Sister Emily's Lightship Page 9

  Dusty tried again. “I will play Roman for you. Or even Greek.” He will promise anything when he is in the early throes of love.

  But the ghost only wept the dry tears of the dead, crying, “Roman is the name of the man I love. Where is he?”

  “Obviously alive and well and pursuing other maidens,” said Dusty, his forthright nature getting in the way of his wooing. “For if he were dead, he would be here with you. But I am here.”

  He tried to enfold her in his arms, but she slipped away as easily as mist.

  “Are you, then, dead?” she asked.

  “I am of the fey,” he said.

  But if she listened, it was not apparent, for she continued as if answers were not a part of conversation. “He must be dead. I saw him die. It is why I died. To be with him.”

  That, of course, decided Dusty. He was always a fool for lost causes. And I must say, from my readings of history, that I knew we would all have to watch him carefully in the 1780s, the 1860s, and the 1930s, 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s.

  “Tell me, gracious lady,” he said, careful to speak the elfin equivalent of the Shouting Voice, which is to say, well modulated. At that level the voice could bring milk from a maiden’s breast, cause graybeards to dance, and stir love in even the coldest heart.

  But the suicide’s ghost seemed immune. She wrung her hands into vapor, but did not step an inch closer to Dusty’s outstretched arms. Sometimes the voice works, and sometimes it does not.

  So, shrugging away his disappointment, Dusty tried again, this time in a more natural tone. “Start from the beginning. I may have missed something important, coming in the middle like this.”

  The ghost settled herself daintily some three feet above the ground, crossed her ankles prettily, and offered him her smiling dimple. “My name is…or was…oh, how do these things work in the afterlife?”

  “Do not worry about niceties,” Dusty said, patting her hand and the air beneath it at the same time. “Just begin already.” I do believe it was this moment he began falling out of love. But he will never admit to that.

  She sniffled angelically and pouted, showing him the other dimple. “My name is Julie. And I was in love…am in love…oh, dear!” She began to cry anew.

  Dusty offered a webkerchief to her. She reached for it, and it fell between them, for, of course, she could no more touch it then Dusty could touch her. She wiped her nose, instead, on the winding sheet.

  “Go on,” Dusty said, blushing when she looked at him with gratitude. He often mistook such human emotions as gratitude, sympathy, and curiosity for love.

  “My own true love is Roman. It is a family name, but I like it.”

  “A fine name,” Dusty agreed hastily, having bitten back the response that children should be named after natural things like sunshine, dust, and rainbows, not unnatures like cities, countries, and empires.

  Warming to her tale, Julie the ghost began to catalog her own true love’s charms, an adolescent litany of cheeks, hair, muscles, and thews that anyone but another adolescent would have found unbearable. As it was, Dusty was as busy listing Julie’s charms. They were certainly a pair.

  The families, it seems, were feuding. Something about a pig and a poke. Dusty never did get it straight. But the upshot was that Roman’s parents would not let him marry Julie, and Julie’s parents would not let her marry Roman. Such are the judicious settlements of humankind.

  So the two, instead of finding a sensible solution—like moving to Verona, changing their names, or buying both sets of parents new pigs and new pokes—decided on suicide as the answer. Answer! They had not even discovered the right question.

  But of course, Dusty agreed with her. Even the fey have hormonal imbalances, which is all that measures the difference between adolescent and adult.

  “What you need now,” Dusty said in his sensible voice, “is to reunite with your own true love.”

  Julie began another cascade of tears. “But that is impossible. He is alive. And I am…I am…”

  “Not alive,” Dusty said, being as tactful as could be under the circumstances.

  “Dead!” Julie finished unhappily, the cascade having become a torrent.

  “But you thought he was dead,” Dusty said.

  “I found him lying in a pool of blood,” she answered. “There was blood on his hands and on his face and on his coat and on his…” She blushed prettily and hid her face with her hands again.

  Dusty admired her sly smile through the transparent bones.

  “Everywhere!” she finished.

