Seven Daughters

by Jessica Lourey

If you’ve chosen the candle, burn it until it puts itself out. If you’ve chosen the plant, thank it for composting your fear and turning it into something useful.

  Do what you will with the stones. The spell is set, and your cage is open.

  Chapter 2

  “I can help sew, you know,” he’d said a week after he was hired.

  “If you watch the till and keep the racks tidy, that’ll be help enough,” Xenia had said.

  He’d tried Helena next. “My dad says I’m a good cook.”

  “That’s nice,” Helena had murmured, focused on adjusting a pile of confectionery rulers. Her double-boiler of dark chocolate was cooling, and she needed to pour it into the paper-dollar-sized rectangles before it became too thick. When it was poured, it would flatten over the almond paste into a thin wafer of bitter sweetness, into which she’d carve a perfect replica of a dollar before sprinkling it with green sugar. Dark, rich chocolate, ideal for those who had money problems.

  “I bet I could help you with the candy. You know, be your assistant.”

  “Oh,” Helena said, not glancing up. He stood, hands in pockets, for ten full minutes, watching Helena’s every movement with the intensity of a supplicant. When a tinkling bell announced new customers, he’d returned to the front. He was good at his job, unobtrusive, helpful, smart. That had been last summer, the season before his senior year, and he’d only gotten better since. Helena didn’t know what they’d do without him when he graduated come June.

  But that was the future. The now was a humming Thursday. A busload of tourists on their way to the casino on the other end of the county had stopped in downtown Faith Falls, and a clot of them had entered the store, whispering about the cost of the beautiful chocolates.

  “Each one is handmade,” Helena heard Leo say. “We don’t use artificial ingredients. There’s no wax in the chocolate.”

  The tourists flashed tight smiles, but if they didn’t taste a chocolate or try on a dress, they didn’t know what they were missing. It was just food and clothing, and they were saving their money for slots. Leo didn’t pressure them. Xenia had scolded him the one time she’d caught him doing the hard sell.

  “This isn’t a time share.”

  “But everyone loves your dresses when they try them on,” he’d said.

  “Some things you need to arrive at on your own. We’ve got plenty of customers as it is.”

  Leo hadn’t sulked. He’d processed her words and changed his behavior. He was that observant, and he’d never tried to twist anyone’s arm since. He simply told them what they were looking at and left the rest up to them.

  “Do you have very much homework?” Helena asked Leo, closing the door of the display case. She asked him this every school night he worked for them. Every time, the answer was the same, or close to it.

  “Naw. Got it done during study hall.”

  “Good.” Helena was never sure if she believed him. She suspected he was the type of boy who could be lazy and still earn good grades. He was a kind soul, too, almost too tender for this world. Leo had confessed to her that since his mother had died two years earlier, he’d tried living down in the day-to-day world, but the hot exhaust of humanity made him sleepy. Seven Daughters was the one place he could breathe. “I’m glad to hear that about your schoolwork. Because—”

  She stopped in midsentence, her heart pounding.

  Meredith Baum née Gottfridsen had just strode into the store.

  She was a woman with breath like a two-stroke engine and eyebrows that appeared as though they’d been pasted on backward. One glance at her, and you knew she had been a sour baby. Though she’d taken on her husband’s name when they’d married thirty years earlier, she was a Gottfridsen to her core, from her crown of copper hair to her stubby pinkies, and she’d snatched up the family mantle with zest if not grace. Specifically, she’d taken it as her guiding purpose in life to undo the Catalains.

  Her great-grandfather, Albrikt Gottfridsen, had been enamored of the Catalains when Eva and Ennis initially moved to Faith Falls. He hadn’t lived to see the town’s devotion die. When the railroad came through in 1932, Albrikt was ten-year’s dead and Eva and Ennis Catalain had disappeared, leaving a hole that the town crammed with the most convenient of stuffings—anger. The fact that Eva and Ennis’ daughter Velda had grown up to be the loosest of women, and same with her daughters Ursula and Xenia, didn’t help matters.

