by Ishbelle Bee
The village in which we live was called Appledoor and was a small, sleepy-eyed place surrounded by fields of apple trees and ancient woodland. I had always felt as safe as a bed bug in this place. Snuggled up, squashed with love. But on the day of my sixteenth birthday things began to change. There was a great thunderstorm that day: black ribbons of darkness spread across the sky and the clouds were shaped like dragons, soaring and screaming. That evening the schoolmaster, Mr Quipple, was found drowned in the river. He had committed suicide, left no note.
Aunt Eva thought he was suspicious because he never grew any flowers in his garden. She said on Sundays he would read his newspaper in the garden and shout at the local tomcat if it was lazing about. She says that men who have gardens without any flowers or plants have no soul. She said the tomcat probably pushed him in the river. Or a mermaid lured him in, swishing her aquamarine tail and fluttering her moon-silver eyelashes at him. She kept the newspaper article of his death in the toilet next to our ancestor, Reginald Crump.
I asked her if anything else awful ever happened in this town and she said no, but she suspected the meat at the local butchers. “It’s probably human,” she said, then laughed out loud, a shocking laughter with hints of electricity in it that zapped and tingled.
She has a huge mane of thick hair that she dyes a vibrant flame red and crimps. It falls down to her waist like crazy snakes. I think she really is a beautiful woman. She’s something strange from a fairy tale, or maybe she’s Queen Titania. She’s made of raw magic and rare delights. She has just turned fifty and says she has never been in love. I don’t know if this makes her sad. I don’t really know how to feel about it at all. I think magical creatures find it difficult to live amongst humans, in a human world. She must be so frustrated. She must be so lonely. But she won’t tell me.
My mother is not beautiful like her sister, Eva. She is a tall, strong woman and a wonderful gardener. Hands always in the earth. Hands always making something grow. She campaigns for the suffragettes. I have no father. My mother told me he was a salesman just passing through Appledoor. He wooed her with magic tricks and then got her pregnant and left. There are no pictures of him, only her memories.
She said he was handsome with a lopsided smile and full of promises. And full of shit, as Aunt Eva often tells me. I am like my mother, tall and plain. My eyes are very pale, like a ghost. My mother tells me I have my father’s eyes. Hers are baby blue. They are the colour of safety and calm waters. Mine are the colour of moth wings, hiding and fluttering in a secret wardrobe. Just like Daddy.
On the day of my abduction, the sun was boiling like an egg. The hottest day on record for fifty years. I woke up sweating, my thighs damp. I’d dreamt that Aunt Eva was a mermaid swimming in the river, throwing insults at Mr Wishbone in his boat. I dreamt that mother was standing in a field of bright golden corn and that Daddy came to visit me, came into my room with a basket of apples. He said he knew a magic trick and he waved his hand over those green apples and they turned into bright red pomegranates, heavy magic orbs. He said they were delicious, “Why don’t you taste one, sweetheart?” His hair was greasy and his hands nervous. I thought, he’s just a con man. He’s a grin without a face. Something not to be trusted.
I heard Aunt Eva’s voice, like a soft siren coming from the waters, “Oh, my poor girl. That bastard. That bastard. He’s sold you.” The dream ended. I heard my mother leave the house and the neighbours’ dog howl. I pulled myself out of bed and stood in front of my mirror, examining myself. I thought, I have not been ravished yet, I wonder what it would feel like. I was sixteen and I had not been kissed. In fact, no boys had ever shown any interest in me at all.
I am only sixteen
there is plenty of
time.
I sat with Aunt Eva in her garden. She made homemade lemonade and put something alcoholic in it. She wore an extravagant, very low cut green dress with a string of fake pearls. She smelt of honey and spices. The heat beat down on us; we were two eggs in a frying pan sizzling gently. A quill rested in her hand like a wand, tapping against the garden chair. I think she would be capable of serious witchcraft. She wiped her lips with her sleeve and looked at me. “Darling child. Do you know that I own a shotgun?” I shook my head, I didn’t. She looked at me quite seriously. I could feel some dark magic humming under her words.
