Alabaster

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  "Was it the bottle, or the boy?"

  The Bailiff stuffs the blue bandanna back into his trouser pocket and winks at Dancy. "It was the bottle," he says. "And the boy, and some other people you best hope you never have to meet face to face."

  "And the women?"

  "No. It didn't really ever have anything much to do with the Ladies."

  "Aramat's dead," she says, and then another truck roars by, whipping the trash and grit at the side of the interstate into a whirlwind. When it's gone, Dancy wipes the dust off her clothes, and "It was an accident," she says.

  "Well now, that's a shame, I guess. I'd honestly hoped it wouldn't come to that," and the Bailiff shades his eyes and glances up at the sun. "But it was always only a matter of time. Some people are just too damn mean and crazy for their own good. Anyway, I imagine Biancabella can take care of things now."

  "I don't understand."

  "What don't you understand, Dancy Flammarion?"

  "The boy. I mean, whose side are you on?"

  And the Bailiff laughs softly to himself, then, and reaches for the bandanna again.

  "You've got a lot to learn, child. You're a goddamn holy terror, all right, but you've got a lot to learn."

  She stares at him silently, her eyes hidden behind the broken sunglasses, while the Bailiff blows his nose and the cicadas scream at each other.

  "Can I have my duffel bag back," she says. "I left it in your car."

  "Wouldn't you rather have a ride? This sun isn't good for regular folks. I hate to think what it'll do to an albino. You're starting to turn pink already."

  Dancy looks at her forearm, frowns, and then looks back at the Bailiff.

  "What about the others?" she asks.

  The Bailiff raps his knuckles twice on the trunk. "Dead to the world," he says. "At least until sunset. And I owe you one after-"

  "You don't owe me nothing," Dancy says.

  "Then think of it as a temporary cease-fire. It'll be a nice change, having someone to talk to who still breathes."

  Dancy stares at the Monte Carlo, at the Bailiff, and then at the endless, broiling ribbon of I-16 stretching away north and west towards Atlanta and the mountains.

  "But I'm not even sure where I'm going."

  "I thought that's why you have angels, to tell you these things?"

  "They will, eventually."

  "Well, it's only a couple of hours to Macon. How's that for a start?"

  In the marsh, a bird calls out, long-legged swamp bird, and Dancy turns her head and watches as the egret spreads its wide alabaster wings and flaps away across the cordgrass, something black and squirming clutched in its long beak.

  "It's a start," she says, but waits until the egret is only a smudge against the bluewhite sky before she closes the umbrella and follows the Bailiff into the shade of the car.

  For Dame Darcy

  The Well of Stars and Shadow

  Through the deepening slash-pine shadows, the dim and fading shafts of twilight falling pale through the high branches of Shrove Wood, and Dancy Flammarion follows the familiar twists and turns of Wampee Creek. The cinnamon ferns and saw palmetto grown waist high to an eight year old, understory carpet of rust fronds and emerald-sharp leaves, and she watches the uneven ground, mindful where she puts her feet, watching for snakes and steel-jawed traps laid among the pine straw. Traps set for raccoon and bobcats, but they're just as happy to snap shut on little girl ankles, even this strange albino child who can only go out to play when the sun turns fat and red and sinks slow into the swamp.

  "You watch yourself now. Don't go getting lost or hurt," her mother or her grandmother always says, and "I won't. I'm very, very careful," Dancy always reassures them. "I know my way," and she does, the long mile and a half between their cabin and the place where Wampee Creek spills out into the wide, peatdark lake that no one has ever bothered to name. But they worry for her anyway, this girl all they have left in the world, and sometimes, hazy grey evenings when the cicadas are a little quieter than they should be or her mother doesn't like the look of the stars rising over the trees, Dancy carries her grandmother's crucifix in the bib pocket of her overalls, near her heart, and maybe a sprig of pennyroyal or dried angelica root wrapped in a white cotton handkerchief, as well.

  "Never hurt nobody yet to be too cautious," her grandmother might say, and "Better safe than sorry," her mother might nod. So Dancy carries their charms, and wears her own tarnished St. Christopher's medal, and watches where she puts her feet.

