Mariana knew that it was bad, whatever it was, by the woman’s face, white and drained and staring. The publican’s wife was puffing from the run to Mariana’s cottage, but her face was bloodless as a sheet.
“Your man, John,” she sputtered, “and Tom Cutter. In the Wheel. Something has them trapped there.”
That something contained a wrongness the woman couldn’t put in words, and Mariana felt a shiver, and wished she really was the witch that unkind people called her. John was in danger, her sweet John who’d never hurt a fly, even when he was in drink.
She would still be more help than anyone else in the village. She had a bag that was not her birthing bag, and she had seen ghosts before, sorry things that didn’t know where they belonged and only needed a little push to shake into shadows and cold air. They wouldn’t have put fear in the publican’s wife like this.
She rose from her well and the water she’d drawn for an evening tisane and took her other bag in hand, the one with a cross and censer and a white candle the old priest had blessed for her.
Mariana ran. She could go faster than the older woman had come for her. It was late enough that decent folk were home, and Mariana ran too fast to feel whatever curious eyes lit on her.
Then she was at the tavern, and slipping under the sign of the Wheel into the dim taproom through a door that banged in a fitful breeze. The place was littered by a quick departure, mugs overturned and plates abandoned. Only John and Tom were still there, at the bar where Tom had been drowning his sorrows for three days, since Agnes, the mayor’s daughter and Tom’s sweetheart, disappeared.
Standing close, only an arm’s length from them was the something, short and slight as a young girl, dressed in a red cloak with the hood thrown up. Both men stared at the girl, wide eyed like rabbits caught by a snake. Tom had his thumb tucked behind the first two fingers of his left hand, flicking up and down against them. Mariana had only seen him do that twice before, when he was afraid he’d not have money for the landlord on the quarter day.
Mariana felt on her skin and tasted at the back of her mouth with the same sense that let her see ghosts, that made her the one the village called when things were wrong and no one knew why. The girl felt like a warm body, a deer cut open and steaming in sharp air, tasted of hair and offal, mulled wine and powdered bone.
The girl was not what she seemed, and she was menacing John, Mariana’s John, whose hands were rough and gentle, whose eyes crinkled at the corner when he smiled.
“What’s your name, little girl,” Mariana asked, and wondered that her voice was steady. “And where do you come from.”
The girl turned to her, slow and deliberate. Her face was white and smiling, and her red, red coat was too bright for the dim room. It shone like holly berries against snow, and the girl’s lips matched it.
And then the girl twitched her cloak open, and there was another mouth slit up her belly, black and rotten, with white ribs shining sharp for teeth, and shadows came from it, the shapes of an old bent woman and a famined wolf, and a second little girl, and they were behind the red-cloak girl and in her, reaching to work that awful black mouth like a bellows.
From the girl’s mouth, the girl’s voice.
“My name? I’m wearing it.” She laughed and flapped her cloak. “And where I come from?”
The other mouth opened with a crack of bone, a scent of shit and blood and sugar. There was a sound like the squeak of wet leather as the ribs pulled further out of flesh, and a voice of growls and weeping and hollow echoes.
“From the hollow place where we remember and the grinding pain of it.”
The girl continued.
“I ate my grandam once. She was so sweet with salt, richer than any flesh I ever knew. And when I was done, the wolf that was grandam and had eaten her bit into my belly, bit in and hollowed me. The tear of his teeth was like a first-time lover inside-out. I had to make my open-broken ribs to teeth to take him with my mouth down there. Now we are one and three and four and all of us in me, where I was hollow girl before.”
This was no sorry echo of one dead too soon. Those had been wisps, shadows, barely present and eager to be gone. The red girl filled the taproom to the edges, more solid than the wooden chairs and the stone hearth. Mariana almost broke at it, the horror of the other mouth and the playful smile of the girl talking about death and eating and this awful half-life as if she were a play at tea-party. Mariana felt her bile rise, and only bridled it back down looking at John and the little candle of hope cutting the fear in his wide eyes.
But Mariana did not know how to stop this evil thing that was nothing like what the sight had shown her before. She thought of reaching for her bag, for salt or candles or her cross, but her knee shook and her fingers felt too weak. She did not think that she could fight this thing. What could she do but keep her talking, keep its black eyes on her instead of the poor men?
“What do you want here, little one? I want to help you however I can.”
It was almost true. This thing must be in pain. Mariana did want to help her on, to help her die as she should have.
The red girl smiled.
“I suppose you could cut them up. They smell like my story, close enough and I want…”
She shook and tensed and trembled, white-knuckle stiff as if she was afraid of fainting. Mariana could only smell sweat and beer and the blood-sick cold of the red girl.
“Sooo hungry,” groaned the rib-toothed wound in her. “Give us the meat. It has been so long, so long since the last.”
Mariana felt the hunger in her bones, a desperate sucking need, a fall already too begun to step back from. It would be filled.
