It was wicked in the telling, but sublime in the doing
I heard them coming up the path right on time, little feet crunching twigs and dry leaves on the lone dirt path. A half dozen pairs of small, bare feet, black with dirt and muck, followed by one heavier set of footfalls. Murmured voices, I heard the adult remind them of their manners, of the ways I was to be spoken to, and how I was to be thanked.
Oh, I would make sure I would be thanked.
I was ladling water into the kettle when the soft knock came. It took a few moments after the adult had left, as always, the nervous group poking and prodding each other until one became brave enough, or more often was pestered by their fellows to rap on the heavy wooden door. There was a door knocker, halfway up the door, but children being so short they could rarely reach it.
“One moment,” I called, hanging the ladle back on the hook and drawing the barrel closed. I shuffled to the door, passing the mangy mutt by the fire who let out a low huff at the disturbance, and drew the curtain closed across the doorway to the other room of my home.
I stood straight, joints cracking and popping to release old pains from their cages in my bones. The kettle held in one hand, I reached another to settle on the rusted handle inside the door and paused to regard the wrinkles, spots, and bruises of my own skin. Once clear flesh now purple and black, a hand once beautiful it was now scarred and withered by time. I grasped the handle and pulled, smiling to show my three and a half remaining teeth.
“Welcome young ones, welcome. Do come in. Oh, is that for me?” Using a husky voice, I was every bit the crone I remembered visiting myself so very long ago. I placed the offered package aside, never to be opened. Scattered in age the group of four, no five small children looked healthy enough, the plump flesh of youth carrying shining eyes, hesitant faces, and the rounded limbs of baby fat. So much ripe flesh, full of delightful rich blood. I backed away a step, and waved them near the hearth before pushing the heavy door closed behind them. None could have seen more than nine summers.
“So, it’s time is it? Time for your telling?” I emphasised the last word dramatically, waving my free hand in the air with fingers curled into a crooked claw.
Three of the children clutched to each other, frayed tunics and shorts matching their patchy cut hair in the same dull brown of mediocrity. One child wore a long dress of the same drab material, short hair blonde under the stains of dirt, though smears on her face spoke of a parent or siblings attempt to clean her up.
The last child looked neither girl nor boy, longer pants and sleeved shirt revealed as little as their blank, plain face. They stood at my deep stained chair, poking the faded leather with a curious finger. Perhaps agender like me, they too looked disheveled, but their shoulders and hips sat somehow different to the others. The hips a little higher. The shoulders a little closer together. Yes, perhaps like me. But how much? It was only us that could know the spirits.
“Are you gunna eat us?” the smallest child, the little blonde girl, wrung a pigtail in concentration as she spoke around missing teeth. “I don’t wanna be eaten.” I smiled again, showing my dark tongue inside the blackened teeth, a twinge in my chest responding to her manner.
“No, lil’ one, you won’t be eaten here. Not by me at least.” I winked, and she shot a looked at the mutt by the fire and gulped.
“They don’t eat children,” the fifth child said, the word came like an insult, as something they clearly did not consider themself. Back turned they ran a palm against the smoothness of the chair. They, the child had said. Turning slowly they regarded me, eyes too cool and knowing for their age. We locked gazes, and I felt a sharpness to them that belied their age. They pushed their sleeves up their arms, thin and bruised revealing a familiar tale, and studying the bones in their face I read a brutal history. Likely the father. It was normally the father, though for me it had been mother dear who had tried to make me like her. Pain twitched in an old scar.
Smile splitting my face in a rictus grin, I limped close to the hearth, nodding agreement. “Yes, that’s right. I eat those that… have done wrong.” I paused for dramatic effect. I hadn’t spoken a word since last telling, some three years passed.
The three boys shuffled aside huddled tightly together, fingers clutching at each other as I came near. One of them mouthed the last words I had spoken, like a dog working on an old bone. The girl, still wringing a pigtail in her fingers, turned as I passed and continued to face me to say “You’re very old.” She couldn’t have a clue just how old, of course.
