My legs trembled. I whispered, “Please, please.”
“For you,” she repeated, and patted me on the cheek. “Your love.” She nodded at the men gathered around.
“They take you to the Denying Room,” she said. “They drag you.”
“What?” Ángel demanded, and I flinched. “No, you can’t—you can’t keep him there!”
“No,” she smiled at him, thin-lipped. “But he may keep himself.”
A man lifted a broken blade and gashed me across the leg. I fell and hit the ground, and Ángel said, “I’m not going to stand for this.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” she told him.
***
The light came in through the bedroom window. I opened my eyes. I was lying on the bed in our bedroom, and Elle leaned over me, hair spilling down, eyes full of light.
“You didn’t give up,” she whispered, and pressed her lips to my forehead. “You never forgot.”
Blood and hair lips and teeth, face rotted purple with decay
I inhaled a shuddering breath.
The room was whole, undamaged. I sat up and looked at my hands. Soft and unbloodied. I turned my head.
Elle smiled.
“Coffee?” she asked.
I followed her into the kitchen. The air smelled of salt.
“I looked for you,” I whispered, standing in the doorway, my hands opening and closing. “I never gave up. I never... forgot.”
She made coffee and sat with me at the table, one hand curled around the bones of my wrist.
We went out, later, into the street. Under the autumn sky, blue and huge. The crowds moved around us like water, like wading in a warm ocean. Their murmuring the noise of the waves.
Seafoam people.
We passed a man on the corner, black-haired and filthy, in a pair of round spectacles. He had on too many layers and he looked homeless. Crazy. He followed me with his eyes. I didn’t want to see him open his mouth.
“Stay with me,” Elle said, and hung on my arm. I wrapped her up tight.
The man hissed, “You forget. You.” The smell of decay washed over me.
We passed him as quickly as possible, and I didn’t look back. Kept Elle close that night, all night.
“Did something happen?” she asked me, once, eyes bright and clear.
“No,” I said, and tucked her bright head under my arm. “Nothing.
***
They dragged her from the waves, body bloated and covered in slime. “Is this her?” they demanded. “Is this her?” I couldn’t touch her hair, tangled and matted, glistening with rot.
They showed me where she was cut, on her throat and belly. Wounds gaping like mouths, blacked at the edges. Viscera pulped and spongy. Water streaming from every orifice.
Dead. Dead.
I thrashed awake, eyes and mouth gaping, shrilling out my horror. Small hands clutched at me.
“Oscar! Oscar!” her voice was strong in the dark. “You’re okay! You’re fine! It was a dream, a dream, it wasn’t real!”
“No!” my arm shot out, shoving her away. “Oh God.”
I fell off the bed, onto my hands and knees. Gasped in air, throat tearing.
“No.” the word drooled out of my mouth, thick as blood. I crawled away from the bed, got my feet under me, and staggered down the hall, toward the door. The way out.
Elle followed.
But she’s dead.
She grabbed at my arms, fingers digging in.
“Oscar, no,” she pulled at me. “Don’t do this. It’s okay, everything’s going to be fine. You just had a dream—”
I shoved her again, hard. Her fingers tore free and she stumbled.
“You’re not real,” I hissed at her, and even in the poor light I could see her face crumple.
“No,” she breathed, “not again.”
I turned away and dragged the door open, groped my way down the hall and out onto the street. The empty street. I inhaled the silence of the air.
Behind me, Elle came through the door.
“Oscar,” she reached out. “Please—”
I shoved her away again, harder.
“Bitch,” I hissed, “You’re not real you’re not real.”
“I am,” she insisted, voice firm, strong. She stepped toward me again and I slipped backward, matching her step for step.
“It was just a dream, Oscar,” she said, “Your mind playing tricks on you. That’s all. It... it happens sometimes. You... you just got lost, for a little while. You were sick.”
“I saw you die. I saw it.”
“No. It was a dream. Your mind just... made that up. You can see me. You can see that I’m real. Look at me. Please. Please.”
