by H C Turk
Though not the first sinner interfered with us as Elsie shooed me along, a new torment found me as though to fill the vacancy of unimplemented anxiety. Through the London air came an unknown smell that was unpleasant yet not quite terrifying. Only the accompanying heat was frightening, Elsie and I passing a shop wherein a male made bottles with an open flame and his own air. The sight struck me with a rushing sense of alienness more than danger, and I had to whisper harshly for Elsie to explain how such an event as a sinner’s blowing bubbles of molten sand could possibly be. Familiar with the girl’s wilderness innocence, Elsie provided a clear explanation that in no way relieved my feeling that although I might come closer to being a simple person such as Elsie, the sinners’ greater artificiality would always remain unfathomable. But why was I uncomfortable with this thought when my unending innocence proved me the continuing witch?
At the river’s edge, I found disappointment: no bridge was visible on this curving segment of the Thames. Well removed toward that way, Elsie described. Without this prime element, I was certain that my prediction would not be fulfilled, and my dreams would remain like that bridge, imperceivable in the present, but as unavoidable as the past. No better was the water itself, which seemed incapable of cleansing mere dirt, much less imbedded dreams; for the river stank, soiled from the sinners’ industries, from cooking animals to blowing glass.
Only the lapping of water against the docks was passably satisfying, the liquid swells soothing my future loss, which would be the failure to lose my nightly scenes. At least I would prove those nightmares no more than imagination, this river for demonstration, not drowning.
“And it’s a foolish notion we’re having, girl, and one yet changeable,” Elsie declared, standing near me as she looked about for witnesses. “I’m saying we return now, before the mistress finds us.”
“Let us find me the witch,” I intoned, my voice so confident or so inhuman as to send Elsie a step away. Thereafter, witnesses were of no concern to her, only the youth professing to be more than a girl. But her old sensibility remained, Elsie the servant aware of her duty.
“Aye, girl, and what are we thinking, now, with the autumn weather about us? To be wet completely will cause you the croup, and I am not having you ill.”
Intelligent was Elsie’s attempt to impress me with a desire to preclude my illness, as she rubbed, rubbed her dress with all her fingers.
“This weather is neither cold nor wet enough to harm me, miss, for witches are not subject to vapors.”
“Ah, then be thinking of me, lass. If you’re to be swimming in these waters, I am the woman who’ll suffer from your ruint clothes—and my ruint life, because the mistress will see you wetted and know you were out and the fault to be mine.”
“More important, she would know my intent, that of proving my true life to you. Then we both would face disaster. I shall therefore immerse only myself, not my clothing. Since my hair will necessarily become wet, if we’re found at Rathel’s house, I shall maintain that I’ve allowed you to wash it as is your continual wont.”
“No, girl, and I’ll never be so wishing to clean your hair that I’d seek the great troubles before us. Right you be, lass, in wording it disaster. And since I’m struck with some decent thinking, I bid the two of us return home afore we make disaster for each other.”
Expecting that disaster to strike like a storm, Elsie looked around for bystanders who might witness against us. Though previously she had attempted to appear innocent with her observing along the road that paralleled the river, Elsie now looked stressfully everywhere for sheer danger. No worker nor passerby approached, Elsie and I shielded from most directions by an empty shed. But Elsie’s extended viewing revealed none of the true disaster, for one step away stood the lass removing her attire.
“Alba! and you’re mindless now to be denuding yourself on the Thames!” she hissed. As Elsie reached to pull my dress around me, I moved away with a step and a slip, and the garment fell to the ground.
Miss Elsie then revealed her true intelligence, understanding that her path of curiosity led directly toward that inferred disaster. Therefore, she abandoned disbelief, proceeding directly to agreement.
“Aye, Alba, and truly I’m believing all you say about witches and plagues—and any thought in your mind, child, if only you’ll be clothing yourself and return with me!”
But I would not clothe myself, would not return. Being of a race more physical than social, the witch pulled herself from the servant with an economy of effort, dropping crinoline and bloomers to the dry planks of the wharf, then into the river with scarcely a splash.
