by H C Turk
That night, I slept on the carpet. I thus discerned it wool, and that is a sheep’s covering. At least this fur can be removed without destroying the bearer. How typical of sinners to develop so odd an activity as shaving, then apply it not only to themselves, but animals.
That day, I completed examining my (my?) chamber. The soft blue and grey counterpane was not unpleasant, if only because it was not metal nor unfortunate tree flesh soaked in oil, merely woven from the bodies of innocent flax and cotton plants. As for the other fabrics, I remained uncertain of this “silk” on much of my clothing, though it smelled like bug excrement. How silly of my nose.
Trees were everywhere. The entire floor, the window frames and sills, and the myriad furniture were made of former trunks. Here was a desk of low construction with a surface folded flat to write upon. Many drawers and crannies in this thing, paper and ink and quills—more deceased fowls to haunt me, praise God I could not write. Against the opposite wall stood a more massive piece: the armoire tall as a sinning male wherefrom Miss Elsie had attained some of my clothing, certain nether items brought from one of the paired chests of drawers rife with sliding boxes.
Shameful was this furniture for its artifice and waste. How unlike a flower, whose complex portions stem from a single seed, whose entirety grows from little; whereas furniture are false items made from butchered pieces of vanquished trees. Flowers come from life; whereas furniture delineates death, the death of plants like flowers themselves. The secretary, for example, with its feet humorously carved to resemble the paws of some animal, with its sharp edges and lacquer coating and gilt appliqués and veneers. Exemplified here was sinners’ craftsmanship, which means annihilating a natural thing to reattach its parts not with ease, but obsession.
Ah—but here was an item to examine. Upon a woody dresser with hateful metal handles sat a timepiece. Of course, the sinners had invented mechanisms that split the day into smaller pieces called hours, hours into tiny bits called minutes, minutes into virtually nonexistent particles called seconds, all of these sinners’ moments unneeded by a witch. “Moment”: how fine and broadly applicable an interval, but inadequate for sinners, since moments require no devices for measure. Furthermore, moments are silent; whereas all the sinners’ time portions are as loud as their timepieces, for my clock clicked. A sinner’s time is filled with noisome activity, having the same contents as a clock. Sound enough this beggar made that the witch deposited the wooden case beneath the winter clothing in her armoire. Therefore, when Miss Elsie came to set the pendulum into a motion to set me toward madness, she would find only silence.
Situated against the walls were chairs, standing cases containing books other than the Bible, and adjacent shelves with those hated, hot lights. Also present were hygienic devices: a stand with lavatory and water jar made of clay whose delicate paintings of flowers seemed no great art to me. Most imaginative was that final piece, the chamber pot I had been using since so instructed my first day in London: a sturdy pottery item unusual in utility, but attractive in its smell. Not that witches have an especial desire to be inhaling our droppings’ fumes, but at least these materials are natural. And despite the servants’ attempts to remove the thing’s waste odor by removing the waste each day and occasionally splashing in some perfumed liquid, the pot had come to smell like me. Regarding utility, perhaps the invention was excellent; for if not in these pots, where would all of London’s people be peeing? Pray God not in the parks. A further curiosity was of the site where these pots were emptied. Pray God not in the parks.
Attached to the walls were paintings that might have drawn my interest had they not been made of oil smears. A natural oil, I could smell, seemingly from the flax plant, but similar greases were used for cooking killed animals. Away I went to the walls’ better view: windows. Windows in each of two perpendicular walls, for my bedchamber was situated in the building’s corner, the second and uppermost story. Through one tall window, I viewed a bit of the house’s frontage, and across the broad street a largish stone townhouse not unlike ours (ours?). With some effort, I could distinguish the natural scents of greenery obscured by London’s artificial odors. Continuing to explore, I found that my chamber’s larger window had more expansive panes, none colored: Rathel’s house, though elaborate, was no cathedral. I approached this window set in the rear wall, pulling aside the curtains to find a revelation. Behind Rathel’s home was her garden.
