The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

by Joseph Fink

  Edmond, who networked with the wealthy and criminal alike, taught me much about the art of persuasion and manipulation. “Nothing must ever be your idea,” he explained. “If I want you to go to bed, and I tell you to, you’ll rebel. But if I simply set up a situation in which you will have the idea to go to bed yourself, then you will go with satisfaction, thinking you have won even as you do exactly what I wanted you to. Remember that, because it will get you far in life. Short-lived pride at winning a disagreement is a fool’s game. It is far better to let the other side think they have won as they coincidentally decide to do what you wanted all along.” He winked at me, and then tried to switch two pieces on the backgammon board and laughed when I slapped his hands.

  For my father’s part, he wanted me to be able to protect myself, and so taught me how to use a knife. I soon became adept at all sorts of defensive and offensive uses of a small blade, and I would, with my father’s consent, practice fighting with the crew using short lengths of wood, until I was soon besting even the most skilled of them. I think my father allowed this practice because he wanted them to think of me always as potentially very dangerous. But even my father did not understand the full potential of how dangerous I could become.

  5

  At age thirteen I started to talk more openly about my future. I wanted to join my father’s business, to accept it as my legacy and, when he grew too old, to inherit his place in the business. My father was adamantly against it. He had given in on teaching me to protect myself, and to understand the intricacies of his business so there would be no secrets interrupting our family closeness, but he wanted me to use the wealth he gained to find my way in the world of the righteous and law abiding. “Your mother and I dreamed such dreams for you,” he said. “And none of them involved you becoming a smuggler or a fighter.”

  “What could I do in the outside world?” I asked. “Use whatever wealth we have to pretend at nobility? Drift through the world in a cloud of servants and days of leisure until the family money runs out and it all starts over again? Marry some wealthy heir, combine our fortunes, and spend my days serving him? There is no job in the world of the righteous for a girl. But here, among these so-called criminals, I could lead.”

  He shook his head, unable to argue with me but also unyielding in his insistence that I not enter the business. Edmond, when he was around for these arguments, would tussle my hair in a patronizing manner that would make me furious if it came from anyone else, but from him carried only affection. “I think she’d make a great smuggler. Better than a couple of bumbling fools like us.”

  “Stay out of this, Edmond,” my father said, uncharacteristically cold. “She is my daughter, not yours.” Edmond shrugged, a big, clownlike shrug, but I think the words stung him. This was one of only two subjects that he and Edmond diverged on, the other being the perennial argument about joining forces with The Duke’s Own.

  “It will only get more dangerous for us,” Edmond would say. “Royal forces are aware there is something fishy about this stretch of coast. We could be caught. And then there is the Order of the Labyrinth. Their ships are sighted more and more often these days. We need protection. The Duke’s Own can give us that. And we could make so much more with their distribution.”

  “My legacy will not go hand in hand with any band of murderers and slavers,” my father would say.

  He would embrace Edmond, a sign that he wished to drop these disputes for the time being. “Edmond, please, let me think about my family’s future.”

  But there was little future left.

  The Order of the Labyrinth was becoming more and more a worry, not only for my father but for anyone who lived or sailed upon the Mediterranean. Their ships, stacked high with crates, and bearing a black flag with the white sigil of a labyrinth, seemed to be everywhere. No one knew their purpose, who ran their organization, or what they wanted. What was known for sure is that they accepted no approach of their ships, and would viciously attack any other vessels that came too close. The various kingdoms and empires sent military craft after them, but none could catch them. Their ships were fast, and their captains appeared to know the waters better than anyone. There had been no sign of any of their ships arriving at any port, and so the rumor was that there were islands throughout the sea, seemingly deserted, that actually held hidden anchorages for the Order. No one understood exactly what or who the Order of the Labyrinth were.

  There were rumors as large as legends, but the stories were so exciting and terrifying that the general assumption was that they must be at least somewhat true. Some said the Order only attacked at sea, late at night. They would use arrows to silently kill the lookouts, and then sneak aboard the victims’ ship, slitting each sailor’s throat and throwing the bodies overboard. They would carefully clean up all of the blood, and then abandon the empty ship entirely, the pristine ghost ship left as a warning to others of their presence. Some said the Order employed mystics who held the power of flight and the ability to reach into a man’s heart and stop it by simply concentrating from as much as ten miles away. Some said the Order had been in the Mediterranean as long as humans had. Some said the Order had been there even longer than that, and that the first humans to reach Europe had found tall stone buildings already there, each carved with the emblem of a labyrinth. Those same people said that the buildings had no doors and no windows, and yet the hooded members of the labyrinth still came and went, through means no one understood. Of course, others said that the Order were simply bandits like any other, and the hoods and emblems were only a show to keep their victims disoriented and easily controlled. In any case, the mysterious aura of the Order was enough to make any man scared. Any ship bearing the black flag and white labyrinth was given a wide swath upon the sea. It was universally agreed the Order could be anywhere, at any time, and if they wanted what you had—whether it be wealth or life—they could take it from you.