  A sudden splash, and she stops, focuses her pink eyes on the crystal waters gurgling between low yellow-white limestone banks. Just an ol' bullfrog, she thinks, scared off by the sound of her boots, the dry crunch of pine needles underfoot, the brittle snap of twigs. "I ain't after you today, Mr. Frog," she says, her voice big in the still and the half light of the Wood. "If I was, you never would'a heard me coming."

  Wampee Creek whispers back to her in its secret, frog-hiding language, conspiracy of moss and ripples, and Dancy Flammarion shrugs her bony shoulders and looks up at the sky. Only indigo scraps and patches visible between the boughs, but enough that she can see it'll be dark soon, and she'd rather make it all the way to Mr. Jube's shack before the greedy shadows swell and swallow everything, the world tumbling down the night's velvet throat, leaving her to pick her way blindly through the trees. Then it won't matter how hard she squints and stares at the ground, then the snakes and traps and stump holes will have her at their mercy, and she learned a long time ago that mercy isn't one of the virtues of night in the Wood.

  "See you sometime else, frog," she says and starts walking again, and by the time Dancy comes to the lake there's only the slimmest rind of dusk hanging low in the sky and an icy white sliver of moon is rising above the pines and cypress crowded like thirsty giants around the shore.

  * * *

  Rain and rust and the baking North Florida sun, time and all its corrosions, to leave only rotting bits of iron mongery where once there was a town; a hundred years ago, and the Hebbard Lumber Company of Philadelphia sliced a path through the canebrake wilderness and stitched it up again with steel rails and creosote cross ties. The men who came to cut the trees, to turn pine and sycamore and bay into weekly wages and callused hands, a billion board feet of timber hauled from the swamp by the company's clattering, steambreath engines, and maybe no one ever gave the lake a name, but the town that grew up around it was christened Hebbard's Mill. 1904, and the company built shotgun houses and a general store, raised a church and school for the children of the men, ran telephone lines all the way from Milligan, and for two decades this was somewhere.

  And then, suddenly, it simply wasn't anymore.

  A cholera epidemic in '21 and rumours of scandal back in Philadelphia, embezzlement and doctored books, death, and, finally, nervous whispers about the lake, blue lights seen floating above the black waters late at night. Blue lights or lights the color of infection, gangrene will-o'-the-wisps, and the men began to leave a year before the company took the town apart, pulled nails from weathered slats, shipped away the pieces that could be sold or used elsewhere and left the rest to decay, a belated offering to the swamp so at least maybe the bad luck wouldn't follow them.

  Nothing remaining now but the scattered hulks of steel-boilers and steam pipes lost amongst the tall brown grass and dead leaves, abandoned washtubs and the disintegrating skeletons of company trucks; Hebbard's Mill gone all the way back to the forgotten gods of the Apalachee, back to the bears and alligators, and hardly ever anyone out her but Mr. Jube in his shack to tend the small cemetery set back among the live oaks and magnolias.

  Dancy Flammarion pauses where the clear, clean waters of Wampee Creek bleed themselves away into the peat-stained lake, always a moment's hesitation because there are ghosts here, ghosts and worse things than ghosts, she thinks. But then she sees the lantern burning bright on Mr. Jube's porch, the warm and welcoming orange-white glow of burning kerosene, and the old man waves to her from his r
ocking chair. She looks over her shoulder at the forest, the inky spaces between the trees, the trail leading back the way she's come, back to her mother and grandmother and their small cabin near Eleanore Road. They've never met Mr. Jube, but sometimes they send him a jar of blackberry preserves or a loaf of bread, anyway, trusting Dancy, that she's wise enough to know good men from bad.

  She walks quickly along the muddy cattail-choked shore, the short path he keeps clear for her, and in another moment, she's standing safe on the porch. Mr. Jube smiles his wide, false-toothed smile for her, tobacco-yellowed dentures and his skin the color of molasses, a full white beard to make up for his bald head. "Well now," he says, "what you doin' all the way out here this evening, Miss Dancy?"

  "I never had to have a reason before," she says, and "No," he replies. "I guess you never did. Just, some nights, well, some nights ain't the same as all the others."

  "Want me to go back home again?" and the old man stares at her and rubs his beard a moment.

