The powder smells rotten, and burns our eyes and noses as it dissolves. We pick up the heavy paddles our mothers stir with, two girls to each paddle, and make whirlpools in the vat.
It was me, the girl with one blue and one brown eye whispers. The cut on her cheek glows, little stitches where her mother sewed her up. I changed last night.
No—we say, the first girl didn’t remember she was a deer.
She lied, she says. I remember everything.
Whispering so the mothers don’t hear, she tells us how it felt. Like power, she says. She felt the strength in herself, in places her human body isn’t strong. She could have run and not stopped till she was too far for her human legs to carry her back. Away from this place, our mothers, our fathers, us. She says she wept when she changed back. That she longs only for the dark to come, to become again what she has always been inside. She says she doesn’t know how the antlered girl could do it, not changing anymore. She’d want to die if she was her. That she deer-kicked the headboard off her bed, and she’ll show us to prove it.
If only you could feel it, she says to us all. She closes her eyes in remembering. If only you could know.
We must all want to do it, but the red-haired girl beats us to it—when the deer girl closes her blue-brown eyes, the red-haired girl splashes the front of her dress. The water is hot, but not boiling, and the dye powder hasn’t been added yet, so it ought only to frighten her, make her squeal a little. Show her what we think of her gloating—that it’s ugly, and we can be ugly, too. But when the water hits her, she screams, and claws at her chest, and screams again. Some of our mothers come running.
Stupid, careless girl, one mother hisses, thinking she splashed herself by accident. She points at the empty mordant sack. We told you to be careful. Get water, she says, and some of us go. Run now. Get your fathers. Cool water, buckets, cloths.
She helps the girl with one blue eye and one brown eye pull her dress over her head right where we stand, here in the field, our brothers watching. The girl’s neck, down her chest and stomach, between her legs is steaming. Her skin is bright pink and angry-looking. She sobs and moans. The mother blows gently on her skin. Like magic as we watch, little blisters bubble and rise.
*
Our mothers announce that the first of the red clothes is finished. It’s a red cape with a hood, embroidered with white flowers. There are two little holes left at the crown of the head. They present it to the antlered girl in her healing bed with all of us watching.
The girl who got burned is in a bed beside her. Where the mordant liquid touched her skin was blisters, but when our fathers rubbed ointment into her, the blisters turned to deer fur, coarse and short in a streak down her chest. We can see a tuft of it beneath the collar of her nightshirt where she lies in the bed. She glares hate at us, but we have eyes only for our mothers, their new red gift.
We say ooh when they slip it around the antlered girl’s shoulders and tie the ribbon at her throat. She blinks but says nothing still.
Her head now is too heavy for her neck. She leans back into the wall, or must hold her head with her hands when she sits up. We sigh louder for her silence like our mothers want us to, when they draw the hood up her face, help her fit her antlers through the gaps.
So pretty, our mothers say, we think meaning the cape.
So pretty, our brothers say, we think meaning the antlered girl.
Feel, our mothers tell the blind boy, who must admire their work too.
He runs his fingers along the embroidery at her shoulders, the ribbon around her neck. He skates his fingers up the hood, across her forehead.
Still silent, she reaches out to him, guides his hand slowly up to her antlers.
So pretty, he says, touching the velvet, the bone, her soft hair just beneath.
*
When the night comes, we sleep all in the same room again, and we bar the door to keep our parents out. We are afraid to turn, afraid we still won’t. We want it to be all of us, or each of us wants it to be her alone. We imagine it: a roomful of deer, our antlers knocking into each other, the heavy wooded smell of our bodies. The furniture, our blankets and pillows, all our precious things ruined under all our trampling hooves.
The red-haired girl, the one who splashed and burned the blue-and-brown-eyed girl, is the one to change. She is the third girl out of all of us, and though we hold our breath for others, it is only her. She tosses her head. Flicks her tail. Pulls away when we draw close.
Why are you like this? we ask her. We knot our fingers in her fur. Pull and then soothe. We pinch her furred face. Stroke her hooves, thick like bone and dark with dirt. What did you do that we didn’t?
We curl into her heat, press down to make her lie still with us. She is strong, but all of us together are strong too. We can make her do as we wish. We think of the three deer girls, one who bled, one who was kicked, one who burned another. Who felt pain, brought pain down on someone else.
The deer goes still, breathes, big chuffs in and then out again like our fathers in their sleep.
We think we understand now, how to become deer. We hold the knowledge under our tongues like a spoon of honey, let it soften and dissolve, spread through us.
You big dumb thing, we say. We run whorls in her fur with our fingers, but are gentle. We will none of us be the one to hurt her in front of the others, though all our thoughts swell big and dark. You big stupid. You big ugly.
*
In the morning, the red-haired girl walks our fathers and our brothers to the edge of the woods, where she stands on a tree stump, spreads her arms like an angel, and in her stillness and silence calls the real deer to her.
Our brothers tell us this story later, over cubes of meat, the grease shining on all our chins, bubbling red against our still-red teeth: How our fathers said, Be still, strange one, and crouched to shoot around her. How she didn’t flinch when the deer fell, and when they pulled her off the stump, her eyes were still closed, and she was smiling.
