The day before Gabrielle Belain was to be executed, a large red bird visited the window, hovered on the sill, and kissed her mouth through the bars. This the people saw. This the people believed. In that moment, Gabrielle began to sing. She did not stop.
The Governor, as he welcomed representatives from neighboring protectorates and principalities, attempted the pomp and protocol befitting such a meeting. He heard the song of the girl pirate in the tower. His foreign guests did not, even as it grew louder and louder. The Governor rattled his sword, ran a shaking hand through his thinning, yellowed hair. He attempted to smile, as the song grew even louder.
The people in the market square heard the song as well. They heard a song of flowers that grew into boats that brought bread to hungry children. They heard a song of a tree that bore fruit for anyone who was hungry, of a cup that brought water to any who thirsted. She sang of a kiss that set the flesh to burning, and the burning to seed, and the seed to sprout and flower and heavily fruit. The people heard the song and sorrowed for the redheaded child, barely a woman now, who would die in the morning.
The song kept the Governor awake all night. He paced and cursed. He made singing illegal. He made music a crime worthy of death. Were it not for the celebrations planned around the scheduled execution of the pirate, he would have slit her throat then and there, but dignitaries had arrived for a death march, and a death march they would see.
In the moments before the dawn crept over the edge of the sky, the Governor consented that I would be allowed into Gabrielle’s cell to administer baptism, absolution, and last rites. Gabrielle stood at the window where she had stood all night and the previous day, the song still spilling from her lovely mouth, though quietly now, barely a breath upon her tongue. I offered her three sacraments, and three sacraments she refused, though she consented to hold my hand. I thought she did this to comfort herself, a moment of tenderness for a girl about to die. When the soldiers came to take her to the gallows, she turned to embrace me for the first time. She placed her mouth to my ear and whispered, “Don’t follow.”
So I did not. I let the soldiers take her away. I did not fight and I did not follow. I sat on the floor of the tower and wept.
Gabrielle, still singing, walked without struggle in the company of soldiers, all of whom begged her for forgiveness. All of whom told her stories of how her mother had saved a member of their family or blessed their gardens with abundance. Whether she listened, I do not know. I remained in the tower. All I know are the stories people later told.
They say that she walked with her eyes on the ground, her mouth still moving in song. They say she stepped up onto the platform as the constable read the charges against her. He had several pages of them, and the people began to shift and fuss in their viewing area. As the constable read, Gabrielle’s song grew louder. No one noticed a boat approaching in the harbor. A boat made of flowers and moss and leaves. A boat with no sail, though it moved swift and sure with a woman standing tall at its center.
Gabrielle’s song grew louder, until with a sudden cry, she threw her chained hands into the air and tossed her red hair back. A mass of birds—gulls, martins, doves, owls, bullfinches—appeared as a great cloud overhead and descended over and around the girl, blocking her from view. The Governor ordered his men to shoot. They did, but the flock numbered in the thousands of thousands, so while the square was littered in dead birds, the cloud rose nonetheless, the girl suspended in its center, and moved to the small craft floating in the harbor.
The Governor, his rage clamping hard around his throat and heart, ordered his ships boarded, ordered his cannons loaded, ordered his archers to shoot at will, but the craft bearing the two women skimmed across the water and vanished from sight.
This I learned from the people in the square, and this I believe, though the Governor issued a proclamation that the execution was a success, that the pirate Gabrielle Belain was dead, and that anyone who claimed otherwise risked imprisonment. Everyone, of course, claimed otherwise. No one was imprisoned.
That night, I stole gold from the coffers of the Abbey and walked down the road to the harbor. My beloved Abbot knew, I’m certain. The stores where such treasures are kept are always locked, but the Abbot left them unlocked and did not send for me after my crime. I purchased a small skiff and set sail by midday.
I am, alas, no sailor. My map, one that I copied myself, paled, faded, and vanished to a pure white page on the third day of my voyage. I dropped my compass into the sea, where it was promptly devoured by a passing fish. I have searched for a boat made of leaf, but I have found only salt. I have searched for two faces that I have loved. Gabrielle. Marguerite. The things I have loved. The scratch of quill to paper. The Abbot. France. Martinique. Perhaps it is all one. One curve of a wanton hip of a guileless god. Or perhaps my believing it is one has made it one. Perhaps this is the nature of things.
I do not know—nor, indeed, does it matter that I know—whether these words shall ever be read. It is not, as our beloved Abbot told me again and again, the reading that saves, but the writing: it is in the writing that the Word is Flesh. In our Order, we have copied, transcribed, and preserved words—both God’s and Man’s—for the last thousand years. Now, as I expire here in this waste of water and wind and endless sky, I write of my own disappearing, and this, my last lettering, will likely fade, drift, and vanish into the open mouth of the ravenous sea.
I have dreamed of their hands. I dream of their hands. I dream of a garden overripe and wild. Of a woman gathering the sea into her hands and letting it fall in many colored petals to a green, green earth. I dream of words on a page transforming to birds, and birds transforming to children, and children transforming to stars.
1.