“I want you to listen very carefully to me, Pomegranate. I think something very bad is going to happen to you today. I have heard it in dreams. I have seen it in the smile of cats. Read it in the frog spawn.” She sat back into her sun chair and glugged down the remainder of her lemonade. I didn’t know whether to be worried or to laugh.
“Will you protect me, Auntie, with your shotgun?” I said, almost mocking her.
She stared at me. She had something alien in her eyes, something from a remote star.
“When he comes for you, I will be with you, and I will stop it.”
A long silence ensued between us. I could hear the wind pick up over the water, rustling, secretive. A cool sleepiness. She yawned and brushed strands of hair out of her eyes and then smiled a deep secret smile like a crocodile, and looked upon me. “I am going to tell you a story about me and your mother, when we were young girls in Appledoor. Would you like that, Pomegranate?”
“Yes,” I said, not really thinking. The sun was in my eyes, making me sleepy, making me dizzy. And so she began. She told me the tale, which she had told me many times. She told me the tale of the Lightning Tree in the field of flowers. And she said when she had finished the tale, she would take me to the field and show me the tree. And so I listened. I shut my eyes and let myself slip into the words, like maple syrup oozing over pancakes, with satisfying easiness.
When Eva and my mother were ten years old they went to live in a foundlings home called Honeybee House, the other side of the river. Their parents, my grandparents, had died in an accident. A train had derailed off a bridge; they had been trapped inside and drowned. Eva and mother never talk about their parents and they have no pictures of them. I wonder sometimes if they ever existed, if they are both strange women from another galaxy, touched with stardust. Maybe all my ancestors are borrowed from other people, photographs Aunt Eva has collected from her flea markets and adopted – made into an intricate jigsaw past. A fake scrapbook of memories. I wonder then, who are these women really? Maybe they are not human. Maybe they are the daughters of gods dropped from the heavens. And then, what would that make me?
The Lightning Tree
Aunt Eva – as lazy as a cat, as beautiful as fire roses, as mad as the buzzing of bees – began her story. A mile outside Appledoor was a huge field, lush with wild grasses, with a solitary tree. A tree that had been hit by lightning and was black as charcoal and fifty feet high. If you placed your hands on it, it felt warm. Like apple pie from the oven. And it smelt. It smelt of syrup and of blood. When Aunt Eva and mother were little girls they would come and visit the tree and play in its branches. They would cast spells by its roots and make wishes in its secret holes. It never spoke to them. It just listened and watched. Aunt Eva said she would leave secret messages for her sister, and sometimes gifts. Once she hung a jade hairpin from its branches, a dangling gift on a pink ribbon.
On the summer of their eighteenth birthdays, my father arrived into the village selling soap, and wooed my mother with his crooked charming smile and perfumed words. He stayed clear of Aunt Eva. He was frightened of her, thought she was a witch. He thought of her as one of those women too beautiful for men. Only the gods would touch her. My mother took my father to show him the lightning tree. He had no interest in such things. He held her hand by the roots of that tree, promised her a thousand things and then fucked her. It was over quickly. He left in the morning, soap samples jiggering in his bag.
But Aunt Eva had done something. She had carved an image of him out of the tree. She had dug in the earth where he had cum by the roots and smeared it over the doll. And she had chanted under a red moon and
hung him from the tree. While my mother wept, pregnant with me, Eva was enforcing revenge. And the gods listened to her.
He was made impotent and diseased. And Aunt Eva laughed. And the gods laughed. And my mother wept.
A few years later, to return himself to full health my father, a born salesman, struck a deal with a demon. In exchange for sex. And today, Aunt Eva reminded me, was the day of collection.
We walked out of the village, hand in hand. Aunt Eva’s hair as red as fire, my own pale, and in comparison, uninteresting. Through the fields, lush with wildflowers, bordered with ancient woodlands. It was sizzling hot, scissor hot. As hot as Eva’s hair. The weather for devils to play in. The sky was heart pink, the air smelt of cinnamon cakes, so sweet and hot. It was as though I was falling under a spell.
