by Vered Ehsani
“Well, isn’t this a peculiar thing,” I said, but the zebra paid no heed and contentedly set to munching dry, crunchy grass. I left the beast, for I wasn’t about to cause it to be dragged to another location when the current one was adequate enough.
Instead, I headed at once toward the river with my walking stick in hand. I assumed, since the victim was a woman, that the scene of the crime would be at or near the place where the local women gathered to wash their clothes. I headed for the cluster of large rocks, where the women beat the sodden fabric while enjoying the chance to gossip.
Near the river, there were several women milling about, huddled in a small pack and gesturing to something just inside the tree line. As I approached the area, they eyed me nervously, as if I might on impulse attack them. I smiled and nodded at them but they stared back fixedly, whispering conversation while watching my every move.
Slightly unnerved by their obvious suspicion, I was almost relieved to see Kam nearby. Almost. I fervently hoped he wasn’t plotting on feeding me to some shape-shifting relative. With Kam, that was a real possibility.
He nodded his shaved head at me and I had to peer up to meet his fierce gaze. Pale brown eyes stared down at me, alert and sharply intelligent. Delightfully toned muscles shifted with every graceful movement.
But it was his skin markings that always intrigued me most about him. Highly unusual for this part of the continent, the swirls and symbols pierced the dark skin across his face, arms and chest. More startling than that was what I saw when I squinted my eyes: the markings glowed brightly, shifting and moving with powers I had yet to ascertain. Meanwhile, his energy field was curiously non-existent, which was only possible for a corpse, for no living creature could hide its energy field from me. Yet Kam was very much alive.
I sniffed at the air, my overly developed olfactory nerves tingling, and breathed in his distinctive scent: spice, warm earth, wood smoke and something a little wild. Behind that, I detected the copper of fresh blood.
“Dr. Ribeiro mentioned there was…” I started to say but Kam wordlessly shifted to one side and I said no more.
A young woman, more a girl than a woman, lay on her back, her arms by her side. In one hand she held a short, crude knife; in the other was a wilted red hibiscus flower. Her eyes were wide open, staring at whatever one stares at while dying. A film of blood covered her arms and upper chest.
As I leaned over to inspect the source of the blood, I realized I knew her, or rather I recognized her. She used to sell vegetables along the roadside near the camp. I’d bought from her on several occasions but had never bothered to ask her name.
Swallowing a strange and unnatural guilt, I noticed that runes had been carved into her skin.
“You are familiar with these symbols?” Kam asked, his deep voice rumbling through the air, echoed by a rumble of thunder from above.
“No,” I admitted, wondering why I’d never asked for her name. In London, I’d known the name of all the shopkeepers I’d bought from, and sometimes the names of their snotty-nosed offspring as well.
Setting aside that line of thought, I considered the victim, wondering what, apart from the carved-up skin, was odd about the scene. I frowned, an action that inevitably caused me to call to mind Mrs. Steward’s repeated admonitions that excessive facial expressions wrinkled the skin. It was truly an inopportune moment to recall such a trivial piece of advice.
Except…
“She’s smiling,” I said, and my frown deepened; Mrs. Steward’s beauty advice be damned.
I leaned closer to the body, confirming that the mouth was relaxed and smiling, in ghastly contrast to the state of her body.
“Strange and stranger still,” I mused. “ And why would the murderer leave the weapon?” I asked as I touched the gory blade tentatively.
The girl’s grip on it was impressive, which made as much sense as her lingering smile. If she’d been killed by the knife, as the evidence suggested, how could her hand have clenched it so fiercely after death? And how could she possibly have died like this and maintained a smile?
Kam remained silent, as was typical of him.
“Did anyone see or hear what happened?” I asked while straightening up. Flies were already starting to gather, attracted by the sweetness of drying blood.
“No, nothing,” Kam said, his tone unreadable.
“Most peculiar,” I murmured, reluctant to admit my confusion as I studied the scene for more clues. There weren’t any. “Have there been other cases like this?”