“Mmm” I agreed, hooking the kettle above the fire, taking a mortar and pestle from the mantle. I turned to her and continued, “Yes, very old. Older than you’ll get, I’m afraid.” I cackled. A nice cackle always served to scare them.
“Get me one of those bones o’er there”, I waved my arm at the fifth child, a crooking finger indicating a pile on a table by the chair, “and let me at me chair”. The girl moved closer to the hearth, bumping into the dog who let out another huff and turned his head aside. I swished my robe wildly as I turned, silent rusted bells among the dry bones of frogs and squirrels hanging from the tattered bottom of it by pieces of gut. The eyes of the thickest of the three boys widened at the flash of my old, permanently bruised skin.
“Oh, don’t be scared of me now,” I told him as I turned and wriggled my rump into the seat. “Like I said, I won’t be eating no children tonight.” The odour of fear filled the room. I felt the spirit on my shoulder shiver in joy at the taste of it, and begin to bounce back and forth in glee.
I placed the mortar on the arm of the chair carefully before leaning forward, pointing the pestle accusingly at the boys. “Unless, of course, one of you has been up to no good?” The boys shook their heads in unison, and even the girl swung hers back and forth so wide I damn near thought it would fall off. I shot a look at her, stopping her, but she bit her lip, and began the movement again in her hips. The hem of her tattered dress swished back and forth by the fire.
“Don’t you be lighting yourself on fire there, Sylva, it’ll day me days to drag back the water I’d use to put you out.” She stopped moving, eyes slowly widening when she realised I’d used her name without having heard it. I sent a silent thank you to the spirit who whispered it in my ear.
“Here,” the fifth child was at my elbow suddenly, placing a pair of crows skulls in the curved bowl. I hadn’t heard or seen them approach. I could tell the spirits liked this one.
“I said one of those bones, child. One.” A test.
The child shrugged. “I thought two would be better”. I eyed them suspiciously to keep them guessing, but grinned inwardly.
“You got your own bone spirit, eh?” I said quietly, letting my voice settle into a more neutral tone. A flat stare was my only response. I felt my own bone spirit appear in the air above the pestle, a subtle pulling under the skin of my my near hand, and float down to taste the offering. The skulls shifted in my vision, echoed briefly as the essence was drawn out of them, the child had been right. Finally, a child that could…
“Your dog smells” the little girl interrupted the thought. I turned back to her, bushy eyebrow raised, and twisted my mouth in a wry grin.
“He probably thinks you smell too!” She wrinkled her nose. “Bring me a sprig of that purple herb there, girl.” I felt the child at my elbow twitch at the last word.
She turned and bent her knees to reach down, her dress barely moving as though it floated around her legs, and carefully held the indicated pot with one hand while pulling at the small bush with another. The whole plant moved as she tugged at it, so I interrupted “Hold the trunk, girl, not the pot, and twist.” The mutt huffed again and watched her with bored eyes.
Doing as ordered, she stood again slowly and sniffed at the freshly picked herb. Scrunching her face in disgust, she turned fast and brought it to me quickly, the smell offending her young taste. She reached up to drop the sprig in my outstretched hand, and I snatched her by the wrist before she could. The mortar thudded to the floor, the crow skulls bouncing like small rocks around the fallen pestle.
“You know this child, yes?” I growled at her menacingly, indicating the fifth child with a nod.
She nodded her head rapidly, tears welling sudden in her eyes.
“And you know they’re a little different, not like you, not like the boys eh?”
She shook her head, lying, so I squeezed her wrist, and the shake became another nod.
“Well, I’m not like your mommy or your daddy neither, but that’s not what’s got you scared, is it?”
This time the shake was truth, and I smiled.
“What have they told you about me?” I relaxed my grip on the little girl, her arm sliding from my hand softly. I plucked the sprig from her hand before it fell.
“My mommy says you talk to the dead.” It came slowly, as though she would afraid she would offend me.
“Go on,” I prodded, seeing more in her face.
“And that you eat people.” Again slowly.
