The Tangleroot Palace

by Marjorie Liu

  Her gaze met mine. “Same as I saw in you.”

  My cheeks warmed. “No use for it, except killing. That’s no life, Ruth.”

  “Better life than what you were headed for.” Her fat fingers flicked through the air above the blue-eyed poppet. “Would have been in a grave. Nothing to show for living. Nothing to show those sympathetic bones.”

  I looked down at my needles, spread across the table. Each one born from a hand, hands whose names I knew: Lettie, Polly, Rebecca. Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.

  And now I knew the names of other bones from other hands.

  All in sympathy.

  It’d been years since Ruth had ventured off her land, but that afternoon she put on a woolen skirt and coat that moths and mice had been chewing on for a decade, pinned up her long gray hair, and buttoned her blouse until those needles hanging around her neck were hid. Not that showing them would have made folks any less uncomfortable. Ruth walking amongst the good Christians of the valley might be enough to thin the blood of that hollering preacher himself.

  We were real silent until the end, just before she limped out the door, and she looked back and said, “There’s a man come to my attention. You go home now, come back tomorrow.”

  “You need help?” I asked, but she raised her brow at me, made a clucking noise, and walked on out. The poppet was in a cloth bag that swung from her shoulder.

  I followed her, soon after.

  Ruth had a fast limp. I had to hustle to catch up. Not that I wanted to get too close, but there was some investment on my part, and so I took a different trail that was roundabout and uneven, steep—too difficult for Ruth to walk, though I myself was too fast, sliding and flirting with loose rocks underfoot, and low-lying branches that might have taken my eye or broken my nose if I hadn’t been quick to duck. All for good, though. I reached the bottom of the trail certain I was first and Ruth, somewhere above, still huffing and puffing.

  I kept to the woods, lungs tight as I forced down deep breaths of cold air, and made my way to a small log cabin settled in a clearing where a man stood on the covered porch, rocking a baby. A stonecutter, still dusty from the quarry, staring at his child like she was sunshine and angels, and so much sweetness I had to look away.

  I took another breath, and walked from the woods.

  “Clora,” he said, with a tired smile, kind as could be. “Been some time.”

  “I’m sorry for that, Paul.” I hoped he couldn’t hear the thickness of my voice. “How’s Delphia?”

  Paul glanced over his shoulder at the cabin’s closed door. “Pain’s lessened, I think. That tea you brought seemed to help her sleep. But it’s this one,” and he paused, holding his babe a little tighter, “that’s gotten fussy.”

  “Etta,” I murmured, peering into blue eyes that were just like her father’s.

  “Oh, but it’s nothing,” said Paul, just as gently, and kissed her brow. “I’m just glad I’m fit to care for her. What with. . . .”

  He stopped. I looked away again, toward the woods. His wife was dying, eaten up by scirrhous in her breasts. No stitch could cure her of those tumors. Maybe, if caught early. But not by the time I’d heard. Not for nothing did I think it fair the needle could kill or control, but when it came to healing a mother, all that power was to no account.

  “It won’t be much longer,” I said quietly.

  Paul’s jaw tightened. “Then just me and Etta. Been thinking of leaving the quarry when that happens, maybe to find work in one of the towns up north. Cutting stone is too dangerous. Can’t let nothing happen to me now.”

  I glanced down at the baby. “You have something to live for.”

  Paul made a small sound. “Come inside, Clora.”

  “Can’t.” I backed away, shaking my head. “Ruth is coming.”

  He frowned, holding his daughter tighter. “You shouldn’t spend so much time with that witchy woman. You’ll get the taint on you.”

  “Too late,” I said, making his frown deepen. “And didn’t you hear me?”

  “Heard.” Paul gave me a disapproving look. “Got nothing to fear from an old woman. Why she visiting, anyhow?”

  “Your wife sent a note. She got it in her head that Ruth could cure her.”

  His brow raised. “Can she?”

