Mam’zelle says to Moma, impressed. “My sister, our Lia is surely ready as she’ll ever be.”
Maw-maw bangs the empty saltshaker.
“What I tell you just the other day now, my sister?” Moma agrees. “This one here—”
“The time has come,” Maw-maw growls. She thumps twice on the tabletop for attention and points to the scribbles she’s drawn in the salt. “To teach her the way of things.”
Moma tosses her hair till the tiny bells clack, and Mam’zelle makes a ladylike pray continue gesture.
This might not be witchcraft, Lia thinks, but I am spellbound.
“All is connected,” Maw-maw says. “From the bright hot bang at the beginning, to the dark cold silence at the end, and back again. It is woven already. Alpha to Omega, from the first nothing to the final nothing, the nothings attached and the same nothing. The circle is closed. None walking the path of the circle can see forward—only behind. But those outside of the circle, those who do not walk it?”
“You can see both ways,” Lia says softly.
“Not perfectly, not altogether. We puzzle. We scheme. But yes, we can.”
Lia can’t recall Maw-maw ever smiling this kindly, and she’s now possibly doubled the amount of words Lia has heard from her during any given discussion. She ought to be terrified, because this sounds insane. But far more shocking to Lia is that she already knows this speech. Not in cryptic mythological language, but from sitting on a rock at Riverside Park with the nearest star to the planet kissing her hair, watching a mad-eyed Columbia grad student she loved to distraction expostulating.
No, no, forget all that time-is-a-flat-circle Nietzsche crap, Ben laughed. It’s close, sure, but there are better descriptors. Think of a loaf of bread, though. The whole loaf of bread exists, the slices are time, and each slice is marked differently. As you flip through them, of course you can remember the last one you saw, and you can’t remember the next one you’re going to look at. But if you were outside of the loaf, outside of time? Everything is there. Complete. The ones you already saw don’t vanish, the one in your hand exists, and the ones you haven’t looked at yet are already there. That’s time. That’s what the universe is like.