  And it wasn’t just the licentiousness of the Catalain women that spurred Meredith’s distrust of them; it had been the life mission of Meredith’s mother Midge to bring down the family. Midge believed with her very soul that the Catalains had gotten away with murder—the murder of Velda Catalain’s husband, specifically. Allowing an act like that to go unpunished was akin to taking part in it.

  Meredith had been weaned on these truths. Even so, she may have been content to nurture a low-burning resentment toward the Catalains, never taking up her mother’s task to destroy them, if not for one thing: her husband Michael’s “visit” to Ursula Catalain the year before Heather was born.

  Meredith’s desperation to get pregnant combined with the test results showing Michael had lazy sperm had goaded her into thrusting her husband into the arms of that Medusa. She assumed Michael and Ursula’s affair began the night he bought the potion. Mixing business and pleasure would have been bad enough, except that over the course of their two-week affair, they’d had the poor taste to fornicate in public. Specifically, in Ursula’s car in the ValuCo parking lot, Ursula’s head popping up and down like a rocking horse. Meredith knew this because her best friend Caramine had witnessed it, and related the story to Meredith in great detail before sharing it with the entire town.

  Meredith could never forgive the fact that she had planted the seeds of that affair, and worse, that she was beholden to Ursula for the birth of her daughter. (In the rare moment when she was completely honest with herself, she had to admit that it might be the fact that Ursula was on top—a position that Meredith herself had always been unwilling to take—that pricked the hardest.)

  Meredith and Michael had never talked about the shameful tryst, and whenever she broached the idea of owing their only child to Ursula, he always laughed at her until, after two decades, she gave up mentioning it and replaced her resentment with religious zeal and an ongoing plan to destroy the Catalains where her mother had failed.

  These life goals fit like gloves.

  Except she’d discovered that Ursula was hard to get at. The woman stayed mostly in her cottage at the rear of her house, concocting her potions and sleeping with other women’s husbands. Helena and Xenia, with their storefront, were easier, and so it was with a combination of boycotts, smear campaigns, and light vandalism that Meredith had been attacking the Seven Daughters almost since it had opened fourteen years ago, trying to destroy the Catalains the same way they’d upended her own life.

  Unfortunately for Meredith, Helena and Xenia’s reputation as honest businesspeople and the unique quality of their wares always won out. Helena knew this, just like she knew that Midge, Meredith’s mother, had been right. Velda had murdered her own husband and gotten away with it. In addition, Helena knew that Ursula had slept with Meredith’s spouse. So, she didn’t take Meredith’s vendetta personally, and in fact pitied her, always offering her and her lady friends candy and lemonade when they were picketing the store, hot chocolate if it was winter.

  This was the first time, however, that Meredith had stepped foot inside Seven Daughters.

  Her mouth was set so tight a razor wouldn’t have fit through her lips.

  Helena stopped in mid-inhale, frozen like a rabbit. The interior glass of her candy case fogged over, as if breathing for her. This wasn’t good.

  The fact that Meredith had entered the store meant her need for vengeance had ramped up. What could have set her off, especially considering Ursula was out of town? More importantly, how could Helena get rid of Meredith without angering her further? Xenia was still in the
back room. Leo was boxing candy. The only other people in the store—two women, presumably from the tourist bus—were chatting obliviously over a rack of dresses.

  Helena wasn’t sure what to do, so she fell back on her standby: kindness.

  “Welcome, Meredith!” After all the hours Meredith had devoted to her, Helena felt the least she could do was address her by her first name. “I’m so glad you finally came inside. Can I offer you some candy? Help you shop for a dress, perhaps? Or maybe you just wanted to say a quick ‘hi?’”

  Meredith scowled so deeply that she emitted the smell of sulfur. She prowled toward the candy counter. “I’m not here to buy anything.”

  “Oh?” The fog in the candy case cleared, revealing melted puddles of chocolate. Leo had turned from his work and was staring keenly at Meredith. Even the two women in the racks had stopped to pay attention.