  “No.” I stepped off the porch, nearly falling, and suddenly it was hard to see past the tears blurring my eyes. “She’s going to hurt you, Paul. I want you to remember that. It was her doing.”

  Her doing, not mine. Her doing, even though it was me that put the idea in Delphia’s head, even though I was the one who carried the note, that note which told a story of how much a woman would give to live just a while longer so she might not leave behind a little daughter and a good man. A good man who loved her with all his soul, she said.

  I knew the interest Ruth would have in a man like Paul: so good, so true. Nothing rarer. Nothing more powerful.

  I walked away, and as he called my name, the baby cried.

  It got done, just as I knew it would, and the stain was on my hands sure as if I’d taken a knife and cut Paul’s heart.

  I heard of his death from Martha, who stopped by my shack because she was terrible lonely—terrible, to come visiting a girl she’d never wanted—but even if the words hadn’t come from her mouth, I’d seen the doll on Ruth’s special shelf where she kept other poppets filled with death’s power, and I had to turn away, not wanting to look too deep into those embroidered blue eyes. Not because I was reminded of Paul, but because all I could think of was his daughter who would soon be alone. Delphia wouldn’t last the week, Martha said. Blamed the shock of losing her husband.

  Sure, I’d known that, too, even if I hadn’t wanted to think on it. Wasn’t just power that made people greedy, but desperation. And I’d had plenty of that building inside me, years on end.

  The night Paul was buried, I went and stole his hand.

  Now, I was guessing that the dead might know the truth of things, that I was no innocent and that my soul was in the shadow, but I hoped these men might also recall those words I’d spoken at the end—to Edward, too—that it was Ruth, Ruth, Ruth who made the spell that killed them. They might be sympathetic, as such, to my plight. A gamble, but one worth taking.

  I made the needles from their bones. One full week it took to extract and carve, and polish—and pray as I had never prayed—but when I had my little daggers I began sewing the doll.

  The cloth I used was old. Old enough that I’d had to dig up my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother for it. The oldest of them was a white wedding gown, turned brown with age; and then a black dress torn up with holes; and last, a gown made of muslin that tore so easily, I held my breath when I added it to the patchwork of poppet flesh.

  Days I practiced stitches with Ruth, and nights I stitched to kill her, embroidering a fantasy of freedom upon the skin of the doll: an open road leading to its heart, and the blue sky, and birds with their wings outstretched. Black thread held the joints, but everywhere else, color sapped from forest dyes, from the walnut and woad, safflower and goldenrod, mixed double, double, to toil and trouble.

  I poured my heart into the making of that poppet. I poured what was left of my soul. And when I was done, or near so, I cut open my arm to spill my blood upon its guts: strands of hair I’d gathered, sneak-like, over years in Ruth’s home; persimmon seeds she’d spit from her mouth into the yard; and chicken bones where her teeth left marks. Epsom salts for freedom, and blue salt for healing; gray talcum powder to protect from evil; and last, dirt from the graves of my mothers. Dirt from the graves of the men, along with a finger from each of their hands.

  And when I was done I set a shroud upon the thing, because its eyes seemed to watch me, and I could not stand the judgment already waiting, on high and low, and inside my heart where there was no peace and never would be, ev
en if I got what I wanted.

  Even so.

  “There’s something different about you,” Ruth said, setting down some knitting as I approached her cabin. The morning sun was on her: hair silver as frost, her skin pale, and those bone needles shining white around her throat.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “Been thinking.”

  “Dangerous.” Ruth heaved herself from the rocking chair and went inside. “I’ll make you tea.”

  She said those words with kindness. I’d heard them a million times. Comforting, warm. Ruth, who had rescued me. Ruth, who had raised me as her own. Ruth, who had been my teacher and friend.

  When she turned her back on me I reached inside my satchel, grabbed the poppet, and squeezed.

  Her back arched so wild she went up on her toes, a rattling cry tearing from her throat. I squeezed harder and heard a cracking sound. Bone, breaking.

