An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

  “Put them in the brigbox until shift,” Sergeant Warner said. “Today’s too big a day to deal with them properly, but that should get the message through.”

  A guard grabbed Aster by the elbow and dragged her to the hatch. She couldn’t walk properly, sore as she was. Giselle got up to follow, limping, but Warner grasped the waistband of her knickers and pulled. “On second thought, not you,” he said, releasing his grip so that she crashed to the floor. “According to reports, you haven’t reported for evening or morning headcounts for some time.”

  Giselle balled into herself on the hard metal ground, but the guard pulled Aster along and closed the hatch so she could no longer see. The brig was a tiny cell the height of a cornstalk, the width and depth of a newborn colt. She could not stand or lie, only sit with her knees pulled into her chest, her bottom and back and everything aching like whooping cough.

  * * *

  Aster didn’t realize she’d passed out until voices awoke her. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sleeping, several hours or several minutes. With her eyes still closed, she tried to stretch, but remembered she was locked inside a brigbox.

  “Maybe things’ll calm down around here then,” one of the guards said from the outside. They spoke in a strange accent, but she understood, if with difficulty.

  “Where do they do it? I’ve never been to one before,” another asked.

  “E deck.”

  Aster shifted as much as she could in the tight space and pressed her ear against the metal wall.

  “I don’t understand why they’re doing it so quickly.”

  “My guess is to restore order. That guard went and got his head blown off and people’ve lost faith in the Sovereignty’s ability to govern, what with the blackouts and all. This should get things moving back in the right direction.”

  Aster coughed loudly to let them know she was awake. “Water,” she said. “Water, please, sirs.”

  Keys clanked, then the tiny door was open. “Out,” one said, pulling her. It hurt to stand, even more than it did when they first threw her in.

  “Drink,” said the other, handing her a metal bowl. Aster grabbed it ravenously and started to sip, then stopped suddenly. She scrunched her face and twisted her tongue. It was piss. The two of them laughed riotously.

  How pathetic that this was a source of humor for them, tricking someone into drinking waste. Aster swallowed, put her lips to the bowl, closed her eyes, and drank the remainder of the urine without stopping for air. She handed the empty bowl to one of the guards. “Thank you, sir,” she said, then licked her lips and tried not to gag. “That was delightful. I love urine.”

  The guard grabbed her by the back of the neck and pushed her toward a metal box, not her previous enclosure but another in the room. “Just for being smart,” the man said, “you’re going back in.” He unhinged the lock and swung open the door. Giselle sat crouched inside, her body a mess of flowering bruises: irises, peonies, pharynxia, sheep’s tongue blossoms, violets—rhododendron in some places. Beneath skin, blood seeped from inflamed vessels. Giselle’s head drooped to her chest. She wheezed, and her eyes were closed.

  The guard shoved Aster inside so that she barreled into Giselle’s body. When he snapped the door shut, she and Giselle were forced to embrace, their limbs twisting and joining like the molecule models Lune drew.

  The men continued to talk for a few minutes more, until they quieted and left the cabin altogether. Aster tried to reposition, but it was impossible.

  “You stink worse than death,” Giselle said, the words coming out in strangled pants. Aster could feel her warm breath. It tickled her elbow and made her shiver.

  “You’re awake,” said Aster.

  “Been awake.”

  “I thought they knocked you out.”

  “They didn’t.” Giselle’s voice shook, couldn’t seem to find its footing.

  “Are you all right?” Aster asked stupidly. She wished she hadn’t.

  Giselle released a loud, labored breath. “It was fine. I liked what they done to me.”

  There was so much to which the body could become accustomed. Aster used to think, Never again—never again or I will would surely die, but she never did. “I regret that this happened to you,” she said, though she didn’t know exactly what had. She could guess. The cruelty of the guards only took a few forms. They were predictable in their violence. “Do you wish me to—”

  “Do you know what those men were saying?” Giselle asked. “I only understood here and there. What’s a coronation?”

