Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories

by Kelly Barnhill

  She opens her mouth wide and sticks out her tongue. And it begins.

  The butterflies shoot out in threes. They are large, luridly colored, and glowing. They have bright eyes, hot antennae, wings that could heat a kitchen on a winter morning.

  Fifteen butterflies. Eighteen. Twenty-one.

  Her body shudders and shakes. Her eyes water and weep.

  Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty-two.

  Her skin burns, her teeth burn, her tongue may never be the same.

  One hundred and two. One hundred and five.

  The butterflies hover over her head in a bright cloud. They shake the air. By the time the three-hundredth butterfly (the largest of them all, with electric-blue wings) emerges from her choking throat, she slumps onto the slats, utterly spent.

  The butterflies await their orders.

  “The eyes,” she gasps, her voice barely a whisper. “Infect the eyes.”

  The butterflies need no other encouragement. They fly fast as missiles into the open eyes of each billboard Minister, disappearing into the depths of ink and paper.

  “Well,” she hears the Inquisitor say. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Make sure you stop at the baker’s before you go. Bring a pie home for the missus. You won’t regret it.”

  The eyes of each Minister burn black as coal. They glow red. Then gold. Then purple. They pulse and swell.

  “I’ll be sure to make a note of your cooperation in my report.”

  “I’d appreciate that. We all serve at the Minister’s pleasure.”

  The largest butterfly stays with the girl. It rests on her chest, wrapping its wings over her body like a blanket. She shivers and heaves. Above her, the eyes of the Ministers brighten and beam. She can feel the vibration worming through the air.

  And though she is weak, she smiles. She lets her left hand drift over the luminous body of the butterfly, stroking it tenderly. It’s working, she thinks. I knew it.

  The Inquisitor wears his visor and keeps his eyes on the papers secured on his clipboard. He fusses over forms signed in triplicate, over figures and diagrams and proper terminology. He knows that careers are made, stagnated, and destroyed by words, that a single misplaced comma can hang a man. Indeed, it happens all the time. He remembers his less careful colleagues with a shudder. He is fastidious for a reason. He has held this job now for eighteen years. Almost a record. The Inquisitor jabs his last period with a flourish and does not look up. Instead he exits the building, slides into the backseat of the long, black car waiting for him outside the Constable’s office, and raps on the glass separating the driver from her passenger. The driver clicks the car into gear and allows its girth to glide silently down the quiet street.

  The Inquisitor does not stop for pie.

  The Constable follows the Inquisitor out of the building, crosses his arms, and watches the silent car disappear into the dark. He draws in a long slow breath of cold night air and looks up at the glowing eyes of the Ministers. He sees a growing brightness, and then a burst of energy shooting across the quiet street from eye to eye to eye, making a multipointed web over his head. He sighs deeply, rubbing his arthritic hand over the loosening folds of his face. He needs a shave. He always needs a shave. He looks back up and sees the slumped figure of the girl on the catwalk, her butterfly still wrapped protectively around her chest. He shakes his head and goes inside to place a phone call.

  The telephone on the wall is an ancient thing—heavy black plastic, with a twirling wire that attracts dust. He dials the number he knows by heart and braces himself.

  “Yep,” he says. “Got a little sparrow on the roof.” He waits. “There’s been a development.” He holds his breath and nods. “She did indeed.” Listens to the other line. Holds the receiver away from his ear for a bit, wincing. “Well, there’s no call for that kind of language,” he says. “Channel was already open, and we both knew it. Been open for a long time. She just opened it more. Well. A lot more. Fool girl. Don’t matter either way. Secret’s out. Someone blabbed. Don’t know who, but someone did, no mistake. And now we’ve got a whole mess of trouble coming our way.” He waits a bit more. Rests his forehead against the wall. He’s getting too old for this sort of thing. “Yep. I’ll get her down. Why don’t you come and collect her when you can. Bring the other fool too, assuming he’s sober enough to stand.”