The red girl turned back toward John and Tom, still rooted on their stools. Tom cursed, and John crossed himself with trembling fingers.
The last time. Keep her talking.
“The last time?” asked Mariana. “Have you eaten people before, then, others since your grandmother and the wolf?”
Yes, this was good. She needed to know more before she could help this spirit on or know how to send her away, and if she kept the girl talking, maybe she could lead her away from John and let him run.
It worked. The girl stopped and turned to Mariana once again.
“Oh yes, we ate again.”
“We’ve been so hungry,” moaned the awful mouth.
The girl licked her red, red lips too like an invitation.
“We went home after the first, but Mother slammed the door at us. She did not like our fine new mouth and its white teeth, and when we told her what had happened; ‘slut,’ she said ‘to eat your grandam’s meat and drink her blood for wine.
“We met another in the woods, put out by a cruel mother, famine pinched, put out with her other. She learned eating when she was witch-caught, and her teeth were sharp and tested.”
The other mouth rippled.
“She tasted of home between our teeth.”
Mariana could see a little shadow now among the rest, a girl famine-thin. She thought she was beginning to understand. This girl-shaped thing was many souls together, caught in some story-hell, but why should it want John or Tom? She was girls betrayed and exiled and forced into evil things. What would ordinary working men have to satisfy that hunger? There ought to be a girl. Was it poor lost Agnes? Was whatever happened to her something to draw this awful thing?
“I know both these men well, red-hooded girl, and I can’t think they’re what you really want to eat here. They don’t fit you.”
She knew it was true. She just had to make the thing agree long enough for them to get away, then she could find some way to get it out of the village or dead or quieted somehow.
“Will you let these men go if I help you to look for what has truly brought you here?”
The red girl pressed its finger to her bottom lip in parody of a thoughtful child.
“We will all go out and see what we can taste on the night wind. I am not ready to let my tasty ones go yet. I still think I might want to eat them.”
“We will eat before we go,” thundered the black mouth. “We will eat, no matter who.”
The red girl gestured Mariana to go out first, and crooked her finger at the men without looking. They followed, heads bowed as if they were on leads. Mariana could see how badly they wanted to make a break and run, and she prayed for their nerves to hold, and hers. Nothing good would come of upsetting this thing that was so hungry in her ribbed-toothed belly. The tension and cold and storybook unreality that had filled the Wheel followed the ghost into the yard.
Outside, the oil lamps above the door still burned, and the moon was past the half and brightly silver over them. Mariana waited by the door, and the red girl walked past, and then John came and the girl did not stop him clasping Mariana’s hand, and his palm was warm and rough and solid in the nightmare. She was shaking, and he was shaking, and they gripped tight together.
An owl screamed before they could still each other, and in the scream Mariana heard a girl crying, “No! No.”
She looked to the trees, attention pulled by the insistence of her second sight, and there was an owl, white under the moon, and it was a girl crouched there in the ruin of a fine silk dress. Agnes!
That must be who the spirit wanted. Maybe Mariana could help them both, and get John away too. What had happened to Agnes to catch her in an owl’s shape? Was that this hungry ghost as well, or had some other terror come to their little village without Mariana guessing anything?
She saw the red girl’s eyes locked on Agnes in the tree, and knew what she would do. Was this betrayal? Wouldn’t letting the chance pass betray John just as much? She let go his hand and stepped away. Better to give him space to run.
“Agnes,” Mariana called, “come down, will you?”
The girl came. Mariana knew she would. She flew as a bird and landed a bedraggled girl, with feathers in her tangled hair and eyes so big and round.
The red girl hissed with delight, and the men both cried out in surprise. Tom was fear-white and staring at Agnes. John’s thumb was back behind his fingers.
The red girl bent and reached a hand toward Agnes where she crouched.
“Oooh, there you are, little sister half-born. Tell your tale for us, sweet one.”
Agnes answered her in singsong, with the harshness of a bird still in her throat. Her arm snapped up and pointed straight and stiff at Tom Cutter.
“Go bring to me your dowry, love
“and some of your father’s gold
“Tomorrow you shall be my bride.”
She dropped her arm and rocked, holding her knees and staring at nothing.
“One moonlit night as I lay hid
“I Looked for one but two came there
“The bows did bend, the leaves did shake
“To see the hole the fox did make.”
It was an old song, an old warning, and Mariana understood: the robber bridegroom and the lucky girl who came early to surprise him, the pain so great she fell out of the branches and into a bird’s body, when she saw that the one she loved so would kill her for a little money.
Tom sputtered his denial, but John, next to him, looked anywhere but at Agnes’ face, or Mariana’s. How could he? How could he have come with Tom to dig the lonely crossroads grave for Agnes? How had he held her hand with his that were still rough from the spade he had used to dig the crossroads grave?
