Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  She considered, briefly, and the answer was rattling. Maggi, I waited for Maggi a hundred times to return from the field or campaign.

  Maggi had known that she’d never return when she left for California. She even wrote a goodbye for Margaret in an old book.

  “Be a better woman than me, be a better witch. I’ll always be proud of you, Margaret.”

  It had been scrawled in Maggi’s terrible handwriting. Margaret recited the words from memory, and as she did, her voice cracked along levees that kept tears from running down her cheeks.

  What remained of Heart Owens’ home-in-exile was an opulent husk. Black and white marble still presented a stately atmosphere, as did thick curtains of jacquard, low over windows, depicting High Sierra scenes. With nothing to make it a home, Margaret lit candles around the floor, near the vestibule. The orange and yellow flicker easily kissed every corner of the room, casting shadows from thick lint balls.

  Margaret took her time removing the embroidered corset at her waist, casting it to red and gold tile, along with her bra and Maggi’s old shemagh. She considered those things, then sat down with her legs crossed. She remained in her slip of cotton and scallop lace, a chill leaving her nipples erect and visible under a narrow margin top.

  Burns on one corner of the shemagh had blackened into a chainmail crosshatch. The kind that Maggi had worn inside her jacket. Another corner was stiff and saturated in dried blood. Margaret didn’t need to run her fingers across it to know that it wasn’t Aubriana’s. With care she folded it first into a broad triangle, and again diagonally before pressing the damaged edges underneath until it was only a small square. Handling the fabric like a living thing, she laid it next to her and curled up on cold tile, her face resting in the shemagh. She could still smell road dust and diesel soot, along with glancing memories of a thousand miles that Maggi crossed coming to California. At times she could taste liquor or rain, at other moments the musky scent of Maggi’s unwashed hair. For Margaret it was a vibrant thing, a second skin, not so different from her own Tilapia, something that her mother had lived and fought in, saturated deep in her emotions.

  She could never explain this to anyone else, not even Townsend. It was a private experience that required her lonely attentions. She imagined herself surrounded by merciless gale, whispering eons and soulless ghosts that existed somewhere within the cracks of history.

  I can be angry at Maggi for everything she wasn’t, or I can be thankful for everything that she was.

  Margaret didn’t absolve Maggi of her abuses, but she did understand them better now. Maggi had been too young to adopt a fragile little girl and too young to process the loss of her lover, Alexander’s father. She was thrust into the painful undulations of change, a violent and unrelenting world. Maybe a better person would have acted with greater kindness, or maybe they would have shuddered under the weight of those days as well. It didn’t really matter.

  At some point Margaret fell asleep on her mother’s folded shemagh. She didn’t dream, only languished in the black of sleep, eyes closed and lost. It was the clicking and fumbling of a lock that woke her, and she stirred to watch Townsend enter.

  “Margaret?” He asked, his voice as soft as his big lungs would allow.

  In reply Margaret blinked several times and sat up, “You ought to move in with me. I have furniture, and servants, and a bed.”

  Townsend stepped across the red and gold tile, his boots muculent with grime and oil. He wasn’t in full kit, but he wore fatigues faded from black to a silver gray, under molle vest. Dark rings circled eyes a deep shade of charred steak, his jaw and skull heavy with stubble. She could see his balding zenith, sides still thick in follicles.

  “I haven’t slept much these last few weeks. Not sure how much good a bed would do.”

  Margaret smirked and glared, “Beds aren’t just for sleeping, I’d remind the General.”

  Since their first night together, a narrow, but deep canyon had separated them both. It wasn’t a lack of attraction or tenderness, it was an understanding that stood between them. It felt to Margaret that when Townsend watched her, he was waiting to lose her. She could hear it at the edge of his thoughts, feel the prickle of anxiety. He wanted something, and it was a thick vine that choked him in her company, a hidden desire that Margaret did understand.

  She simply wanted him to ask. Prone to intimate dominance, Margaret enjoyed the strength of Townsend’s resolve, and though she had every intention of giving him exactly what he wanted, she’d delight in hearing him speak it.