I nodded “I have on occasion, but only the tastiest ones. Anything else?”
She shook her head and I could see the truth in her eyes, but one of the boys spoke up, the slightly thicker of the three. “My older brother said you punish people. People that do nasty things.”
I flicked my eyes to him and nodded, before leaning back in my chair. I noticed the mortar back in its place, the fifth child had gently placed it there, the small skulls back in the center. I tilted my head at them.
“And you, what do you know about me?” I asked them.
“Enough.” they said. Yes, the spirits had been whispering their strange words in the childs ears, even if they couldn’t understand them all yet.
“Good.” I changed my voice again, though it had come husky, then quiet, then hard, I now softened it to calm the girl and boys. I spoke rarely, but with great control. It was like a small weight lifted off each of the four, each breathed a small sigh of relief, but the fifth stayed tense, some fear of what was to come. The spirit on my shoulder knelt quietly, patiently waiting.
I indicated an area of floor not far from the dog, and bade them all sit. “Do any of you know this herb?” I asked, holding the sprig aloft as they all sat. The boys sat cross legged, the girl folded her legs under her dress, but the fifth child mirrored the spirit on my shoulder, hands atop their thighs. They regarded me coolly, and I felt a tail twitching back and forth on my shoulder blade.
Four heads shook a confused no, the fifth showed no change in emotion.
“This is a sleeper herb.” I settled the mortar in my lap, starting to pluck the purple leaves from the twig and popping them in my mouth one by one. As each leaf burned on my tongue, my power burned the spirits within as only I could, or those like me. I continued, “The leaves of the sleeper herb give vivid dreams, but it’s the stem that gives the herb it’s name.” I pulled the last half dozen leaves from the stem, piled them on the arm of my chair. “When you leave, I want each of you to take one of these leaves, it will help you remember this telling, even if you’ve forgotten before you go to sleep.” Four heads nodded, the fifth cocked to the side in confusion.
I dropped the bare steam into the mortar, and began crushing the skulls around it. “Do any of you know why I live so far away from the rest of you, down here in the valley?” Four shakes. “It’s the screams, you see.”
I let the lie sit, reading the faces. The girl was rapt with horrified attention, as were two of the boys. Good. The third boy, the one that had spoken before, had begun to grin before catching himself, looking at the others to see if he’d been caught, and mirroring their expression. Ahh, he’s the one. There was always one who would take it the wrong way, take the lie as fun rather than fear.
The fifth childs expression was different than the others, their features quietly different, more subtly expressive, but I could read it as easily as I could tell what the dog had eaten by his wind. Afraid. They wanted to be wrong. Good. They’ll last a long while. Longer than me, maybe.
I stopped grinding and pointed the pestle, now tinged purple with flecks of white, at one of the shelves filled with small glass bottles and vials. “You”, I nodded at the thicker boy, “Bring me the jar of yellow liquid there, but mind you don’t open it.” His grin returned and he sprang up, fear fully banished, and had the jar to me in a flash. “Hold it while I open it,” I dropped the pestle back in the mortar, slowly unscrewing the top with my now free hand. “I need some of this for the mixture, but it’s the dog’s favourite, go on and give him a little in his bowl and bring it back to me.” His nose wrinkled as the lid came off, but he did as ordered, stopping when I said and returning while the dog lapped at the stale piss.
I took the jar from him when he returned, and made an “ah ah” sound as he moved to leave. “You have to put it back yet,” I whispered as I tilted it over the mortar measuring by memory before screwing the lid back on. “Here,” I handed the nearly empty jar back to him, “Now I want you to remember that smell, because I’ll know if you don’t eat your leaf tonight, and they’ll send you back. The leaf won’t last a second night, and I can’t spare more herb, so I’ll make you drink what’s left here instead, do you understand?” The boys face paled and he nodded. I hoped the threat would work, and the memories enhanced by the leaf would keep him out of trouble longer. Keep the others safer from him, longer.
“Put it back.” I bid him, and he took the jar back as I returned to my grinding. “Where was I? Oh yes, the screaming.” I waited for the boy to sit down.