He shook his head, his gaze fixed out over the river and across the savannah. If he did know more, he clearly was uninterested in informing me.
“If you need any assistance, do let me know,” I said, as there was nothing more for me to do.
Kam glanced at me, his eyebrows twitched up and he smiled slightly, an expression that didn’t relieve the fierceness of his countenance but did add to the handsomeness of his features.
“We’ll see you, Miss Knight,” he said and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that prospect.
As I walked away, I had to fight the urge to glance back but I could feel Kam watching me. Only when I had passed over the hill did the tension leave my shoulders.
Chapter 6
As I’d suspected, Lilly was no closer to death than any of us, which is to say that she could expect to live to some reasonably wrinkled age, barring disease and a horde of stampeding elephants.
“It’s a stroke of luck she survived at all, Bee,” Mrs. Steward said as she fussed over Lilly. “And no thanks to that doctor. I’m not convinced about him. When I asked him where his practice was, he said it was at home. When I asked where that was, he said in a tent in the camp. Shocking, truly shocking, what poor standards we must suffer with. How we endure is beyond me.”
Despite the poor standards, Lilly recovered.
To celebrate, Mrs. Steward announced we would all go out to the new — and only — soda bar that had been added to the general store. Going into town wasn’t quite as dramatic here as it was in London, for town was little more than a large and rapidly developing construction camp. Still, it was a pleasant enough distraction.
The general store had a floor littered with large sacks and barrels of non-perishables, and several shelves laden down with an assortment of tins, smaller sacks of rice and a selection of random items that varied from week to week. The real charm of the place was the soda bar, where precious glass bottles of fizzy drinks resided.
As Mr. Steward had declined to join us on account of his work, we were just the ladies and Bobby who could barely restrain himself upon seeing the colorful glass in front him.
“Mama,” Lilly immediately said as she studied the store with a quick eye, “they have face powder this week. May I please?”
“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Steward said without even looking up. “I would only consider it if there was a cause for such a thing, but here in this backwater outpost, there’s hardly need to pretty ourselves further.”
Lilly pouted, Bobby blew through his straw with enough force to create bubbles and I slurped at the soda.
“Bee, you look quite tired,” Mrs. Steward commented.
I often marvel at the comments people allow past their lips, for what woman truly wants or needs to hear such a statement?
“It’s nothing,” I said, not wishing to divulge the details of my nightmares. Nor could I freely discuss my concern over a certain ghost husband or the brutal murder of a nameless girl.
I faded out of the conversation, adding only the occasional nod or polite sound to pretend involvement without being so committed as to be forced into saying anything. So sunk was I in my morose reflections that I barely noticed when Mrs. Steward slid along the bar to chat with the shopkeeper’s wife.
The wife, named Mrs. Patel, was a plump Indian woman covered in enough colorful fabric to set up a shop of her own. She was also the center of whatever little gossip there might be had, given that her husband was on very close
terms with the stationmaster, who also doubled as the postmaster. All this to say that she knew the comings and goings of every person and parcel.
I abhor gossip.
But I couldn’t feign disinterest when Mrs. Steward rushed back to our end of the bar, grabbed both Lilly and I by an arm and shook us ferociously. “Girls, girls, what splendid news!” she gasped.
“There’s a shipment of dresses arriving?” Lilly asked, eyes all sparkling at the prospect.
“There’s a circus coming and they’re recruiting boys as lion trainers?” I suggested, eyeing Bobby’s bubbly mess.
“No, no, you foolish, vain creatures,” Mrs. Steward said with a great exhale of breath. “A Governor has been appointed by Her Majesty to oversee the colony. And he’s arriving tomorrow with his family.” She leaned toward Lilly with a glint in her eyes that could mean only one thing. “And he has two sons.”
“So maybe the circus can take both of them and Bobby,” I muttered.
Mrs. Steward did a fair job of ignoring me, for she was determined to make her intentions quite clear, as if they weren’t already. “Tomorrow, we shall go meet the Governor and his family,” she said with the intensity of a General issuing battle orders. “Of course we’ll be there for some other purpose, to deliver a letter to the postmaster. Lilly, you must write immediately to Aunt Phyllis…”
“She’d dead,” I pointed out.