  Ruth crumpled, slamming down with a thud that rattled the entire porch. For a moment she was completely still, and then her fingers twitched, and her hands and arms began to move, and she clawed at the planks, panting for air. Her legs remained still.

  I took a long, deep breath, and climbed the steps. My heart pounded. Dark spots floated in my vision. Ruth tried to grab my foot, hissing curses at me, but I sidestepped and went into the cabin.

  I gathered the dolls on the shelf, including one with my name embroidered over the heart. My hands burned when I touched it, dizziness sweeping down, but I swallowed hard and held the doll close—burning, burning—and went back outside.

  “I’ll kill you,” Ruth whispered, gaze burning with hate. “I should have killed you years ago.”

  “You held the leash and thought that was enough.”

  Foam touched her lips. “I cared for you.”

  I held up the doll she had made to control me. “Not in the right way.”

  “You would do the same!” Ruth tried to grab me again as I walked past her to the yard. I dumped the dolls on the hard frost, and then reached into the satchel for Ruth’s poppet. I went back and showed it to her, crouching a safe distance away. Her eyes narrowed, and even with her back broke I saw those wheels turning, how she examined every stitch, searching for a flaw. But of course there was none. If I’d done one thing wrong, I’d be dead and she would be kicking my corpse into the refuse pile for the pigs to eat.

  “Impossible.” Ruth tore her gaze from the poppet. “I own you.”

  “I found sympathy.” I pulled down my collar to reveal two necklaces of bone needles hanging from my neck. “Just enough.”

  Her eyes widened. “Those men.”

  I said nothing, and the silence was terrible and heavy, heavy on me because I saw myself in that moment: me, in Ruth’s place, sprawled on the porch with a broken back and some other girl standing over me, ready to take my place with a fury. Future or not, it chilled me.

  “Oh, God kill you,” Ruth whispered. “God kill you, and the Devil, too.”

  “In time,” I said, and twisted the poppet’s head.

  Freedom should have a tingle, some flash of light, but I felt no different afterward. Maybe I wasn’t free. Maybe being free of Ruth wasn’t the same thing at all.

  I burned all the dolls, except mine. I was too much a coward to tempt my own death, though I deserved it in a mighty way. Shadow of death over my heart, waiting, waiting, for the needle and thread. Wicked stitchery.

  I wanted to learn a different kind.

  Ruth, I burned with the dolls. I broke her needles.

  But I kept her house.

  A week later, I heard word that Delphia had passed. No relatives nearby to care for the baby, and no one stepped in to take claim. I waited, to be sure, and then went down into the valley to take the girl. I did not ask. I held out my arms, and there was something in the way those folk looked at me, something I’d never seen before except when they looked at Ruth, but I supposed I finally had her eyes.

  I took the child in, but the only doll I made for her was stitched for play, with a needle from her father’s hand.

  Things would be different, I promised.

  All for sympathy for the bones.

  “Sympathy for the Bones” is one of my favorite works of short fiction (if I’m allowed). I wrote it for the anthology An Apple for the Creature, which was supposed to be about “your worst school nightmare,” and indeed, I can’t imagine a nightmare more awful than someone else owning your soul. What does one do in that situation? What is the cost of freedom? What price do you pay for a power that has been bent to one dark purpose your whole life: hurting others?

  The Briar and the Rose

  The Duelist was an elegant woman, but that was by her own design and had nothing to do with the fact that her mistress bade her act with certain manners when she was not, by law, killing her peers.

  She was called Briar, but only on Sunday. Other days, she was simply the Duelist. No man had legs half as powerful or as long, and her reach with a sword was so terrifying that experienced fighters would surrender at her first lunge. A foreigner from across the sea, a brown woman in a city where she was as exotic for her skin as she was for her blade; where, after some seven years—four of which had been spent in her mistress’s employ—she had settled down comfortably in her reputation and only had to draw her sword against the very young, and very stupid.