“Have any of you ever seen anyone in the village fight?” Five shaken heads. Good. “What about stealing? Or breaking someone elses things?”
The girl piped up, “There was a man, he came from the south last winter, and when he left my brother Solly said he’d stolen his heart?”
I smiled, “No, not that sort of stealing. I mean like when one someone takes your toys without asking, or food that’s not theirs to have.” The two other boys looked at the thicker one, then back to me. “Ah, yes, like that. Do you know why the adults don’t do those things?”
The fifth child spoke up, confidence returning “It’s the laws, the laws of the land.”
“That’s right.” I said, tapping the pestle on the inside of the mortar to flick the liquid off. I pointed it at them “And what’s the grandest of all the laws of the land?”
“No one shall kill another one, not for any reason.” They recited it well, likely they read it every day in their villages school.
“Very good.” I nodded, then pursed my lips in thought. “If someone steals or hurts someone else, they’ve broken the laws, haven’t they? What’s to hold them to the laws?”
“Taxes?” asked the fifth child.
“Beating them up?” asked the thicker child.
“Smelly dogs?” asked the girl, wrinkling her nose at the accused wretch.
I laughed, and shook my head “Not smelly dogs, no, but something like taxes, and sometimes something like beating them up. You understand it has to be worse than what they’ve done though, doesn’t it, or they’d do it again anyway yes?”
The children looked confused, even the fifth unsure how to respond.
“It’s ok, you won’t have seen it happen yet. Let’s say I steal a loaf of bread from your mommy, Sylva. The law says that I must get her two loaves, or something of equal value.”
“My mommy makes the best bread. It would be three loaves!” She was cute.
“Perhaps. Now what if I’ve hurt someone, say I’ve broken your arm Dalen,” another widened set of eyes, thanks to the spirit on my shoulder, “The law says you should break my arm, and break my leg!” The boy named looked at his arm, at the shape of my leg under my robe, and then back again.
“Must it always be more, then?” asked the fifth child, and I could see it beginning to form in their mind.
“Yes.”
“What if they killed someone?” Just as I asked.
“Then they must be killed too. Or for certain…” I paused again for effect, “other crimes.”
“But doesn’t that break the law again?” As if they’re speaking from my memory.
“Not if it’s done here, the way I do it, no.”
The children shivered, I had let the fire grow low, but it was the power they realised I had, the power outside the law, that was the source of their chill.
It took several moments, but the thicker boy was the first to speak. “How do you do it?”
I smacked my lips, and set the mortar and pestle on the table by my chair before leaning in dramatically. “Slowly.” I said, drawing the word out as long as I could. “Very slowly.” I grinned, showing cracked broken teeth and twisting my face as scary as possible.
The two smaller boys clung to the thicker one, and the girl shuffled towards them. The fifth child looked down, the light fading from their eyes as they realised what it might mean for them, given they recognised our shared gifts.
“Let me show you where I do it.” I stood up forcefully, jolting the children in fear, and pointed at the curtain at the back of the room. “Come.”
I shuffled past them, the boys the first to follow, and the girl next. I threw back the curtain that hid the darkened room, the only other room of my home, and gazed back over their heads at the fifth child, unmoving and staring into the fire. “Come,” I repeated, “One day I will be gone, and it may be one of you who takes my place. You must know.” The child slowly looked back, a tear in their eye. I nodded and turned into the room. We both know it will be you.
“It’s wicked in the telling.” I began, waving my arm over the dark wooden table, “but sublime in the doing.” I grabbed one of the chains, stained with old blood and shit like the table it lay upon. “They all beg me to stop, you see, but I don’t.” Another lie that served the greater truth and good.
The fifth child slowly walked into the room and bumped into Sylva, who had stopped to stare at the tools hanging on the wall. Knives. Bars. Hooks. Strange shapes with spikes. Rust and stains coloured them blacks, oranges, and browns. She let out a yelp, and spun to hide her face on the newcomers shoulder.