  “Did you look for a wound?” Dusty asked.

  “Blood makes me urpy,” she admitted.

  “Urpy?” If her giddiness had not already begun to change his mind, her vocabulary certainly would. “Urpy?”

  “You know—throw-uppins.”

  He nodded, looking a bit throw-uppins himself. “So you did not look.”

  “No. I ran to my nurse and told her I had a headache. A very bad headache. And borrowed a powder. A very strong powder. And…”

  “And lay down by Roman’s side, having drunk the powder in a tisane. Folding your hands over your pretty bosom and spreading your skirts about you like a scallop shell.”

  She made a moue. “How did you know! Did you see us?”

  He sighed. “My sister told me the story. She read it in one of our father’s books. His library is vast and has tomes from the past and the future as well. Only, I’d better tell you the rest. Roman is not dead.”

  “Not dead?” She said it with less surprise than before. “How?”

  “Who knows? Animal’s blood or tomato sauce or spilled wine. Who knows?”

  “Roman knows,” she said vehemently. Then she stopped. “Why are you laughing?”

  How could he explain it to her? Humor is difficult enough between consenting adults. It is impossible intraspecies. Dolphins do not trade laughs with wolves, nor butterflies joke with whales. Puns have a life span half the length of a pratfall. He fell out of love abruptly. But there was still enough attraction left for him to want to help her out.

  “You must convince Roman to die,” he said. “Only then can he join you.”

  “How?”

  “Haunt him.”

  And so the haunting began.

  Dusty was right, of course. Roman had already begun looking for alternatives. He had a passion for slatterns and sculleries, an interest that had apparently begun long before his dalliance with Julie. She would have been disappointed in him within the course of a normal year—that is, if she had not found him basted like a beef on a platter. Perhaps he had guessed it and had knowingly provoked her into death. If so, Dusty was right about the haunting.

  But Julie forgave him, for spirits are so set in their ways. They long for what lingered last. She believed in Roman despite the evidence of her ears and eyes. It led, of course, to a spectacular single-minded haunting.

  Poor Roman. He never had a chance. Whenever he was about to place his well-manicured hand upon a maidenly breast, Julie’s ghost appeared. She sighed. She swooned. She wailed. She wept. What passion he had, fled. As did the maid to hand.

  Dusty enjoyed it all enormously. He coached Julie in every nuance of necromancy: the hollow tones, the fetid breath, the call from beyond the grave. It turned out she had genius for spirit work, a sepulchral flair. Within the week, Roman was on his knees by her grave, begging for release.

  Dusty supplied a knife.

  Roman ignored it.

  Dusty supplied a noose.

  Roman ignored it.

  Dusty supplied a vial of poison.

  Roman joined a monastery, gagged on the plain food, choked on the sweet wine, and longed to talk to his neighbor. He escaped less than a month later over the wall, his habit rucked up around his knees, his sandals in hand.

  “Your poor hair,” sighed Julie to him as he prostrated himself below the standing stone. The memory of her hand stirred the strand of golden fuzz over his tonsure.

  “Gi
ve me a month to grow it back, and I will join you, my love,” he said, smiling up at her. There was larceny in his smile, though she did not recognize it.

  “A month I can wait,” she said magnanimously. “Even two. But no more.”

  Dusty, sitting atop the standing stone, made a face. He might not be able to read a woman’s heart, but men were no trouble to him at all.

  Within the first month, Roman had converted his inheritance to cash and sailed off with a Portuguese upstart to find a brave new world, leaving Julie far behind. Ghosts, as Roman knew full well, cannot travel over water. Particularly not across a vast sea. But he could not outrun his promise. He died on a foreign shore, a poison dart between his eyes and eaten by cannibals directly after. A windspirit brought us the word. He had died messily, with Julie’s name upon his lips. She liked that part.

  Julie dictated her story, slightly changed, into the ear of a fine-looking poet some years later. He called her his muse, his dark lady, his spirit guide. That so impressed her, she left off haunting and took up musing with a vengeance.