As I looked to the water, the enterprise’s most tactile aspect of wet suffocation became primary. Aware that the immersion to benefit my future would torment my present, I accepted a demeanor of dutiful accomplishment, intending to perform the task of convincing Elsie as though my continued survival were at stake. For no reason other than survival would I walk through water. Not to cross a river only paces long to gain food and end my starving, not to save myself a walk of days around a water body. Perhaps to quench flames consuming my sinners’ attire, but nothing less. Though something burned me enough to force me toward that water, in the following moment, I was not ensuring my survival, but losing it.
At once I was drowning. The last sound heard was a gasp from Elsie, my last thought to remain calm and procedural, to keep my eyes closed and pinch my nostrils shut to avoid irritation in these sensitive membranes from the dank sinners’ river. But once ensconced in the fluid, I found myself captured by it, and I was not retaining my breath, but bereft of it. After that first, smothering moment, I was prepared to push upward from the river’s bottom to gain air again. But since any form of human can survive without breathing for a brief spell, I survived my airless moment and came to understand my problem. Of course, water supplies a witch air, a fact I had neglected in my concern for drowning. Less air comes from water than the atmosphere, but enough for survival. Then the water’s filth became significant again, for I was eating it. I had opened my mouth to take in the Thames, allowing it to pass in and out via my pumping cheeks. I had to eat it like fruit, consume its saving juice, which was wet air the fish know well, that a witch can smell and even sinners see as bubbles.
I calmed; very calm. I achieved understanding. Since I received little air, I knew to undertake equal activity. I calmed, allowing the water’s air to seep into my lungs. Though continuing to feel some smothering, I breathed through it, a great fear ready to rush through me even as I was ready to rush through the water. But no further terror and no sudden movement came as I breathed enough for survival.
I remained calm, very calm. To ensure this mild state, smothering one panicked thought away, I determined to imagine a walk lengthy enough to prove myself unsouled. Taking but a slight step to retain my balance in this buoyant world, I imagined walking through Rathel’s house, from garden to basement, returning through the kitchen and to the library, up the stairs and down again. The river’s bottom here was strewn with sharp shards and hard-edged materials, the discharge of sinners’ luxuries. Since the water greatly reduced my weight, however, I suffered no stumblings as I walked a pace or two while imagining many; for mild movement seemed to help my breathing, aiding the water’s entry into me, where it might leave its air.
After twice traversing my imagined route, I returned to the river’s edge, one hand outstretched to feel my way, being cautious not to open my eyes and suffer from a wash of effluent. In those last moments of my immersion, I nearly smiled because salvation was ahead. Just a few more steps, and I would find relief, and knew my mother would be proud. And joy I felt, not from salvation, but because I had not shamed my greatest love.
Dry Elsie was swaying. Her countenance was one of confusion, and the servant reeked of fear. Collapse seemed imminent, but with my rising from the water, her disposition changed, Elsie becoming rigid as she stared.
Distress caused me to look away and concentrate on
ly on myself. As water fell from my mouth, true air entered unpleasantly. I felt my lungs burn, and determined to inhale shallow breaths, not the deep gulps I desired. The respective sensations differed profoundly, the water’s thick dullness compared to true air’s sharp bite. A moment later, breathing somewhat better, I opened my eyes, looking to Elsie with a silent plea as I lifted my hand for help.
The woman did not hesitate to offer aid. No longer staring at me in confusion and disbelief, she saw that the pilings at my feet were steep and awkward for climbing, especially for a youth who had not been breathing for a duration of terror.
As Elsie grasped my arms, I stepped away from the Thames. She spoke, her voice implying anger, though her scent described relief.
“Alba girl, I knew you to be drowned and myself insane for allowing you to enter. But then I’m seeing you move, not your head with that dark hair, but your white skin like a ghost to chill me dead. No person who breathes could remain so long below without expiring, yet you’re moving and I can see, lass, though I’m disbelieving even now.”