“No Silva, you must look, even you who would not hurt the smelliest of dogs. It is the telling.” I lay my other hand on her head gently, smelling her terror. “I know you will never suffer this, but you must understand it when it happens to others, and you must know to stay away after you leave.” She gulped, nodded bravely, and wiped tears from her face.
The thicker child jumped, finger red with blood from one of the knives. “Don’t touch that,” I snapped, grabbing their arm and bringing the wound close to my face. “The things here, those blades and bludgeons, they carry evil dear children, evil that can make you sick, the evil of those they are used on. It’s only the spirits that make them safe for me, and for those like me.” I eyed the fifth child. They know. I let the thick childs arm go, the wound seemed superficial, and they glared at me as they stuck thumb under an armpit.
“How long does it take?” The fifth child. I had never thought to ask, how I wish you hadn’t. WIth what I was planning, though, they would soon know. They would know when they came back.
“All night. Dusk to dawn.” I said solemnly, tracing a long fingernail down a machete, thinking of the things I had done with it. The cuts I had made. The lives I had taken. “The mix, that back out there,” I pointed back out with my other hand without looking, “That keeps them alive, you see, keeps them from passing before I’m done. You can’t take two lives from one, no, but you can make the taking of one much, much worse than it would otherwise be.” My eyes settled again on the fifth child, the next me. “Like a nightmare, by the end they will beg for release.”
The children had all fallen silent, the fifth and I staring deep into each others eyes. Yes, it’s time. I reached for an old stained jar, empty with dust settled on top. “When someone needs the punishment, they make them drink the mix, and leave them at my door before sundown. The mix takes away their movement, you see, and I’m stronger than I look, I can get them in here, and hold them in place with these,” I brushed the chains.
“But if the mix takes away their movement, why do you need the chains?” So knowing, dear child.
“Have you seen a bird go into an oven to be cooked? Have you seen the string around the raw meat?” Their skin flushed as the meaning dawned on them.
I ushered them out of the room, drawing the curtain closed and handing the empty jar to the fifth child. “Put the mix in that, go on.” They obeyed, taking both jar and mortar and obeying with gentle hands. “Dalen,” I called one of the boys without looking, “put more wood on the fire, it’s as cold as I am old.” He too, obeyed.
The children all stood, the girl knitting her hands in silent fear, the boys slightly apart, alone in theirs, the fifth held the filled jar. “You saw how I made that, mm?” I nodded at the jar in their hands, and they nodded back. “It’s written down in this book,” I fished behind me, pulling an old leather tome from between the cushions, “I want you to take it, and learn all that’s in it.” They nodded again slowly, and we traded jar for book. “All of you, you have been told, now take your leaves, and begone. I’m old, and tired.” They’ll know the truth, once they’ve read it. They’ll know the real truth.
One by one they slowly took their leaves, the fifth child moving first, holding the door for the girl and the two silent boys, looking to be last. As the thicker boy, the one I was certain would lead a life of ill deeds, came to my chair I addressed the other four “The rest of you wait outside, I will speak to this one alone.” The fifth child gave me a look of confused yet relieved betrayal, and closed the door behind themself, leaving the thicker boy alone with just me, and the dog.
Again I let the silence linger.
“You lie, don’t you boy?”
He nodded dramatically, lowering his head in feigned disgrace as though I were his parent, had caught him stealing fruit. The spirit on my shoulder laughed at the poor facade.
I smirked and continued, “Of course you do, it’s fun, isn’t it? Lying about taking food, about who pushed who and so on? Tricking others?”
The false expression faded, and he smiled a little, looking up conspiratorially and narrowing his lips to restrain a smile. “See, I knew you did. I want you to tell a little lie for me, Stalen, that’s your name isn’t it, Stalen, named after the uncle that died before you were born?” He nodded again. He didn’t know why his uncle had died. No more that he knew that uncle was his father, or that his mother had also been his sister, dead birthing him terribly young. His grandmother had raised him oblivious, in love with a face that looked so much like her own lost son and daughter.