  “Don’t play coy with me, Helena Catalain.” Meredith’s voice was low, ominous. The overhead lights flickered. Helena believed she caught the faint scent of vinegar coming from the corner where she had displayed the grape globe candy, matchhead-sized orbs of spun sugar clustered around an edible green vine. “I know what sort of magic you’re up to in here, and I can finally do something about it.”

  Helena’s world went black. She blinked rapidly until light returned and glanced at the two customers. They were watching the exchange uneasily. “Now Meredith,” Helena said, her voice even but her knees shaking. “You’re too kind. It’s not magic that makes our candy and dresses so popular, but I appreciate your endorsement.”

  Xenia walked out of the back room, a yellow measuring tape in hand, two criss-crossed pencils holding up her salt-and-pepper bun.

  “Sister, Meredith Baum has kindly paid us a visit!” Helena’s voice was pitched too high.

  Xenia cocked her head, a slow smile spreading across her angular face. Someone unfamiliar with her would have thought she was welcoming Meredith. Helena recognized the expression for what it was: a cat spotting a mouse.

  “Meredith!” Xenia tossed the tape over her shoulder. “You’ve finally entered the witch’s lair!”

  Meredith turned as white as lefse. “I knew it,” she hissed.

  It took her a full thirty seconds to realize she was being made fun of. Xenia’s laughter turned Meredith’s shade to pink.

  Helena felt terrible. Them being witches was another thing Meredith was right about, and no one would believe her. Helena was stepping around the case to console Meredith—she thought it cruel to laugh at others, no matter who they were—when the front door swung open, admitting a woman so wide she had to angle her shoulders to fit through. She lurched all the way to the candy counter, grabbing Meredith’s arm as if for support. She was in her early 20s and out of breath.

  “I’m tired of hiding!” Her hair was disheveled, sweaty blond curls plastered to her enormous face. Her hands were so plump that they looked like blown-up surgeon’s gloves, and her shapeless sundress was straining to hold all her flesh.

  But that’s not what everyone was staring at.

  A tattoo was etching itself into the top half of the arm that was holding Meredith, the woman’s skin swelling with color and shape as sure as if a needle was puncturing her flesh.

  The woman cried out in pain.

  Meredith gasped.

  Helena wondered how much worse this day could get.

  Chapter 3

  The enormous woman slapped her hand over her arm to cover the emerging tattoo.

  Meredith shrunk back, wresting her arm away. “What are you?”

  The woman blinked, crystal-ball tears sliding down her cheeks. “I’m Claudette.”

  The simple, heartbreaking beauty of the words crushed Helena. She rushed forward to hold Claudette, though her arms were barely long enough to reach the backs of her shoulders. “Welcome to the store, Claudette.”

  Claudette sniffled. “I didn’t mean to come here. I went to the little shop in back of the Queen Anne? To get help from the…other one? But she wasn’t there. I don’t know how I ended up here.”

  Helena patted Claudette’s shoulders. Taking the touch as encouragement, Claudette’s story rolled out like marbles as the tattoo continued to stipple her skin, its shape emerging in waves:

  She’d gone in search of Ursula this morning. Visiting the cottage behind the Queen Anne had been her piss-aller, something she never would have done if she hadn’t been denied access to the plane last week. It was supposed to be a weekend getaway with her girlfriends, a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas. She’d never flown before. She’d been excited. Then she’d spotted her seat, about the size of a dinner plate. She tried squeezing in, and with a little prodding, she was successful. If that damn stewardess, herself so skinny she looked like two sticks rolled in hair, hadn’t come by and insisted Claudette wear a seat belt, it would have worked fine.

  As it was, they made her deplane and wait for a larger one to come along. She swore to her friends that she’d board it, but as soon as they took off, she drove home to Faith Falls. “A woman can only take so much shame, you know?”

  Leo passed a tissue over the counter, and Helena handed it to Claudette. Her tears were pouring freely now, tender glass globes rolling down her cheeks and shattering against the wood floor. Xenia and the other two customers had gathered close, everyone in the store hypnotized by Claudette’s story and the mysterious image emerging on her arm.

