From a distance, the shape knotted with seaweed was difficult to identify as a human hand. Fingers threaded through glistening strips of lichen, spongy and saturated against the sand, the wrist haloed in slumping fronds plastered against the slope of a vein running from the middle finger down to where the elbow would have been, had the wrist not tapered off into a strained, black-blooded socket, where tiny sea creatures had embedded themselves in the rotting flesh.
Tavius’ father gave explicit instructions: gather the greyish feathers that dotted the landscape in the morning when the tide was low enough to leave a shadow of damp sand stretching across the shoreline, and the sun had not yet appeared from the shroud of mist that settled over the island every night, anticipating an eternal slumber. They were the same instructions daily, and they both had committed them to memory, down to the cadence, years ago. They did not indicate the appropriate protocol for the discovery of a severed appendage on the beach.
Pulling the paper bundle tighter around the collection of feathers, Tavius took a hesitant step forward to examine closer. Grime coated the nails, half curled in the sand. It was unclear if they’d been curled back when they were attached to an arm or had become so drifting through the ocean like limp claws. His eyes traced the ribbon of pathway that connected the rocky shoreline to the narrow tower where his father toiled in his workshop. The only people on the island were Tavius and his father, both of whom, as far as he was aware, had both of their hands attached.
“Are you stuck?” Tavius asked the hand, prodding tentatively at the seaweed. The fingers wriggled in response, a halfhearted thrash, like they’d already given up. He offered one last look up at the workshop. There was only one window, and it looked out over the sea. Tavius peeled back the layer of seaweed. The fingers stretched once, experimentally, before digging into the cool dark sand, hoisting the palm up behind them, and dragging the barnacle-crusted wrist socket behind it like the oversized shell of a hermit crab.
The hand scuttled up against the rocks, the index finger tapping around occasionally to orient its position. Tavius tilted his head to the side.
“Be careful on the rocks, they can get really hot when the sun comes up.”
He then felt very foolish; after all, it wasn’t as if the hand could hear him.
Here’s a story. You might know it.
A boy and his father live in a tower by the sea. The father is an inventor, the boy is a dreamer, and they both look to the sky with longing through the tiny porthole of a window they are allowed in the tower. They are prisoners, more the father than the boy. At this point in the story, the boy is too young to have committed any crime.
They watch the birds that swoop beneath the clouds, light and delicate, seemingly untouched by the cares of the world.
(At this distance, they do not see the hungry swarming and snapping of beaks, the snatching of claws, and the helpless squirming of prey. The world is crueler than they imagine, but they do not know this yet. Rest assured, they will find out.)
The inventor takes a sketchpad and traces the arcs of their wings. The dreamer pops up on his toes and spreads his arms until his shoulders ache.
Tavius closed the door behind him, taking a deep breath of the cool musk of the tower. The stairs arched upward in a narrowing spiral, and his footsteps thunked on each. He slowed halfway up, balancing on the edge of the boards so they would not squeak and schooling his expression into one that was serious and demure. His father did not appreciate his work being interrupted, even with supplies he himself had requested. Tavius trapped once on the door with his knuckles before opening it.
Tavius’ father worked with his back to the window, light fanning around him in an ever-widening wingspan against the desk. When Tavius was little, he’d used to sit in the corner of the workspace, sharpening his father’s pencils to neat points and holding down the corners of papers that stubbornly refused to completely unfurl. He was not little anymore, his father told him, and much too big for such menial tasks. Much too big, it seemed, for more than a dismissive nod or sharply delivered word. He set the bundle of feathers down at the edge of the desk.
“Father.”
“Is that all?” Today’s batch was largely semiplumes, stringy with brittle veins that cracked when pressed too hard. Tail and wing feathers were his father’s preferred plumage, but they were much harder to find, required more time spent crawling the rocks until Tavius’ knees were speckled with bruises and digging deeper into the sands that would coat his forelimbs for the rest of the day, and the sheets of his bed for weeks after. Moreover, even when he did all of that, he still only found one every fortnight or so. Explaining as much to his father was a losing battle, so Tavius remained silent.
“That was all I could find. I’m sorry.”