“Oh yes, of course,” Mrs. Steward said, flustered. “God bless her and the inheritance she left us. Well, for heaven’s sake, think of someone to write to.”
“Preferably someone who isn’t dead,” I suggested. “That could be awkward.”
“For by tomorrow afternoon,” Mrs. Steward pronounced with a hand raised up, “we must have a letter in hand. By such means, we’ll be the first to introduce ourselves. We’ll then contrive some excuse to have them over to our abode before anyone else does so, and thus secure your future, Lilly dear.”
“What’s the rush? How many eligible ladies are there to concern ourselves over?” I asked.
Really, apart from the Indian laborers, the few business people who were starting to set up shops, and a smattering of others, there really wasn’t much competition socially to distract the Governor or his sons.
Lilly, thrilled to hear there was some possibility of entertainment soon to be had, batted her eyelashes and said, “In that case Mama, perhaps we might need that face powder after all?”
And so that day, Lilly received both face powder and the possibility that her life wasn’t destined to end in spinsterhood.
Chapter 7
I trace the scar on his shoulder. It was inflicted by the same canine brute that nearly chomped off my right ear. “It’s all right, Drew.”
Even then, we both know it isn’t. But as the older sibling, more educated in human misperception of reality, I’m determined to uphold the comforting myth of a world that can be contained within the rules of normalcy.
“Twas just a dream,” I sooth him as I push back his soft hair and dark fears.
He scratches at the scar. “It’s not a dog, Beatrice,” he says, pulling away.
“Be still,” I admonish, not too unkindly. “The dog’s long gone.”
“No, it’s not,” he insists, his small, chubby face set in a stubborn frown that only he can make adorable. “The dog was a monster. I see it in my dream. It’s coming.”
I shake my head with the determination of a logical mind. “Stop talking nonsense. Father wouldn’t approve.” But I see the truth shimmering around him. Still, I ignore it, wave it away as a young child’s fantasy taken too far.
I blink and he’s gone. The bedroom walls dissolve into trees and shrubs, his bed sinks into a small pond with a murky secret.
“Drew?” I shout but the gloomy foliage muffles my voice.
A woman, tall and beautiful with blue-black skin and shortly cropped hair, steps out of the trees. She stares down at me, her eyes cold, her smile mocking.
“Mrs. Knight, paranormal investigator extraordinaire,” she say with an unbecoming sneer, “and you can’t even look after your little brother.”
“But I’m… I was just a child,” I protest.
“Such excuses as only the weak can make,” Koki persists as she drifts toward me. “You are pathetic and you owe me a leg.”
The woman’s form melts into a Praying Mantis that is the size of a horse. One of her back legs is missing, but her two hooked arms are fully functional, as are her sharp mandibles, each as long as my forearm. Koki lunges toward me, jaws clicking, arms searching.
I scream and…
I jerked upward and awake, kicking off my blanket. It took me a moment to grasp that I wasn’t in the forest, nor was Koki looming over me, preparing to rip off a limb.
But my hammering heart didn’t quite believe this rational observation, and my lungs weren’t functioning at full capacity. I reached for my walking stick and held it against me, prepared to bludgeon any shadow that approached too close.
The bright outline of a wolf formed by my side, its energy glowing with a dangerous heat. It only appeared in times of duress, and I basked in the lethal comfort it brought me.
Every nerve in my being was alert for a sign, yet the house was quiet and calm. But I knew well what that meant.
Absolutely nothing.
Silence and the dark could hide all manner of evil. Something was coming. That’s what the dream meant. I could feel it. And I’d be lucky if it was only Gideon the automaton come to reclaim his wife.
Chapter 8
While I wished nothing more than to sleep for a day or two, Mrs. Steward wouldn’t hear of it.
“We must be prepared for our spontaneous meeting with the Governor,” she reminded us all. “The train arrives just prior to mid-morning tea. And Lilly requires assistance in writing a letter to someone. Who now?” She tapped her puckered lips.