  "No, girl. Now that you're here, you'd best stay a while. What's wrong with your arm there?"

  "Nothing. I got scratched up by some creeper briars, that's all," she says and shows him the pricked and bleeding place on her left forearm, the small red welts on her pale skin.

  "Well, we ought to put something on that, some iodine, don't you think?" and before she can say yes or no, he gets up. "You just wait right here," he tells her, points to the crooked stool near his rocker, one leg longer than the other two, or two legs shorter than the third, and she obediently sits down for him. The screen door slams loud, echoes far across the lake, and Dancy waits alone until Mr. Jube comes back with a small bottle of iodine and a cotton ball.

  "It don't hurt much," she says, trying not to wince, pretending the antiseptic doesn't sting as he dabs the brownish liquid on her outstretched arm. "It's just a scratch."

  "Never can tell with briars. Better safe than sorry."

  "You sound like my Momma," Dancy says and frowns.

  "Is that a fact?"

  "She says that all the time."

  "Well, then, your Momma must be a right smart lady," and when he's done, Mr. Jube screws the cap back on the bottle and blows on Dancy's arm a moment, his breath like stale pipe smoke and apple cider. Then he tosses the cotton ball away into the hungry darkness waiting at the edges of the porch and sits in his chair again; the wood creaks and pops, and he looks at the label on the bottle before setting it down near his feet.

  "She taught me how to read," Dancy tells him. "I've read all her books. I've read the whole Bible."

  But Dancy's already told him that a dozen other times, and Mr. Jube only nods his bald head for her and stares out at the night and the wide, still pool. His eyes almost the same color as the water, old man eyes grown suddenly distant and alert, and she knows he's listening to the lake.

  "Did you hear something?" she asks, but he doesn't reply, leans forward a few inches and stares intently into the dark. So Dancy sits quietly and watches the restless cloud of bugs flitting about the lantern's chimney, waiting patiently until he's ready to talk to her again.

  "How 'bout a game of checkers?" he asks, finally, sitting up straight in his rocking chair. "Think you're up to a few games a checkers tonight?"

  "Sure," she says, even though she really doesn't like checkers and doesn't want to play, would much rather he told her stories about his days in New Orleans and St. Louis, or showed her the snakes and frogs and turtles that he catches to sell to the men from Tallahassee.

  "I'll make us a pot of coffee," he says, still watching the night. "I got some jellybeans, too. I've been saving out all the red ones for you."

  "I like the green ones best."

  Mr. Jube shakes his head, sighs, and looks away from the lake. "Damn. I could'a swore it was the red ones you liked best."

  "I like the red ones, too." And she sits on the stool while he glances back towards the water one more time. That look on his face that she's never sure means he's afraid or he's curious, both maybe, and after a few moments more he stands up and takes the lantern off its hook, and Dancy Flammarion follows him inside.

  * * *

  Almost a whole hour later, and Dancy is not talking because she knows that Mr. Jube doesn't like to talk or have to listen to anyone else talk while he's playing checkers, not even when he's letting her win. She sucks on a yellow jellybean, letting the tart and sugary coating slowly dissolve in her mouth, stripping the candy down to its gummy, bland center, and Mr. Jube taps his fingers lightly on the edge of the table, tap, tap, tap, tap, deliberate woodpecker noise to make her wonder what he's thinking about. His face all wrinkled concentration and his eyes fixed on the board between them, but she knows his mind is somewhere else; he takes a sip of his black coffee and slides a red checker towards her. Dancy jumps it, and two more besides, and Mr. Jube scratches his head and pretends to be surprised.

  "Now why didn't I see that?" he says.

  "'Cause you ain't trying, that's why," Dancy says and spits what's left of the yellow jellybean out into the palm of her left hand.

  "Yeah? Well, maybe, or maybe you're just gettin' too good for me."

  Dancy adds the three captured checkers to the neat stack in front of her. "King me," she says and pops the jellybean back into her mouth.

  "Look at that. Now you're gettin' my checkers all sticky."

  "It isn't any fun when you don't even try to win. I don't want to play anymore. Tell me a story, instead."

  "Bad luck to leave a game unfinished."