The dull witch had not previously noticed this area, but finally I was pleased in London, for here was my (my) own park! Near my window grew a large and lovely elm tree. Beyond were sycamores and maples. Below were gravel paths winding through lush, well-kempt grass of a particularly bright green with darker green hedges and bushes unfortunately cut flat or curved, but living organisms nonetheless. I saw flowering plants and spiky, unusual grasses in tall clumps, many plants unknown to Man’s Isle, but immediately beloved by this witch.
Quickly I examined the window as though attacking it, attempting to decode the method and mechanism whereby I could part the glass and smell the garden, this living segment of the sinners’ world enough to make me laugh with joy, then growl with perturbation since I could not open the blooming thing, unable to grasp that hateful, metal latch. And when I touched the handle from anger, all my manipulations were to no avail, if only because I would touch the metal, but barely. Then came an encouraging idea: I only had to move downstairs and exit the house to experience the entirety of the garden, not merely its fragrance. So from my chamber I ran, left across the balcony, down the stairs with rapid feet and not a stumble, left again, the only route to the building’s rear, through a swinging door into a corridor terminating in a glassy door through which I saw shrubbery, a door I achieved but could open no more than the blooming window.
What a meager entrapment for the sinners’ world of murder. How foolish of Londoners not to use the simple wooden latch of Mother’s cabin, or the rotating lever of my bedchamber door. In comparison, this mechanism was multiple, vast, complex, mysterious. How disheartening not to gain that good life removed by a mere finger’s thickness of glass due to mechanical ignorance. After sighs and slumping shoulders, I sadly contemplated my future. Either I would abandon my plans, or request the aid of a servant. The latter I could implement by waiting until a servant came along, or by actively seeking one of these persons. Turning to discern my location, I discovered the kitchen at the corridor’s opposite end. This locale emitted smells of burning animals and sounds of human voices. Help lay beyond. But no region could be more repulsive than that crypt of bloody baking. I would deny myself the garden rather than enter the kitchen.
Viewing the garden again, I espied an available servant, a large woman hacking away at a bush with a metal implement. This was Theodosia, the one person of the household never seen above the stairs. Soon this woman saw me, and gestured that I might join her. After some failed manipulation with the lockwork, I revealed to Theodosia an ignorant countenance. Herein I was successful, for the servant approached to call through the glass that I might come out if I so desired. More loudly I replied that I knew not how to open the door. No part of England exists so wild as to be without doors, she insisted. Briefly I explained in a holler that such was my home. Theodosia then stepped to the door with no kind face to grasp the latch and succeed no more than I, for some witch had locked it from within. Thus, the servant became so exasperated as to howl in wordless consternation.
“What is your great distress?” I cried. “I am the one trapped with no escape!”
Soon, we were pulling at the door from opposite sides, Theodosia leaning near the glass to point toward the mechanisms and mutter unfamiliar terminology as though I comprehended her technical language. Pull on this and that I did without success. What a scene we made to the next servant nearing, one noted in advance by a wave of sick cooking smell; for Miss Delilah approached from the kitchen to expertly release the bolt and activate the latch with no kind glare and not the first word, returning t
o the kitchen with a gait of annoyance.
Immediately Theodosia stomped back to her work, grumbling furiously. And though with the door’s opening I smelled a fine raft of natural fragrances, my pleasure was polluted by failure, by the consternation I had caused. But with thanks to the good Lord, I entered the garden, intent upon enjoying this realm whether I suffered or not. Enjoy the green sights and growing smells I did until arriving at the well to find a tiny river flowing from it that in fact was a sinner-made ditch certainly meant to resemble the Thames, the small wooden bridge above bleeding well intended to represent Hershford. Around with me at once, to the house again, through the same door that in my genius I had left unlocked, to my chamber and beneath the bed forever.
• • •
“Being equal in this instance to my reputation of evil existence, you might believe me likely to chew away the feet beneath your ankles if you allow me not the small privilege of a familiar companion.”