I couldn’t. My gaze slid off her pale form entirely, skittered away into the shadows.
I heard the rustle of feathers. Dry and huge. A bright eye winked at me, out of the dark. A long hand extended, nails glistening.
“Come with me into the pits,” Ghost Bird crooned.
I looked back, at Elle. She shone like a star.
“I know what I saw,” I said to her, to both of them, and took Ghost Bird’s hand. Her nails pierced my skin.
We walked into the city, and Elle called my name.
Fate’s Mask
Steve Toase
Nettie would never drown, never taste the brackish choke of salt water as her life ebbed. She was born with a wedding veil shadowing her face, marrying her to the land so the sea could never steal her.
***
Nettie’s life was marked by the visits of sailors whose ears had heard of her veil of blood. Arrogant, proud men covered in tattoos, leaning against the doorframe like they owned the place; young hairless boys frit at the stories of the waves. They came with promises of spices: myrrh, sandalwood and saffron. All her life the small cottage echoed with scents of Damascus, Ceylon and Goa. Sometimes, she would take the young men as lovers, their skin as scented as the decorated spice boxes they carried. So much more exotic than the lumpen farmboys who watched her with hooded eyes.
If the caul had just been to guard the mouth from the tempers of the ocean maybe a deal could have been struck. But her mother’s birth gift was also a mask, disguising her as luck’s daughter so fate would leave gifts of fortune along her path.
Luck and fortune always attract attention. In the small town where Nettie lived the attention came from Temperance Kaylocke. Temperance was well known locally, and what people knew was that Temperance twisted the seasons to her will. She wore the marks of souring milk and untying storm knots. Her eyes bloomed with the white phosphorus of cataracts and her voice cracked like a summer’s field. Her cottage stood just off the front street, the garden edged by gorse hedges no one dared cross in case the children of the thorn pursued them.
Ten years prior, when Nettie was just a small girl, Temperance employed Harland Caston to carry out repairs on her house. For three days and three nights, after the work was completed, Harland spoke to no one. On the fourth day, while in his cups, he held forth on the finds in the roofspace: two mummified familiars and a thing wrapped in swaddling clothes that whispered to him while he worked. As Harland finished speaking Temperance walked into the bar. Everyone present that night swore her eyes turned from pale white to burning black. Within three days Harland’s lungs filled with blood. He died on his stairs, clawing for breath.
From that day everyone lowered their head when Temperance walked by. Except one person. When Temperance passed, Nettie would hold her head high and look straight into that clouded gaze, wishing her good morning or good evening, depending on the time of day. Nettie felt no fear of Temperance’s eyes turning black. She had faith that the caul would deflect the dark stare back to the older woman. She could see her lack of fear bothered Temperance, the older woman muttering on her way, trying to attach bad luck to Nettie’s life.
***
In Nettie’s nineteenth year she was to be married. One of the young sailors had chosen her warm bed over th
e intemperate seas and a cold berth. The day was set for the summer, when the fields would prickle with ripe corn. She dreamt of standing on the steps of the town hall wearing the dress, manikin displayed in the corner.
The morning was humid and Nettie opened the casements to the fragrant spring air. She sang as she worked, a sea shanty carried back from India by a past lover. The words bringing back memories of cardamom and ginger.
She kept the caul to hand like a piece of unfinished embroidery, uncovering it from the muslin bag to search for portents in the dead cells. A skin touchstone for harvests and horrors, resting in her aproned lap. She closed her eyes, and let her fingers skitter, looking for meaning to guide those who came to have fortunes told and blemishes lifted.
Staring at the flashing blackness of her own eyelids she listened to noise building, a chattering like spring beetles. Nettie opened her eyes. The temperature fell and she watched in terror as a formless breeze climbed down the chimney, gathering ash and pace, gripping the caul from her grasping hands and spinning it through the air towards the open window. Nettie followed after. The caul danced just ahead of her. Her foot caught in her dress hem. She fell face down in the trail of coals and charred wood left across the room, watching the blood connection between her and her kin leave across the steep-pitched roofs.
