by Jaym Gates
“It’ll be okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Boss Yang or to myself. The clouds were gathering over Chinatown again, and I stretched my fingers toward the sky, empty of curses for the first time in years.
Her Curse, How Gently It Comes Undone
Haralambi Markov
You rise at dawn as you’ve done every day since you were a little girl, even though you don’t need to anymore. Still, your body aches for the work you never have to do again. In that moment when sleep clings to your eyelids, you believe you’re in the village. The silk in your bed and the mattress you sink in, not unlike a marsh, tell you otherwise. You’ve traded that life and traded it well.
Want has no place in your household. Need has been forgotten — by your husband, his form slack on his side of the bed; by your children, who have spent the first months in this grand house playing games, but never by you. As with all deals struck in the dead of night, yours is written in someone else’s blood and the rewards are as transient as the specters you can bring forth with your tongue.
No, you will not tend to a household until your skin cracks and palms weep, but you have your duties. Silently, as a shade yourself, you slide from the bed and leave its warmth behind. The carpet swallows your steps whole and the air is cold. The wardrobe creaks open, but you needn’t worry — your husband sleeps through everything now.
Behind the wood carvings of tulips and hyacinths roost your dresses — so bright that even in the dark it seems you’ve stolen every color in the world. Gowns that turn you into a thing of beauty; skirts so heavy and so lush, they erase your ancestry; jewels so breathtaking they turn your blood blue and smoothen the harshness of your features.
None serve your purpose and you reach deep within until you touch familiar coarseness. The dress dulls in comparison in a dead, ashen grey. It snags on your figure and scratches your skin, but it’s what you’ve known in your youth and you welcome it. For all their beauty, for all the times you’ve wished to wear them while mending old rags, these gowns are untrue — an enchantment not of your making. One that traps their wearer.
Once dressed, you take to the corridors which in the slimming dark shrink to a needle’s ear and widen to a church’s hall. This is how you know you’re on the right path. You walk in the dark and seek out the thread. Your hand sways left to right until it lands on the taut thread, which exists only for you. Further and further it leads across halls, then through a dark meant for no mortal man. You step on stone, moss and the unspoken things between mothers and daughters.
The door has changed again. Now it’s a perfect circle of iron forged to resemble a fattened face. Its cheeks are marred with boils and stitches over rough scars. Oval eyes roll back in and the small mouth puckers in mysterious ecstasy as you approach. It all happens so slowly you want to shut your eyes. The lock has appeared. You insert your right forefinger between the parted puffy lips and steady yourself for the prick, which still makes you tremble and shiver.
The door shudders, smacks its lips around your finger and opens its mouth wide enough so you can enter. Your workstation is thankfully the same. Spoons and needles, cloth and herbs, knives and vials await. Dried clove and spearmint fill your nostrils with their overpowering smell, while underneath creeps the savoury scent of dried blood.
Tables line all walls. Stains, old and new, testify of the favors, big and small, you’ve been paid to pluck from the gardens of possibility, justly or not. The center is where you look first, where floats a thin, wide saucer smelted from silver so pure as to be mistaken for the down of a dove. Within, bewitched waters reflect the contents of your first commission — the one that has earned you your house. It’s the one commission that haunts you the most.
You peer in the saucer and are met with the tower’s ground hall bathed in morning light. She drags the body of another warrior who’s tried to free her from the tower, within which you imprisoned her. She’s confined to a dress as rich as the ones you own, far better than any chains and shackles. It’s your greatest work — white silk bathed in the princess’s blood and a bodice beaded with the shattered bones from the leg you cut off yourself.
You repeat the curses three times as you’ve done every morning since you’ve kept her prisoner.
“A skirt of blood so you never carry armor.
A bodice of bone so you never hold a sword.
A leg of metal so you never charge into battle.”
Curses work better in threes and like a spider you weave yours finer than any woman in your family ever has. Your virtuosity at the craft was virtue enough to practice. Because you could, because you are good. Because you wanted to become so accomplished as to challenge fate, to turn your family’s fortune around. For witches are never meant to pick up the fruit of their labor for themselves, but only to grow it. You challenged this and won. Now you have to live with yourself.
“I’ve done it,” you speak to the shadows as if a declaration will keep your house and your new fortune safe. It has to.
For now, it’s the princess that suffers and not you. She’s whom your patron fears most — the warrior, who takes charge with blades, who knows her defiance wins her enemies, who slays the monstrous children of your patron, their lovers and partners in trade. And she suffers well. Who is she but a woman with a weapon and you’re so much — privy to the secrets that can break her like a twig. All you have to do is bend. Still, you wish you really knew what deal it was you said yes to, for your prisoner had saved your village and children not once but twice where you had failed.
The memory still grips you with its fleshless fingers. Day had melted into night and the sky had swollen with reds and pinks. A twilight wind rushed through the trees as the princess and her knights emerged from the forest, leading the villages’ children to safety. Everyone looked weather-beaten, but not her — the wind fanned her mane of hair and the will in her eyes spoke of power. When all eyes were on her, she was the hero from the tales every village and town spun about her. Back straightened, hands married to sword and shield, she was heedless of the weight of the world and you believed she could carry the skies, if she had to.