  “Sit with me, General,” Margaret said, folding legs under her, crossed. One elbow on her left knee and leaning forward, picayune before Townsend’s full height. He did as she requested, though she giggled as he attempted to sit on the floor, joints popping.

  “Twig?” Townsend asked.

  “Let’s share one,” Margaret nodded once, smiling, “I’d like to taste your lips.”

  Townsend’s case of cigarettes was simple, folded aluminum, dented at the edges. He withdrew a twig wrapped in red paper, and lit it with a silver lighter kept in a molle pocket.

  Margaret tipped her head back, auburn hair falling away from her ears.

  “Tell me what you want most in this world.”

  Townsend exhaled smoke through his nose and offered the red twig to Margaret. It smelled sweet and ashen between them. “I never much considered that. Never much saw the value in things. You can’t take them with you after you’re dead. Spent my whole life marching through oceans of things. Just rust and rot.”

  Margaret accepted his cigarette and ran it along her lips. A part of him was painted on the parchment. His adoration of puns just lurking at the edge of her mind, with the sound he made the moment he first entered her body, “I can have anything I want, but I’d trade all my velvet and silk for a right hand. Or, perhaps, teach this body to make do. A night where my right arm doesn’t itch, or my fingers stop aching.”

  I won’t prompt you, Townsend. You’ll need to ask me for it, of your own will.

  Margaret kept her tendrils close, whatever Townsend may have felt in her company was just ambient power, bleeding at her pores and pooling around his dirty boots. She even kept her mind still and quiet.

  When Margaret handed him back the ruby twig, he accepted, but didn’t lift it to his lips. Rather, he watched the tile for a moment as the paper and tobacco slowly burned, then answered her with sullen puissant, “I guess if I wanted anything, I always imagined a woman at my side. Not a whore or battle buddy. A companion who’d stand with me, ready to live forever in the death of a worthy enemy.” When he finally inhaled the cigarette, his eyes rolled up and locked on Margaret, “Truth be told, since Saint Louis, I always wanted that woman to be you.”

  Margaret wished she could tell him the same. Townsend had been nothing more than a warm body the night they first shared a bed. A handsome and powerful man who she could play her games with, and forget the sting of Duke Owens’ insult. What had separated Townsend from all the other men she’d known, was his understanding of who Margaret was.

  I think some days you know me better than I know myself.

  “You don’t call me ‘witch.’ You’ve always called me a woman.” Margaret spoke to herself, matching his stare, “I can’t give you children. Would land do? I’m about to be Duchess of the Bay Area Reach. I assume I can ride a horse wherever I please in that case. Really, I could do that already.”

  It was jest, and Margaret laughed as she spoke, still leaning forward, bridging the gap between them. He didn’t answer with words, rather his cigarette fell away to the tile and Margaret knew there was a shift in the room, but without pouring through Townsend’s mind, she was at a loss to what he was feeling.

  This was a moment of critical intimacy that Margaret had no experience with, and before she could fidget further, she fell forward on her thighs, reaching for Townsend’s groin in an aggressive seizure of his trouser inseam.

  Townsend froze, one of his eyebrows
starting to arch up, and his lips parting.

  “What just happened? What are you doing?”

  I have no idea, Margaret lowered her eyelids and smirked, with no answer.

  “Margaret, you don’t need to grab my dick to show me how you feel.”

  Margaret’s face flushed a shade of spring cherry. The nightmare mirror knew nothing of fear, but understood much of embarrassment in this moment.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just say how you feel.” Townsend withdrew the slender hand from his genitalia, leaning down to look closer at Margaret’s face, “Tell me what you want most in this world.”

  I am a witch, and all that comes with that, Margaret almost laughed, but it was a kiss of salt on her cheeks that came instead. She knew nothing of affection, and she barely understood the kind of power exchange that Townsend was initiating.

  Pressing the heel of her left hand to tears, Margaret answered, “I want to share my lands, and my wealth, and everything I paid for with an arm and my own skin. I don’t want to be just Margaret forever, and sometimes I sit around and think about what it would be like if I heard people say ‘Margaret Townsend.’”