  Dusty went away in disgust and found a compliant milkmaid instead, with soft hands, warm thighs, and a taste for the exotic. But that, of course, is another story and not nearly as interesting or as repeatable.

  The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who

  ONE GOLD COIN WITH the face of George II on it, whoever he was. Three copper pennies. And a crimped tin thing stamped with a fleur-de-lis. That was all. Beauty stared down at it. The trouble with running a large house this far out in the country, even with magical help, was that there was never any real spending money. Except for what might be found in the odd theatrical trunk, in the secret desk drawer, and at the bottom of the pond every spring when it was drained. Three times she had counted: one gold, three coppers, one tin. And the next day would be Christmas.

  There was clearly nothing for her to do but flop down on the Victorian sofa, the hard one with the mahogany armrests, and howl. So she did. She howled as she had heard him howl, and wept and pounded the armrests for good measure. It made her feel ever so much better. Except for her hands, which now hurt abominably. But that’s the trouble with Victorian sofas. Whatever they were.

  The whole house was similarly accoutered: Federal, Empire, Art Deco, Louis Quinze. With tags on each explaining the name and period. Names about which she knew nothing, but which the house had conjured up out of the past, present, and future. None of it was comfortable, though clearly all of it—according to the tags—was expensive. She longed for the simpler days at home with Papa and her sisters, when even a penniless Christmas after dear Papa had lost all his money meant pleasant afternoons in the kitchen baking presents for the neighbors.

  Now, of course, she had no neighbors. And her housemate was used to so much better than her meager kitchen skills could offer. Even if the magical help would let her into the kitchen, which they—it or whatever—would not do.

  She finished her cry, left off the howling, and went down the long hallway to her room. There she found her powder and puffs and repaired the damage to her complexion speedily. He liked her bright and simple and smelling of herself, and magical cosmetics could do such wonders for even the sallowest of skins.

  Then she looked into the far-seeing mirror—there were no windows in the house—and saw her old gray cat Miaou walking on a gray fence in her gray backyard. It made her homesick all over again, even though dear Papa was now so poor, and she had only one gold, three coppers, one tin with which to buy Beast a present for Christmas.

  She blinked and wished, and the mirror became only a mirror again, and she stared at her reflection. She thought long and hard and pulled down her red hair, letting it fall to its full length, just slightly above her knees.

  Now there were two things in that great magical house far out in the country in which both she and the Beast took great pride. One was Beast’s gold watch, because it was his link with the real past, not the magical, made-up past. The watch had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him, though everything else had been wiped away in the spell. The other thing was Beauty’s hair, for, despite her name, it was the only thing beautiful about her. Had Rapunzel lived across the way instead of in the next kingdom, with her handsome but remarkably stupid husband, Beauty would have worn her hair down at every opportunity just to depreciate Her Majesty’s gifts.

  So now Beauty’s hair fell over her shoulders and down past her waist, almost to her knees, rippling and shining like a cascade of red waters. There was a magical hush in the room, and she smiled to herself at it, a little shyly, a little proudly. The house admired her hair almost as much as Beast did. Then she bound it all up again, sighing because she knew what she had to do.

  A disguise. She needed a disguise. She would go into town—a two-day walk, a one-day ride; but with magic, only a short, if bumpy, ten minutes away—in disguise. She opened the closet and wished very hard. On went the old brown leather bomber jacket. The leather outback hat. She took a second to tear off the price tags. Tucking the silk bodice into the leather pants, she ran her hands down her legs. Boots! She would need boots. She wished again. The thigh-high leather boots were a fine touch. Checking in the mirror, she saw only her gray cat.

  “Pooh!” she said to the mirror. Miaou looked up startled, saw nothing, moved on.

  With a brilliant sparkle in her eyes, she went out of the bedroom, down the stairs, across the wide expanse of lawn, toward the gate.