Now, the same woman wrestles with the corpses of her fallen comrades drained of all her previous strength. You can’t stand to watch her drag the man by the shoulders. Her fake leg scrapes the stone underneath. You can almost see the sparks beneath her skirts.
You finish your vigil, test your curses again and prepare yourself for the trip to her prison, not bothering to cover your face. you may know her, but she’s seen many such as you. The sun beats down heavy when you, carrying a basket filled with food, reach into the clearing where the tower looms over the wilderness. Your patron abides by the rules and invited challengers to test their power — a welcome distraction to winnow the ranks of knights and defenders.
The tower won’t be beat. Your design will not allow it, but still you come day after day to check for flaws and weaknesses — see the perfection of your work and laugh at the fruitless attempts of the princess to escape. She can’t escape and when you’ve checked the veracity of your claim, you make yourself be heard and felt.
A few loud steps in the gravel and a birdsong whistle lure her. Her face peers through the grid window. Sweat beaded her face and up close, the fatigue and exertion become more evident.
“Oh, thank the Holy Father! You’re alive,” you say and give a wide smile chest aflutter with relief. What is one more role, one more lie.
“I haven’t survived this many battlefields to be done in by a mere tower.” Her tone irritates and you think of how to best make her fear the tower once you return.
“Of course not. I’m stupid to think any other way.”
“I meant no offense. It’s hard to stay here and do nothing, when so many others die. I should be there.” She looks into the distance not that there’s something to see other than tree crowns and bushes, then she returns her gaze on you. “Have you heard more news?”
“Nothing but rumors. T
his is but a small village and the lone riders that pass through here don’t stay for more than a night and speak to no one. Not even your saviors dare speak. But we can read faces and it’s not good.”
The princess winced at ‘savior’, but you had to bend her mind as well as her body. She might have lost her strength, but her will is an even deadlier weapon.
“This can’t go any longer. I’ll free myself and then the witch will hurt in her last moments in this world.” You shiver at the vehemence in the threat.
“I wish it so badly. The forest has become so dangerous. We’re all afraid to go even in daylight. But how will you do it, Your Highness? The tower won’t open to more than one man and no wise man has broken through the enchantments. You know this!” The mechanisms of your tower have been proven time and time and yet, she still insists on breaking free herself. How could she pose a threat to your patron?
For a moment, you lose all pity for her. Let her rot. But you don’t show your contempt. You look into her face with the expectant innocence of a child wanting to hear their mother assure them all will be all right. The princess hesitates and sighs. She hangs her head low and the mess of her hair meets the iron bars.
Good. You’ve chipped away at her spirit.
“Your Highness, we all pray for the day a strong prince will come to free you and you’ll be able to protect us again. Until then, please take what little we have and keep your strength.”
You hand over, one by one, the fruits and meats you’ve carried — all laced with potions that steal from her muscles. Her hand trembles as she accepts with such trust, it again ignites your conscience, but you give her all nonetheless and with a few kind words part ways to return to your house.
In the time afterwards, you see to your children, plump and rosy, unlike you growing up. Wealth erases poverty the fastest in children. Youth has no patience for strife and it forgets. You see your household run and entertain guests who wish their fortunes told — the one talent you could practice in this city where the future is never certain and secure.
In the evenings, when your rich skirts grow heavy, you check on the princess, hoping and fearing she’s escaped, and go to your husband who already sleeps. You shed the fabrics and the absence of a corset reminds you that the sharp pain you feel in your chest is of your own doing. Before you chase after your own sleep, you lean over your husband’s ear and whisper:
“If something happens, run far, far away and forget my name and yours, for they will bring you great misfortunes.” Then you sigh in some semblance of relief, until the pain grabs you again tomorrow.
#
Conversing with rich folk feels like spells you haven’t learnt used against you. Yes, your dresses fit and their seams mirror the ones worn by the ladies you entertain — the illusion is complete. Yet, you catch the prickle of their eyes when you say the wrong thing or say the right thing the wrong way. Eccentricity can only be so much forgiven in polite society and you already feel like treading onto a river during winter — calm and firm on the surface, yet one step could lead you to your death.
Months have passed and your purse has grown heavy for money finds money — the type of magic all men wield. Your son has been sent far away to study so he can build a future that does not rely on your patron’s promise. Paper binds your boy’s life and now your husband’s signature charts a better future. A branch of your family tree will grow heavy with fruit.
Now you work on the one you wish to see in bloom — your daughter. You smile and laugh with the ladies who pat their corsets and twist their fingers like willows in the wind so all their rings and bracelets reflect light like rainbow dust. Their affluence is their weapon, their ornaments their language. You welcome them whenever they fancy, you offer them all they do not deserve and you read what you don’t see in the cards — for these women can undo you with a single word whispered to their husbands. To such a woman, you have resigned yourself to trust your daughter.
