Speaking to Skull Kings

by Emily B. Cataneo

  She walked to the table in the apse where the monks had arranged supplies. She inscribed a scrap of linen with an image of Mars in ascendance. She sprinkled dried laurel and bat’s blood onto the linen, wrapped it around a clay goblet.

  She told herself she needed to escape. She needed to mend things with Johann. She needed to check her star charts.

  She tossed the linen-wrapped goblet into the fire.

  “Unlock the chapel door,” she whispered. “And then leave. Walk away from here. Go anywhere.”

  The fire hissed and spat crimson sparks. Smoke puffed into the room. Eliška coughed, and her head pounded. She bent over the table and her body buzzed.

  Then the scrape of a lock echoed through the chapel.

  She bounced on her boot-heels, waiting for them to leave. For an hour, she made herself stand still, until the monks had enough time to shuffle off across the snowy field, until there was no chance of them seeing her and forcing her back into the chapel. She knocked over a chair as she raced to the door, but hesitated just before she pushed it open.

  Returning to the pedestal, she scooped up the feather and concealed it under her cloak. Then she raced back again through the chapel, past long shadows trailing out of the skulls and femurs, and into the hollow bowl of the night-dark field.

  As she hurried towards the stables, she tripped over something and sprawled into the snow.

  “Mistress.” Pesmet, eyes gleaming, clawed at her cloak-hem. She yanked her cloak over her mouth and lurched away from him. His arms and face were unmarked, unnaturally smooth—a sign that the Dark had advanced. “Mistress…they went…” He frowned, and although he looked at her eyes, she could tell he no longer saw her and instead only saw the snowy field and the chapel behind her. “Hello?” he whispered. “Is anyone there?”

  “Pesmet.” But she knew that the Dark had consumed him—the Dark that rendered its victims unable to see or hear other humans.

  “Am I alone out here?”

  Her heart beat faster at the fear in his voice, the trembling around the word “alone.” In two days I will walk through the city and see no one…I will eat oranges alone for the rest of my life…I will walk the embankments of the river, dying of the Dark, and see only stone and shadow.

  Pesmet’s eyes refocused and he gasped, a drowning man given one last mouthful of air. “They went to the city. You told them to go anywhere, and they went to the city.”

  He pressed his baby-smooth hands against his eyes. “They went to the city and they have the Dark. They took horses.”

  “They…”

  But Pesmet shuddered and fell to his knees. “Isn’t anyone out here?” he howled, looking through her. “Please, where did everyone go?”

  Eliška squeezed her eyes shut, then raced to the stables.

  As she rode through the city walls, past the gold-lit windows sheltering husbands with their wives or mistresses, girls playing with poppets, boys pretending to be the soldiers they would never be, she knew they all hoped the Bird-Men would swoop down and wrap them in soft wings and cradle them with wire hands. She knew they hoped the Bird-Men’s marble birds would open their beaks and sing. She knew they hoped the Bird-Men would save them, save them from Pesmet’s fate, from the Dark, from plagues and war and floods and loneliness…

  The city dreams of Bird-Men, Eliška thought. Can I fault them?

  She raced up the stairs to her laboratory, carrying the smell of snow into the musty room, and pressed her eye to her telescope. She swept it over the bowl of the stars, searching for a sign of the Bird-Men’s return, and then sagged against her table when she saw that the stars looked the same. The same reading she’d taken five days ago. Except…

  Saturn in the eighth house. Saturn had been in the ninth house five days ago.

  She scribbled on her star chart. She crouched next to her astronomical model and trailed her fingers against Saturn’s gold impassive curve as she realized: they didn’t have two days until the Dark arrived. They had one.

  The Dark would arrive at dawn, along with the monks that Eliška’s magic had sent racing towards the city.

  She buried her head in her hands. This was why she had avoided astral magic ever since her father had tumbled from his horse shining with the light of Mercury. This was why she had studied her star charts like a dutiful astronomer and stayed far, far away from witchcraft: because it never worked out the way you intended.