  Her mistress was the most favored courtesan of the Lord Marshal, and in the evenings she was called Carmela. The Lord Marshal thought himself a special man that he knew her name, but Carmela had a talent for making every man feel the same, and each knew her by a different identity.

  Even the Duelist was not privy to all her secrets, though she spent most of her waking hours attending to the woman, and even longer nights sitting by that bedchamber door, listening to her loud, dramatic lovemaking. The Duelist knew that Carmela had more respect for her sword than her intelligence, that she took delight in having a quiet beast of a woman guarding her, a woman with the same brown skin, as if they were a mismatched set.

  Carmela paid the Duelist well for her sword, silence, and skin—and trusted her not to, as she put it, get any ideas.

  But the Duelist, in fact, had many ideas.

  Saturday had come around again, and it was almost midnight. Nearly Sunday, in fact. Which was the only day worth living, in the Duelist’s estimation.

  She stood at the edge of the ballroom, wearing her most imposing jacket—a stiff green silk that hugged her trim waist, held down her breasts, and enhanced the already massive width of her shoulders. No one had ever told her to dress in outfits that complemented her mistress’s voluminous ensembles, but the Duelist had made it a rule. She understood Carmela’s vanity, that a valued guard was also an accessory, and that it would please her mistress that nothing around her, nothing that reflected her taste, could ever be accused of anything so tacky as clashing.

  Tonight Carmela was dressed in emerald silk, a gown embroidered at the bodice with gold thread and laced with rare gems as yellow as a cat’s eye. Her full skirt rubbed against the stocking-clad legs of the men crowded around her. “To remind them of my hands,” she’d once told the Duelist. “To make them imagine my hands stroking their legs.”

  Her breasts were as enormous as her waist was small: two immense, soft, ridiculous distractions that were barely covered by that petite bodice. Her brown skin looked even darker against her bright dress; dusted in gold, Carmela’s flesh was nothing but supple, her face slender and delicate, crowned by thick brows. She was the only flame burning in a room full of aging pale-skinned men and women who would never be the equal of such raw beauty, not even in their wildest dreams.

  She was also a proud, dangerous woman who had stayed up too late and danced far too long with the Lord Marshal. Addicted to the attention she received from him and his cronies, even as the Duelist watched her movements slow, and her words thicken.
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  “She’ll collapse soon,” said the Steward, in passing.

  “Prepare the special tea,” replied the Duelist, watching as Carmela missed a step in the waltz and stumbled against the Lord Marshal. He laughed, gathering her up in his arms like it was some great joke. But Carmela wasn’t smiling.

  “Don’t tell me my job,” muttered the Steward. “If you were only half as fast with that sword as I am with her tea, you’d be more than just her paid dog.”

  The Duelist could have drawn her sword and removed his head before he even finished that sentence, but she was beyond the age where she needed to prove a point by killing. That had been the way of her youth, but no longer.

  The Duelist crossed the ballroom instead, causing a minor ripple as the much shorter guests stumbled in their dancing to get out of her way. The Duelist ignored their frowns and the deliberately loud whispers; some of it was sour grapes, anyway. She’d dueled against, and killed, hired swords who belonged to the uninvited (and now, in some cases, divorced) wives of several guests. Wives who would have been wiser punishing their wandering husbands, rather than attempting to murder the woman those men had wandered to.

  Still, the Duelist felt some sympathy for those spurned wives. Carmela flaunted her conquests, vaunted her great beauty and wealth, cultivated an obsessed audience—rubbed it in, as if she wished to blind every other woman with her magnificence. In short, Carmela—unlike most others who spread their legs for coin—did not know her place.

  Carmela saw the Duelist coming, frowned, and touched her brow with delicate painted nails.

  “My darling,” she cooed to the Lord Marshal, leaning over so that her breasts swelled even more from her dress. “I’m quite exhausted. It’s time for me to retire.”

  “I know better than to argue,” he said, with a pout that did not belong on a man in his fifth decade. “Every Saturday is the same. You throw these lavish parties in your home, then run away just as things are getting interesting.”