  Aster had caught most of what the guards said, but had come in too late to understand the context. Giselle had provided the missing conversational link. “That means they’re appointing the new sovereign.”

  Both of their breathing had calmed, reduced from heaves to occasional whimpering.

  “Already? God above, I thought we had more time.” Aster did too. “It’s gonna be that man you used to always talk about it, isn’t it? Lieutenant. Like the Surgeon said: You got to do something. You got to stop it.” Though Giselle had never met him, Aster’s stories had apparently been vivid enough to convey his darkness.

  “Yes. I will march right up to E deck and tell them not to do it,” said Aster.

  “You could try. They might not listen to you . . . But what about the Surgeon?”

  Before Aster could respond, a guard opened the door. “Back home with you,” he announced, then led them limping down the narrow passageways to Q deck. This early, everything felt void, no smells of cooking, no wandering children crying for their meemas.

  “Can I piggyback?” Giselle asked. Her voice came from behind Aster, who glanced back to find Giselle leaning up against the wall. Aster hoisted her onto her back, her forearms beneath the underside of Giselle’s knees, which were sticky.

  * * *

  Except for a few straggling women, Quarry Wing was empty when they returned. None asked what had happened. Everyone else was already off to their chores, gathering eggs and heating baths. Aster eased Giselle down into the cot. “Do you want a bath?”

  She shrugged, so Aster went to the sink and filled small pail halfway up with water, heated it on the kitchen stove. After it reached a boil, she filled the remainder with cool water and tested the temperature with her fingers.

  Aster reached up to her bedpost and grabbed her medicine belt, took out a small pouch of dried calendula and a little vessel of silba oil, mixing them into the water along with a light squeeze of soap. Using a small flannel cloth, she began to wash Giselle, careful of the wounds. “Too hot?” she asked.

  Giselle shrugged again. She barely flinched when Aster rubbed over the bruises with soapy water. When it came time to clean the in-betweens of her legs, Aster first squeezed water from the rag over the hair and skin, then sponged the area quickly in two swipes, stopping when Giselle stiffened and forced her eyes shut.

  “Aster?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to do something or not?”

  Aster dipped the washcloth into the bucket, swirled, then wrung it out. “Flip over,” she said, then finished with Giselle’s chest, stomach, and thighs. Giselle turned slowly, and Aster draped the sheet over her lower half and got to work on her back.

  Giselle grabbed Aster’s wrist. “If you’re going to do something, you do it big,” she said. “Burn the house down.”

  “What can I possibly do? I am as helpless as you.”

  “Just something! Anything!” Giselle shoved Aster away, spilling the pail of water sitting on the stool and knocking Aster to the floor, her shoulder and back making painful contact. “I’m clean. Go. Go!” Giselle lowered her hand down and reached for the fallen bucket, only to bash it away.

  Aster grabbed the chair and slowly pulled herself up into a standing position, using her boots for traction. She patted Giselle’s back dry with a small towel, then brought the sheet up to cover her fully.

  “Wiping me clean won’t help. Neither will patting me dry.
Neither will feeding me or giving me water,” said Giselle.

  Aster understood. Those were all such small things in comparison to the disaster of Lieutenant at Matilda’s helm. Drops of goodness in a pool of fresh blood.

  xiv

  The year Aster met Lieutenant, a decade ago now, she and Giselle still played house.

  Aster smeared wood ash against her cheeks to make it look like she had a beard, then said in her most husbandly voice, “Bring me my pipe, stupid woman. I wish to read the newspaper and cannot do so without first having a smoke.”

  A girl a few years Aster’s senior—seventeen?—poked her head in through the hatch, belly fat with child. “Ey, witch-freak, toss me my stockings,” she said, nodding toward the bundle of soiled laundry beneath Aster’s feet: her tuffet.

  “Don’t you know he’s the man of the house?” said Giselle, playing Wife to Aster’s Husband. “You better give him the respect he deserves.”

  The girl in the corridor crossed her arms and leaned into the hatch frame. “Fine, then. Witch-freak, could you please toss me my stockings, if it pleases you? Sir?”