  So the city had one night left, one night of laughter and tears, of drinking ale together and telling ghost stories and—

  Eliška opened a drawer and lifted out her copy of Picatrix. She propped open the book, with its blood-red illustrations, and ripped a piece of linen off her skirt.

  She had doomed the city to the Dark one day early through her use of astral magic. So now she must save it.

  She concentrated on rehearsing the Latin incantations, focused on setting up her star chart and preparing her linen, not letting the gravity of what she was about to do overwhelm her.

  At midnight, she walked to her window, looked across the way at the one house still glowing with candlelight at this hour, then past the silent snow-muted roofs to the faint distant stars above. She had always thought the stars looked strong, powerful—patricians and matricians willing to impart their secrets. She had never thought they looked fragile, as though one hard tap might shatter them.

  She returned to her writing table and scribbled Johann a letter. She told him she still loved him, she hoped he felt the same and that he should meet her on this side of the bridge at dawn. She slipped the letter under her door for her chambermaid to post. Then she slid into her chair and lit a censer.

  As blue smoke billowed through the room, she inscribed an image of the sun in the twelfth house on the rough linen. She draped the linen around the feather and balanced it on the censer.

  The blue smoke came faster, choking the room, obscuring her planetary model, her star charts and bookshelves. She clasped her hands around the censer—it should have been hot, but it was cold as the ice on the river—and she incanted, she prayed, she hoped, she asked Mars to use force, Venus and the moon to use seduction, Mercury to use manipulation, and Saturn to use its darkness to ask the sun to grant her its anima motrix. She asked the planets to sing in their four-range voices, to change the plan the sun had laid out for their cursed city, the plan the stars had laid out for Eliška.

  No, sang the planets. No, we won’t bequeath the power of our god to a human, the sun’s power changes a man.

  “I’m not asking you. I’m demanding you,” she shouted as she shook the censer.

  The smoke poured into her nostrils, and the dry air of the laboratory vanished. She rose over a plain that was covered in wild and untamed snow, snow that didn’t see sunlight this time of year. She sensed the Bird-Men, sensed that they hid somewhere on this plain. She rose higher and her rays illumed the creatures sheltering in deep unbroken snow under bent pines.

  Beneath her light, the marble birds on their heads shone, and the frost and ice that lined their wire torsos glimmered.

  Go.

  She felt their resistance—but we were told, by our maker, to curse the city forever by our absence—but she only had to whisper Go once again and they rose out of the snow, shedding specks of frost from their wings as they flapped south.

  Eliška shone in the sky for just a second, the kind of second you want to spend your whole life in. Then she opened her eyes in the laboratory, surrounded by clearing smoke and by her possessions, the possessions that had always defined her—Eliška, the woman who had followed what was written in the stars, until tonight.

  She had done it. She had saved the city. She had dove into astral magic and come out the other side. Her body buzzed alive, as though she still glowed, still had the power to make the world turn to her will.

  She paced her laboratory, eating an orange. Then, as dawn lightened the sky, she ran outside to meet Johann, and to see her Bird-Men.

  * * *

&
nbsp; Snow fell outdoors, fat white flakes blanketing the cobblestones of Golden Lane, obscuring the castle on the hill above her. She raced through the streets, her boots slipping, towards the shouts echoing from the riverbanks.

  She stopped on the wide steps that led down the hill away from her laboratory and the castle. A dark crowd congregated on both sides of the silver-iced river, milling in the falling snow, streaming over the bridge between the blank-eyed statues.

  “The Bird-Men!” shouted a man. “They’ve come!”

  Cries of, “We’re saved, praise the Bird-Men,” rose through the crowd.

  Eliška craned her head towards the sky.

  All she saw: fat flakes of snow drifting through lavender dawn.

  Eliška drew her green cloak closer around her and surveyed the crowd standing ten deep along the frozen river. Every face looked up at the falling snow as though looking upon a lover returned from the Holy Land or a castle containing their heart’s desire. Some fell to their knees, weeping, curling into balls as though wings embraced them. Others hefted children towards the sky, held hands with grandmothers, brothers and sisters.