The last sound she heard was water. It bubbled and flowed from the masses of decaying snow piles, slicked the path, and fanned into the spongy turf and sleeping grass. Bits of puddle splashed up on her white socks and white-and-red legs—a spangle of gray salt drips curving up to the knee. She did not mind, but continued to run across the park, gaining speed as she went. She ran with ease, with a surety of motion and grace. She did not worry about growing tired or hurting herself. She ran without fear.
Both the path and the park were empty, which surprised her because the day was warm at last after an endless winter of endless cold. She wore shorts and a T-shirt that said “Big Mama’s Bar,” which she thought she had been to once. The westerly breeze nipped at her upper arms and thighs, and while it was warm enough to melt the snow, she probably should have worn leggings or a windbreaker.
Should have.
In truth, it didn’t really matter either way. In about ten minutes, Ronia Drake’s life will end. She will not see death coming, nor will she see it scuttling away—its large mouth damp, drooping, and satiated. She will only know a sharp knock, a flurry of feathers and fur, a whisper of her name, and a sharp, curved finger at her throat.
Or perhaps it will be a burst of light.
Or perhaps it will be nothing at all.
2.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to be a princess. She wanted a pretty ring that glimmered on a pink-tipped finger, a tiny foot slipped neat and tight into a smart, beaded shoe. She wanted a crown of curls framing a delicate face.
But, alas, she was large-footed and ungainly. Her face was broad and fleshy and unbalanced. Nothing about her twinkled. Nothing.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who came into a little bit of magic. Well, perhaps came into is the wrong phrase. Perhaps stole would be more apt. Either way, the girl felt, it was nothing more than semantics. When people inherit money they say came into, and since the magic’s previous owner was as dead as could be, came into was as good a description as any.
There once was a little girl who wanted to be a princess, and learned magic to make it happen. Magic—stolen, inherited, or otherwise—is an unwiel
dy tool, but like any other useful thing, can be mastered by anyone who bothers to learn it.
After several attempts on unsuspecting proxies, the girl turned her magic on herself. She marveled at her tiny feet, snug in lovely beaded shoes with heels that clicked over a blue tile floor. She marveled at her face, milky soft and delicately boned. A princess’s face. She looked longingly at her hands, her long-fingered hands, as pale as pearls. There should be, she felt, a ring on her finger. With a diamond that glittered. And a prince to go with it.
Once upon a time, there was a princess who stole a prince. No, she thought, not stole. Came into. And so what if she used her little bit of magic? Her little inheritance. So what if he needed some encouragement to turn his head? No one cared, anyway. If she could have her way, and she often did, she would tell a new story—the right story—and she would write it like this:
Once upon a time there was a princess. A very pretty princess. Prettier than you. Once upon a time, a very handsome prince stole the very pretty princess.
No, not stole. Came into. And he would not get out.
3.
The moment Ronia Drake died, her daughters turned to their stepmother and pointed.
“Girls,” the stepmother said, “don’t point.”
“You,” the girls said, their small fingers pointing to the stepmother’s pale gold curls, cropped prettily under her ears.
“You,” the girls said, pointing at the stepmother’s swollen belly, which had enlarged upon itself, doubling, then tripling its size until people joked that it must be a medicine ball shoved under her skin. Or a go-kart. Or a truck.
“Girls,” she said again, but she stopped. She never called them by their names. She only called them “girls” when she was feeling petulant and “ladies” when she was feeling fine. Now, with the pointing and the accusations, she was feeling petulant. But when she reached for the first one, the one with the scar over her eye (and if only she could remember which one had the scar over her eye), she caught sight of her own hand and drew it back with a sharp cry. The stepmother had always had lovely hands the color of pearls. Or, at least it seemed like always. She told people that when women let themselves go, the first place it shows is in their hands. No man wants to make love to a woman with red knuckles and cuticles jutting out like spikes. No man wants a woman with quick-bitten fingernails, or fingernails rimmed with dirt, or spots or wrinkles or cracks.
Ronia Drake had dreadful hands. It was no wonder her husband had left her. The stepmother said this as though it were true. No one noticed the way a smile slicked across her milk-pale skin. No one noticed the strange glitter of her terrible beauty. Or, at least, they pretended not to notice. Instead they nodded to her comment about hands. So true, they said. So very, very true.
But now. Now as the stepmother reached for one of the girls she saw a hand, her own, covered in blood. A hand missing a pinkie and a thumb. And what was worse, it wasn’t her own hand at all. It was Ronia Drake’s hand.
4.
As Ronia Drake ran along the path, the wind seemed to curve around her, twisting like yarn. Her hair wouldn’t stay tied back and instead wisped free, tickling her eyes and ears and nose. The left side of the path was a strip of grass that soon would be green but was currently brown, and though it looked prickly, she knew that if she removed her running shoes, the ground would be spongy and cold and soaking wet. Beyond the grass the ground fell away in a tangle of leafless branches and trunks and thorns that wove through each other in their tumble toward the river below. Ronia Drake always warned her daughters to stay out of those woods.
You never know who might be living in those woods.
