Cursed

by Marie O'Regan

  Alek sits up, rubbing his shoulder. He hears the noise his father makes but it takes him a few moments to gather himself and look.

  Valerie stands over Reid Howard, who’s on his knees, swaying, a red stiletto heel buried in the top of his head. He looks as surprised as Tully, although more outraged. Then he loses his grip on life and gravity takes over; slowly he flops face-forward onto the polished concrete.

  * * *

  As far as Mercy’s Brook is concerned, Obadiah Tully died a hero, saving Valerie and Alek from Reid Howard’s psychotic episode, before his own untimely demise. No bodies have been found in the grounds of the estate, and the Mayor is happy with that since he considers a graveyard of girls might be bad for the town’s morale and future economic prospects. Least said, soonest mended and all that, he says to Valerie and Alek, meaning, Keep your mouths shut and no one looks at your actions too closely. The hastily appointed new Sheriff keeps telling Valerie that they might never find anything more than the shoe collection.

  Valerie keeps the red stilettos in a box in her cupboard. If she could, she would get rid of the memory of that day, but it’s like a golden key with blood on it that she can’t rub off. Some nights she re-dreams the moment in the cellar with its collection of pretty, bloody shoes; she dreams Alek is much smaller, younger, that he says “Daddy”, and Reid takes the boy’s hand in a way he never did in life.

  Some nights, too, she dreams that he turns into his father. She dreams that the apple hasn’t fallen that far from the tree, that he might have no choice in any of it, that the switch will flick whether either of them wants it to or not. But she also knows he made his choice about who he wanted to be.

  Lily doesn’t come to her in dreams anymore, though, and she can’t quite work out if it’s a gift or a curse.

  HAZA AND GHANI

  LILITH SAINTCROW

  Our father was a woodcutter and that Year of the Dog was an ill-luck one, for not only did Mama die as cold winter ebbed but the temple lottery fell upon us as well. Late at night, my brother and I lay awake in the attic listening to Father sob, for a son is the only wealth a woodcutter knows. Now, now, his new wife crooned, wrapping her sinuous body around his work-hardened one. You can always make more children. And little Ghani, she can make more children too.

  I did not know quite what she meant, then, but Haza’s face turned to a stubborn stump’s as he listened and he slipped out the narrow hole under the thatched eaves that night, coming back only when dawn began to pull mist through the warp and weft of trees. When the priests came to take him, he went with bulging pockets but without a backward glance, his queue tightly braided and freshly oiled. The rope of red-black hair would be cut off at the temple steps, of course, but I had made it as pretty as possible, my thin fingers in his hair and my belly growling.

  A girl eats last.

  That night Father’s new wife built up the fire after dinner, and brushed her long black hair. She beckoned me close, but I refused even though Father gave me a clout on the ear and snarled at me to mind, which he had never done when Mama was alive.

  But when a woodcutter finds a new wife of supple spine, long hair, and unblinking eyes in the forest, it is already too late. That evening I pretended to sip from the wooden cup she held for me, with its sickening smell of anise clotting in my nose and making me drowsy. I went to bed in the attic when she told me to, and when I heard my father making grunting noises and the wooden bed squeaking downstairs I slipped through the same hole Haza had, with a tiny bundle wrapped in rough fray-cloth upon my back.

  I also lit a precious, filched candle-end with a stolen flint, settling the tiny gleam very near the attic thatching; when I reached the far end of the valley and looked back through the trees there was a rosy glimmer in the night. The pale stones Haza had dropped led me along the path the priests had taken, and though the dark was deep the moon shone upon them and I did not lose my way.

  * * *

  Haza must have quickly run out of pale stones, but I did not need them once I reached the slash-road through the forest. I followed that ribbon all night and through the next day as the forest receded and settlements rose on either side. Eventually the temple of the Flayed God floated into sight, a stacked white triangle cut into a mountainside over a great bowl full of smoke and noise.

  I had never seen a city before, but I had seen plenty of anthills, and decided it was similar.

