Cursed

by Marie O'Regan

  “My mother wailed and my grandmother wept, and I couldn’t comfort them. I remember I looked down into my brother’s eyes, and my sister’s, at the snowflakes falling into them, and I thought of the way I’d saved for those red shoes, one shiny coin after another falling into a jar. It was me who’d failed to bless the twins. It was me who’d tired of them, me who’d wished so hard to be free of them. And I was free – except for the way my shoes kept on twitching and shifting, not done with their dancing yet, restless as sin, reminding me of what I’d done.

  “Did the grey folk grant me a wish that night when I was thirteen, do you think? Or did they curse me for always – or was it both together? For I’ll tell you this: sometimes, having your dearest wish put into your hands is the biggest curse of all.”

  Annis stopped speaking but she didn’t look at me, just went on staring into the past, and I was glad of it because I didn’t know what to say. Did she really imagine her feet fidgeted the way they did because her shoes wouldn’t stop dancing? That was something out of a fairy story, one I had read myself when I was young. The girl in “The Red Shoes” was also punished for thinking too much of her finery; her new shoes forced her to dance and dance until she was exhausted and a kindly woodcutter saved her by chopping off her feet with an axe. Was that the root of Annis’s tale? Perhaps she didn’t have a physical illness at all. Perhaps her legs wouldn’t be still because she was punishing herself for some accident that happened to her siblings, and her ailment – her curse – was psychosomatic. But why did she not simply take off the shoes? I gazed at her in dismay, realising that perhaps I couldn’t help her at all, that maybe she needed more than I knew how to give. I had no idea if she was mad, but I didn’t think she could be altogether sane.

  “Oh, it wasn’t like the auld story at all.” Slowly, Annis lifted her head and looked at me, and I fought the urge to squirm. Once again, she made me feel that she saw into me, that she saw everything.

  “You think you know it, but it wasn’t the same. Andersen’s tale came out of a softer land, and it was naught like mine. There’s no woodcutter in my story, nor any wood; there were never any trees grew on Foula. It was a peat-cutter I’d set my heart upon, and he never did chop off my feet. He didn’t carry me over the threshold or tie my dancing feet to the kitchen table so I could gut the fish for his dinner. What kind of a man would do that? No: Alex Galdie decided he didn’t want me after all. He married a girl from Hametoon and settled on the island. It was me who left, on the very next boat I could. What else could I do? I couldn’t go home again. I’d got my freedom all right, but I carried the place away with me, and I’ll tell you, I was right about those shoes – once I had them, I never truly wanted anything else again.”

  I still didn’t know what to say, so I took the blanket from my neck and wrapped it about hers. As I did, she grasped my fingers, gently this time.

  “You could help me,” she said. “Would you help an old lady, dear?”

  I told her that of course I would. I asked what it was she needed.

  “I canna take them off,” she said. “I’ve tried and tried. But I know that you could – if you were willing. If you knew the story of them and chose to take them anyway, to make them your own.”

  She kicked away the tartan covering her legs. Her feet kicked freely, her toes pointed, marking out the steps she couldn’t take. For an instant, the shoes looked as if they were being worn by someone younger; someone being whirled in a young man’s arms.

  I focused again on her face, which was old and lined, her eyes watery. I reminded myself that hers was a mad, wild tale, with no sense in it. I didn’t believe she’d worn those same shoes for so many years. I didn’t believe that she couldn’t stop dancing – but she did. I could free her from her unhappy delusion. I may have failed to help my mother, but now I could help her neighbour – her friend.

  And Annis could rest at last. She could have peace. She could go where she wanted, even home, perhaps. An image rose before me: Annis going to join her brother and sister with the trows, walking away from me backwards, her steps steady at last, and never taking her gaze from my face.

  Another feeling came over me then, one that had been waiting beneath: of longing, almost of greed. I told myself it would be doing her a favour to take them – and they really were lovely shoes. They were wasted on her. She was old. What was the use of her dancing?