“Try earlier tomorrow.” His father refolded the bundle and sighed, deeply. Discontent seemed etched on his face with a scalpel, too deep to ever fully disappear. His work, his home, his son. Tavius had seen him cast out near-perfect sets of wings, leaving him to pick off feathers still sticky with wax until they built up under his nails and hardened against his skin. “You seem distracted.”
Tavius considered telling his father about the hand, but somehow the words failed to materialize. Instead, he shook his head, mumbled another apology, and set off to the kitchen.
There was no oven in place—anything his father wanted heated went up to the attic, where the sun caught in the bottle of open window and no exit save a narrow trapdoor—only crates of dried meat and fruit and an icebox of clear water. Tavius’ father collected these shipments from the port half a day’s walk up the beach; the journey could not be completed before the sun rose, and as such, Tavius was never allowed to accompany him. He wondered if the hand had belonged to one of the sailors, though it had been many weeks since they’d come, and would be many more still before they’d return.
That was when Tavius heard a scraping at the door, a desperate clawing at the underside of the wood. He hesitated, tongue pinched between his teeth. He was not supposed to open the door past sunrise, but the scratching grew more agitated and distressed. He glanced up the staircase and, not seeing the arch of his father’s shadow, opened the door for a brief moment, hiding behind the back paneling, before closing it tightly.
The hand scuttled in before collapsing flat against the floor, fingers splayed out around it in a gesture of exhaustion. Tavius swallowed, taking a step back.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly. “If my father sees you–”
The sentence faltered, primarily because Tavius had no idea how his father would react to a sentient embodied hand crawling like a spider through their house.
The hand did not respond, instead laying in limp exhaustion on the cool stone floor.
The skin around the wrist and empty socket had sagged, beads of flesh rolling like raindrops down the exterior of the hand and resolidifying. The fingers had flattened slightly, their prints wider and stretched, and when they flexed against the floor, there was a sticking sound, like they had reformed against it. Tavius blinked, gently reaching out to touch the hand, approaching it like a wild animal, palm up and tentative. The effect, of course, was negligible. It was not as if a hand could smell to identify a predator, but it crawled over to him regardless, index finger tapping against the freckled side of his arm to test it before crawling into the hollow of his elbow.
“Oh,” Tavius said, startled. “Um, hi.”
The hand dragged itself up his arm, settling onto his shoulder where the fingers tested the russet curls of his hair with a two-fingered tug.
“Ow, hey!” Tavius reached to pull the hand off his shoulder, the fingers straining and writhing in the open air. The texture was strange, the beads of melted flesh picking at the underside of his fingers. He set the hand back down on the floor.
“You’re made of wax.”
The boy and his father watch the birds with care, and dream of flying every night. When the storms come—and there are many storms by the ocean, huge ones, that ravish the shoreline and smack wind and spray against the stones in the tower, tracing down the crevices to make their beds cold and wet—they cling to each other and talk about what it would be like to fly.
The inventor designs a pair of wings. He and his son do not have many things in this place, and it will take everything they have to make them. The inventor pauses, the dreamer does not. He rips canvas from their walls and melts their candles for wax.
When the storms come again, birds huddle beneath their roof for shelter. While his son sleeps, the inventor coaxes one onto his wrist, gently tracing its sour grey plumage with a shaking finger. It barely has time to shriek when he snaps its neck, and even then, the roar of the storm masks the struggle. The inventor lays the dead bird out on his worktable and stretches its wings out, tracing the bones against his sketchpad, prodding the skin for softness. He plucks it bare of feathers and lets the carcass drop out the window and into the swirling sea. The remaining birds huddle higher against the rafters.
(This is when the inventor learns that the world can be cruel. He thinks his son will never have to find out.)
By the time the boy awakes to the hazy glow of the post-storm sun, the inventor had dismantled their beds, carving hollow bones from their frames.
When the mist came in that night, Tavius crawled down into the cool cellar where his and his father’s hammocks swung in almost complete darkness. He pulled his patchwork comforter up to his neck and closed his eyes, mind twitchingly flitting to the hand he’d securely hidden in the cupboard beneath the sink in the kitchen. He’d tried to explain to it the reasoning behind his locking it in—the terrifying uncertainty of his father’s reaction, the salting sea spray mixed with fog that would ply its wax joints to spindly stretches of sinew—but communicating with a single limb was challenging, and the putty-soft fingers had rapped against the wooden door for several minutes before giving up.