  “Eliška!” The Imperial Physician raced down the steps towards her, his cheeks ruddy and his eyes glistening. “It’s a miracle!”

  “I don’t…” Eliška blinked snow off her eyelashes. “I don’t see them.”

  “What do you mean?” The Imperial Physician laughed, a giddy childish laugh, and held his arms towards the sky. His feet lifted off the ground and he soared towards the river, buoyed by nothing as he twisted like a marionette and laughed like a little boy.

  The city laughed and cheered and cried tears of relief. She scanned the cluster of people near the bridge—no blue-eyed trader waited there. Instead, one of the monks she had banished from the monastery stumbled through the crowd; the Dark had arrived in the city.

  Why weren’t the Bird-Men swooping down to protect her too? Why couldn’t she see them? Why didn’t they exist for her? She trained her eyes on the empty snowy sky leading to the dark spires of Old Town Square and raised her arm, a bare arm that emanated a silvery light, as though she still glowed with the power of the sun.

  The sun’s power changes a man, the planets had said.

  She couldn’t see the Bird-Men because right now, flush >with the glow of the planets’ magic, she wasn’t part of the city. Perhaps she wasn’t even human.

  She had saved the city, but she had doomed herself.

  Eliška squeezed her eyes shut and thought:

  Imagine Johann’s window creaking open, and imagine him bringing you basket upon basket of oranges until oranges spill out of your laboratory and cascade down the stairs.

  Imagine sun striking the black spires and gold spheres atop the cathedrals, sending the city into a bright interplay of light and shadow and tomorrow.

  Imagine the skin on your arms isn’t prickling, itching, burning beneath your green cloak.

  Imagine that you can change the fate that the stars have written for you.

  Imagine the Bird-Men are swooping around you too, folding you in their wings, singing with the marble statues on their heads, sheltering you from the Dark forever and ever.

  When she opened her eyes something pale brown had stuck to her cloak. She pinched it between two fingers: it was a soft wispy feather, really nothing more than a piece of down.

  Eliška pressed her feather to her lips, and pretended that any moment now, she would see Bird-Men in the falling snow.

  HUNGRY GHOSTS

  If you come to the house, I’ll give you mint tea, with a shot of whiskey on the side. I’ll loan you a sweater, one of those big lumpy ones you might find in your grandfather’s closet or at the Salvation Army on Main Street. I’ll teach you to crochet, if you’re interested: I have a trunk of yarn at home, all crimson and mustard and the colors of the forest. If you’d like, I’ll bring you to the basement and we can kiss. We’ll be cozy there, in the house, among the faded floral wallpaper and old-fashioned light switches and the grand built-in china cabinet. Maybe we’ll even be friends.

  This is what I tell people, when I invite them to the house.

  Of course, none of it’s true.

  * * *

  The summer when I was eight years old, I barely slept. I curled in a ball with the windows flung open and my sweat-sticky sheets peeled back. Whenever I nodded off, the closet next to my bed would rattle, paint-chipped doorknob quivering, and I would jerk awake again. I would stare at the closet as the rattling traveled down to the floorboards under my bed, then receded even further towards the basement.

  One night, mid-July, I placed my bare feet on the dusty floor, tiptoed out of my room and flicked on the basement light. At the bottom of the staircase, I saw the ghost.

  She stood with her back to me. Her long silver hair caught the light from the exposed bulb at the top of the stairs. Her elbows stuck out on either side of her, as though she held a book up to her eyes.

  I told Mémé about it the next day. She set down her glass cup of café au lait, clutched me to her chest and stroked my hair. She rasped, “Don’t worry, Sally, my sweetheart. I’ll ad-dress the situation. You’ll sleep again. Don’t worry.” She adjusted her white sleep mask. For as long as I could remember, she had worn that mask, even during the day, with two slits cut in the fabric so she could see.