  All of this made my father nervous. He understood bandits and smugglers, the flow of goods, the motive of wealth. These were known quantities. He didn’t know what to do with secret societies, with ships that could not even be sailed past safely. And these ships were seen more often near our shore. Whatever the Order of the Labyrinth was, they were expanding into our region, and my father felt this could only mean trouble ahead.

  It was around this time that I, one evening, went out in the field behind the house to practice throwing my knife into the trunk of the old olive tree that had long since given up bearing fruit. Its bark was a patchwork of scars from my many previous sessions, and the scars had tended to group together closer and closer as my throwing became more precise. I could now easily land the knife within inches of where I had thrown it last, but I would not stop my practice until the blade landed every time in the notch left by the first throw. If I was to run a smuggling trade, and I was determined to do so, then I must be the best at every imaginable criminal feat. For crews of men to respect a woman as their leader, she must not just be their equal, but many times better, and I would not rest until I had achieved that.

  As I threw, I felt a presence behind me. I turned, and there, quite close, in the gathering darkness, was a man. He was hunched stiffly, and I recognized him as the figure I had seen twice before through my life, always indistinct and distant. Now he was quite close, less than twenty feet, although he had his back turned, and in the dim of the gloaming it was difficult to pick out any detail about him. I quickly retrieved my knife and held it at the ready, but he made no move nor any sound. He only stood with his strange posture and distorted mouth, as though the basic functioning of his body had failed. I grew afraid, and, betraying an imagined self full of bravery and strength, I took my knife and ran inside. When I checked again out of a window, the man was gone.

  6

  Here is what a wet dog smells like.

  A wet dog smells like everywhere the dog has been. Grass and leaves and dirt and stones, mud and rainwater and smoke and garbage.

  Like ever
ything the dog has done. It smells like saliva and adrenaline, like the furious joy of hunting smaller animals and the cringing confusion of being threatened by larger animals, or loud sounds, or a passing storm.

  A little like ripe fruit. A little like shit, of course, but a little like flowers. A lot of funk, but a little sweet. Like food on the final moments before going bad. Like a compost pile when it has moved past the initial rot and starts the real alchemy of soil. Like grapes, a little.

  A wet dog smells exactly of our idea of what a wet dog smells like. The comfort in complete comprehension. There is no fear in understanding. It is the smell of something we love, a smell we put up with because we love them. All loves are negotiations. We tolerate so that we may rejoice. The smell of a wet dog is part of that bargain.

  That is what a wet dog smells like.

  When I was fourteen years old, Edmond arrived late one evening to our house. This was not unusual, obviously, but his was a careful, tended-to schedule, and we had not expected to see him for some months more. He had never arrived early before, and my father looked deeply concerned. Edmond for his part was pale and had difficulty finding the words to express his reason for coming.

  I heated water for him, and my father fixed a simple meal of bread and cheese.

  “What is it, Edmond?” asked my father. “What trouble befalls us?”

  “Trouble, yes,” he said. “Great trouble. Oh, my friend, I don’t know if we will make it through this one.”

  My father and I hunched in close to him.

  “The Order of the Labyrinth,” Edmond whispered. “I am hearing from all over Europe, from every criminal connection I have, that the Order is looking to take over all smuggling in the civilized world. They have been gradually eradicating smaller operations, by brutal and inhuman means. The Noble Steed, a ship we conducted business with last summer, was discovered seemingly abandoned in waters frequented by the Order. When bandits boarded the ship, they found the bodies of the Steed’s crew burned to ash. I have it on several of my sources’ accounts that we are the next target. The Order of the Labyrinth is coming for us, and they will destroy us.”

  I reeled with the news. My father took it even worse than me, and clutched at my arm.

  “Should we shut down our smuggling operations?” my father asked. “Perhaps restart them when the threat has passed?”

  “They already know who we are,” Edmond snapped. “Their attack on the Steed was a warning to us. It is too late to hide.”

  “What can we do?” my father said.

  “You know what we can do,” Edmond said. “We have bickered about it before, old friend, but now it is an existential necessity. We must join forces with The Duke’s Own. By ourselves we are powerless, but a grand force like that can provide countless fierce men to protect.”

  “The Duke’s Own,” my father repeated, and spat on the floor.

  “Please, Papa,” I said. “They can help.”

  “They are cruel and soulless men. They make their wealth off slavery and blood, and I will not accept that coin, even to save myself. We cannot mix their unspeakable crimes with our family’s legacy.”

  For the first time, Edmond looked angry. “Then we are lost.”

  My father shook his head.

  “No, there is another way. I have a plan.”