Though the island at night was never quiet—the winds thrashed, and creatures fluttered and flustered when the darkness came—Tavious could not help but attribute every hint or scrape of movement to the restless wax limb pacing their cupboard of cleaning supplies, melting fingers scraping curls of wax onto their dishtowels and hard bricks of soap. He slept lightly and in blinks, and found himself pacing the floor waiting for the mists to retreat, already dressed long before was his custom when morning came. After checking to make sure the door to the cellar was solidly closed, he knelt down by the cupboard and unlatched the bar holding it closed.
“Sorry about that,” he said quietly, tapping a finger gently against the blue vein at the arch of the hand. After rocking back on its fingertips—almost sullenly, Tavius couldn’t help but think—it crawled out and up his arm, gripping his shoulder with its thumb pressing into the hollow beneath his collarbone. The white barnacles in the exposed socket shook, the melting of wax having locked them in place. Tavius thought he might pick them out later if he could keep the thing still for long enough.
As soon as he stepped outside, however, the air smelling of salt and the upset of waves, the hand scurried off his shoulder and out into the sand, feeling its way off the well-tread path and up into the brushes of grass towards the forest. Pushing the heavy door back into place, Tavius hurried to the edge of the trail.
“Wait, we can’t—we’re not supposed to go there.”
The hand did not hear him, of course. Tavius swallowed and kicked a stone across the path harder than was necessary before setting off for the beach, picking through the sand for feathers. The throng of seaweed from the previous morning had been washed into oblivion. It was almost as if it hadn’t been there at all, save the few light markings back where the water did not touch.
He pursed his lips and hefted himself up onto the rocks, squinting where the gulls came to rest, and picking a few soft down feathers from the cracks. The pickings were thin, as he had come to expect, but he did his best to be thorough. The bundle was at least respectable by the time the sky warmed from the color of dark blue coves to deep violet. He dusted himself off as much as possible before climbing back on the path, looking nervously to the sky above. The hand could not have a sense of timing, could not know when the sun would rise and reduce it to a dripping mass of blood and bone-colored mush.
It emerged on the path, all the same, dew-soaked grass plastered around its wrist. Its index and middle finger dragged it forward, the fourth and fifth fingers curled tightly around something.
“You’re back—we should get inside before,” Tavius stopped. The index finger tapped his shoe experimentally before dropping its bounty, a large grey feather, spanning the length of Tavius’ forearm. This was the kind of feathers his father sought, the thick broad kind that would allow them to fly. “Where did you find this?” He held it gingerly between his fingers, tracing one across the plumage. The bristles flicked back into position, trailing the movement.
The hand, in lieu of a response, scuttled back into the grasses.
“Wait,” Tavius grabbed it at the wrist, lifting it into the air. “It’s too wet out there for you. You’ll come apart.” He swallowed, examining the feather. “Could you point the way, do you think?” He positioned the hand on the flat of his palm like a compass. After a moment’s flailing, it froze, fingers curling into a fist save for the index finger, pointing out into the sleepy woods.
Tavius glanced back at the tower, before taking a tentative step off the path.
The wings are beautiful, and while beauty does not mean function, it is easy to forgive the confusion. With them affixed to his back, the dreamer feels as if he could soar forever, reaching closer and closer to the sky. His father fastens the straps, made from their belt loops and shoe buckles, around his chest, pulling them taut enough to leave red strips down his skin.
“You must be careful,” the inventor tells his son. This is the part most people know. “If you fly too close to the sun, the wax will melt from the heat. If you fly too close to the waves, the salt from the sea spray will weaken it.”
“I’ll be careful, Dad,” the boy says, his eyes fixated on the sky above. He never found out about the bird his father plucked to make the wings, still thinks that the gulls that sail beyond the clouds are untouchable. He perches on the windowsill and jumps.
The wings catch him, he is lighter than air, and the moment is beautiful. The inventor joins him, solid and steady and much warier. They could cross the sea like this, but they don’t. This is not that kind of story.
Tavius’ boots laced up to his knees, and they caught on the bristles of plants left untamed for years. Every time he paused, the fingers of the hand curled back to pinch the soft skin at the base of his palm. He was neither fond of this arrangement nor inclined to do anything in particular to remedy the situation. His heart felt like a fluttering bird, scratching at the inside of his chest, wings snapping against the hollow of his ribcage.