  It was round, flounce-skirted Kali the kitchen-queen who saw me in the bustle and scramble of the Great Market, kicking the shins of an older urchin who attempted to steal my tiny, pathetic bundle. I had not eaten in three days, but I was used to that, and it was her approach that caused the boy’s friends to scatter. The cut on my forehead – they had thrown stones to help their leader – bled into my eyes, so it was through a scrim of salt-stinging crimson I saw the round, black-haired beldam with her frayed multicolored skirts and iron hoop earrings, her horn-hard feet as bare as mine and her hands rough-blistered by the work of cooking. Kali held my chin and examined me, a funny floating feeling filling my skull, and she tch-tch’d at my dusty, dirty hands.

  Still, she must have seen something in my still-unformed joints, for she snapped at me to hold fast to her skirt, setting off at a brisk pace.

  So it was I learned the way from the Great Market to the servant’s door piercing the temple’s wall-girdle, and so it was I descended into the smoky underhell of the kitchens, where Kali set me to chopping a gigantic pile of roots and other vegetables.

  It did not occur to me to question or complain.

  Not then.

  * * *

  All that spring the new trainees practiced in the temple’s broad stone avenues. Most dropped from exhaustion or refused to go further after a particularly brutal session. Their hair was allowed to grow back in a skull-stripe; they would perform rites and services but never be admitted into the inner sanctum.

  Those who did not falter were feasted and shaved each evening. The art of the Flayed God’s monks is sharp and direct, punches that shatter bone and kicks that splinter metal.

  In the kitchens, though, there is the Flower Style. It is a dance of lifting, bending, chopping, running; Kali declared I had aptitude. I did not even mind the savage stretching of a child’s ligaments and tendons; the queen of the kitchens, though round-hipped and of generous belly, was also a bending reed when she wished to be. If I ever found a movement too difficult she would perform it with an ease that beggared my ineptitude. I held myself lucky she did not clout me over the ear as our father had.

  Even the Abbot himself was said to hold Kali in some regard, for it was she who prepared the bitter-spice sacred drink in its vessels of beaten silver for the new-moon and other rites, especially the Great Awakening when the God frees his skin and dances without it.

  I saw the Abbot only once during that time, a bulky man in sumptuous, flowing, but unbleached robes – for the Flayed God is humble, and likes to hollow out the proud – whose pate glisten-gleamed as he passed along ranks of sweating temple trainees shouting the cadence of strike, parry, kick, ia!

  One of them was Haza, and the Abbot stopped to admire my brother, stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat, scarlet-faced with peeling sunburn, and moving with the same thoughtless grace our father did when he danced with axe, block, and saw to wrest wood from forest depths.

  Watching from the shadow of the fruit-garden, where Kali sent me to gather the fallen and overripe nourishment for sleek black temple pigs, I felt the sun’s warmth turn cold for a moment. It was whispered in the kitchens that the Abbot’s eyes had grown filmy.

  But that could not be, for the Flayed God required his servants whole.

  * * *

  He came to the back door often, Old Vril, with his quick dark eyes and his copper-shod staff. The copper was green with decay, and his teeth were yellowed, drunken soldiers leaning upon each other for comfort. His rags were foul, but he did not smell of rot and the body’s simmering, only of dry dust and fu
nerary spice.

  Perhaps that was why I risked Kali’s wrath to give him scraps wrapped in large glossy leaves; the queen of the kitchens wished the beggars to wait in the courtyard given to their purpose, with the perpetually fouled fountain and the young monks going among them to learn the medicinal and healing arts. I did not like that courtyard, for it was full of moans and cries, and the way the beggars fell upon the food – both the coarse fare prepared out of the bounty of taxation for the Flayed God’s chosen and the leavings of the great feasts – made me uneasy, especially once I had gained some little weight.

  For Kali encouraged us to taste and sip. A good cook should know the texture of a dish at every stage, and that lesson has lingered all my life. What Kali did not encourage was feeding any of the beggars at the kitchen doors, and it was my ill luck that one of the other birds – for such we were called in the kitchens, plump, downy, and nestling under her skirts – saw me pass a leaf-wrapped chunk of spicy charred roast to Old Vril. He did not eye my bare arms and legs like the others did, even the ragged, hungry women.