  That afternoon, as I lay on my side on the floor, my eyelids drooping in the heat, the front door thudded open. Mémé’s voice floated up the stairs, intertwined with the sounds of a new person: an accent thick as clam chowder and a footstep that threatened to break the fragile wood of our front staircase.

  The man who had entered our house wore a uniform and carried a messenger’s bag with the creased edges of letters sticking out. He chortled when his eyes fell on the gap between door and wall where I stood. “A little girl lives up here? Shouldn’t she be in school?”

  Mémé shook her head at me no when I opened my mouth to answer. The shadows in the house shifted and fell over her, and light caught a long satin string trailing from the fraying edge of her eye mask.

  She led the messenger bag man to the basement, and he never came back up. That night, no one knocked in the closets, and I tumbled into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  In the years that followed, I caught glimpses of others ghosts around the house: two girls holding hands, wearing pinafores, their silver hair licking their waists, preceded by a gust of breathy girlish laughter sweeping through the foyer. I hated them. I learned to crochet webbed tapestries in bright primary colors, and I hung them on the walls, imagining that they might catch the ghosts the way flypaper catches insects. I lit votive candles in winter, hoping the bright flames would drive them back to the shadows in the basement.

  I became used to them eventually, the way you become accustomed to a creaky step in your front staircase or a sticky door leading to your porch. I learned their habits, the way you might learn the habits of a troublesome downstairs neighbor. They were literary and restrained and standoffish. They read Hawthorne and Dickinson; they drank mint tea out of plain china cups; they played cards or cribbage, but never for money.

  I imagined someday I would leave the house, shake off the ghosts. I had read about a place called the ocean in one of my books, and I dreamed of going there, far away from our corner of the forest where sunlight never filtered through the thick pine boughs.

  Soon after my twelfth birthday, a letter appeared in our mailbox: the authorities had found out that I hadn’t been to school, and they demanded Mémé enroll me immediately. I brought her the letter, imagining spending blessed days away from the ghosts’ whispering, and to my surprise, she agreed.

  “It will make it easier for you anyway, in the long-term, sweetheart,” she said, but when I asked her what it would make easier for me, she shook her head, the frayed strings on her eye mask swaying.

  My first day, I sat in the back row in every class, folding my hands and crossing my feet at the ankles.
In front of me sat rows of girls, bright and pastel as Easter eggs, loud and funny with hair straighter than spaghetti. And among them sat the boys, smaller and stringier than the girls at that age, smelling of their fathers’ cologne and the sweat of soccer games.

  After the bell freed us from class, I shuffled out into the loop behind the junior high school. I sidled up to a group of girls and boys standing next to a white-painted column.

  “I’m Sally,” I said. “Sally Ouellette.” I stuck out my hand, which I’d read in books was the way people greeted each other.

  One of the girls—silver necklace with a heart medallion, skinny arms and swelling chest, named Christine, I later found out—said, “So you do exist, then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My dad said you and your mom were just a rumor,” said a boy, Jake. “But they also told us not to go to that part of the woods. I guess—” He glanced back and forth at his friends, eager as a squirrel after a nut. “I guess they were trying to protect us.”

  “From what?” I crossed my arms over my patched and faded dress.

  “Let’s get going,” said a second girl, her eyes dropping to a phone in her hand. “The shop’s going to fill up if we don’t hurry.”

  “Can I come?” I asked.

  A series of looks exchanged between them. “Yeah. We just—I forgot something inside. We’ll come back for you.” Jake glanced back at me as they walked away. But they never came back. On my way home, I passed the shop they’d been talking about: they huddled around like bees in a hive, clutching ice cream cones.

  I walked home, down Main Street, past the post office and the library and the bar and the church and all the other buildings I’d never set foot inside. I reached the end of the town and shuffled along the shoulder of the hairpin two-lane highway, arms crossed over my chest, studying the mosquito bites and bruises that speckled my shins and thighs.

  “Why did they do that, Mémé?” I asked her that evening in the kitchen, as she took a pair of pinking shears to my messy brass-colored braid.