The hand directed him into a column of trees, beyond which he could glimpse the glow of a clearing.
“We have to be fast, it’s almost morning, and we need–”
Tavius froze, the slumping silhouette of a person stood in the clearing, the back arched and head lulled downwards towards the tangle of weeds and grasses struggling against the sand.
“Hello?” Tavius said. “Are you—ouch!” The hand pinched his inner wrist with unprecedented vigor, slipping from his lax grip and into the grasses, scuttling towards the figure. Tavius sped to catch it, boots sliding on the wet grass. He regained his posture by placing a hand, instinctively, on the shoulder of the figure standing before him.
“Sorry,” he muttered before the bird in his chest stilled, tensing its every muscle with the intent to flee. Tavius lifted his hand off the wax shoulder of the person standing in front of him and countered around him in the wet grass. The shoulders curled inward, melted wax peeling down its front and leaving bones and muscle, fat and sinew, oozing and melted into brownish blobs dripping from the front of its form. The neck had been pulled wide, strained into a single lean rope of wax flesh to where the figure’s head rested, half-melted in the grass. Tavius took a step back.
The head was upside down, the hair and forehead gelatinous against the forest floor, melted wax rolling down the chin and dripping off the bridge of the nose. Even still, Tavius recognized his own face, the boyish curve of his own jaw, the gap between his own teeth. He looked back at the hand, which had come to a stop beside the wax figure, reaching fingers up to curl with the figures’ own hands, hanging limply at its sides.
On the side of the hand was a scar, scooping from the thumb to the inside of the wrist. His father had told him he’d gotten it trying to cut open an oyster with a knife when he’d asked about the identical scar on his own hand. There was white in the same area on the matching hand of the melting wax finger, grotesquely long as the fingers thinned and stretched towards the ground.
The boy flies too high, of course. The birds do it all the time, the sun catching the luster of their wings, making them glow like gold. He has a brief moment of consideration and acknowledgment that he should fly lower. His father breathes a sigh of relief as he lets himself drop a few feet. But it is not enough, and the rapid movement down only serves to dislodge the loosened feathers, the boy’s heart plummets, he flaps more desperately, legs kicking.
“Remain calm,” his father yells, and the dreamer tries to breathe, he spreads his wings wide and tries to glide. His pattern smooths just low enough for the sea spray to catch the remaining feathers, pulling them off until the boy’s wings are nothing but wooden bones and waxed canvas that leadens him down when he hits the water. He kicks and writhes, trying to work off the harness so that he can at least float, reaching up skyward for the inventor.
(This is how the dreamer learns the world can be cruel, not the fall, but the shadow of his father passing above him.)
Feathers litter the waves as he sinks, they make a beautiful constellation.
“Octavius.”
Tavius looked up. His father looked different in the light, and Tavius suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him leave the tower.
“I thought the rules were very clear.” His voice was even, too calm. Tavius looked around him. On the ground, the disembodied hand scuttled into the shadow of melted wax. “You know this area isn’t safe for you.”
“I’m sorry, Father, I –” He opened his mouth, fully intending to complete the thought. Instead, the cavity was full of silence. Wordlessly, he lifted the single wing feather. His father approached slowly, moving past the wax figure as if he’d always known it was there, and took the feather, testing the bristles against his thumb.
“Yes, this is good. But the rules exist for a reason. Come back home.”
Tavius couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stand still, trembling. His father reached out, placing a hand on his shoulder, the fingers digging into the soft places between the bones.
“It’s nearly dawn. Come with me.”
“W–what is that?” The words were splintered, shuddering, flying on broken wings.
“Not your concern. A failed test.”
“Father.” The word came out as a rasp, the thin ribbon of neck vibrating with it, the sprawl of melted mouth barely able to usher it into existence. The failed test shuddered, reached forwards, delicate strings of wax protruding from his fingers as he moved clunkily, uncertainly.