  Dancy stares at him for a moment, trying to remember if she's ever heard it was bad luck not to finish a game of checkers, the sort of thing her grandmother would have taught her, if it was true, so she's pretty sure he's just making it up.

  "I ain't never heard-"

  "You haven't ever heard."

  "I haven't ever heard it was bad luck not to finish a game of checkers."

  "Lots of things you ain't heard, child."

  Dancy fishes another jellybean from the big bag on the table, a pink one, and she thinks about putting it back because the pink ones taste like Pepto-Bismol.

  "That's why I come way out here to talk to you," she says and puts the pink jellybean back in the bag, takes out an orange one, instead.

  "I look like a schoolteacher?"

  "I ain't never seen a schoolteacher," Dancy mumbles around the orange jellybean, "so I wouldn't know if you do or not."

  "Bet your Momma don't let you sass her like that," Mr. Jube says and looks over his shoulder at the door, at the dark windows on either side of it like bookends.

  "You could tell again me about the time you saw the loup-garou, or the time you caught the two-headed snapping turtle and-"

  "I never said that was a snapper. Just an old cooter terrapin, that's all," Mr. Jube says, still looking at the door, and Dancy sighs and swallows the orange jellybean without bothering to chew it.

  "Or the time you went deep-sea fishin' and-"

  "Hush a minute, girl," the old man growls at her and holds up one index finger like he's pointing the way to Heaven, so Dancy sits still and waits for him to be finished with whatever's gotten his attention. Whatever's he's listening to, listening for, and then she hears it, too, and "Oh," she whispers. "What is that, Mr. Jube?"

  "You just sit right there, Dancy," he whispers back, "and don't you say nothin' else, not one word, till I say so," and now she's afraid, the urgent tremble in his voice and this sound she's never heard before; something far away, but coming closer, rumble so deep she feels it in her bones, her teeth, all the way down in her soul.

  "You shouldn't'a come out here tonight, Dancy," Mr. Jube says. "But you didn't know."

  Dancy shakes her head, no, no, no, she couldn't have known, and she grips the edge of the table, grits her teeth together tight, and the rumbling sound rises and falls like hurricane breath and locomotive wrecks. The earth splitting apart beneath her feet and the sky above her head broken by the weight of the stars; the bag of jelly
beans falls over, spilling a rainbow spray on the cabin floor, and the checkers skitter and dance across the board.

  "I should'a told you all this a long time ago," he says. "Guess I should'a told you a hell of a lot of things… " but she can hardly hear him now, regretful words buried deep in the roar, and across the room a quart Ball mason jar full of pennies and nickels tumbles off a windowsill and bursts. Dancy shuts her eyes tight, not wanting to see what could ever make such a terrible racket. So loud there's no room left for anything else, the whole wide world pressed flat and dry and silent as an old briar rose held forever between Bible-thin pages, the world pressed brittle, and she can't even remember how to pray.

  The salty, copper taste of blood, sharp pain nailed between her eyes, and "You make it stop!" she screams. "Oh god, Mr. Jube, make it stop right now!" and it does, meanest splinter of the empty moment between her frantic heartbeats, space between the throbbing in her head, and the only thing left behind is the murmuring swamp outside the cabin-the frogs and cricket fiddles, cicadas and night birds. Dancy slowly opens her eyes, blinks at the back of Mr. Jube's bald head, and when she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, there's a smear of spit and crimson.

  I bit my tongue, she thinks. That's all, I just bit my own stupid tongue.

  "Now, you do what I said," Mr. Jube tells her, firm and a bright hint of fear around the edges of his voice, the way her grandmother sounded the day that Dancy found a rabid fox hiding under their back porch.

  "This is all gonna be done and finished 'fore you even know it. You listenin' to me, child?"

  "Jesus, ain't it done already?" she asks, and he glares over his shoulder at her.

  "What d'you think your Momma would think about you blasphemin' like that?"

  "I bet you she'd say something worse'n that, if she was here."

  Mr. Jube shakes his head and turns back to the door, the blank, unseeing windows. "Well, she ain't here, so you're gonna mind me. And this ain't done just yet. We got a little bit more to come. But we gonna be fine, Dancy. You do exactly what I say and everything's gonna be jake."