  It was Kali herself who wielded the thin, flexible switch as I stood with my hands clasping a stone atonement pillar carved with the Flayed God’s many names, and she was not cruel. Still, I sobbed without restraint, sharply aware of her disappointment and afraid I would be sent back into the smoke-bowl of the city to fend for myself again.

  That night, face-down on my pallet in the low dormitory attached to the dormant kitchen, I heard a scratching like a mouse, and pulled myself painfully upright, shuffling for the door as if I had to make nightsoil.

  The path to the soilhouse was overgrown to provide modesty, and Haza met me at the bend in deepest shadow, first hugging me, then thrusting a clumsily tied leaf-package into my hands. “I thought you would find the way,” he said in an undertone, his shaven head glistening a little as moonlight dappled the broad waxy leaves overhead. “How is Father?”

  “I left the night after you did.” The packet was still warm; it smelled of roast and the meaty starchroot I had helped make that very evening while sniveling with pain. “He is probably happy, with her.”

  There was no need to tell him more, and in any case, he did not seem interested. “You’ve been in the kitchens?”

  “Kali found me.” I longed to tell him of Flower Style, of the groaning of my tendons, how it was different than the monks’ directness. But there was a rustling, and we drew back into the bushes on either side of the path like the forest creatures we once had been, waiting as a senior in a saffron robe wandered past with a lantern, scratching luxuriously at his crotch and yawning.

  When he had vanished into the soilhouse we emerged again, breathing in tandem, and I reached for Haza’s hand. “You are well?”

  His face was shadowed, but there was a line between his eyebrows I knew. His fingers were chill and damp. “We eat well.”

  Did I not know as much? “Better than home.”

  “This is home, now.” He freed his hand from mine, not ungently. His queue was cut; he was supposed to have no family but his fellow monks. “We cannot let them know, Ghani.”

  As if I was stupid. But I did not mind. We were together again, and a boy always wants the last word.

  On my way back into the dormitory, I stopped by a particular long-leaved bush tucked near the temple’s protective wall. I plucked some few leaves and bruised them inside another, different leaf, dropping the palmful upon the thin pallet of the snoring girl who had betrayed me as I passed, and in the morning she had a spreading, virulent rash from sticky sap.

  * * *

  That summer there were no rains, and the dust grew thick. The governor of the province came with a long train and made offerings inside the gleaming stone pyramid, incense rising in clouds and cymbals shatter-clanging through day and night to keep the sun awake, feasting afterwards spreading its largesse to the steadily increasing number of beggars choking their fouled courtyard. Old Vril’s eyes burned with fever and his skin was scorching; he settled in a vine-shaded corner and watched. His staff’s copper shoe developed lacy holes, green rot nibbling at metal, and his gaze followed me when I braved that cauldron of suppuration, begging, and soft hopeless cries to bring him scraps.

  I could not do so often, for Kali had examined our hands again after the Frog Festival, and those of us who had special signs in their palms began to learn the fermenting, drying, grinding, and brewing of the round, ribbed fruits sacred to the Flayed God. Dexterity is needed, a fineness of touch even through calluses, and the cupped palm of a cook must be married to long fingers and several other subtle signs. Now, of course, I can tell at a glance who has the hands for it, but then I was a child, and knew only that Kali found something she was looking for in me.

  Indeed, she was the only one who ever had.

  It was in the deepest days of drought that the rumor began. At first it was only exchanged in looks between senior monks, but like fire, suspicion spreads in dry times. After the Frog Festival and the visit from the governor there was another temple lottery, and many boys were shaved upon the temple steps and brought into the stony girdle.

  During the Water Jar Festival the Abbot dropped his staff, its godbird feathers fluttering, and when he bent to retrieve that most sacred item he reached for empty space. One of the senior monks had to rescue its flutter-length, and the rumor was proved before a crowd of worshippers and notables.