  “It’s not that I want to be thin,” Claudette continued. “I just want to feel safe. Growing up with an alcoholic, handsy father took care of that, you know? Food became my out.” Her voice grew faraway. “A juicy steak steeped in cream of mushroom soup sprinkled with French-fried onions makes me feel secure, at least while I eat it. Then I want bread with butter, and ice cream laced with toffee crumbles, and then sugar-sweet coffee, and then more, but it’s never enough because eventually I have to stop eating and there’s just me, and the judging world.” Claudette inhaled a shaky breath.

  The tattoo finished itself on her forearm at that moment. It was a vivid green snake wrapped three times around her arm, a salacious pink tongue licking out of its fanged mouth. Meredith spotted it, and the blood drained out of her face.

  Another tattoo began carving itself on Claudette’s exposed shoulder immediately after the first ended. She seemed oblivious to the pain of the second one, so caught up was she in her story.

  “I’d heard of the witch on Hazel Street.” Claudette glanced guiltily at Helena, and over at Xenia. “Everyone has. My mom even went to school with her, though she said she was normal back then. None of my friends have visited the Queen Anne cottage, but I knew a friend of a friend who’d gone because she had cold sores and wanted to be rid of them once and for all. The rumor had it that her cold sores disappeared but that her cat was run over the same month.”

  Claudette blew her nose with the tissue she’d been handed. “I don’t own a cat, but I am prepared to pay a steep price to feel like the world has room for me.” She stared at Meredith, who was listening to the whole story in horror. “I’m tired of people telling me I smell good or have pretty eyes or I’m funny, and I don’t care if that makes me sound shallow.”

  She went quiet.

  Xenia broke the silence. “You’re missing something.”

  Claudette’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Those tattoos that are working their way out of your skin.” Xenia pointed at Claudette’s exposed upper arm. The second tattoo was nearly complete It was horrific, a lump of grey-green flesh with teeth and hair.

  “No!” Helena yelled before she could stop herself. She threw an arm out to steady herself. “I mean, yes to Xenia’s question. What about the tattoos?”

  Claudette shrugged. “They started appearing after I left the Queen Anne. And then I found myself here.”

  “Do they hurt?” Leo asked.

  Claudette nodded. “Terribly.” She pointed at the now-complete tumor tattoo on her shoulder. “This is the third. I have another one on the front
of my thigh. A jail cell with a skeleton in it. I thought a hive of bees was stinging me. What do you think they mean?”

  Helena glanced around the circle. Shock was written on everyone’s face but Xenia’s, who looked more curious than anything. “I don’t know,” Helena said. “Ursula might know, but she won’t be back until the end of the week.” She didn’t know what else to say, so she offered Claudette a wafer of a Money Luck bar from the sample plate on the counter. They were the only candy that hadn’t been harmed by Meredith’s vitriol. Claudette snatched the morsel like an antidote, popping it in her mouth and swallowing it whole.

  “Do you like it?” Helena asked, smiling.

  Claudette nodded. “It’s delicious. But I think it’s missing something.”

  Helena’s hand flew to her heart. It wasn’t that she minded healthy criticism. It was just that her candies had never before been less than perfect. She snatched the last emerald-dusted square from the sample plate and popped it in her mouth, rolling it around. She tasted the bittersweet chocolate, and the organic honey, and the almonds she’d ground almost to powder to add a nutty crunch. It was delicious and reminded her that she needed to put more of her money into savings. She opened her eyes, pleasure written across her face. “What could it possibly be missing?”

  “Mint.” There was certainty in Claudette’s voice, but that’s not what convinced Helena to hire her on the spot as her assistant. It was the truth of it. This candy needed a hint of mint, absolutely demanded it. Helena laughed a deep, throaty chuckle, wrapped her arm around Claudette, and walked her back to the kitchen, Meredith forgotten.

  Meredith backed out of the store. If Helena had still been there to see it, she would have witnessed the transcendent glow of victory on Meredith’s face, and it would have scared her to her bones. Whatever Meredith had come for, she had gotten it, and then some.

  The ground under Faith Falls rumbled, but with a new tenor.

  The snakes were talking. Soon, it would be time to rise.