Though opening my mouth, I could not speak. Bending slowing toward my clothing, I spit away more of the river’s filth. Reaching to wipe my mouth, I saw a pair of trembling hands, one mine, one Elsie’s. Never had I seen my mother tremble.
Elsie’s aid was interrupted by a new difficulty as obvious as the dimples on my hips; for as soon as the servant ceased her vigil for witnesses, a parcel of them arrived.
Two men and three women ran toward us from different directions, gasping. Though I remained slow and uncertain, Elsie moved rapidly as she guided my dressing, on with only the outer gown, her intent to cover my person at once and take the mass of underthings along. Her thinking turned most competent, Elsie explained the situation before the assemblage could demand the facts of this remarkable scene.
“Oh, and the courageous girl is throwing herself in the river to save her mother’s imported dog from drowning. Oh, what a thoughtful lass to set her clothes aside and not be ruining them. God bless the poor child who’ll be suffering now since the cat could not be saved.”
“Dog,” I coughed.
“Since the dog could not be saved,” Elsie added in correction. “Oh, Lord Jesus, bless the dear girl for her courage and kind manners!” she concluded, and looked toward the sky.
During her speaking, Elsie attempted to hurl the dress around me so that we might flee without further explanation. Because I certainly did not care to be centered in a pack of sinners whether denuded or hidden in a sack, I cooperated, though my movements were more restrained than Elsie’s: only one of us had faced drowning. But we of the Rathel household were not alone in handling me, Elsie toward the end of her most imaginative explication of drowning beasts finding it necessary to shove aside the hand of a sinning man who was covering my breast with his fingers. Upon recognizing the move as no random slip, Elsie responded in accord with the man’s behavior.
“Ah! you flipping rotter to have your hand on the child’s bosom!”
Though gasps from the other sinners proved them agreeable with Elsie’s allegation, the guilty man had a rationale of sorts.
“But I was helping the lass dry the water away. She’ll catch the croup with such moisture.”
I said nothing, for I could not care. In a manner, I was still beneath the water. Had I not seen other members of my family there?
Most astonished of all, the man’s female companion proved herself the wife by spouting shouts and also spittle, so violent was her response.
“Satan take your bloody soul for fondling a lass!” she screamed, and shoved the man so hard against his chest that he nearly toppled over. “Curse your black hands, untrue husband, for such corruption before my very eyes!” she suggested, and threw her arm at the man’s head in a tremendous arc, connecting soundly with his jaw, a blow to collapse him to the wharf and frighten all decent persons regardless of their ability to travel in a submariner manner. Though smashed most combatively onto his back, the man yet retained his senses, looking upward between his wife and me, attempting to ascertain why he had attacked the child, why one so young seemed irresistible.
“Not only a girl before my very eyes, but one not even a wench!” the woman continued, and kicked the downed man with her ending word. “Having your hands on a baby’s breast no older than your own daughter!” she shrieked, and again delivered a blow, her shoe directed against the man’s own bosom, this latest attack inspiring him to evade so totally that his balance was sacrificed to dodging, the husband toppling into the Thames with a greater splash than mine, a blubbering noise from the intake of water silencing his previously blubbering lips and their inadequate explanations.
Now covered to the ankles, I was pulled along by Elsie, who held the unlaced fabric tightly around me to prevent further revelation of the man’s fleshy goal. Though the greater scene had drawn additional sinners, the battle between spouses became their surpassing interest, a relationship more interesting than a retreating child and her guardian. Away we went with a bundle of underclothes and a largely nonplussed witch, though the servant remained protective, an initiative clearly coming from her heart, and therefore worthy of my appreciation.
Once removed from the crowd and settled in a rapid pace to Rathel’s townhouse, Elsie received a terrible revelation known as truth.
“Ah, this is why the mistress is removing the male servant,” she wheezed grimly, looking not at me, but somewhere far ahead, though she continued to hold my apparel tightly, even cruelly, against my torso. “The lady ever knew how you’d be drawing men, as you did in church—I’ve heard of it, lass—and just out of the river though you might be drowning.”