She’ll come with us now to hunt, our fathers say. They flock to her, clap her back, put their arms around her. They kiss her head where in the night her antlers sprout. Our mothers purse their lips, but say nothing. She has become a good spinner, strong with the yarn and the thread, and they want her for themselves.
Our good luck charm! our fathers call her. Lady Fortune!
Rabbit’s foot! one father says, and another corrects him, Deer hoof!
*
The antlered girl has stolen a handsaw from our fathers. We see her from the dyeing vats, sprinting toward the woods with the handsaw in the crook of her injured arm, supporting her heavy head with her free hand.
Should we go after her? one of us asks, and our mothers shush us, clap their hands.
Focus, they say, not seeing the antlered girl as she slips between the trees. Keep working.
We are not allowed to use the mordant sacks anymore, and not the paddles, either. Between us all we wring a sheet of red cloth almost as long as the field is, longer than our houses.
The rest of us shrug, shake our heads. We do not know all the rules. If one of us hurts another, she will change. But if the antlered girl hurts herself, then what? Could it be all of us, any of us?
She will be back, one of us whispers.
Maybe she just wants firewood, another says.
Maybe she wants to hunt, too.
Pay attention, our mothers snap. Don’t let the fabric fall.
A handful of us look back to the woods for the antlered girl, who has disappeared into the trees. Most of us have already forgotten her. The ones of us who haven’t pretend to, and wonder if neglect is its own kind of hurting.
We spread our arms, come together and apart to fold the sheet of fabric in on itself, drape it over the line to dry. It runs the length of the drying line like a long wound.
*
Our mothers have made the burned girl a red tunic, the front so deeply v’d her pale deer fur shows down to her belly button
. The embroidery is in a paler red, and swirls around her tiny breasts and up her shoulders like a pair of arms wrapped around her back, folding her in like an embrace.
Beautiful, we say when she glares. So pretty, so fine.
We ask the questions our mothers want us to: Did you use a pattern? Did you fit it to her first? What stitch to fix the edges? What size to keep her itty breasts from popping out? They scold us when we shriek and laugh. We are meant to be learning. Absorbing what they know. Hungry for it.
Soon we will all be dressed in red, not just pretty pieces. Red scarves, red gloves, red hats. Red socks, red underwear, red bras. Red laces for our shoes, red ribbons for our hair. Red until the powder runs dry, until they’ve used what all they’ve dyed. There will be more than we can ever wear, more than there are people. There will be pieces too small for even the littlest babies, pieces too big, pieces finer than they’ll let anyone touch. And soon, though we don’t know how soon, we’ll make the red ourselves. We’ll know what our mothers know. We will step into skillfulness like into the dresses they save for us, waiting until our bodies can do them justice. They remind us now that even looking is a lesson in itself, so we look at the burned girl’s tunic, the red, its intricate pieces and stitching, but her fur draws our eyes away.
*
We have one more thing to show you, our mothers say, and lead us to the room we have never been allowed to enter, where they keep the clothes that can never be ours. They keep us standing outside until we’re bouncing, our pulses quick to see. To remind you what you can be, they say, and when they let us in, we gasp.
The walls gleam white with sun, all the blue so bright. There are shelves lined with mittens, socks, hats and scarves and shawls, the knit so fine it’s invisible or in intricate patterns. There are racks with pants and skirts and aprons, racks of dresses no one has ever worn, the bodices embroidered with tiny flowers or creeping vines or stars. There is a dress with the skirt darkly blue at the bottom, fading prettily to white at the top. There is a dress so crammed with embroidery it looks more white than blue. One dress has full sleeves, animals leaping up its side like a zodiac parade. We are allowed to look, to learn. We walk the rows and shelves like visitors at a museum. Already, we plan for later: how we will tell our brothers of this like they tell us of their hunting trips—the blue and white, the stitching that swirls and leaps and seems to breathe under our fingers.
See this stitch? our mothers say. See how fine?
Some of them lace their fingers together. They nestle their heads upon each other’s shoulders, touch each other’s hair, or necks, or backs. They sigh, smile dreamily. When they speak, it’s like a song, the ones we’ve never heard.
All this will be yours, they say. You will learn to stitch, to weave, to mend. You’ll learn to pull and dye and card. You’ll learn to sing yourselves together through the night.
They add the first shock of red: a deer’s head, sculpted stiff cloth. They’ve knit a rack of red antlers, wire inside to give them shape. They spread like twisted hands, ten points, larger and finer than the antlered girl’s own. One mother slips the head onto her own—it hides her, a perfect mask. She tilts her deer head, her antlers and thread eyelashes all red. They want us to admire them, clap and sing. But it’s all wrong. We’ve seen the real thing. We’ve run our fingers through deer fur, felt the heat from soft black nostrils. We know animal power, the smell of must and fern. Our mothers pass the head between them, each slipping it on, tilting to watch us like they think an animal would. It makes us shiver.
Help, the blind boy cries, and bursts into the room.
Our mothers hiss and make to shove him away before he sees, but remember. His love has gone, he tells us, the antlered girl and the burned girl with her.