Distressing were these words to Delilah, the blood boiler and occasional chambermaid, whose current job was to clamber around attacking dust. No fond emotions had I for this servant considering her curt response upon finding me innocent of doorways. Most upsetting to the servant was my final phrase, for worse than having her legs gnawed to gory nubs was this girl’s having a fiend for a friend.
“But that ’tis the greatest, nastiest spider I have ever laid me eyes upon, miss, and has well lodged itself in a corner of your ceiling.”
“Despite its size and impressive appearance, the beast is a kindly soul harming only those genuinely pesky insects whose place on God’s ceiling, I am sad to say, is to provide my friend with nourishment.”
“The Mistress Amanda will chew my feet off her own self if I do not smash the thing.”
My next response was to cruelly bare my teeth, a display unbelievable to most sinners and any witch. Being unfamiliar with me, Delilah was duly cautious, unable to bear the thought of battling the spider, me, and thereafter Mistress Amanda for having failed to succeed with the former. Therefore, she accepted my exhibited animalism in order to avoid the terrors of that well-legged beast, determining to worry later about the horrors of the wigged one. Taking her broom, she departed my chamber in defeat, grumbling unpleasantly.
“I’ll send Miss Elsie up, then, who’ll not accept such unkindness from a child.”
No one came for the fiend. The young wench was called for later by Elsie only to lure her to the day’s second meal. And though she eyed the spider immediately upon entering my bedchamber, Elsie’s comment was cooperative.
“Aye, and you’re keeping the beast if you will, lass, but if you start rearing a flock of them, then you and I will be mouthing at each other’s limbs to see who’s coming away the shorter.”
Blandly was I affected by her attempts to influence me with humor.
“Since I have dressed in the strange manner of sinners and have brushed my hair till it no longer is the protective coat God made it but more of a sinners’ drapery meant paradoxically to obscure windows, I’ll be trotting off for a bit of a bite now, unless you prefer I starve.”
“So why is it, then, you’re not eating this spider, if you’ve such a taste for bugs?” the servant brazenly wondered.
“Why is it you sinners eat pigs and not cats?” I returned.
“And what’s your meaning, lass, in this word ‘sinner’? ’Tis a common word, but not from your mouth, I fear.”
“Bugs in the mouth are not common with sinners, one of which I am not. A sinner is any person not a witch. Therefore, you and I are one of each.”
The woman pondered my explication long enough to understand that she was not being called a witch. Then her ideas returned to consumption.
“And what of you leading me to believe you’ve no use for lunch, girl, if you’re about to be doing all this normal eating?”
“In fact, I seek to provide for my own nourishment with God’s natural foods of vegetables and fruit,” I told her. “It’s your city dwellers’ cannibalism—your lustful joy in devouring dead animals who once were friends to all humans—that sickens me. The kitchen itself seems hellish, and you are surely aware of the consequences of your forcing me to consume its bloody products.”
We stood as when discussing my attire that previous day, Elsie in the doorway facing me as we tossed sentences to and fro like children with a ball, handling each phrase as it was hurled.
“Aye, and the mistress is allowing you to eat raw greens after her fine meats have been removed. Rude you are, girl, to be eating with your benefactor only after she’s finished. But that’s better, I’m saying, than provoking your sensitive stomach. And a terrible organ it is, what with your huge puking on the table, right upon the cloth and the silver eating wear. And I am the miserable wench having to clean it, when in fact it’s due to your endless vegetables not being settled by some firm meat.”
Strange was Elsie during these ravings, for although she sounded distressed, she had no smell of anger. Since she had begun to spew worse than my stomach days earlier, I interrupted the servant to explain my true nutritional state.
“The sensitivity I have is nasal. Never shall I become ashamed of being sickened by the stench of God’s good creatures broiling in their own fat.” Then, unavoidably, I retched, my hand at once going to my face, more to end those sickening thoughts rushing through me than any bodily fluids.
Thrusting her arm toward the floor, Elsie blurted, “This mess you’ll be cleaning up yourself, girl!”