  “I am not a witch,” said Aster. “I am a scientist.” The freak part she could not contest and let stand. She tore through the pile of laundry till she found the girl’s thick, off-white hose, one knee darned with red thread, the other patched with brown corduroy. “These?”

  “Yeah, give them here.”

  Aster tossed them to her and cleared her throat to get back in character. “Damnit, Wife, I said get me my pipe.”

  “All right, all right,” Giselle said. She tied the sleeves of her pullover about her neck, a makeshift apron, then dusted talcum powder here and there over the burgundy-colored wool. The idea was she’d been making butternut fry cakes and flour had spilled upon her. Aster appreciated Giselle’s commitment to visual realism, and nodded her head in salute before unfolding an old star map to pretend it was the Matilda Morning Herald. “Food shortages continue as a result of the blight,” Aster fake-read. The two remained for a good while in companionable, married silence, Giselle dusting, Aster reading.

  It was a long time ago now, but Aster still remembered the way she counted down the minutes in her head, waiting to say: “Wife, I require supper. I am hungry, as the mental effort required to digest politics is quite taxing. You would not understand.” She copied, perhaps exaggeratedly, those things she’d overheard when she worked the very occasional shift in the upperdecks, polishing brass mantelpieces as Mr. Jacobs or Mr. Callahan or Mr. Brown scolded their wives. These men had white skin and perfect clothes. “I said, make me supper!”

  Giselle whipped her head toward Aster, swept the “silver” she’d been polishing (tin mugs) to the rusted iron floor. “Cook your own goddamn supper, fool, if you so hungry.” She stomped forward wearing heels one size too large, crossed her arms over her chest. “Why don’t you ask that slut secretary of yours to make you supper? Huh? Huh? You saw her again, didn’t you?”

  Aster slid her hands into her trouser pockets, and this time when she spoke, she used her own voice and not Husband’s, the curtness giving way, the vowels rounding out. “This is the part where Husband would typically hit Wife as a punitive measure against her back-talking, but I do not want to hurt you.” She spoke the words resolutely, prepared for Giselle to condemn her peculiar speech mannerisms.

  Giselle had become invested in her role, however, and said only, “Hit me. I don’t mind.”

  “Is this what you call a dare?” Aster asked. “Or are you testing me? Is this one of your tests of my loyalty? I have told you before, I find those upsetting and an inaccurate measure of my regard for you.”

  “It’s the rules is all. You’re the man, and I’m the woman. When I get out of line, you got to pop me, so pop me.”

  Aster put down her fake pipe, stood. “Fine. I’ll strike you so that we may preserve the integrity of the game, but I will do so gently, to minimize your physical discomfort.”

  “Do it hard,” said Giselle, putting on her Woman voice, which sounded very similar to her fourteen-year-old voice, a notch more rasp to it. “Just don’t do it so much that I start crying and carrying on. I don’t want my makeup running.”

  So Husband smacked Wife and Wife fell back onto the cot. Aster climbed on top of her, Husband’s knees straddling Wife’s thighs, forearms on either side of her head. A small trickle of blood dampened the old bandage over Giselle’s jaw.

  Aster reached a finger down, drew it across the strip of fabric. “I seem to have opened up your cut.”

  Giselle’s chest heaved. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said, but Aster was already sliding off the cot. Her med-kit was near the rest of her possessions, under her bunk. She removed a fresh cloth, adhesive tape, and cream she’d made a fortnight ago, using ingredients from her botanarium.

  “Your face is your greatest advantage,” Aster told her, quoting something her Aint Melusine oft said. “It is pretty, and it makes men favor you. So we have to keep it pretty.” Giselle sat up on her elbows, and Aster returned to straddle her once more. She dressed the small slit, rubbed in the ointment to ensure there’d be no scar.

  “Even if I had a hundred scars across my face I’d still be pretty,” said Giselle, braggadocio her armor, her only armor. “Come on. Back to the game,” she said, the adhesive in place.

  “What is Husband supposed to do now?” Aster asked.