“Tell me about this man who is coming to collect me, Auntie,” I said. And she turned to me and replied, “He is the Lord of the Underworld. He lives in a palace of clocks. He has an obsession with time and with ladybirds.”
“How do you know all this?”
“The gods talk to me in dreams. Tell me things I shouldn’t know.”
“Why does he like ladybirds?”
“I was told by my mother when I was a little girl that ladybirds are little witches. Maybe that’s why he likes to collect them.”
And we walked into the field where the lightning tree stood amidst an ocean of bursting poppies, little flames burning through the grasses, thousands and thousands of them. We walked through them, as though we were walking through fire, our hands brushing their soft heads, all that red and black, like ladybirds. The colour of the underworld. The tree had a door on it. It was a portal. We sat and waited by the roots in the field of fire flowers. Flowers like bloodstains on a bedsheet.
“Will it hurt?” I said.
“Only the first time,” Aunt Eva replied.
The door opened and out he stepped. A small man, dark haired, black spectacles with a waistcoat covered in tiny ladybirds. He was ugly to me and I was much taller than him. I felt repulsion. He reminded me of dead things: rotten fungi, withered nettles and tripe. He was sticking in my throat and he was enjoying seeing me sickened. He approached us, soft footed, admiring the view of poppies.
“Pomegranate. How lovely to meet you at last. You are not beautiful, but that really doesn’t matter,” and he smiled, sourly.
Aunt Eva spoke. “Will you make a deal with me to save her from this?”
The Lord of the Underworld examined her carefully. “You are a ladybird,” and he circled her excitedly. I did not excite him at all. “I am afraid there are no deals to be struck. A deal was made with her father. I cannot break such a contract.”
“I will go in her place,” Aunt Eva replied.
“So tempting an offer. I would love to have you in my kingdom. In my bedchamber, ladybird. But I cannot.”
Aunt Eva approached him and placed her hand on his heart and he started to scream. She was speaking magic words. The sky broke into lightning flashes, dozens of them, electrical frenzy. I hunched by the roots of the tree, crying, terrified as my Aunt held the Lord Of the Underworld. Her hand gripping his hair in her hands. It was killing her. The gods watched on, and they didn’t know who would win.
And then he grabbed her and kissed her deeply, sucking the life from her. And she fell to the ground in the field of poppies, as though a sleeping princess. I thought, what passion he has for her. No one will ever feel like that for me. And she turned into poppies.
“Don’t worry, Pomegranate. I have put her under an enchantment, turned her into flowers. She is not dead. I could not kill something that wonderful.”
Then he took me by the hand and led me through the doorway into his world.
A Room Full of Pomegranates
The bedchamber of the Lord of the Underworld had ladybirds on everything. Embroidered on the pillowcases, crawling up the curtains, dancing over the mirror.
He takes me to bed. I can hear all those clocks ticking. He hurts me and then he does it again and again. Locks me in the room. He had no other use for me.
I am told I am his wife. I am the wife of the Lord of the Underworld.
The room has little paintings, which hang on the wall – each created in dark oils and each one a picture of a pomegranate. Each one a picture of me, I suppose. There must be a hundred of them. Each one beautiful and sinister. The seeds of the pomegranates are eyes; I am watched from every corner of the bedroom by his spies.
I open a little jewelled box and inside it rest a sharp letter opener, encrusted with ruby jewels.
I stab myself in the heart.
I am floating on the boat of Mr Wishbone, the boat with the little red sail. It is the red of a pomegranate. It is so peaceful, the waters gentle, the air smells of milk, such wonderful softness.
We are sailing away, we are sailing into space.
III: Mr Fingers Attempts to Retrieve his Wife
I awoke in the field of poppies. My Aunt had been turned into flowers and I was alone.