We remember: the antlered girl, the handsaw, her cape rippling behind her. Alone. The burned girl, none of us have seen.
Our mothers are not surprised. They turn from us. Some take each other’s hands, others lift a blue skirt, pull the blue embroidery under their fingers like the blind boy does to see. Then they’ve made their choice, they say, and shrug.
A choice? we whisper to ourselves, tasting the word.
We chose this life, they say. We chose you. To give you all this. We left our own mothers, and now so have they.
A choice? we say, as though it has heat to burn us.
Come with us now, they tell us girls, and promise us, finally, red cloth and thread and yarn of our own. Some of us do, the ones who truly forgot the antlered girl, her crown of bone and velvet, her cape rippling behind her. The rest of us choose different.
*
Some of us take the blind boy’s hands. Some of us hold onto each other. Some of us walk on our own. When we look back, there are the vats still steaming pink, our mothers far and small, the long red cloth that seems to cut our world in two.
She’s been gone hours, one of us says.
You saw her? says the blind boy, And you didn’t stop her?
They must be together, right? They weren’t before, but they must be now.
What if it’s nothing? some of us say.
Others say, What if we’re too late?
We do not have to walk far. We see her from farther than we should be able to because of her cape, the bright red where all else is green, brown, gray. She is on her knees beneath the pines, and the saw is in her hands, at the crown of her head resting upon a fallen tree, grinding at her antlers.
The burned girl is nowhere we can see, and we wonder if she has gone for real—we remember the way she longed for her deer legs to carry her too far to ever return.
A choice, we hear our mothers in our heads.
I want them gone, the antlered girl says when we get close. There is blood in her hair, on the sides of her face where she’s gone partly through the bone. She reaches for the blind boy’s hands. Please, I want them gone.
He touches her cheek and then her hair, the cape wet too. Some of us reach for the saw.
Don’t, the red-haired girl says. She steps between us and the antlered girl. Holds out her arms, her palms stained a faded pink now. You don’t know what it could change.
We look at the red-haired girl, who called the wild deer to die. Who splashed the second girl to change and burned her. Her freckled skin, her teeth, her eyes, her bones, all breakable. Each of us could do so little, and change so much. Any of us could be the fourth deer tonight.
Let’s go back, says the red-haired girl. We found her like we wanted, so let’s go back.
Back, to the blue clothes room, an empty red room for us to fill. But we don’t want just to be red, or whatever colors come after. We want our mothers’ secrets, their distance and silence, the songs they share only with each other. We do. But we want our fathers’ secrets, too. We want yards of seeded lace all red unrolling and we want to be the deer. We want the bone-hilt knives of our fathers and the moon blood of our mothers. And we want our brothers’ grace, and the blind boy’s lips, and the antlered girl’s hair under our hands. We want all that we’ve ever been promised and everything that isn’t ours.
Why would you want to be rid of them? some of us ask, but the antlered girl only shakes her head.
Where is the burned girl? we ask instead, and the antlered girl says, Gone. Long gone.
Some of us reach for the saw. Some of us reach for her antlers, to hold her down. The red-haired girl cries, No! and then she’s running toward home, toward our fathers and mothers, but we don’t care. We’ve made our choice.
We take turns holding the antlered girl’s head, wiping the blood off her face. We take turns with the saw, and hold it many of us together, grinding forward and back. One twisted branch comes away, softly like a tooth coming out, and the blind boy takes it in his arms.
They’re warm, he sighs.
The antlered girl sighs too, and touches the little thumb of bone left, and we begin again. We work, we saw, and thinking of our mothers, we begin to sing.
Change us, we ask the moon
. Change us, we ask the blood inside us, the centers in us spinning, grown heavy with what we still don’t know. Change us, we ask the ghost-mothers and fathers that take up space inside our heads. Change us, we ask the blind boy, who kisses our fingers and our shoulder blades, our hair and our backs and our elbows. Change us, we ask the antlered girl as the last of her antlers fall away, and we wait for the dark to come down.
JEFFREY FORD
The Blameless
They were sitting at their respective ends of the couch, drinking coffee. He was telling her about a cucumber salad he’d made a few days earlier, and she was going through the day’s mail, half listening. In the midst of him reeling off his newly invented recipe, she held up a square envelope and set her coffee down on the table next to her.
“A wedding invitation?” she said, cutting him off.
“Who’s it from?”
“The people up the street.”
“Which ones?”
“The Crorys.”
“I have no idea,” he said.
“Three doors down and on the other side. Remember, we met them at Canoe Carnival. Ina’s a secretary at the high school and he’s some kind of engineer.” She opened the envelope and took out a card.
“Who’s getting married?”
“It’s for their daughter, Grace.”
“She’s not even out of high school, I don’t think.”
“It’s not a wedding. It’s an invitation to her exorcism.”
He laughed. “Get outa here.”
“‘Dear Tom and Helen, we hope that you will be able to attend our daughter Grace’s Spring Exorcism’ … It’s at their house on Sunday, May 7th at 7:00 PM. Two weeks from tomorrow.”
“What?”
“This is big now, exorcism,” she said. “Haven’t you heard about it?”
“No.”
Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4 Page 4