Tavius didn’t stop to think, twisting from his father’s grip and stumbling on leaf-slick boots into the forest, the branches lashing against his arms as he ran. The forest floor deepened into an incline, and Tavius caught his hands against the bark to keep from falling. Next to him in the forest, another half-melted figure with his face sprawled against the ground, this one housing a squirming nest of beetles in his slackened mouth. Tavius clapped a hand over his mouth, reducing his reaction to a pitiful squeak. When he looked up, the legs of another fallen boy hardened against the branches, his head suspended by wings. The thud of Tavius’ back against the trunk made them rain feathers.
The inventor’s wings take him to a limestone-speckled coast. He should relish his success, but the isolation rests heavy, like the mist that advances across the shoreline every night. He could not have saved his son, he tells himself, because it is the only thing he can tell himself to keep from screaming into a wind that swallows his voice.
But inventors cannot be idle for long. He wanders until he finds a tower, crumbling stone and cutting a scar against the horizon. He climbs the stairs, picks through the interior, and builds a life in a quiet workshop with a window facing the sea.
Then, from the dripping wax torches that line the spiral steps, the seals that bind his letters closed, and the candles shuddering on the windowsill, he builds another.
The foliage grew sparser, weeds drying into sticking grasses in the sand, as he crossed the threshold, grew closer to the beach. Tavius knew the beach well, had traced its silhouette with care for as many days as he’d been alive. He could hide in the rocks, duck behind the husks of driftwood that peaked like sea monsters through the sand, scuttle to the far side of one of the mounds of sand.
He got the opportunity to do none of them, however.
His father’s hand was soft for one who toiled as he did, intently and continuously in dim candlelight. The softness of wax never formed proper callouses, made the skin smooth as it clenched, bruisingly tight around Tavius’ wrist. He struggled, stamping at his father’s boots, kicking up sand.
“Let me go.”
Tavius’ father studied him with the kind of pursed frustration usually reserved for his more temperamental inventions. Like there was something wrong with him, but he could not for the life of him puzzle where the problem had originated.
“You need to get back inside.”
“What were those things?” Tavius searched his father’s face, the stern, carved look of thoughtful indifference as steady as rock. “What happened to them?”
The prolonged silence, the examination, unsettled him more than all the shouting in the world could have.
“Come with me, Octavius.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you!”
His father tilted his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, there’s nowhere else you can go.”
Tavius looked past him, the solemn blue of the ocean emerging at a crawl from the fog. The edge of the forest met it with a line of shadow across the ground, holding father and son captive in its shade. Beyond was peaceful, not still, but rhythmic. Tavius tugged his hand once more. His father sighed, shifted, folding the boy’s fingers into his own and pushing their interlocked hands beyond the shadow of the trees.
The sunlight was warmer than anything Tavius had ever known, the mist keeping it trapped and damp. It didn’t hurt, but something about the sensation was dizzying, so very, very wrong.
“What—what are you doing?”
Tavius’ father pushed a thumb into the side of his hand, the skin squishing beneath it with the smoothness of butter. It was the same motion Tavius had seen his father use countless times, shaping wax into wings.
“Now do you understand?” he said, pulling Tavius’ hand back into the darkness. The limp skin hung down, mutilation that should’ve stung. Instead, it just sent rolls through his stomach. His knees swayed with the seagrasses, unsteady and far too weak, and it was the quick arm, circling around his back that kept him from collapsing altogether.
“Not quite, then.” The voice was musing, thoughtful, a rumble above Tavius’ head. It did not seem to be directed at him. “Closer, but not quite.”
The first boy is Primus. He isn’t as smooth, as perfect a recreation, but he laughs the same, all dimples and teeth. For a while, it is enough. But he is too curious—many of the early models are—beads of wax drip down his legs as he chases crabs in the sand. The inventor makes a note.
Secundus runs slower.
Tavius kicked, writhing in his father’s grip as he mounted the stairs, narrowing spirals. They passed the workshop, its sea-facing window casting a glowing shadow on pages upon pages of notes.
“Please,” he tried. “Please, I won’t do it again. I’ll forget everything. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” his father said calmly, his hand not moving from Tavius’ forearm. “I need to make some adjustments to my designs.” He adjusted his hand position, securing them beneath his son’s forearms and hoisting him onto the rickety wood ladder. Even beneath the attic was warm enough to make sweat pill beneath the arms of his shirt.