  Giselle’s tongue swiped across the surface of her bottom lip slickly. “He holds Wife down and then goes.”

  “Goes where?”

  Giselle rolled her eyes. “Just move around. You know.”

  “Like so?” asked Aster.

  “Yes.”

  Husband rubbed against Wife and so on and all that, stopping only when he heard Aint Melusine on the other side of the hatch, bidding the girls, “Quit fooling around like little children. There are chores to do before Reveille, and the others have already begun.”

  Aster hoisted herself up, sat at the edge of the bed.

  “Why’d you stop?” asked Giselle.

  “This is childish, and you heard Ainy, I have to go do my chores.”

  “Aint Melusine won’t care if you skip yours. I’ll do them for you. Okay? We still got awhile yet before work shifts.”

  “No. I would like to check on the status of my plants,” Aster said. She worked to breed, hybridize, and otherwise corrupt the florae in her botanarium, and as such, sought their company. They were her progeny, and she their mother. The wreath dragons remained of particular interest, stalky stems rising up a most deep shade of green. The parent plants, a tinny wreath and a corliss, produced hearty offspring, already surpassing their parentage. Aster hoped in time the fruit would produce an effective taste-concealing enzyme.

  Giselle pouted, lips poked out like a keloid scar, but when Aster said, “We will play later,” Giselle smiled, and so did Aster, and at the time it’d felt so right and like everything would always be good between them.

  They were sisters, in spirit if not in blood, and in blood if not in spirit. They did not share direct ancestry, but like all humankind, possessed a genetic link that went back, back, back for generations, all the way to the Great Lifehouse. Back to a time when house connoted a specific breed of domicile rather than loosely calling to mind some vague notion with no visual referent.

  “A house is like the tents women sleep in out in the Field Decks sometimes during harvest,” Giselle had explained the very first time they’d played.

  “So the point of the game is to pretend to sleep in the Field Decks?” Aster asked.

  “No, the point is we act like a family. A real live family.”

  Aster liked to think of Giselle as her sister, her twin. She pretended they once inhabited the same womb. Hot and warm and pressed together inside their mother. A single zygote halved.

  * * *

  Aster and Giselle both turned fifteen within a month of each other and switched from playing house to doing theater. Had more dignity to it. They
were adults now.

  Girls and women who lived in their corridor plopped mattresses on top of each other to watch them perform, stacks of six, then stacks of four, then stacks of two, so everybody who came could see the stage. They did it in the Scullery, the biggest cabin except for the galley kitchen next door, which was too narrow to put on a proper play.

  Wife stumbled onto stage, chest stuffed with balled-up knickers, and Husband handed her an old medicine bottle. Giselle unscrewed the cap and breathed in the contents dramatically. “Oh, what marvelous perfume,” she cried. Pressing the package to her chest, she sighed in that way the women down on Q deck never did, but seemed common enough up on D, E, F, G. Women in Quarry Wing, where they lived, sighed too, but it had a different sound to it. Heavy and deep and quickly disguised as the opening notes of a dirgy lullaby. “Thank you, Archibald,” said Giselle. “Thank you truly.”

  “Here—allow me to apply the fragrance to your bosom,” Aster said, her speech still occasionally unsteady. What she’d meant to relay was Husband’s desire to apply a dab of perfume from the jugular notch of Wife’s sternum bone down to her umbilicus—navel. Belly button.

  Different sorts of words belonged to different sorts of occasions, and Aster had not yet matched which went where. It was like what Aint Melusine was always saying, that Aster was one who looked sideways, or one who saw through the corner of her eyes. When you saw the world sideways, you couldn’t always get a proper handle on things.

  “How about we put the perfume on my neck instead?” Giselle suggested, and unbuttoned her collar. “It’s too cold for the girls to be out and about and jiggling and all that noise,” she added, her natural way of speaking slipping through the charade.

  “No. That is not sufficient. If I wished it to go on your neck, I would have said so, but I would like it to go on your bosom,” said Husband—not Aster—a distinction she wished maintained for the official record.