I ran back to Aunt Eva’s cottage. I ran as fast as I could and locked myself in. Into her bedroom, under the covers I hid. I wished I could have changed into different shapes. I wish I was magical like Aunt Eva and could fight him, but all I could do was run away. I fell asleep and dreamt I was back in the room surrounded by pictures of pomegranates. Their eyes were full of ladybirds, fat ruby shapes opening their wings. I shouted out for Aunt Eva to save me but she had turned into a goddess in a coffin made of red flowers. And the poppies were laughing, the lightning tree was laughing, the pomegranates were laughing and he was coming back for me, he was coming back to teach me a lesson.
When I woke up, the moon had risen in the sky, a silver sickle, glinting like a scimitar. I descended the staircase and into the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Dried lavender and sage hung in bunches from the window and pots of fresh mint sat by the sink, a stone frog peered at me, propping the door ajar. This was a witch’s kitchen. Why did I not inherit any magic? Moonlight drifted lazily through the room and it was then I heard the knocking at the door. I let him in. What else could I do?
He examined me like a sleepy spider and sat himself at the kitchen table, while I poured the tea. One of Aunt Eva’s fruit cakes sat like a heavy omen near the teapot.
“I am not accustomed to my wives committing suicide to escape me. That will not happen again, do you understand?”
I did not answer him.
He adjusted his spectacles. “Of course, I don’t want you to be unhappy. I know that you will be lonely in the Underworld and so I have decided to grant you six months of every year on Earth, and then you will return to me for the following six. If you disobey me again, I will break this agreement. Will you agree to this?”
I nodded my head.
“You are not overly intelligent and you are not very interesting, but you are my wife, my possession, and we must try to be civil to one another.”
“What about my Aunt Eva?” I asked.
“For the six months you spend with me in the Underworld she will remain as poppies, under my enchantment. When you return to the Earth, she will transform back. And I realize she may very well try to kill me again, which I greatly look forward to,” and he smiled slyly. He continued, “I am not overly fond of women, but I could become very attached to her. She has a spark about her.”
“Perhaps you should seek the company of men. My Aunt has some lovely gowns upstairs you could try on,” and I laughed.
He slapped me across the face so hard I fell onto the floor. “Watch your tongue.”
I stood up rather shakily. “May I get some clothes from upstairs before we leave?”
He nodded, not even bothering to look at me. I walked steadily up the staircase into Aunt Eva’s bedroom and took the shotgun from under her bed. As I walked downstairs I pointed the gun at his head. He looked genuinely surprised. I pulled the trigger and his head exploded all over the wall. “That’s for slapping me, you pile of dogshit!”
I kept hold of the shotgun and ran back out of the town into the field of poppies. Aunt Eva was standing up, her hair alive like flames, poppies still scattered over her body plopping gently to the earth. She hugged me, half in a daze.
“I shot him, Aunt Eva. I blew his head off.”
She answered, “He won’t be dead.”
“I don’t want to go back with him,” I screamed. Poppies were still attached to her hair, which was long, blood red like lava. Suddenly, through a haze of poppy heads, he appeared and seized her by the hair, twisting it in his hands. I held the shotgun up again but I couldn’t get a clear shot between the two of them. Aunt Eva shouted something out and lightning started to dance in the skies and it fell, bolt after bolt onto him. Electrified, he flew off her and I shot him again, his head exploding. His headless body fell backwards, softly, into the poppies.
“What do we do now, Aunt Eva?”
“We stuff him in the tree,” she cried, grabbing his feet. “It will hold him as a coffin.” And so we stuffed his body into the whorl of the tree and filled it with soil, and Aunt Eva bound it with a heavy charm of poppies.
We could hear him screaming in the tree: “Bitches!”
We left that field of poppies and went home. Aunt Eva burnt black candles and sage and charmed little bells round the cottage. She painted spiral symbols on my face and arms with ink and I fell asleep on the sofa. And we waited.
Mr Fingers in the tree
Bitches
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