  Outside, the light emanating from the eyes of the Ministers is so bright that he can’t see the stars. It’s a pity. A little starlight might clear his head or soothe his soul. It usually does. He shrugs, rears back, and with more agility than would seem possible for a man of his age, leaps halfway up the building and clings like an insect to the bricks. He scuttles the rest of the way, scoops up the girl and her butterfly in one arm, and rappels back down, leap after downward leap, gripping the bricks with both feet and one hand. He lands on the ground, as light and soundless as dust. He brings her inside, locking the door behind him, and lays her gently on the cot in his office, crossing the room to put the kettle on.

  “Huh,” he says.

  The Constable stares at his hands, utterly amazed. He curls his fingers into tight fists and stretches them out as far as they will go. His arthritis is gone. His joints are unswollen and loose for the first time in twenty years. And his performance on the side of the building is a thing he never has been able to do—even when he was young and strong.

  And what’s more, he hadn’t even thought about it. His body knew what it could do before he did. He removes his eyeglasses and scans the room, blinking all the while. Crisp, sharp lines; details standing in stark relief. He slides the spectacles into a drawer, closing it with a decisive click, wondering if he will ever need them again.

  “Good god, girl,” he whispers to the sleeping child on the cot. “What did you go and do?”

  16. Then.

  On the morning after the Boro comet finally vanished from the night sky, not to return for another quarter century, the junk man—the man with the wobbly cart and the hand-patched boots, who smelled always of grave mold and vomit and whiskey and piss, the man who came through town every Saturday from the West Road and left every Monday by the East—found the dead child lying on the rubbish heap. The child with the magic mark.

  The junk man wasn’t looking for a child—living or dead—nor did he trouble himself with the national frenzy over the Boro comet, whose arrival always meant trouble. Whose presence in the sky, moreover, caused certain . . . anomalies in some children. He had better things to do.

  The junk man had begun searching the rubbish heap, picking up treasures as he went. A possibly gold chain. A perfectly good shoe. A solicitor’s briefcase, likely taken before the gentleman in question was thrown into the river with stones tied to his ankles. It was a dangerous profession these days, soliciting.

  There were fliers. Signs. Banners. All regarding that troublesome Boro comet with its foolishness and woe. The junk man kicked a banner with his hand-patched boot.

  He sang as he picked through the heap. His feet quivered with a bit of a suppressed jig and his fingers began to itch. He loved the rubbish heap. He never knew what he might find in there. Once he found a ring so valuable, it kept him in butter and beef for over a year. He had found the deed to the land where his shack now stands on the heap. Tools. Outlawed books. Loose change. Mostly operational eyeglasses. A set of false teeth.

  And now a baby. When he first came across it, it was shocking, of course (though not, it should be noted, as shocking as all that, times being what they are). But there was no denying the fact that the poor thing was as dead as can be. A days-old corpse, to be clear about it, its eyes pecked out by ravens, its body gray and foul and leaking.

  And then, without warning, the child curled its lips. It stuck out its putrified tongue and crinkled its cheeks. It began to whimper. Then cry. It blinked and blinked, raking its eyelids across the fleshy soc
kets until two bright eyes suddenly appeared, as shiny as new pennies. Its cheeks plumped and pinked, their skin suddenly glowing with good health and vitality. The child breathed. Blew bubbles. A rosebud mouth sought a nipple, and four tiny limbs kicked and flailed with hunger and cold and rage.

  It was warm, ruddy, and alive.

  Impossible.

  The junk man fell to his knees, clutched his heart. His first thought was to dash the child’s head against the rock. Surely it was possessed. Or it was a demon. Or it was an apparition dreamed up by some wronged customer to cause him to lose his mind before losing his life. Clearly it would devour his flesh, suck his brain, and go carousing through the countryside finding innocents to maul.

  He approached the child cautiously. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and sank into a crouch, resting his bottom on the heels of his boots. He settled his face into a suspicious stare. The baby, hardly noticing him, began to wail.

  It sounded like a baby.

  It smelled like a baby.