Controlling my choking, I replied, “Being a natural substance, vomit terrifies me not; whereas the charring of animals is wicked, and the eating of their gore….” Then I retched again, coming up with a bit of bile that I was certain to swallow rather than appear the total wretch to Elsie by soiling her floor. But the gulp in itself was enough for the servant, who whirled around and quit my chamber, having had enough of my oral asperities.
Before eating, I continued with my universal assessment that I had abandoned the previous day, having been tormented toward defeat by that tiny, diabolical bridge. And though I would not abandon the garden proper, I required a bit of emotional acceptance before again entering that otherwise fine and growing place. But this day would see me situate myself in the sinners’ world by commencing with the house’s interior, territory insufficiently familiar to the realm’s new witch.
First I examined my bedchamber’s door. This efficient latchwork required but a turn of the handle to activate. Looking closer I saw a hole for inserting a key. The thing could be locked, an achievement beyond me. I thus resolved to learn of these small, swinging walls lest they imprison me worse than the bulk of London itself.
Entering the upper corridor and stepping to the balcony, I viewed the great main room below, an area with no purpose but to separate north from south, it seemed. Walking along the balustrade, I found additional doors like mine, presumably closing similar chambers. Standing by the end door, the one farthest from the stairs and farthest from mine, I leaned near the jamb, detecting a smell from within of Rathel herself. Away I went with no further interest, finding an odor of abandonment through the imperfect sealing of the other doors. Outside mine, I was pleased to smell my own odor; but since I was not sufficiently established therein, I entered to pee a spot in each corner and make this place my own.
One door upstairs was odd. Past Rathel’s chamber, I stepped to this narrowest door, smelling. The area beyond did not seem enclosed. From curiosity, I attacked the door’s mechanism, a simple handle unlike the garden door’s fiendish latches and bolts. Being unlocked, this door readily opened, and there was a ladder. My, my, and up I went, finding at the ladder’s top a flat hatchway in the ceiling. Here was a latch similar to the windows’, but no despair came over me. Instead, I determined to remain reasonable and attempt all the available motions of my hand until I sussed the unpleasant metal. And succeed I did, mainly by force, not intellection; for I grabbed the piece and pushed hard to produce an impressive click. T
hen upward I leaned, the door swinging open, cool, exterior air and the light of the sky falling upon me. Then I stepped from the ladder onto the building’s roof.
What magic I found there! Beneath my feet was a platform with a finished floor and a pair of steps to allow access down to the roof. Though the purpose of this exit was to allow servants opportunity to repair leaks, my task was visionary. Beyond me in all directions, I saw the sinners’ world, an endless view of near and distant buildings. Though many structures seen were taller than Rathel’s, her townhouse had been built upon high ground, and I peered over much of London. I felt the superiority of my angle, felt endless space beyond, felt a thrilling position that seemed as much my own as that hole beneath my bed, but an antithetical type of space: not one to conceal me to but reveal the world. And I cackled to have achieved this view, to look upon the sinners’ endless architecture, seeing church spires and buildings nearly as great as St. Nicholas Cathedral—one with glossy, multiple roofs resembling inverted turnips—viewing behind our house that lovely garden mostly hidden by treetops, but a fine sight regardless. At the end of the street was a patch of green, another type of garden though not enfenced behind a house: the park I had seen on my last journey into the city, a bit of wildness I determined to explore. But that greenery was too removed from Rathel’s townhouse, too much a part of the sinners’ world that was literally beyond me, and would have to wait for a more proximate familiarity. Then down the ladder I climbed with a felicitous disposition, a feeling to satisfy even a witch removed from her true world.
Outside the door stood Rathel. Guiltless I remained, studying neither her smell nor her countenance. Instead, I explained myself, not having lost my pleased demeanor.
“Through this passage I have discovered the roof, and a satisfying view therefrom. I hope you are not offended by my pleasure.” And past silent Rathel I ran, neither fleeing nor allowing the chief sinner to interrupt my function of determining my place in God’s world apportioned to sinners.