by Julia Fine
I went to our telephone and picked up the receiver, but could not bring myself to dial the number for the cottage. Mrs. Blott could not answer, Peter would surely be confused, and I had no desire to make awkward conversation with Matthew. Still, how could I not be there? I called for Marlowe, retrieved my jacket and a flashlight, grabbed a pastry from the kitchen, and set out.
WE TOOK THE main road, which was well paved and lit sparingly by flickering streetlamps. Through the murmur of a softened rain, I listened for the rumble of a car, a bicycle’s sputter, some fellow traveler on the road. Nothing passed us.
The only other life I sensed on our half-hour walk was the forest, dark and whispering beside me. It had always been there beckoning, a regular temptation, but where before the wonder had been one of possibilities—shimmering futures like fish to be caught—the sport had changed so that I was the one being baited. The memory of the shadow self I’d seen was a hook in my heart, the lure lax but set to tighten any moment. The thought that I might suddenly be reeled in without notice frightened me. Even more difficult to parse was the notion that I wanted, even needed, this bond with the forest. I had left some vital part of myself, barely discovered, in the touch of the shadow wood’s tree bark, in the depths of my shadow self’s eyes. I worried that my feet would redirect me, my subconscious would send me back into the wild before I’d had the chance to talk things through with Peter, or say goodbye to Mrs. Blott. I was relieved to finally reach her cottage, bright and cozy, smoke puffing from its stone-piled chimney with every appearance of normalcy, even if I knew she did not wait for me inside.
I’d left my key when I set out that afternoon, and was thus reduced to knocking like a stranger, covering my fist with my jacket so as not to disturb the wooden door. I scolded myself for forgetting my gloves, which could have allowed me a more meaningful farewell, a stroke of Mrs. Blott’s cheek, a clasp of her hand. Perhaps I could find a pair inside.
The wind picked up, pushing off my hood. What could Matthew and Peter be doing? Cold and wet, suddenly quite tired, I pounded again.
“Coming!” came Matthew’s muffled voice, along with a squeak I imagined to be a chair across the floor. He opened the door and squinted. “Maisie?” he said.
Matthew’s hair was mussed. One cheek was pink, engraved with the pattern of whatever had been pressed against it. He smelled like plain soap and rosemary. He blinked.
“What’s the matter?” he asked me, stifling a yawn.
“Have you been sleeping?” I noted the disdain in my voice, but did not try to check it. How could he go to bed a few short hours after finding his aunt lifeless, leave my bumbling father on his own to settle her affairs?
“Stand back and let me in,” I said, “it’s cold out here, and I need to see Peter at once.”
“What?” Matthew cracked his neck, stretching, still sloughing off sleep. I stepped past him into the kitchen. The table held a cup of tea, a ragged notepad, an open textbook with the pages he’d used as a pillow bent down at their corners.
“He’s upstairs, yes? With the body? Or have you sent him off into the village?”
“What?” Matthew frowned at me, his nose wrinkled, his hair almost golden in the light of the dying kitchen fire.
“My father. The body,” I said slowly. “Mrs. Blott? Your great-aunt? Her leg is gone, but you still have the rest of her. Or did you clean her up, and bury her, and find time for a nap in these three hours I’ve been gone?”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t be useless.” I started up the stairs, calling out, “Peter?”
“Maisie,” said Matthew.
I paused. The second floor was quiet and dark. When I looked back, I saw that Matthew’s face had resolved into a serious expression. I felt a chill incongruous with the toasty cottage, Marlowe sprawled comfortably by the door, the familiar hydrangea pattern of the quilted cotton curtains.
“Maisie,” said Matthew, his voice low, “it hasn’t been three hours since you left—it’s been three days.”
The Silver Necklace
Emma, 1817
When Emma Blakely was born, the first thing her mother noticed was the birthmark: a palm-sized patch on the baby’s cheek, the angry pink of a fading burn. The accoucheur assured her it was common in infants, though likely a sign that the girl would be wild. Cecilia Blakely was most displeased. Cecilia liked smooth-skinned, quiet children who kept, most days, to the nursery, children who could be paraded in front of her guests and made to perform the songs the governess had taught them in sweet, reedy sopranos; children to be applauded and praised. Children like Emma’s older sisters. She did not want a child who would embarrass her through poor performance, poor behavior, or poor looks.
Because the mark was not a danger to the child, the doctors Cecilia consulted all advised she leave it be; any attempt to surgically correct it would result in a scar cruder than the original marking. They said it was merely a sign Cecilia had eaten too many strawberries during pregnancy. The girl would never be a beauty, but she still might have a fine life, develop other skills deemed admirable by a husband.
EMMA LEARNED OF her own ugliness at an early age. Her favorite doll had smooth ivory skin, the rouge marks round on the apple of each cheek.