  The baby was naked. A girl. She hiccupped in her loneliness and grief. The magic mark curled out like a snail’s shell from her navel. It gave off a pale glow. The baby girl brought her fist to her mouth and sucked it desperately.

  And oh! She was terribly alone. The junk man cupped his hand over the top of her fragile skull, and felt the gentle pulse of her fontanels, like the wing of a bird.

  And the junk man felt something stir within him. The heart that he did not know he possessed eased into an unused groove and clicked neatly into place, like a coin into a slot. His eyes sprang wide. He shuddered and gasped. He was alive in a way he never knew before. He pressed his index finger to her palm, and felt the pincer grip of those tiny digits. The tendrils growing around his heart, holding it in place, pulled in tight. And everything was plain.

  He cleared his throat and looked levelly at the child. He had never spoken to a baby before and was unsure how to begin.

  “Good god, girl,” he said. “It’s not every day that you meet a body what can outwit a pack of soldiers. Good for you.” He shook the child’s hand solemnly and looked behind him to see if he was observed.

  There was no one on the rubbish heap—save for a mostly drunk junk man and a recently dead baby. He found an old bedsheet and tore it into strips, binding the baby to his body. The child calmed. She abandoned her fist, opting to suck on his filthy shirt instead. Buttoning his coat over the baby, the junk man took a deep breath and pushed his cart down the road.

  The child squawked twice. He began to walk with a bit of a sway, rocking her with the swish of his body. “Hush now, little sparrow,” he said. “I’ll get you fed soon enough. That or you’ll feed the buzzards again. We’ll see.”

  He headed to the far side of town and down the path into a thicket of wood toward the egg woman’s house. She would know what to do. She usually did.

  17. Now.

  The egg woman and the junk man arrive at the Constable’s office just before midnight. He is pushing his wobbly cart, emptied of its usual cargo.

  He grumbles. She pays him no mind. He grumbles louder.

  “Had it all arranged just so,” he says. “Just how I liked it.”

  “Stuff it, old man,” the egg woman says without turning around. “This is all your fault.” She looks up and sighs. She is being unfair, and she knows it. Someone else is at fault. She glances up and gives the lurid billboards atop each building a hard look. The bright web linking the eyes of the Ministers is starting to fade a bit, but she can feel it all the same. An electric hum in the air. Pricks in the skin. Something bubbling underground. Like as not, everyone in town can feel it too. It’s only a matter of time before things start happening.

  Not that they hadn’t been happening already.

  The Constable’s office is dark; she knocks anyway. The old man’s face appears in the window, lit by a candle. He grunts, fusses with the chain, and ushers them inside.

  “Marla,” he says to the egg woman with a respectful bow. “Sonny,” he says to the junk man with his usual derision. The Constable calls all men younger than himself “sonny,” but he reserves a special bit of extra scorn for the junk man, on principle.

  “Who brought the bug?” the junk man slurs, squinching his face at the luminescent butterfly still resting on the girl’s chest as he sways back and forth like a boat in a ceaseless gale. He shakes himself to clear the drink. It doesn’t work. He feels light-headed and buoyant, as though his feet are only barely touching the earth.

  (Which, incidentally, they aren’t.)

  “Please don’t speak unless you can find a way to make yourself less of an idiot, Simon,” Marla says. She turns to the Constable. “Has it started?” She doesn’t know why she asks this. It has clearly started.

  “She’s done this to me before,” the Constable says. “Sudden bursts of strength. Wholeness. But never like this, and never for this long. I went up and down the side of the building with my bare hands and picked that girl up like she was a bag of feathers. And now, I been leaning down and tying and retying my own shoes. Opening jars without pain. Push-ups. Handstands. Flying leaps. The whole bit. I even lifted my desk over my head without strain. And that thing is heavier than a truck.” He says this in the same flat way that he describes the details of a crime scene. He will have time to be astonished later.

  “I see,” Marla says, closing her eyes.