As Ronia Drake ran, she did not notice the eyes in the woods. She did not notice the way the ravens gathered and re-gathered only just behind her as she ran. She did not notice the pale reflection that glimmered on the edges of the oil-slicked sheen of the dark puddles. Pale curls dancing on the rippling water. And a delicate mouth slashed open in a grin.
Every once in a while a bench made of river rocks held together by gravelly mortar with a few splintery planks set across for sitting on appeared along the path. So did occasional ancient barbeques and fire pits with chimneys that pointed effortlessly toward the sky. These too were made of river rocks. Once, when she had taken her daughters here for a picnic, Anna, or perhaps it was Alice, shinnied to the top of the chimney, her long, bare arms and legs moving with the chaotic grace of an insect. Now that she thought about it, it was both Alice and Anna, but it was Anna who fell, slicing the tender skin between her eye and brow on a particularly sharp piece of granite. Alice remained on top, crying, and Ronia never knew if she cried because her sister fell, or if she was frightened, or if she simply did not like to be separated from the girl who shared her face. A man called nine-one-one on his cell, and a fire truck came to bandage Anna and pluck Alice from the sky. The girls, reunited, wrapped their long, pale arms around each other, whispering soundlessly in each other’s ears.
That night, Ronia dreamed that the girls lived in a nest at the top of the chimney. Their hands gripped the edges of the rocks like talons and they peered down at the people on the path. When Ronia walked along the path looking for her children, the girls threw bits of twig and feathers and dry grass at their mother, but it did not reach her. It blew up in a twisting wind and vanished over the edge of the empty trees. She called to the girls to come down, but they were no longer girls. They stared down at her with large, complicated eyes, their gentle antennae clasping and unclasping, their long, thin, green legs folded under their bodies, ready to spring. Ready to fly away. And they did fly. Over her head, her girls, or her grasshoppers, or her grasshoppers who once were her girls, vaulted across the sky in a buzz of leg and song.
When she woke, she did not remember the dream.
“I had the strangest dream,” she told people.
“What was it?” the people asked.
“No idea,” she said.
5.
The police were called, more than once, although no one could tell them why they called. People dialed the emergency number and found themselves staring at the place where Ronia Drake once lived and breathed, but now did not. One man vomited on his phone, ruining it forever. A girl tried to explain what she saw, but she fell to her knees and began speaking in tongues instead. An older woman began to have heart palpitations, and asked the dispatcher—a kind woman named Eunice—to send out an extra ambulance while she was at it. When the ambulance arrived, the EMTs found the old woman seated under a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her, her body pressed to the trunk of the tree as though pinned. She had faced herself away from the remains of Ronia Drake, which seemed sensible enough, but had died anyway, pressing one hand against her eyes and one on her heart. The girl remained in the center of the path, kneeling, her hands and face pointing to the sky. Her voice had gone hoarse by the time the ambulance came, and the second ambulance, and the fire truck and police car. But her lips continued to move.
One paramedic knelt by some of the remains of Ronia Drake. A severed ponytail, a bit of T-shirt that said “Mama.” The paramedic picked up the ponytail and brought it to his nose. He smelled bread and long-limbed children and cut grass and a curved pink lip exposing white teeth that had been sharpened to points. He smelled bright green grasshoppers tenderly washing their faces. He smelled a slim, long-legged deer, bending sweetly to feed upon the damp grass. A deer with two grasshoppers balanced on her delicately boned head. A deer with a blue eye.
“Ronia Drake,” he said to the others. “Her name was Ronia Drake.” He did not explain how he knew this, and no one asked. The others began looking for any kind of identification, though they would find none. They did find a shoe, ten toes (in ten places), a shoulder, a blue eye. Each part was sliced cleanly, as though with a scalpel. There was little blood. “And this,” the paramedic said, picking up the two hands clasped together as thou
gh praying. One hand was red-knuckled and quick-bitten. The other was pink-tipped and pale as pearls, with a diamond that would have gleamed were it not for the drop of blood that had landed on the stone. “This,” he said, “is not her hand.”
Above their heads an unkindness of ravens gathered and dispersed and gathered again. They landed on empty branches, on signs declaring which path was for biking and which for walking, and on the wet ground. They opened their black beaks and called to one another, and back, and back again. The paramedic looked into the glinting eye of the biggest, shiniest of them all. Although he knew it was crazy, he could have sworn the ravens were calling “Ronia, Ronia, Ronia.”
6.
The stepmother locked herself into the bathroom.
“You,” the girls said on the other side of the door. They did not knock or bang.
“Shut up,” the stepmother whispered, her voice like glass in her ears.
“You,” the girls sang. No, screeched. No, sang. Sang like birds—no, like bugs. They sang with the voice of something small. Something scuttling. Something with a damp, satiated mouth.
“Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz,” they sang, their voices reverberating on the tile and porcelain, shaking the walls, vibrating the stepmother’s perfect house.
The stepmother covered her ears, felt the coagulating blood gum up on the side of her cheek. Her left hand was bloody still, and still not her own. Ronia Drake’s hand. Ronia Drake’s hand missing a pinkie and a thumb. With the hand that was her own, she gripped at her belly, swollen so taut and tight that it threatened to split down the middle. The child inside did not move. It had not moved all day.
Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories Page 9