“Like me,” Emma said proudly to her eldest sister, holding up the little figure with its helmet of curls and soft cloth body. She pressed the doll’s cool china cheek to her own.
“Not like you,” the sister scoffed. “More like Grandmother, or Mother. Your mark is too large, and much too bright. You’re ugly.”
Emma dropped the doll to the floor, letting it land facedown on the thin nursery carpet.
“Besides,” continued that same sister, primly, “yours is only on the one cheek, and it doesn’t wipe off. Everyone knows that beautiful women look the same from one side to the other.” The sister knelt to retrieve the doll, straightening its petticoats, brushing a bit of dust from its forehead. Emma hoped that its nose might have chipped in the fall; that the rouge of one cheek might sport a fracture. When her sister sat the doll down on a rocking chair, hands crossed demurely over its skirts, Emma saw that its downward plunge had done nothing. The face was still vacant, serene, symmetrical.
Emma was left at the house when her sisters went into the city. She was warned not to stray to the edge of the yard, where passersby might see her. Eventually she was no longer invited to perform for the guests with her sisters, and would sit up in the nursery with the governess when company came, listening to the clinking of silverware, the parade of voices laughing down below.
CECILIA BLAKELY FELT sorry for her youngest daughter. Loved her, in her way. Emma’s sister was right: everyone did know that beauty was symmetrical, that symmetry and balance, not just in appearance but in management of household, in marriage, in bearing, was the secret to the gentry’s success. Cecilia’s youngest had burst from the womb at extreme disadvantage, consequently putting her nearest relations at extreme disadvantage. No one of any worth would want Emma as such, and with so many other daughters to consider, the Blakelys could scarce afford the sort of dowry that might influence a husband. The only solution to Emma was to slice the mark off, but no doctor would attempt it. Lye soap did nothing. Lavender and liniments and laudanum all failed. Cecilia had nightmares of her child grown old, confined to an attic, sold off to the circus. She shuddered when she saw Emma’s face in the light.
And so she decided that despite her reservations, despite a firm faith in the ordinary and a lifetime of belittling the silliness of villagers and their myths, she’d venture down from the great house, disguised in her serving maid’s shawl, and beg for aid from the wisewoman who lived by the river. It was September, the year 1817.
“Ask the wood,” advised the woman. “Draw a circle in the dirt and tell the trees what you desire. Leave the girl there overnight, and they will grant you what you wish.”
And so as a last, desperate resort, Cecilia took her little daughter to the forest. She dresse
d the child in a hooded fur cloak that would cover the birthmark and, said the wisewoman, scare away the wolves. Emma rubbed its plushness against her unmarred cheek. She was used to luxury, having spent her short life at Urizon, but had never felt something quite so sensual, lined in such a lovely, lusty hue.
“Where are we going?” Emma asked her mother, who had paused at the lowest tier of the back garden. Cecilia said nothing. Her mouth had turned lipless. She sniffed.
After a brief journey on an unmarked path, angling around prickly branches and ducking to avoid low-flying birds, Cecilia stopped near a patch of purple hyssop. As instructed, she drew a series of spirals in the dirt, then spread a checkered blanket at their center.
“Sit,” she said to Emma, who had never seen her mother even crouch to pluck a flower. Emma was hesitant. “Sit,” said Cecilia again. Emma sat.
“You must stay here tonight.” Cecilia’s voice already sounded far away, though she’d moved only a few feet from her daughter. “I’ve packed you a basket with supper and snacks. Don’t eat too much at once. And don’t get dirty.”
“What will you eat?” asked Emma. “Won’t you stay with me?”
Cecilia ran her tongue over her top set of teeth. “No,” she said. “No, you’ll be here alone. But this will fix you. When I come for you tomorrow, you’ll be beautiful.”
Emma nodded. It was early autumn, and her new cloak was warm. The basket was filled with breads and cakes, and Emma nibbled at the edge of a scone while she watched her mother leave. It would be worth a night in the wood, she thought, to be beautiful. To protect herself and her family from the feeling that clotted in her throat when people pointed or laughed. She lifted two fingers to her cheek, feeling for the mark, but without view of her reflection she could not distinguish fair skin from foul.
Emma sang to herself. She ate several biscuits. She watched the suncast shadows of leaves stretch their borders and expand with the twilight, until the wood was entirely in shade.
Emma thought it to be long past her bedtime—the air had grown chilly, the sounds of the forest were sharp. Emma shivered. Every crack of a twig, every rustle of leaves, could be a creature about to attack her. The darkness made the stretch of wood seem endless. Emma tried to keep up with her singing, but found her voice thinning and quavering, until her courage failed her and her song fully died out.
“Mother?” Emma whispered. From the edge of her circle came two glowing sets of eyes, four yellow orbs, each with its own black, pinpricked pupil.