  The junk man walks (floats?) to the sleeping girl. He tries to wipe the drunkenness away from his face. The whiskey stink pours from him in a cloud, and, suddenly, he feels ashamed. He lays his hand on her forehead, sliding his fingers onto her cheek as though she was still a little child. In his heart, she is always a little child. She feels hot and dry. “She’s sick,” he says.

  “It’ll pass,” the egg woman says firmly.

  “You don’t know that,” the Constable says. “And you don’t know what’ll happen next. Us three’ve been protecting her all these years. And now . . .” He raises his eyes to the ceiling. “The thought of government soldiers marching into my town is a thing that has kept me up at night ever since the two of you pulled me into this business. In any case, this is where they’ll come first, so this is where she needs not to be. Get her back to the farm. And maybe get her out of town.”

  The junk man curls his arms around the sleeping girl. Her body feels lighter than it should, as though she had been filled up with helium. He pulls her to his chest and cradles her like he did when she was a baby. “Little Sparrow,” he croons. “My precious little bird.” Though he is unsteady, he doesn’t drop her. Marla gives him a look—hard and exasperated and forgiving all at once. She follows him out the door.

  Outside, as they laid the girl and her butterfly in the cart, Marla reaches into her basket and hands three eggs to the Constable. He tries to decline.

  “I couldn’t possibly. Three? Not during a food shortage.”

  “You’ll eat them and you’ll be grateful for it. One’s for strength and one’s for luck.” She nods and turns down the road. The Constable stares at his three eggs.

  “What’s the third one for?” he calls after her.

  “Lunacy,” the egg woman says without turning around. “It might be our only hope.”

  18. Then.

  At first, the junk man didn’t notice anything strange about the recently dead baby. Besides, of course, its de-corpsification.

  That, he allowed, was odd. And was a thing best not thought about.

  In any case, he was the last person to get judgmental or holier than thou. Live and let live, that was his philosophy, his heart giving a little thrill at the word live.

  Live, live, live. He nearly sang it.

  And besides, despite the fact that he had seen it with his own eyes, he had difficulty accepting the whole business as fact. Not really. She was too alive, too . . . wonderful. It was as though she was
only dead in theory. A clever trick by a clever girl.

  Without meaning to, he leaned in and kissed the wobbly, delicate top of her tiny head. She smelled so good, it made him weak inside. And yet strong too. As though he had the strength to do bare-handed battle with legions of soldiers-of-fortune just to protect her. He wanted to do harm to any who might try to harm her. He wanted to find the individuals responsible for throwing a baby—a baby, for god’s sake!—onto a rubbish heap. As though she were, well, rubbish.

  The very idea!

  It enraged him just thinking about it. He wanted to tear out their hearts and rip off their heads and spit upon their graves. He wanted their reputations slandered, their good deeds questioned, their names forgotten by history. He wanted their corpses thrown on rubbish heaps. Let them see how they liked it! Actually, no. He enjoyed rubbish heaps as a general rule. Best not pollute them.

  The child whimpered. She was so hungry.

  “Soon, my sweet,” the junk man said. “Soon my little sparrow. You will eat and eat until your blood runs sweet. Sweet in the mouth, sweet in the eyes, sweet in your tiny heart.”

  (Where was this coming from? Poetry? Crooning? Great heavens. He had never been a sentimental man. What other strange magic did this child possess?)

  He wasn’t sure what infants ate when there wasn’t a mother to do the job. Milk seemed a reasonable option, but milk from a cow or milk from a goat? Or perhaps a sheep? He had no idea. But the child was hungry, and she must be fed. He worried about her crying—what if someone alerted the authorities? What if someone handed her off to the same soldiers who threw her away? His fear was hot and cold at once. He curled his arm around his precious bundle and walked faster.

  He didn’t know what family she originally belonged to—most of the pregnant women had been rounded up and stored in an asylum until their due dates came. He could ask around, but not many people in town wanted to talk to the junk man—or anyone, really—about such things. You never did know who might be a spy for the government. He skirted the main road and went along the back byways. He shot furtive glances at people who did not glance back. If they heard the child crying, they did not show it.