For two days Nettie was inconsolable, shooing away the arms and soothing words of her lover. She sat in the hearthside chair, her fingers stroking the dirty bag, looking for an echo, a note that she could sing. All traces had fled and the room hung in silence.
***
Nettie’s luck followed the caul out of the window, a tattered train of fleeing fate. The first effects were immediate: the wedding dress stained by the airborne ash, the window shaken and shattered by the passage of ghost breeze.
Others took more time. Hair spoken about on ship decks from Whitby to Singapore now hung lank and lifeless, the colour washed out like her good fortune. Blemishes bloomed across her skin, attracting gossip from the marketplace matriarchs. The scars across her face echoed the flyblown fruit hanging unpicked in her small orchard. She only saw her fiancé now through the frosted glass of the bar, Nettie walking past on her errands while he watered his throat with gin by the hour. She glanced up and watched his head turn from her towards prettier, younger girls, faces evened out with cream. She picked up her pace and walked past, her lungs filled with powder no amount of coughing would shift. Her passage attracted glances like bluebottles to a corpse. Nettie ignored the stares, still proud despite her circumstance. She sat down by the market cross, taking weight off her joints.
“How you doing, young Nettie?”
She looked round to see Mrs Stanley standing there, her long grey hair tied back with a piece of red silk. Behind her peered Jonty Campbell, a local farm labourer.
Nettie smiled, though her skin was dry and cracked. “I’m getting by, Mrs Stanley. I have had better days.”
Jonty smiled, showing the ground remains of teeth. “Not for a while, you haven’t. Not while you lost that birth veil of yours.”
Nettie shrugged. “That was the start,” she agreed, “but I thought my life would be like everyone else’s. Not this.” She coughed, but her lungs just bubbled and choked.
Mrs Stanley sat down next to her, Jonty on the step below.
“Do you like my new ribbon?” asked Mrs Stanley. “If my hair goes and decides not to have any colour, I’ll bloody put it in myself. Can change the colour every day, too.” She opened her cloth bag and pulled out a rainbow of thread.
“Been trying to convince Jonty to wear one, but he’s not having it.”
“Keep telling her, I’ve nowt to tie it to,” he said, lifting his hat to reveal a perfectly smooth head.
Nettie giggled, a laugh that faded away into a coughing fit. Mrs Stanley slapped her on the back.
“Have a good spit, love. Clears the pipes.”
The cough faded and Mrs Stanley reached down, grasping Nettie’s hand.
“The problem, love, is not just you’ve lost your caul. The main problem is what the caul is been used for.”
Nettie looked at her, confused. Mrs Stanley stroked her hand.
“Thing is,” said Jonty, “we, with our generosity of time and expansive knowledge, can help you find who has the caul.”
Nettie’s eyes brightened.
Jonty smiled his broken toothed smile. “And what they are doing with it.”
“How?”
“Come to the Simpson barn tomorrow and we’ll show you,” said Mrs Stanley. “All, as they say, will be revealed.”
She pressed three emerald-coloured ribbons into Nettie’s hand.
“Take these. You look like you need a bit of colour in your life at the moment,” said Mrs Stanley.
***
Nettie rose early, the other side of her bed cold and unslept in. The walk took her along field hedges, across plough furrows, to the derelict Simpson farm where the barn squatted, wind-dried and paint-mottled. Not too big, just large enough for a few head of cattle.
The mist felt cool against her sore hands, stripping the burning from the cracked skin. Inside the wooden building she could see a rich orange glow, fading in and out of view.
“Morning, Nettie,” said Mrs Stanley, leaning against the door, her fingers lacing the three orange ribbons weaved through her hair. “You look brighter, girl.”
Nettie smiled. “Feel better, Mrs Stanley. Thank you for the ribbons.”
