What Big Teeth

by Rose Szabo

  “Maybe that’s enough for today,” Arthur said quietly.

  Her head whipped around, making her short white hair bounce. “I’m not done yet,” she said. “Keep teaching me.”

  “Arthur!” I said. Or rather, I felt myself say it, but it wasn’t my voice: it was Persephone’s. “What are you doing?”

  He regarded me coolly. Little Eleanor turned toward me.

  “I told him to teach me,” she said. “I’m good at it already. Listen.”

  “Eleanor, go play outside. I mean it.”

  She scrambled down off the bench, glowering at me. “When I’m the grandma, you won’t be able to tell me what to do,” she said.

  “Well, it’s a good thing that day hasn’t come yet.”

  She ran past me, disappearing.

  “I’ll never understand why they like you,” I felt myself say. But of course, it was not me, it was Grandma Persephone.

  Arthur smiled tightly. “Perhaps they get it from their grandfather.”

  And all at once, I was back in the parlor. Grandmere was looking at me strangely.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just a strange feeling.”

  And then I glanced at Arthur. I knew at once that he’d felt it, too. I gave him a quick little nod. We opened the book of sheet music and picked out a song.

  We played beautifully together: he compensated well for my narrow span, and added little flourishes, and sang a slightly flat accompaniment. I felt a sense of loss. Could we have been doing this before, without Grandmere here? Could we have been doing this from the first night I arrived in the house, if I hadn’t felt so small and shabby and unworthy, if I hadn’t shoved Luma in front of him? If I’d only just asked instead of telling? A few times I met my own eyes in his smoked lenses, and I quickly looked away.

  It was in the middle of our second song that Rhys came banging in through the front door. He was disheveled from the forest, shirtless, twigs in his hair and scratches on his face and chest. I leaped to my feet, not sure whether to help him or block his way into the parlor. He was looking past me, to Arthur, who was also rising to his feet. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do next, and maybe, neither was he.

  “Rhys,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  I saw a flicker of movement from out in the hall. Luma was watching from the staircase landing. She had wolf eyes, and they caught the light and reflected back two perfect green discs. In that dim light I could see her long teeth bared. They’d chased each other in here, and now he was cornered. I sighed and stood up to calm him down. But Grandmere was already rising from her chair to meet Rhys.

  “You will stop this at once,” she said, and midstride, he froze, his hands dropping to his sides. “Go to your room and stay there,” she said to Rhys.

  And then he went. He walked mechanically up the stairs, past Luma, whose wild eyes bored into mine from the darkness. And then she slipped away into the shadows, and I lost sight of her.

  The Hannafins had stood up and were moving toward the hall, gathering coats and hats, mumbling about what a nice time they’d all had. Grandmere was slumped back into her chair. She seemed tired, I thought; maybe making Rhys do something so against his nature had worn her out. Father poured himself another glass of wine. Mother looked so faint on the settee that I thought she might lose consciousness. So with no one else to do it, I walked the Hannafins to the front door. Arthur followed a little behind me. When they’d gone, I turned to him.

  “You felt that, too,” I said.

  He started to nod, but his head froze on his neck. At last, he shook it free.

  “Persephone did something to you,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  He scowled. “You shouldn’t assume you know what’s going on,” he said.

  “Don’t be cruel.”

  As soon as I said it, I regretted it. His face all at once became neutral.

  “Alright,” he said. “Good night, Eleanor. It’s been a pleasure.”

  He slipped out into the night.

  I wanted a moment to myself to parse what I’d seen: Margaret, knocking on the door. The cold hand on my back. The vision I’d had earlier that night. But Grandmere was beckoning me languidly from the parlor, so I went.

  “I think that went well,” she said. “But your cousin … he continues to behave quite badly.” I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to go on. “None of this is your fault, of course. Your father, or your grandfather, should have said something to him by now—explained to him how a young man must behave. But of course, they baby him because he is their beloved heir.”

  That much was true; Rhys was babied. He did get away with everything. I hated that, and I always had. But I thought about that night he’d fallen out of the closet in the hall. The bruises on his neck. The look of wounded joy on his face, like he was about to sink his teeth into something wonderful. I thought for a moment of Lucy Spencer, and my whole body filled up with shame. After all, I’d gotten away with something, too.

  Still. I didn’t want him around Arthur. He could find someone else to …

  “What if we sent him abroad for the summer?” I asked. “Send him to Europe?”

  She scoffed.

  “I doubt he could manage that,” she said. “Outside of our protection I’m sure trouble would find him.”

  “He’s not exactly vulnerable.”

  “He is young and impulsive. He might hurt someone. He might get arrested. And if that happens we won’t be able to protect him, not without revealing ourselves. No, we should find him someone to marry. Someone trustworthy, who can keep him out of trouble. I would like this town to like us, not merely tolerate us. I think the Hannafin girl might help with that.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She seems a little frail. What if he hurts her? Grandmere, do you know anyone who’s like us?”

  She looked at me quizzically, as though she didn’t quite understand.