The calling may very well come for her, but what good is your knowledge compared to what nobility can offer. She will be a beauty — you have seen to it. You’ve armored her with skin as soft as a duckling’s down, hair a sliver of night and armed eyes that pierce the heart who bears them head on. She will come into a different kind of power that never will require her to speak with the things in the dark.
The princess’s name bloomed on painted lips as soon as their skirts quieted.
“Princess Hecelina has gone missing for good. My husband, as you all know, works closely with the king and no one has seen as much as a hoof print,” said a lady with heavy emeralds on her ears as big as grapes.
“How inconvenient to disappear when she’s most needed. Our summer manor has been ransacked more than once by unspeakable things,” said another with hair of white gold.
“Serve you all right for depending on her — a whole country following a woman? I can’t fathom the ludicrousness,” objected a third with cat-like eyes.
“But Marie Jasmine, she has killed a dragon. My cousin fought with her and he says she killed it with no more than one blow. That has to prove her divine right to lead against the unholy servants of hell. As unladylike as it is,” interjected Emerald Earrings.
“Oh, I believe it. My father hosted a banquet in her honor last year. The arms on that body,” Marie Jasmine shuddered, “and she came in dressed as a stable boy. The scandal almost ruined him.”
You listen and nod, hoping the houses of the women burn and nothing of their wealth remains to separate them from the people you grew up with but polluted lineages.
Tea cups clank onto dishes and you weave your intentions while the herbs’ warmth still has them enthralled. You’re smarter than to think you can own them on your own.
“My daughter is of age,” you say as low and clear, the implication apparent. “She needs proper education. There are things I want to teach her, which I never knew myself. How to be a proper lady. For I merely see things. My beginnings are humble and it has been through your charity I found such happiness here. You, as my dear friends, I hope will extend your arms in friendship and see the potential in my daughter.”
A potential they can’t comprehend. You could teach her so many things as your mother did you once, but how will she use them. Will she cross lines you haven’t gotten to, yet? Just to see if she can? It’s a dangerous future in a place like this.
You continue to recite your speech like you’ve done every time they come over without much success. Inviting charity in a rich woman’s heart might just be the most difficult spell to pull off. You stare into their glazed eyes searching for submission, when you feel the tug at your underskirts. It’s so weak you pretend not to feel it, but it persists until the whole of your skirts are pulled in the direction of the door by the force of all the babies’ fists you helped not come into this world.
Heed you must, although your breath won’t return and your knees shake. It’s harder to reach that place in daytime for the shadows between worlds grow thin, but you soon stand in front of that door, then in your room and you see them circling around the pool — a skeleton wearing lace tight around each limb and bone. Its surface is a constellation of gems and stones and golden threads.
Atop the skull, a crown of golden spikes and blades sharper than a butcher’s knife reflect light as if it were a halo. Only the face is left open and that is the one place covered in flesh — a face belonging to neither man nor woman, neither a nobleman nor a peasant. To you it looks like the first face ever created. It’s the face before all the details have been drawn in. Where the skin ends, blood rings the lace in faded red.
You avert your gaze from those soulless eyes and bow. A visit is an omen, a warning and you wish you could divinate the meaning, foresee the outcome. Should it end so early — only one of your children secured for? You swallow before you address.
“Your visit brings me honor.” It’s a stiff and formal greeting, one you never mastered, but you know better than to risk angering your pa
tron.
“Honor has nothing to do with my visit.” They say, countless voices layered and sewn into one storm. “Your ineptitude has.”
You have known since the moment you pledged yourself to this primordial evil that this day will come. In less than a year, though? That breaks your heart. Nothing is as you wish it to be. You’ve done not early enough for your family. Not nearly enough to break the fate that follows witches who want more than their lot.
“My curses stand. I see her day and night. Nothing has changed,” you speak with certainty in the hopes that this is a trap you can boast through.
“Then you must certainly have known of our dear guest’s attempts to leave instructions to her rescuers and chose to ignore it.” The skeleton circles around the room to come by your side. Its presence chills you.
“No, that’s not possible. She has no paper, no ink. I have seen to that.”
By the cruel smile on that impossible face, you expect the worst. Your patron rolls their bony fingers in a fist, rings and stones singing like chimes in the wind. When they part there’s a strip of cloth and you recognize it immediately — the princess’s underskirts. Red lines swirl into writing.
“You have to understand, Avicia. There is a reason for this woman to be favored so by chance and fate. This is the reason I chose you to keep her away. I could kill you right here and go handle this myself, but I won’t. You show much promise, so I will just scold you for now and let you resolve this situation. Do not disappoint me a second time.”
“I will discipline her.”
“Good. Dissuade her from struggling. Drive her into sleep like death, if you have to. Just do not allow her to flee.”
“You have my word.”
Your patron laughs. You have no idea how an empty chest can produce such laughter, but it does and you quake with it.
“Child, your word does not concern me. I have your family’s lives in my hands — now that is worth more. Do not make me show you what I can do with it.”