“What about Uncle Henry?” Bobby suggested as he covered a yawn by stuffing a piece of toast into his mouth.
“Oh yes, Mr. Steward’s brother,” Mrs. Steward said, ignoring her son’s appalling table manners. “He’s still alive, more or less. He’ll have to do. Well, get on with it, girl. And Bee, help your cousin.”
As if she couldn’t write without my intervention.
Wearily, I slurped down breakfast while dictating a passable letter to an uncle we barely knew.
Mrs. Steward snatched the letter ere the ink was dry. After a brief perusal, she sniffed, sighed and pronounced it satisfactory.
“Let’s be off then,” she said. “No, Bobby, you may not bring your pet lizard. Jonas, is the cart ready? Lilly, do put some more powder on your face, girl. The Governor is fresh from high society and not accustomed to the thinness of social graces found here. Bee, get rid of that ridiculous feather. A solitary feather in one’s hat is no longer a fashion statement. Bobby, get off the table at once.”
Lilly skipped off to make herself more presentable and I stroked the long feather in my sunhat. I always had a feather in my hat and I certainly wasn’t removing it, regardless of the current fads. And why Mrs. Steward was so concerned about my fashion eluded me, for it was Lilly who needed to attract a son, not me.
Eventually Mrs. Steward managed to round us all up and herd us into the waiting cart.
“Oh Mama,” Lilly protested upon seeing the contented little ox chewing its cud. “Surely Papa can purchase a proper carriage and fine horses for us to use. Anything but this embarrassing excuse of a creature and a collection of old wood on wheels.”
Mrs. Steward sighed as only a martyr can. “My dear, I have little say in the matter. Truth be told, there are no fine carriages to be had for love or money, even if I did have both. We shall alight before the station and pretend the cart isn’t ours until after the Governor departs for his new abode.”
That decided upon, we clambered up. Jonas, who was leaning against the ox, pretended not to notice we were there. I presume his attitude was a silent protest against the dis
paraging remarks directed at his pride and joy. Mrs. Steward had to rap heartily against the wooden siding with her parasol before he lifted his head slightly toward us. I hid my smirk as Jonas ever so leisurely plodded around the ox and heaved himself onto the front bench. With a lazy flick of his wrist, he urged the fat little beast to trundle onward.
It was fortunate for Mrs. Steward’s machinations that we’d departed so early, for the pace that Jonas insisted on maintaining meant we took twice as long as normal to reach our destination. Mercifully for him, Mrs. Steward was far too engrossed in her plans for her daughter to really notice and in the end, we made it to the railway station (little more than a shabby building and a few planks of sidewalk) with time to spare.
“Come on, Lilly, where are your gloves?” Mrs. Steward shrilled after shepherding us off the cart. “You’ve been too long amongst savages, child.”
I glanced at Jonas who was doing a valiant job at pretending deafness, but he caught my eye and grimaced. I shrugged my shoulders, tired of apologizing for my aunt, and was tempted to stay back with Jonas and the ox. I was convinced that I would be more comfortable with them than with whatever was arriving on the train and the spectacle that Mrs. Steward was sure to create.
“Bee, don’t just stand about there, come along,” Mrs. Steward ordered. “Perhaps there’s a spinster relative tagging along with the Governor’s family that you could engage with. Possibly even an old widower. We must never give up hope, regardless of how frail it might be and your advanced age.”
I sighed heavily, for to be twenty-five and unmarried seemed indeed beyond redemption. Jonas snickered while the ox coughed in sympathy. Resigning myself, I followed the Stewards into the station, praying only to survive the upcoming fiasco with minimum humiliation.
As there wasn’t a waiting room, we were required to stand on the narrow, rickety platform alongside various peddlers of wares and food, and a few merchants waiting to collect deliveries. Mrs. Steward sniffed derisively into her lavender-scented handkerchief, Lilly complained about the crowd, Bobby was petting a goat and I gazed about at the colorful commotion, delighting in all of it.