  This was the closest that Margaret could ever be to the word ‘love,’ a word reserved for her real parents and the last time she’d given them that gift.

  Does he know that’s what I just told him?

  “I would be your husband, even if you were a poor brassboy. I would offer you my name and as many years as the gods will grant me.”

  Townsend leaned forward, pressing Margaret backward and down, flat under his weight and strength. When he kissed her there was a static snap on her lips and she favored a soft giggle. There was no magic in that, just charged ozone. She didn’t wrap her mind around him to elicit any particular response, she just wanted to be closer than flesh could allow, listening to his pulse and tasting his memories.

  As their lips parted, a trail of saliva linked them briefly, “I would own your name, and your years, but I have always paid for the things I took.”

  Townsend ran his fingers through Margaret’s hair with one hand, the other pressing him off the floor enough to not crush her. She met that hand with her left, palm pressed to his tendons and knuckles, rough edges of his fingers biting at her fingertips.

  “You can’t take something that’s freely offered.”

  When he bit at her neck, he took no care to be gentle, and the gnashing elicited spasms of electric glee. Margaret realized as Townsend pulled at her skirt, that she could never give herself to a god the way Ramona had, because a god would never have seen her any differently than a mortal. She was an object, a key to turn a lock, to open a door, a clever puppy. Margaret would never see herself that way, and she’d never tolerate another to own her if they didn’t have a full understanding of the soul that powered her flesh and bone.

  An understanding that beat hot in Townsend’s blood.

  Under her breath, true to her warning, Margaret whispered her debts to the ceiling of Aurora’s old home. Her chin curved up and her back arched under Townsend’s ungracious entry, in litany and song that blurred language. Syllables became weak, crippled, folding into the mire and wetlands of her soused desire. Her legs had wrapped around Townsend, and she met every thrust with indigent counterassault, unsatisfied with any hammer fall that didn’t bruise her pelvis.

  All of it was dedicated, gifted, in a keenly honed tribute. Every time a shriek left her lips, every time her throat or stomach spasmed, each time her body exploded in unvarnished reply to Townsend’s focused brutality. She didn’t need to be a witch to experience this protracted kingdom, it was a place any could enter if they shared something with another mortal that Margaret shared with Townsend. Inclination only made the world vanish, until it seemed like Aurora’s cold tile had ceased, and the candlelight gave way to blinding sun. It wasn’t even possible for her to perceive Townsend beyond the parts of him that contused and confused her.

  When it was all over, he didn’t withdraw or roll off, he remained, pressing down to her excitation and labored breath, still inside of her.

  She ran her left hand across the back of his skull, forehead pressed at the ledge of her breasts, breathing ragged.

  Consider this my gift to you, Aphrodite.

  10:20am April 15th, 39 Veilfall

  Manteca Reach, California

  “How fucking hard is it to lace a corset?”

  Margaret turned; ready to backhand the steward that had been provided by the 3rd Army’s command. She was twenty or so, with a head full of hair cut like straw, falling across her brow and ears. A brassboy, same as Erin had been, this steward was gangly, tall, and moved like a poorly animated marionette.

  “Two over two, and keep it tight near the bottom.” Margaret couldn’t release her anger, nor could she unwind the knots in her stomach. Every time the wind hammered her tent, or the crack of distant thunder echoed, she found her fingers taping absently on her left knee.

  “Nada, nada, Lady,” the steward mumbled, a mouth full of marbles, words blending into each other like overflowing rivers, spilling across the causeways of grammar, “She’cha sorsay.” The girl’s r’s rolled uncomfortably long, a hallmark of California low-English.

  There were six carrier pockets under Margaret’s breasts. She’d placed each plate herself. They were a little under an inch thick, held in place by laces and clasps that pulled taut between steel bones. Unlike Margaret’s other corsets, garnished in brightly dyed laces, this particular beast was a flat front overbust that climbed all the way to her throat. Reinforced metal was sewn up behind her neck, and webbed across her shoulders. Another plate would be fitted and bound in clasps over her chest, three more at her upper back.

  Rüstung sklaverei.