  “Oh,” she said at last. “You mean, like them. You know, I think I might—let me write to some, and see if there are any eligible ladies who might visit. And maybe I can find someone for Luma, while we are looking for Rhys.” She stroked my cheek. “I’m sorry, my darling. I thought you meant like you and me.” Her hand lingered on my face. “And there is no one else like us in the whole world.”

  “I’m tired,” I said.

  “Of course you are, my dear,” she said. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

  I nodded and stumbled up the stairs. Rhys was pacing in his room down the hall, stomping around, slamming against the walls. I tried to ignore him, but the sound carried all the way to my room, so at last I got out of bed and flung his door open. He was gnawing on one of his bedposts and looked up abruptly at me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Why are you making such a racket?”

  “I can’t leave,” he said. He ran toward me, and then doubled back and ran toward the opposite wall. “I can’t leave. I can’t leave.”

  “Oh, calm down,” I said. “You can.”

  He looked up at me hopefully, and then ran toward the open doorway, but then doubled back again. “I can’t!” he said, and slammed his fists into the wall opposite.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “If you’re going to be so noisy, go outside. Grandmere is sleeping.”

  He walked toward the door and stepped through it. And then he looked at me, confused.

  “I can leave,” he said. “I’m going outside.”

  “Yes? Just go!”

  He took off down the stairs and disappeared around the corner. The kitchen door slammed open, then shut.

  * * *

  It was a week later when the first suitor arrived.

  We’d had a quiet week at the house. Arthur hadn’t been back. In his absence, I’d fallen into a routine: a late breakfast with Grandmere, some chatting in the parlor, tending to the plants in the afternoon, trying to parse the journal while Grandmere napped, whenever she
napped. Then dinner with the family: Luma wasn’t speaking to me, and Father was drinking more than he used to. I tried my best to make good conversation, to invite people to play chess or sing with me in the parlor. Some days were better than others.

  And then, at night, I dreamed about being Persephone.

  It had started on that first night after she died, when I’d dreamed about walking uphill through that unfamiliar town under that bright blue sky. Every few nights, it happened again. Sometimes the visions were only flashes: I was crushing herbs with a mortar and pestle, or squeezing a cheesecloth while acid-green fluid wept from it, staining my leather gloves. At other times, the dreams were more detailed: whole afternoons or days. The strangest, so far, had been a long argument with Grandpa Miklos, where I insisted that he not tell the children about—something, it was difficult to understand exactly what. That dream was what had woken me up early on that particular morning, leaving me feeling unsettled and unable to go back to sleep. Maybe, I thought, it had something to do with why Grandma Persephone had sent me away. So I took the journal from my bedside table and carried it down to the greenhouse.

  The drakondia were recovering. Their leaves had gone from yellow to deep green, and some of them had new, tight buds at the ends of their long stems. I sang at them as I passed—Tell me with a laugh, tell me with a cry, that you do not love me, what care I?—and felt them bob and sway behind me while I sat down with Grandma Persephone’s journal.

  I was trying to find any reference to myself, but everything was out of order. The first few pages were clearly written by someone else, someone with immaculate Italian and a number of detailed drawings of local ruins. Then followed several in a large, childish hand that got smaller and smaller until Grandma Persephone’s distinct handwriting emerged like a moth from a chrysalis. Then, when she’d reached the end of the book she had clearly started back at the beginning, filling in any available space on earlier pages with entries wherever they’d fit, in tiny penmanship. So next to a childhood drawing of a goat I found her note Lusitania born June 3, with no year listed, just some details about inducing afterbirth.

  I tried to skim, looking for any notes about me. But the main text kept catching my eye. Here she was, running from a mob of villagers after she stabbed a boy in the gut, although she didn’t say why. Here she was waking up in a stone circle in a bobbing sea of snake lilies that had grown while she slept. And here, fleeing to America on a ship, and an inventory of what she’d brought with her. It was covered in little pencil ticks, as though every day she had emptied out her bag, noted that everything was present, and stuffed it all back in.

  I wished I could talk to her about this. I’d never thought much about what her life was like when she was young. To me she had always been old, and then those years had gone by when I hadn’t thought much about her at all.

  And she hadn’t been making her presence known, not since the leave written on her desk in spilled ink. Every night I got frightened, expecting her to fling things around my room. But her silence was its own kind of frightening.

  I glanced back down at the page and saw a note in the margin that caught my eye, mostly because the page was dog-eared, and the little point of the page pointed right to it:

  To summon: three knocks on the door.

  To admonish: three knocks on the floor.

  To banish: three knocks on the wall.

  I stared at that for a long time, chewing on my nails. Margaret had knocked on the door, and a minute later, Arthur arrived. As if he’d been called.

  I’d come to think of Persephone’s witchcraft as a pretty tame thing, even the grotesque parts that involved rummaging around in dead things, feeling their guts. Asking questions about the future and brewing little potions out of flowers seemed innocent enough. This looked simple in a way that felt ruthless. This felt like evil.