  At the gate, she twisted her ring twice. (“Once for home, twice for town, three times for return,” Beast had drummed into her when she had first been his guest. Never mind the hair. The ring was her most precious possession.)

  Ten bumpy minutes later, she landed in the main street of the town.

  As her red hair was tucked up into the outback hat, no one recognized her. Or if they did, they only bowed. No one called her by name. This was a town used to disguised gentry. She walked up and down the street for a few minutes, screwing up her courage. Then she stopped by a sign that read MADAME SUZZANE: HAIR GOODS AND GONE TOMORROW.

  Beauty ran up the steep flight of stairs and collected herself.

  Madame Suzzane was squatting on a stool behind a large wooden counter. She was a big woman, white and round and graying at the edges, like a particularly dangerous mushroom.

  “Will you buy my hair?” Beauty asked.

  “Take off that silly hat first. Where’d you get it?” Her voice had a mushroomy sound to it, soft and spongy.

  “In a catalog,” Beauty said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  The hat came off. Down rippled the red cascade.

  “Nah—can’t use red. Drug on the market. Besides, if…He…knew.” If anything, Madame Suzzane turned whiter, grayer.

  “But I have nothing else to sell.” Beauty’s eyes grew wider, weepy.

  “What about that ring?” Madame Suzanne asked, pointing.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred dollars,” said Madame Suzanne, adding a bit for inflation. And for the danger.

  Beauty pulled the ring off her finger, forgetting everything in her eagerness to buy a gift for Beast. “Quickly, before I change my mind.” She ran down the stairs, simultaneously binding up her hair again and shoving it back under the hat. The street seemed much longer much more filled with shops now that she had money in her hands. Real money. Not the gold coin, copper pennies, and crimped tin thing in her pocket.

  The next two hours raced by as she ransacked the stores looking for a present for Beast and, not unexpectedly, finding a thing or two for herself: some nail polish in the latest color from the Isles, a faux-pearl necklace with a delicious rhinestone clasp, the most delicate china faun cavorting with three shepherdesses in rosebud-pink gowns, and a painting of a jester so cleverly limned on black velvet that would fit right over her poster bed
.

  And then she found Beast’s present at last, a perfect tortoise-shell comb for his mane, set with little battery-driven (whatever that was) lights that winked on and off and on again. She had considered a fob for his grandfather’s watch, but the ones she saw were all much too expensive. And besides, the old fob that came with the watch was still in good shape, for something old. And she doubted whether he’d have been willing to part with it anyway. Just like Beast, preferring the old to the new, preferring the rough to the smooth, preferring her to…to…to someone like Rapunzel.

  Then, with all her goodies packed carefully in a string bag purchased with the last of her dollars, she was ready to go.

  Only, of course, she hadn’t the ring anymore. And no one would take the gold coin or the copper pennies or the crimped tin thing for a carriage and horse and driver to get her back. Not even with her promise made, cross her heart, to fill their pockets with jewels once they got to Beast’s house. And the horse she was forced to purchase with the gold and copper and tin crimped thing began coughing at the edge of town, and broke down completely somewhere in the woods to the north. So she had to walk after all, all through the night frightened at every fluttering leaf, at every silent-winged owl, at all the beeps and cheeps and chirps and growls along the way.

  Near dawn on Christmas Day, Beast found her wandering alone, smelling of sweat and fear and the leather bomber jacket and leather hat and leather boots and the polished nails. Not smelling like Beauty at all.

  So of course he ate her, Christmas being a tough hunting day, since every baby animal and every plump child was tucked up at home waiting for dawn and all their presents.

  And when he’d finished, he opened the string bag. The only thing he saved was the comb.

  Beauty was right. It was perfect.

  Sister Death

  YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND it is not the blood. It was never the blood. I swear that on my own child’s heart, though I came at last to bear the taste of it, sweetly salted, as warm as milk from the breast. The first blood I had was from a young man named Abel, but I did not kill him. His own brother had already done that, striking him down in the middle of a quarrel over sheep and me. The brother preferred the sheep. How like a man.