  The armor was one of a kind, and required a hundred feet or more of cord. The leather and molle were dyed black and chainmail curtains hung over her flexible joints, fixed rondels that hung like Spanish moss. It smelled like stale sweat and pungent copper, old hide and gun oil.

  “Vey-hey, vey-hey, ask’a Lady,” Margaret felt the laces tighten more agreeably this time.

  “Ask’a,” Margaret replied, her pronunciation clear. She had no intention of dropping syllables like an overburdened boat tossing off passengers.

  “Nada, ehn’verno, gust’a, gust’a nada ease?”

  The steward wished to know how wind blew from the east.

  Margaret spoke some low-English. A prerequisite to military command. However, the dialects evolved throughout most regions. California low-English was a mottled mop water mess of bad Spanish and bad English, shoved into a sour cake. Rather than trying to decipher the illiterate languages, she listened to the mood and emotion of the words. Not going so far as to unwind her senses and swallow the steward’s mind whole, just paying attention to intent.

  “It doesn’t blow from the east, chil’a. Como-ya, chil’a?” Margaret answered, flatly, her breath labored. It had been a few years since she’d worn rüstung sklaverei, and Stockton had added a few inches to her stomach.

  “Leena,” the girl drew out the first syllable a second longer than anyone should have, and Margaret wondered if that was how her name was actually pronounced, or if she was merely impregnating the word with sing-song grace.

  “Leena,” Margaret didn’t overcomplicate the name, “there’s a battlewitch on’a enemy lines, a’ma brutalla. Wind-witch. worry-worry, nada.”

  Did I just tell this poor girl that a battlewitch who commands storm-wind is nothing she needs to fear? Margaret tried not to laugh, her anxiety abating.

  She lifted fingers from her knee and rested her elbow at a table to her left. Here sat tasset and cuisse, waiting for Leena to strap her into the hip and lower leg armor. Next to her seat was a small, wooden, hassock that she kicked closer to herself and lifted bare feet to rest on, ankles crossed. She was wearing bindings of black linen over her arches and tarsus. Knees and feet would remain unarmored to favor speed and agility.

/>   Leena made a deep gasp, “Ay-ah! Vey-hey, vey-hey. No brutalla.”

  No matter what language she spoke, she was the same as most people; the unknown frightened her beyond most things. This business of battlewitches, brutalla, was more than she wanted in her life. Margaret could hear her yearning for a mending tent, fixing fatigues, or fabricating rucks.

  “Get out,” At Margaret’s back, was a loud, direct voice, meant to convey a message that could not be misunderstood; even if Leena didn’t speak high English.

  Leena’s mind scattered like cockroaches caught at torch light, gasping, she dropped Margaret’s laces.

  Margaret twisted back to see Leena flee past Lord Owens.

  He was wearing a leather and molle carapace, painted and tanned in a deep shade of ecru over dark wool sark, his shoulders decorated with real silver epaulets, along with a high and rigid collar

  “Good morning, Eric. Have you come to lace up my linothorax?”

  He was upset enough that he was blocking none of his thoughts, yarn wound up in an ugly ball, tresses hanging about, rolling loose and free, “Don’t fuck with me Mayhem,” Lord Owns cornered Margaret’s right side, boots falling as hard as he could possibly muster on carpeted dirt. The sound was impotent, “You know why I’m here.”

  Margaret pursed her lips, glancing down to her undergarments. Simple briefs made from dark linen, wrapped around her hips, below the armor line of her tasset straps, “I’m sorry, you missed your chance a few months ago. But, there’s nothing wrong with a good forebattle fuck. Be a sweetie and summon General Townsend, would you?”

  Eric’s face was drawn up in a very serious scowl, warping scars with withering abandon as his nostrils heaved under the weight of climatic oxygen expulsion. “You shoved that thing into my sister’s corpse. You brought back Dread Harvester and gave her flesh. Flesh!” When Eric Owens yelled, a thin, yet consistent expulsion of spittle departed his lips. “That was never part of the deal we made!”

  Margaret looked up, snapping her tongue behind front teeth, “You seem unhappy.”