“Stalen,” I leaned forward and mirrored his expression. “I need to play a trick on the adults, and it’s only me that’s allowed to play this sort of trick, do you understand?” He looked confused, so I continued, “I know you play tricks, but this is a big trick, and you mustn’t ever, ever tell anyone that it was a trick, though you must remember it was, yes?” He nodded, and I leaned back in my chair.
“Take the last two leaves,” I indicated the pile on the arm of the chair, “You must eat one tonight before you sleep, but I want you to eat one now, can you do that for me?” Confused, he reached for the leaves, stopping before taking them.
“But the others only have to eat one, why do I have to eat two?” Too smart this one, I thought, he must take it of his own free will.
“Why do you think?” His face twisted in thought.
“Because I’m bigger than the others, except for the -” I breathed deep as he said the last word, the slur. It brought a shivering cold back to my stomach, a word I hadn’t heard since my youth. A word for other, for wrong, for unwanted all at once. I breathed out and stilled myself, muttering silent curse on whomever had taught him that word.
“Yes,” I choked back the bile in my throat, the taste of torment brought back from my youth, and girded myself for this moment. “Yes because of that.” He took the leaves, and popped one into his mouth proudly. I watched his eyes widen as it dissolved on his tongue, unnaturally fast as the released spirit danced free into his body. I felt the spirit climb into his skull, settling at the front of his forehead, alive and ready for me to burn in the spell.
I placed my palm against his cold brow, the eyes below dazed and distant, and spoke to the spirit as it layered in his mind. “You will tell them I touched you, as no adult should. You will tell them I said you were too beautiful, too irresistible to my old flesh. You will never, ever tell anyone it is a lie, but you will think of it before you do anything wrong ever again.” I knew that last part wouldn’t stick long, but it would stick long enough for him to know better than to reveal the truth. The spirit burned, tracing the spell through his mind.
“Go.” I pushed him backwards, and leaned back up in my chair. Snapping out of the daze he stood straight, looked at me strangely, and quietly left looking back just once in confusion as he opened the heavy door. I heard Sylva speak to him, and then the fifth child whose name I still didn’t know. They were young, too young for what was to come, younger even than I had been.
I sighed, staring into the fire and thinking of what was to come. My stomach warmed at the thought, of coming apart the way I had pulled the guilty apart over the years. It had terrified me at first, then just disgusted me, and then at some point I realised I had begun to look forward to it, to relish it, sad when it was over and the parts discarded. I felt the fiend on my shoulder squirm, as I lifted the mix to my lips. It must have realised what I was doing, and that it would follow me into the darkness. May one of these never bind to you, child I thought, swallowing the contents of the potion, and please, take good care of the mutt. I began to wonder which part of me they would cut first, my mind drifting blissfully as the potion took hold.
They came to me, just hours later, two huge men with the fifth child clutching the book like a shield. The men chained me down as I had so many before me, and grabbed the tools closest to hand.“You must say you did this,” they told the child, as they began to carve me into pieces without finesse, just chunks to be thrown into the sacred well. I wondered if I would still think or just be gone by then, lost somewhere among the bloodshed and gore.
“When you come of age you will return, and this will be your duty, your home.” One of them said, as the other turned away from the carnage and vomited. The child barely blinked, locking gaze with me as I was dismembered. There was no pain, just a dull pressure and pulling. That was the real secret of the sleeper herb, no screaming like I had told the children, and the generations before them. That was just a tale to warn them off bad doings. I watched one of the men throw my arm to the ground.
It was bliss, everything I’d ever done to a guilty body being done back to me. No guilt or regret birthed the pleasure, no, it was simple raw bloodlust, and curiosity at feeling the other side after so long. I sensed the child knew it was what I wanted. What I craved. The spirit on my shoulder still shrieked in terror, stuck to me by the same power that had kept me from banishing it. I felt true joy as I was cut into pieces, butchered like so much cow or deer. It was a special thanks, the only thanks I had wanted for years, and it was mine.
And it was wicked in the telling, but sublime in the doing.