  I reached out and felt soft leather brush against my fingers. As I did so, a sound reached my ears: the swift, low music of a fiddle. And I remembered what it had been like, in the city, so few years ago: the close dark, infectious music throbbing from tall speakers, the touch of a young man’s hand. I remembered how it had felt to dance, to be free, to never want my feet to be still. I knew I could be a part of that dance again – and the thought came to me that perhaps she was right: that if I let go, it would be for always. I might be joining the dance forever; I might never come home again.

  It’s only a story, I thought.

  Yet still, I couldn’t choose. I reached out and touched the red shoes and I listened to the rhythm of the dance, felt it beating in my blood. I could smell the sea, feel the cold ocean breeze in my hair. And I looked up, into Annis’s eyes, and found I couldn’t move a limb.

  AGAIN

  TIM LEBBON

  It wasn’t the first time Jodi had died, but it might have been the strangest.

  The wild dogs were sniffling at her bleeding, broken body, nudging her with their wet noses, and each point of contact was a shock, so cold that it felt hot, their breath chilling her where blood pulsed from her many wounds. She felt a rough tongue lapping at the hollow of her elbow, and the sharp kiss of teeth. A promise of what would come soon. For some reason they seemed to be waiting until she was dead before they started eating her. That was a blessing. She must have done at least one good thing in this past life to merit such treatment.

  Her breath was clotting in her throat. Pain cut in cooler and sharper than the knife that had been her undoing. It reached past the wounds, deep down to her bones, her centre, the deepest parts of her where memories of countless similar agonies resided. It was easily as terrible as any of them, but the pain was inconsequential. She put a distance between it and her. She would not remember the pain, and it served no purpose because soon – in minutes, possibly even seconds – she would be dead. Then the pain and everything else she had seen, experienced, and known in this life would be no more.

  For a while, at least.

  Then she would wake again somewhere, somewhen, and as someone else, and Jodi had become very good at not taking the sensations of dying agonies with her. There was a reason for that. A good, solid reason.

  She didn’t want to go mad.

  “I saw fifteen bees yesterday,” a voice said, and Jodi’s crackling, wet breath held in her throat.

  I didn’t know she was still here.

  “Eighteen the day before. Considering these fields, these woods, are filled with flowers at this time of year, there should have been hundreds. Or thousands.”

  I thought she’d just left her dogs behind to finish the job.

  As if the hounds had heard her thoughts, she felt teeth beginning to gnaw at the slashed fingers of her right hand. Defensive wounds, they might be called. They’d done no good. It was the terrier, she guessed, though she couldn’t lift her head to see. A beautiful blue sky was her view as a small dog started to eat her hand. She smelled blood and bluebells. Small flies buzzed around her head and landed on her face, and she felt every single one of them, as if the skin of her face had become super-sensitive.

  I’ll forget the pain.

  Her shoulder jarred as the dog started tugging.

  “I save as many bees as I can,” the voice said, and Jodi remembered her then, the old woman with the pack of pet dogs, her clothes made from countless scraps held together with heavy pink stitching. She was well liked in the village, something of an oddity but a member of the village council, an advocate of dog was
te bins and a new playground on the village green. Her name was Helen. She killed people for fun, and she’d told Jodi – a wanderer, a visitor to the village, and soon to die for the fifteenth or eighteenth time – not to take it personally.

  “I always wonder when I save a bee from a bird bath or the surface of a pond in the woods, whether I’ve saved the world. Everything has a point of balance. The last cigarette that will kill you, the last deep breath of a city’s polluted air that’ll cause a cell in your body to mutate and start splitting at an unnatural rate. The last inch of a knife stab that’ll shift you from life to death.”

  Just below my heart, Jodi thought. I think that was the one.

  “The last bee I save, that will mean the world is no longer doomed, that a particular spread of flowers will be pollinated. I’m out to save the world. Daisy, don’t eat the lady’s hand until she’s dead.”

  The terrier let go of Jodi’s tattered hand, and her final breath might have sounded like a laugh.