  It was bright and hot in the greenhouse, too hot to think about these things. I put the book away upstairs, in the drawer of the bedside table with the tarot cards, and decided it was time for a swim.

  I left through the door at the back of the greenhouse and went down the wooden steps that led to the ocean. I undressed and threw myself into the water. All at once I felt blissful. The plants were recovering. In a week there would be new flowers and I could extract the nectar and distill it in the kitchen. I let the current sway me back and forth, losing all sense of time or space.

  I was swimming facedown when Rhys came tearing down the wooden stairs. He reached the water and splashed in up to his knees to call out to me. I felt the splashing before I heard him, and popped my head up.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled to him.

  “Someone’s here!” His face was streaked with something; at first I thought it was tears, but when I got closer I realized it was just a bit of dried blood. I treaded water and kept myself submerged up to my neck. Rhys didn’t seem to be looking at me, though; he was staring out across the water.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “I’ve never seen her before,” he said. “But she’s talking to her.” He growled and started pacing. It’s hard to pace in water; he looked so stupid that I started laughing.

  “Stop it!” He lashed out at me, but I ducked underwater and swam easily away from him. He tried to follow me but fell off the edge of the sandbar and was suddenly forced to paddle. He scowled at me across the water.

  “Why are you like this now?” he asked. “We used to be friends.”

  “No,” I said. “You used to be able to bully me.”

  “I mean when we were little.”

  “Well, I don’t remember that.”

  He gave me a withering look and began paddling for shallower water. I watched him stalk out, shaking himself dry. I thought about chasing after him, but it wasn’t really my business if it upset him. However, I grew curious. Who had come to the house? I waded ashore, put my clothes on, and went to have a look for myself.

  I peeked in through the front parlor windows and saw them all frozen in a tableau: Grandmere, standing with her hand on the arm of a young woman. The girl had auburn hair piled high on her head and wore an attractive blue dress. She laughed, flashing a mouthful of tiny pointed teeth, like a piranha’s, arranged in a double row.

  Grandmere had come through on her promise of a suitor for Rhys. She’d found him someone like us.

  I was surprised, despite my talk with Grandmere. Before then, I hadn’t realized there were other things like us, ones who weren’t already related. I wanted to ask her questions. Where had she come from? How did Grandmere find her? But I couldn’t imagine asking those kinds of things in front of Grandmere.

  “I never smelled her,” Rhys said.

  I jumped. Rhys was beside me, squinting in through the window, still damp. I’d forgotten how quiet he could be.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She was just here. All of a sudden.” He stood beside me with his hands on the sill, a low growl building in his throat.

  “Calm down,” I said. “It’s just a guest. I think she’s here to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can meet someone,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t want to see anyone,” he said. “I’m already in love.”

  It was shocking to me to hear him say it like that; I laughed a little in surprise. He turned on me, his jaw popping a little as his other teeth came in.

  “Don’t you laugh at me,” he said. “You don’t know what I feel.”

  “Rhys,” I said. “Listen to me. This can’t go on.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he doesn’t love you!” I said. “He’s with Luma.” I felt my throat close up when I said it, and I forced myself to keep going. “And anyway, it’s not for you. You’re not some—I mean, look at you!”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “You’d never understand.”

  I felt my hands ball up into fists.

  “You’re right,” I sai
d. “I don’t understand why you’re so selfish. It’s not enough that everyone fawns over you and does whatever you say? So you have to come up with new things to want because getting everything is just so boring, isn’t it?”

  He swiped at me, claws out, and I felt them brush past my face. Then he slammed his way up the porch steps and flung open the front door. I followed him, not really sure what he was going to do. He stormed into the parlor where Grandmere sat sipping tea with the girl.

  “I’m never going to see any woman you bring here,” he said to Grandmere. “So don’t invite any more. I’ve made up my mind.”

  And all at once, as Grandma Persephone had predicted, my eyes adjusted, and I saw Rhys differently. His chest was heaving, his jaw set fiercely against Grandmere. He looked heroic.

  I felt suddenly shabby and ashamed, embarrassed that I hadn’t seen how serious he was. He might be a dangerous grinning animal, but he really was in love. He was willing to stake everything on that. When had I ever been that brave?

  I glanced at the red-haired girl in the chair. The teacup in her hand had paused midway to her mouth. She hadn’t lost her smile, though. It hovered around her face, exactly as natural and bright and sharp as it had been a second before.

  Grandmere stared at Rhys coolly.

  “Stop what you’re doing,” she said to him.

  Midstride, he froze, his hands dropping to his sides. He looked around wildly, and found me.

  “Eleanor,” he said. “Do that thing you did. Let me go.”

  “What?” I said.

  Grandmere didn’t even glance sideways. “Go to your room and stay there,” she said to Rhys. He turned and started walking out. “Eleanor,” he yelled. “Eleanor, help me! Help me, Eleanor—”

  “Shut up,” I said, and then clapped my hands over my mouth. But it was done.

  “I’m so sorry,” Grandmere said to the young woman, glancing at me as she did. “I had no idea he would behave so shamefully.”

  The woman turned to her, and then to me.