  At some point in our lives, we eat an apple for the last time. We smell coffee for the last time. We use a toilet for the last time, wash ourselves for the last time, get our last haircut. On a grand scale, very few of us are aware—as we have an experience—if it will be the last time we have that experience.

  That same week that Edmond arrived, Albert came around and we went swimming in the cove. I was slightly embarrassed to strip down even a few heavier items of my clothes in order to go swimming as we always had done. Albert had grown up and was now much taller than me. He had the first faint shadows of a beard, but had not yet understood this to mean that he might need to start shaving. And in the quiet times between our games, I had noticed a new tension between us. There was a crackling energy that existed in the silences between our joking words, and neither of us knew what to do with that energy. We were just old enough to feel the first inkling of passion, but far too young to recognize it, not even in ourselves, let alone the signs of it in others.

  So the afternoon I spent with Albert was halting and awkward, both of us a little shy for reasons we did not understand. But eventually we found the old rhythm to our days. We no longer played hide and seek or other childish games. We wrestled and raced, we ate cherries on our backs in the grass, and we giggled over private jokes that I cannot recall, although I have spent countless years trying.

  Then the sun was going down, and Albert had to return to the family that I still knew nothing about, and I went back to my house in which the tension was fierce. Edmond and my father were leaned over a table, mumbling through the details of the plan. As soon as I walked in the door, I felt the stress of our situation return, and I looked forward to the next time I got to spend a carefree afternoon with Albert. But there is a last time for everything we do in this life. And, like anyone unlucky enough to be born into this world, I had just been carefree and young for the last time without knowing it.

  7

  My father’s plan was uncharacteristically violent, but he was willing to do what had to be done. Quitting smuggling would not save him, and my father refused to join The Duke’s Own, because he did not want his family name tied to their ruthlessness and violence. More than death, my father feared his only daughter used as collateral against him, or worse, herself forced into a life of banditry and murder. So he had his plan.

  “A fake shipment,” he said. “Here, a few miles down the coast. A cove very similar to ours, and next to dense, wooded land. Almost as good a place to bring ashore goods as our own. We stage a smuggling operation there and allow The Order to see us set it up.”

  “Won’t they be suspicious that we have moved our receiving port?” Edmond asked.

  “Yes, but we will assuage that suspicion on two fronts. Firstly, we will pay off one of the smaller royal boats whose crew we are friendly with to loiter in the waters near our cove, providing a pretext for the move. And secondly, we will move all our operations there, starting now. Once they see that this has become a regular place for us, they will accept it as the new status quo.

  “Then,” he continued, “we will hide a full regiment of mercenaries in the shipment. When the Order of the Labyrinth comes, our hired men will spring out and strike back mercilessly.”

  “The Order of the Labyrinth has many ships,” said Edmond. “Even if our attack succeeds, they will be back with more soon.”

  “Their interest is secrecy,” said my father. “And that secrecy is served better by picking on weaker operations first, rather than waging all-out war with the powerful. Otherwise it would be common knowledge even to the armies of the kingdoms and empires that this Order has become a warring state and must be crushed. So it is in our interest to establish a tone of difficulty. We strike first, and we strike with overwhelming brutality. When they understand that to approach us is to invite fierce and visible violence, they will move on to easier, smaller targets.”

  Edmond did not speak for several moments. Then, “You believe this will work?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s risky,” Edmond said. “You are dead set against joining The Duke’s Own?”

  “It will never be an option.”

  “Okay,” conceded Edmond after a contemplative silence. “I will go about arranging the decoy royal patrol, and the mercenaries right away.”

  “Good. We keep a lookout at all times above this new location, and we board the mercenaries nearby. When we see the ship coming, we set up the fake shipment and prepare for their arrival.”

  Edmond shook his head thoughtfully. “I hope you realize the stakes here. If we fail or falter at all, they will crush us.”

  “They will crush us if we do nothing as
well,” said my father. He looked at me, and the sight of his daughter seemed to harden his resolve. “I don’t know if we’ll succeed. But I know that we must try.”

  Shrugging, and finding only a small part of his usual laughter, Edmond raised his glass. “Here’s to our attempt.”

  “But I must help,” I said. Or, more likely, I whined it. I hated that tone in my voice, but I couldn’t help the rising feelings of helplessness and fury. “This is my family too. This is what keeps both of us fed. You must let me help.”

  My father raised an eyebrow, sighed, and motioned me to sit next to him. It had been some days, and smuggling operations had been transferred for the moment to the new spot miles down the shore. From our cliffs, I could just see the ships come and go from that new cove, but it was all so frustratingly distant.

  “I have been trying to teach you what it is to live a life of crime,” he said. “And much of that is understanding and managing risk. Those who rush blindly in are the first to fall or get caught or otherwise come up against misfortune. You must choose wisely when you put yourself in danger. One miscalculation could be the end of it all.”

  “But inaction could also be the end,” I said.