  The beautiful blue sky grew dark, and Jodi’s last thought was, I wish Eveline were here to see me through.

  * * *

  She saw her from a distance, and as usual she held back, taking in the sight and seeing how much she’d changed. It always came as something of a shock.

  Eveline was growing old. Still beautiful, still radiant and with a whole bearing that seemed to exude life and enthusiasm and love. Her hair was mostly grey, the skin around her eyes and mouth creased from smiling. She sipped a small coffee and looked around the café, phone face-down on the table before her. A good fifty per cent of the clientele were skimming their phones, thumbs stroking screens and clicking away their lives.

  Jodi knew more than most that every second was precious. That was why she loved Eveline so much. Happy or sad, moving or still, she absorbed each life experience with relish.

  The old woman’s gaze passed across Jodi and moved on. Jodi smiled. Eveline paused and looked back, and that was all it took. Their eyes connected, and Eveline reflected her own smile. It’s always your eyes I see first, she’d once told Jodi, maybe forty years before. It’s probably inexplicable, because they’re never your eyes, not physically at least. But I always know you.

  Jodi raised her eyebrows and walked towards Eveline.

  “Get you another?” she asked, nodding down at the empty coffee cup.

  “My doctor’s been telling me to cut down on the caffeine.”

  Jodi felt a jolt in her stomach. She didn’t like the idea of her old friend being ill, let alone growing old. It felt so unfair.

  “But fuck him,” Eveline said. “Flat white, please. And a chocolate brownie.”

  While Jodi went to the counter she felt the older woman’s eyes on her, sizing her up, drinking in who she had become.

  “I never knew where you went,” Eveline said when she returned to the table.

  “I’m sorry.” Jodi sat down, settling a tray containing their drinks and food. Eveline didn’t take her eyes off her as she did so, as if afraid she would be dead and gone again in moments. And perhaps she would. Jodi had long ago ceased trying to sense her approaching deaths, because she knew there could be no escape.

  “So where have you…?” Eveline asked. She’d never quite come to terms with Jodi’s situation. Perhaps she didn’t even quite believe, because it was ridiculous and unlikely and unnatural. She saw, she felt, she understood, but allowing her intelligent mind to fully accept Jodi’s nature was one step too close to madness.

  “A woman in the village killed me,” Jodi said. “Helen seemed a nice old thing, and everyone liked her, but she had this… predilection. I was gone for longer this time, but then…” She glanced down at her new body, the new woman she had become. “Guatemala. A car crash. She was flung from the wreck and hit a tree, died instantly. And I popped in.”

  “Popped,” Eveline said. She sipped at her coffee. It was too hot, so she held it to her mouth and blew gently, as if eager to fog the sight before her.

  “Her family was kind, and good, but I didn’t stay. I’ve been travelling ever since. Up through South America, Mexico, the ’States. I spent some time in Alaska.” Jodi smiled. “Once, I slipped and twisted my ankle and spent a night out in the snow, and I thought that was it for this time. But a couple of men and their dogs found me.”

  “And it took you this long to come and find me?” There was no accusation in Eveline’s tone, and no sadness either. Their relationship was, perhaps, the strangest in the world between two people. How could it not be? In the beginning, Jodi had expected to find others like her, to run across them on the fringes of society, to recognise them as Eveline recognised her each and every time, just by the look in their eyes. But she’d found no one, and no one had found her. Two lives ago she had stopped looking. One life ago, she’d mentioned the idea to Eveline and she’d laughed. You’re watching too much TV, she’d said.

  “It always seems to be…” Jodi said.

  “I know the patterns,” Eveline said. “You find me, we spend some time, and then…”

  “But I can’t not spend time with you,” Jodi said. “You’re the only one who understands.”

  Eveline laughed. “And I don’t understand at all.” She lifted her coffee, then put it down again. “Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”

  They left the coffee shop together, hand in hand. They could have been mother and daughter, or lovers.

  * * *

  “You found him,” Jodi said.

  “I found tales about him,” Eveline replied. “The wonders of the internet.”