“Of course, Miss Elsie, as long I’ve told you. And what is more convincing to you: that normal men turn lurid when near me, or that I’ve proven myself impervious to God’s waters?”
“I’m believing you, child, for whichever cause, and because never did I feel you dishonest. Deluded, surely, as the lady was saying, but no more. But of Mistress Amanda’s dishonesty, it seems near justified considering your danger.”
The servant looked closely to me, emitting a strong emotion not easily described, though her own words were fine explanation.
“A lady such as ours going about her vengeance is understandable, Alba, when such damage was done her heart. Ah, we must be praying, child, for God to heal her spirit. But how can a lass such as this,” she moaned, and squeezed me as though to crush me dead, to protect me with this eternity, “how can such a peaceful babe be dangerous? Yea, lass, I’m believing you much and might believe you more, but I’m having to ask God, not yourself, if I should curse the witch or love her.”
Chapter 10
Blank Stares Of Understanding
No more appropriate activity existed for my uncomfortable sleep than nightmares inspired by sinning men. And what more sensical setting than the sea bottom, for was not its stifling smother reminiscent of Rathel’s world? My true world was now the sinners’ stench, a realm of perception accompanying me when awake even as the sea held me during sleep as I walked, as I dragged a boulder secured to my neck with a chain taken from the anchor since mere ropes were not enough to bond a person so rapacious as to be both sinner and witch, a person deservedly punished for crimes in both worlds. I dragged a boulder that was a sepulcher filled with family, stacks of charred bones and ashes, each with a name: Chloe, Esmeralda, Marybelle, Mother. Dragged a tomb through the sea as fishes swam well removed from this lethargic scene, dragged that rock toward the shore in sight, a goal ever nearer until the boulder fell and I smothered, having lost my effort. Then the choking and stinging of my lungs began, my only salvation to flee upward. All my effort went to gain the air above, but to do so I would have to swim. I would have to swim like a sinner to save myself. I would have to flap my limbs and frolic like the stinking folk who had sent me to the sea bottom, the only nearby sinner a man in semi-holy robes whom I dragged my rock upon until he turned the ocean red with his piety, n
ot a human near except my mother in the stone attempting to gain the surface and thus be ever immune to the burning sting of the wet atmosphere engulfing her. I only had to swim like a sinner to gain Mother a single breath of air, a simple activity required to settle her in God’s selected eternity; but I could not, too much the witch to swim, not enough to avoid being cast into the ocean. Mother waited with no odor of disapproval because her only daughter could not achieve the minor feat of salvation, having insufficient sin or insufficient love.
• • •
I made to exorcise those dreams with more pragmatic imagining, for the concept occurred to me that I would kill Rathel. How reasonable this seemed in being aligned with Rathel’s own beliefs of my abilities; for if the mistress expected me to kill the Eric person, could I not presume to murder her instead? But with the idea dislodged from my head and out for examination, how ridiculous the prospect appeared. True, I believed Rathel worthy of demise, but I could have no part in her death, for I was no sinner. Though I might resemble one and come to smell the same, I would not be transformed into a soulful immoralist.
My future was thus determined, enlightenment striking me in the form of sensibility, not passion. No reasonable witch could be so precisely immortal as to plot mortality, a notion sensible only to sinners believing that an unlimited life of God’s luxury lay beyond their death. That aspect of the sinners, however, was not in my sinning portion. With this return to true identity, a new sense of living rushed to me, a flow of notion to fill the void of my vacated foolishness as rainwater seeps into soil depressions to make mud puddles and swamps, the former a lesser version of the latter even as the sinners’ cooking animals compares to their executing witches. My latest plan was to learn enough of London to leave it. The city’s intimidation was a problem to be overcome with familiarity. But could I achieve this self-schooling before time came for me to kill Eric, before Magistrate Naylor proved me the witch more terminally than I had proven myself to Elsie? And where would I go? Geographical tutoring had shown me Man’s Island on parchment, but that was slaughtered sheepskin—where was home within the real world?