Tavius wedged his legs against the ladder, trying to push back. Instead, the curves of the bars molded into his feet.
“You’re going to kill me!”
“I build things. I need wax. Everything must be exactly as it was.”
“It’s too hot!” The attic door closed with a thud, and Tavius pounded his fists on the wood.
“Nature can be cruel.”
The sentence was whispered, thoughtful, and muffled beneath the wood. Perhaps Tavius hadn’t heard it at all.
Clawing at the wooden door, he felt the tips of his fingers bending backward, buckling in on themselves long before they’d do any actual damage. The window loomed above, glowing like a neighbor sun, far too close and much too hot. Tavius kicked the ground uselessly, pushing himself so that his back pressed against the wall of stones, tucking his knees to his chest to keep them in as much shadow as possible.
It was a futile gesture, and he couldn’t tell if the lines tracing down his face were the paths of tears or his own skin melting.
The boys look much the same. Their faces, the slant of their jaws, and scraped calves; the only thing that changes is the eyes. In the inventor’s memory, they are deep-set and terrified, confused, desperate, and betrayed. He can never bear to imagine them for long.
The scratch of a bolt against a socket always reminded Tavius of an animal in a trap. He nearly mistook it for his own panic before the thump against the base of the wooden door.
The top of the trapdoor housed a metal handle, thin and coated with rust. Tavius could not picture the look of pristine metals; his world had been salted and spray-soaked for as long as he could remember. Directly in sunlight, the rust glowed a burnt orange. Tavius grabbed it and pulled, only to find the handle sinking through his hand like a hot knife through butter, his fingers dropping, cleanly severed, from the palm of his hand and onto the wood. He yelped, clutching the remaining half of his hand to his chest, thumb tracing over the smooth edge where his remaining fingers had been, wax the color of blood shining like a gemstone pressed into the sand on the beach.
Biting back a litany of expressions he had no idea how to voice, Tavius dug the point of his shoe under the handle, hoping the hard leather soles would be enough leverage to lift the door. He felt his toes crush, oozing forward and sculpting to the interior of the boot. The door lifted slightly, and with a kick, he scrambled forward and under it, missing the ladder below and collapsing on his back onto the ground.
Tavius stared up, dazed, breathing labored, until he felt a sharp tug on his hair.
The severed hand, one he now recognized as not his own but molded in the same form, tapped its index finger against his temple.
“Yeah,” he said, the sound warped and unsure. “I’m okay.”
The hand rocked on its fingers, and Tavius forced himself into a sitting position.
“Thank you,” he managed, just in time to have the words cut off by the echo from the first floor.
“What are you doing here? Get out.”
Tavius rolled over, crawling to the edge of the stone platform, where the ledge to his father’s office was visible, caked in torchlight, below. The figures of seven boys stood, shambled, lining the stairs their limbs melted and stretched, faces oozing and crushed, every inch of their bodies soft and pliable as wax save the eyes, dark and hard in dripping sockets. They blocked the path downward, their slumping forms pleading, begging, stripped to sinew and loose clumps of flesh. Look at us, look what you did. His father looked down at the mutilated forms blocking the staircase, confusion, disgust, slowly morphing into something much more trembling and buzzing. Tavius pulled himself forward, the hand crawling onto his shoulder to block the top of the staircase. His steps were uneasy, the oozing of his foot into the crevices of the boot did not make steady walking, and the fingerless hand could not grip the railing for support. Tavius’ father took a tentative step backward, up the stairs, seeking the attic where none of the wax figures could follow. He hesitated when he saw his latest creation standing at the top. On Tavius’ shoulder, the fingers of the disembodied hand fluttered, a mocking sort of wave.
“Octavius, step aside.”
Tavius looked down at the wax figures; even in melted, drooping sockets, their eyes were the same as his. He looked back to his father, and shook his head. Eyebrows threaded with anger, eclipsed by something far more primal.
“Octavius.” Tavius shook his head again, more resolute.
On the steps below the platform, the wax figures began to approach.
The inventor stood on his ledge, eyes darting upwards and down, trapped halfway between sea and sky.
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Laney Gaughan likes to write about haunted places and people. Her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Luna Station Quarterly, and Lamplit Underground, among others. She lives and works in Wisconsin, and is probably currently drinking tea. |