She turned so the older woman could see the pony tail, criss-crossed with emerald silk.
“See? Bit of colour does you the world of good,” Mrs Stanley said, gesturing for Nettie to follow her inside.
“Jonty’s been here all night, making sure the fire kept going.”
“Bit of peat, bit of charcoal. Some rowan. A good wicken-wood fire. Can’t go wrong,” said the old farm labourer, wiping his shirt sleeve across a soot-marked forehead.
The barn smelt of expensive whiskey and wet hay. Nettie walked in and sat down on a hay bale.
“Don’t be hiding away over there. We need you for the next stage,” said Mrs Stanley, walking over and looping her arm through Nettie’s. She led the younger woman over to the brazier that guttered in the centre of the room. By the side a small silver tray held several plants. Nettie pointed to the ones she recognised.
“Wormwood, wolfsbane, basil and lousewort,” she said.
Mrs Stanley nodded. “That one there is briony.” She pointed to a pile of green and white flowers.
She poured some fungi on the tray.
“And these are fly agaric, and death cap.”
Jonty walked over with a black burnt pan and slid the herbs into the opaque liquid inside, putting the pan to rest above the fire.
“Now we wait till the mixture is good and boiled,” he said, smiling at Nettie.
“And then?” she asked.
He tapped the side of his nose, then turned and blew it clear into the straw-covered floor.
The pan started to agitate on the brazier, the thick green liquid spitting over the rim into the flames. The stench caught in the back of Nettie’s throat and she turned to cough into her hand.
Mrs Stanley put an arm round her shoulders. “Don’t worry, love. We’ll soon have you right.”
A thought occurred to Nettie.
“I don’t have to drink it, do I?”
Mrs Stanley and Jonty laughed, raucous, tobacco-stained laughter.
“Not unless you want to be in a box by the time the sun drops, lass,” said Jonty, recovering himself. “Drink it? Dear me.”
“No, love. No drinking, till you buy us a pint to celebrate getting your property back,” said Mrs Stanley, fingers twisting faster and faster through the ribbons in her steel grey hair.
Jonty bent down, his back clicking with the effort, and pulled a corn dolly out from the corner.
He passed the figure to Nettie.
“Hold this little ’un in your left hand, and put your right on the h
andle of the pan.”
Nettie did as the old man asked, feeling the glow of heat through the oak handle.
“Now say, ‘By those from the fields and shadow of the hedges, has so-so got my caul?’”
Nettie repeated the phrase, adding in the name of the girl who now turned her lover’s head. The straw figure squirmed in her hand, but nothing else happened.
“Try another,” said Mrs Stanley.
Nettie repeated the phrase with another name. Again nothing. She repeated the phrase four more times.
“By those from the fields and shadow of the hedges, has Temperance Kaylocke got my caul?”
The pan boiled over, throwing dark smoke everywhere. The corn figure squirmed free of her grip. Outside, tumbling kindling clattered. A dried riverbed curse echoed through the yard.
Mrs Stanley strode out, Nettie following behind, to find Temperance stumbling from her cascaded perch. Mrs Stanley walked over and retrieved an emerald ribbon from Nettie’s hair, binding it around Temperance’s clouded gaze.
“May the green of the oceans bring the salt to shutter your haunted sight.”
She whipped an orange ribbon out from her own hair, and bound it around Temperance’s left wrist.
“Let fire hold you from resistance.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of earth.
“Let grave soil stop lies from polluting your tongue,” she said, crushing the grains into Temperance’s cracked lips.
Jonty guided an unresisting Temperance into the barn and barred the doors with an old piece of ash, bound round with holly. They glimpsed the smoke from the pan filling the barn, from the trampled floor up, listened as it rose through the air, in every nook, between bale and beam. They could hear Temperance stumbling, the dense steam fogging her steps. From inside came a knocking, scarred knuckles against hardwood. Nettie went to move the ash. Mrs Stanley stopped her.
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