  Jodi wasn’t sure she even wanted to know. She’d never gone looking herself, and even later, when she was sure he must be dead and it was only her left echoing down through the years, death to life, death to life again, she’d had no inclination to research him. In her mind he’d just been a random beast, a sickly, evil man who’d wronged her and who had died soon after.

  “You want to see?” Eveline asked. They were in her house, a small, comfortable cottage on the outskirts of Crickhowell in South Wales. It was beautifully furnished with homemade decorations, and the kitchen was a pleasant mess of vegetable baskets from her back-garden crop, jars filled with pickles and chutneys, and a tray of early season fruit. Jodi had witnessed her growing and ageing, coming into and leaving her life several times over the space of the past few decades. It wasn’t fair, she knew, but the love between them was too strong for either to ignore. Eveline could have shunned her if she so desired. Jodi could have chosen not to return. Neither of them did.

  The cottage was close to the river, and later they were going for a walk. Jodi had been here twice before in other lives. She still remembered the cool kiss of the river from when they’d gone swimming above the weir seventeen years and a lifetime ago.

  “No,” Jodi said. “I don’t think I do want to see.”

  Eveline looked shocked, and then hurt. “I’ve spent so long…”

  Jodi raised one corner of her mouth in an apologetic smile. “If it’s good for you to know about him, I’m glad. But I’ve spent a long time trying to forget.”

  “He cursed you to this life.”

  “These lives, you mean,” Jodi quipped, but Eveline was not smiling.

  “He died back in the thirties,” Eveline said. “He was a renowned occultist. A cult leader. A bad, evil man, and there are plenty of testimonies about abuse and murder and—”

  “I’ve done my best to forget.”

  “But maybe knowing more about him, delving deeper, might reveal a way for you to change things.”

  Jodi didn’t respond to that. She looked around the room, eyes alighting on a rack of wine. “Fancy taking a couple of those bottles down to the river?”

  Eveline sighed, then smiled gently, and as Jodi selected the wine, she busied herself in the kitchen putting together a picnic for two. It was still warm outside. By the time they reached the river the sun would be settling into the Welsh hills, and they’d be able to talk about all the things
they had missed since they’d last seen each other.

  Picking up a bottle and reading its label, seeing that it was bottled after her last death and rebirth, Jodi thought, I don’t want to change anything.

  * * *

  Three years later, a rock shifted beneath Jodi’s foot as she and Eveline were hiking in Snowdonia. Eveline was almost seventy years old but as fit as she’d ever been, and she put a lot of that down to Jodi. She wanted to keep up with her. The Guatemalan woman Jodi had fallen into was barely in her forties, and it gave Eveline something to strive for.

  Jodi’s ankle twisted and she fell, tumbling sideways and slipping down a steep slope for almost twenty feet. Striking a rock prevented her from falling any further. Unfortunately she struck it with her head, and she passed away in the mountain rescue helicopter called in to lift her to safety. Eveline was sitting beside her – the first time she had witnessed her passing – with Jodi still slipping in and out of consciousness, and although the sound of pounding rotors through the still-open doors prevented any talk, a look between them said it all.

  I’ll see you again.

  I’ll be watching for you.

  Jodi’s final thought as she slipped into a darkness from which this form of her would never recover was, I only hope I still have time.

  * * *

  In truth, she had never forgotten about the man who cursed her. He was always there when she was birthed again, in blood and pain, sometimes with screaming, sometimes into a body suffering extreme convulsions or terrible wounds. The memory of his voice, his face, his old man’s petulance and anger at her rejecting his sickening advances, hung around Jodi as she became herself and someone else once again.

  “You’ll never die,” he says.

  “I wish you would,” she replies.

  “I’m a special man. A wondrous man. You could have been by my side, but you chose—”

  “Exactly. I chose. Just not you.”

  “Then you will… never… die.”

  And he touches her, softly with one leathery fingertip, on her left cheek. She pushes his arm aside and steps back. He chuckles.