No. He dared to meet Mariana’s eyes just once, and shrugged, and the corners of his eyes still crinkled when he looked at her, and she knew he thought she would still keep him safe because she loved him. She looked away before John did. She didn’t owe him a sight of her heart breaking, and she could stand straight through the pain while her nails cut marks into her thighs through her thin linen dress.
The red girl was stepping closer to poor Agnes, beckoning her to come and whispering soft endearments.
No. Mariana couldn’t let her. Agnes was alive and loved and innocent. She could be saved from this, brought back to her life until the days of hiding as an owl from a betrayal too hard to bear as a girl were only a dream of tricksome memory. Mariana had to stop the red girl.
“Please, don’t take her, please? She’s done nothing. I was wrong before. It’s Tom you want.”
She did not know if it was truth or just a desperate lie. She wanted it to be true. Maybe the other girls that made the red girl had been guilty of something, cannibals or close, but they had been girls cast out and unwanted and betrayed, and Agnes was still all of that. Mariana could not even say if her father would have her back after she had been a bird.
She had to make it true, to make it Tom the red girl took, if she must take someone. Maybe she would only take him.
“He’s the bloody one,” she pleaded. “He would have buried her for a purse, after he tricked her into loving. Doesn’t it make you angry?”
“We’ve tasted treachery before,” said the girl. “It’s boring.”
“Our sister will be sweeter for the fear,” groaned the black mouth below.
Agnes was shaking with the fear now. She must feel what was coming. How could she not? The need of the story had them all now, cold hands moving them like pieces on the board, and the red girl was so hungry. She would eat.
Mariana had to save Agnes. She had to stop feeling so relieved that the girl didn’t want John. She would at least try. Agnes deserved better than that black horror and the pain it promised.
From the bag she had not dared open sooner came the blessed candle and a birch-wood cross. Ghosts were said to fear the birch. She lit the candle at an oil lamp and thrust herself between the red girl and Agnes. She pressed the cross into the girl’s hands and held the candle up herself and believed until her tight teeth sent needles of pain along her jawbone that the flickering flame would hold this evil creature back.
“Stay back, ghost. I will keep you from this girl with everything I have, but you may have these men. Take Tom and be satisfied and leave us in peace.”
At once, trying to make the candle mean something, she felt herself in the little flame, and the power of the red girl pressing all around her, vast and cold and irresistible as the sea.
“Fucking whore!” Tom shouted.
He came for Mariana with a hand to his knife. One of the girl’s shades, the old woman, reached a shadow hand out in a careless slap, and Tom fell senseless with black bile pouring from his mouth.
“You fucking traitor witch!” said John, who had been hers. He spat. “You’ll burn for this, if that thing doesn’t take you. I’ll tell everyone you called it on us, you and the damned owl-girl.”
He ran, and the red girl did not stop him. Mariana felt a tearing of strings she had wrapped around her heart when he went. He hadn’t even noticed how much she tried to save him. She breathed in fast against the glass knives in her chest, and felt her cheeks wet, but she stood firm still and stared the red girl down.
“See,” said the girl, “boring. We are…
“Hungry,” finished the other mouth.
The wound cracked open with a new flood of blood and bile and the scent of frozen air. Mariana held her candle up and it blew out in the dead breath of the monster. She knew she was not strong enough for this. She was no witch to break a devil’s will, only a woman with a little wisdom and a little sight. But she was something else, now. Something that might save Agnes.
“What about me? Am I sweet enough for you? Take me and spare Agnes.”
She was betrayed now, and soon to be reviled by all the town.
The red girl laughed like china bells.
The black mouth opened and the girl arched toward her, snapping, hungry, but her child’s mouth spoke softly.
“Sweet as honey, lady, with those tears on your cheek. But you’ll regret the offer when you think of how much life you have left, more than this little broken bird.”
The pain of John’s voice spitting on her was still a hot coal in her chest, and it was almost pleasant against the emptiness of knowing he deserved this spirit and its hunger, that he would have stood by while Tom killed all for a little money. Mariana could feel herself drown in that blank pain.
She knew what was coming for her. John had shoved the word “witch” back down more than one throat before, when he still played the kind and loving John and hid his cold black greedy heart. If he shouted it now, he would need no more tale than that to raise a mob after her, and how easily they’d hang her up if they found Agnes gone again and Tom there bleeding black at her feet. What use was a witch who couldn’t save good men when she was called for?
“Then take me now before I think better, and leave this girl safe.”
The white ribs were sharp as surgeon’s knives and cold as winter, but they did not numb. Mariana felt every inch as she was broken, and only her tears were still warm.
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R.K. Duncan is a fat queer polyamorous wizard and author of fantasy, horror, and occasional sci-fi. He writes from a few rooms of a venerable West Philadelphia row home, where he dreams of travel and the demise of capitalism. His other full-time job is keeping house for himself and his live-in partner. Before settling on writing, he studied linguistics and philosophy at Haverford college. He attended Viable Paradise 23 in 2019. His occasional musings and links to other work can be found at rkduncan-author.com. |