  I was frothing the spice-bitter holy drink under Kali’s watchful eye as whispers raced through the kitchen. A mere girl cannot taste the drink, but I could smell very well when it became ready and see the froth change. Kali tapped my head with a bone scraping-spoon, to remind me not to falter – if the stirring pauses, the drink will not blend properly.

  The Abbot dropped his staff. The Abbot could not grasp it.

  The Abbot is blind.

  It was strange, I thought as I stirred. The Flayed God’s high priest cannot be infirm. He must be whole as the God before his sacrifice. But I put the question aside, for a mere kitchen-bird does not meddle in those matters.

  Or so I thought then, especially since Kali’s expression grew set and she laid about with that long-handled spoon when she caught other kitchen-birds with guilty faces and wagging tongues. The girl who had tattled on me was clouted twice, and I bent to my work to give the kitchen-goddess no time to catch me thinking. Later that evening something foul was fished from the temple well, and brackish water turned the day’s cooking fetid.

  The next day, another lottery was announced. This one, though, was for the junior monks like my brother.

  The entire temple watched one gasp-hot morn as the young ones mounted the steps one at a time, reaching into the basket with a hole in its lid and drawing forth a smooth, dark stone. They were black and glossy, those sacred eggs, each one brought from burning mountains belonging especially to the mother of all gods, She whose name is not spoken, who wears serpents in her ears and provides warmth to the dead if they have lived a righteous life.

  Again and again they drew forth black eggs, and I drowsed in lace-pierced shade on the fringe of the courtyard. Nobody else seemed to have any trouble staying awake, but I had been up all night stirring and afternoon would hold more of the same. Much of the sacred drink was required for the monks in this season, to bring them clarity.

  At least it did not reek of anise, like Father’s new wife. And at least Kali’s training made the pain only a distant ache.

  I must have closed my eyes; I woke to a susurration that was the sigh of the crowd. My chin jerked up, my eyes flew open, and I saw Haza before the basket, his sunburned, shaven head gleaming, the set of his shoulders expressing shock.

  In his palm was a single, satin-smooth, pale stone.

  * * *

  They put him in seclusion, in the long cloister full of stone-walled cells. His young body was shaved daily by the most solemn of the Abbot’s attendants, but his head was left to grow its fur again. The best we could cook passed to his cell first, where he
was supposed to spend the days meditating. But my brother, used to roaming the forests or spending his days with strike and kick, hardly touched the platters before they went in turn to the Abbot’s table.

  Kali was called upon for more tempting dishes, rarer flavors, sweeter fruits. I could have told her Haza preferred thick porridge with savory leaves, with perhaps some fat from last night’s dinner if it had been a good autumn and Mama had not taken to coughing. I could have told her the squirrels in the forest, turgid for the beginning of winter and roasted in brookside clay, was a dish my brother could never resist.

  But I did not. I mixed the sacred drink, learning its foam and its froth as I absorbed the Flower Style and other kitchen-arts. When you are a blank sheet, everything leaves a mark.

  When a night came that I wasn’t deadly exhausted and the passage to the soilhouse was deserted, I slipped from my pallet and stole through the temple’s familiar wilderness, dodging drowsy door-guard monks and climbing hand over hand along a balcony much more solid and easily navigable than bending, cracking branches.

  Everything is easier when you nibble all day in the kitchens, a mouse in a block of starch. The only danger is growing too sleek-heavy, but the Flower Style provides for that. We soften but do not grow truly corpulent, we who stir and chop and bake.

  “Haza,” I whispered through the grating in the middle of the heavy door. “Haza, it’s me.”

  After a short while there was another rustle, and Haza’s fingers, bathed and scented, came through the holes. “Ghani?”

  “You must eat.” I pressed my lips to his knuckles. His own mouth, breath redolent of expensive spice, touched mine; he rubbed his chin – softer, with oil worked into the skin, no trace of stubble yet – against my fingertips. “Everyone is worried.”