Emma burrowed deeper into her cape, pulled its hood over her head until her face was covered by sanguine silk lining. The newspaper had reported the slaughter of the last wolf in the region just several months prior to her outing. Her father had read the account of its death aloud to the family, applauding the industrious hunters, savoring the gory details. Emma had wondered how they knew that single wolf had been the last one.
The wolves came cautiously closer in slow, languid lopes. Emma could feel the air crackle as they sniffed, could hear the heavy panting of their breath. She hoped the scent of the beast that had first worn the skin now resting on her shoulders remained, deterring them from whatever nastiness awaited little girls in the night wood. That was what Cecilia had promised when presenting Emma with the cape. She said the wisewoman had blessed it. It would keep Emma from harm.
But the wolves were so close that Emma felt the musky heat of them. A tear escaped each of her eyes, wetting the cloak’s lining. When she shook the hood away, she saw a black snout stretch across Cecilia’s circle of protection.
The wolf licked Emma’s cheek with a long, wet tongue, like a cat grooming its young. Emma was frozen, her heart pelting her ribs. Instinctively, she held out a hand, as she would to her own dear pets. The wolf opened its mouth. Spittle hung from sharp teeth. Strong jaws snapped shut.
They closed around the place where Emma’s hand had been mere seconds before. The animal took a step forward, onto the blanket where Emma had been seated. The girl was gone. The wolves gathered.
THROUGH THE VEIL of the forest Emma heard them, their howls echoing from far away. She shrugged off her fur-lined cloak, much too warm for the new midsummer climate. She covered her eyes against the sudden burst of light.
7
I sat at Mrs. Blott’s kitchen table, drumming my fingers on a plastic place mat set out to protect me from its wood, while Matthew relayed the events that had transpired, to his knowledge, three days prior.
At first, as I’d predicted, he and Peter had stood dumbstruck as they watched me follow Marlowe into the rain. I imagined Peter watching me go, my green rain jacket receding, hood pulled tight atop my head. I’d been so proud of my defiance. I’d stomped through Mrs. Blott’s garden, fraught with the knowledge she’d no longer see it bloom.
“That was the last I saw your father. He said he hoped you had gone home,” Matthew told me, “but he seemed pretty nervous. His mouth was sort of . . .” He contorted his own into a perfect mimicry of Peter under pressure, the jaw stretched in an uncomfortable way so that when closed, all of the teeth sat misaligned.
“He kept on saying you’d be at Urizon,” Matthew went on. “I told him if you weren’t there, to call and let me know.”
Peter had nodded again, put on his coat, and set off with an unusual air of dreaminess about him (or so Matthew described it. I told him that Peter often had that air when he had found some pressing problem, as if his mind were miles away from us, his thoughts slow-drifting clouds).
Left alone to deal with Mrs. Blott’s body, Matthew had ventured up the stairs to examine the postmortem injury. The amputation, he told me, had been messy, its aftereffects foul.
“When I phoned the police, I pleaded ignorance. Said I thought it was an animal attack, that I’d found the front door open. They came . . . ,” he said, and here his voice finally cracked. Again he rubbed at his right eyebrow. “The undertaker came for the body soon after. She was cremated the next day. I buried her cat in the yard.”
“And Peter?” I asked.
“I never heard. I assumed you two were safely back at home.”
“And we’d made no effort to contact you? We just left Mrs. Blott to . . .” I was unsure of how to finish.
Matthew shrugged, though not unkindly. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked. “Something to eat?”
Any disturbance he felt at my current situation, my father’s disappearance, the malleability of time, Matthew hid under that expression of competent concern, much as he had when first confronted with my power. He filled a kettle, fought thrice to light the stove, and opened his aunt’s pantry to a wide array of treasures. Realization did not dawn until he’d spread four types of biscuits on a plate, at which point I was pleased to see his steady eyes reveal a hint of panic.
“Can you have . . . ,” he started. “Does . . . all that . . . happen when you eat? How do you . . .”
My diet was the same as any other, though I used my back molars more consistently than Peter or Mrs. Blott. Peter had always stressed the need for silverware, the import of small bites so that I could avoid my lips. I was adept at wriggling a variety of foods through straws, hinging my jaw to fit full cabbage leaves, and, of course, finding excuses when the meals that I was served weren’t to my taste. Mrs. Blott had always managed our cooking. We had more of these same biscuits in the freezer at Urizon. Each bite of her baked goods, I knew, would bring me further from her, as if once I’d eaten the last of her stores she would be gone from me completely. I tried not to dwell on the image of an empty pantry, echoing her empty cottage.
I’d been hungry on arrival, but found my appetite gone.
“If Peter isn’t here,” I said, ignoring Matthew’s half question, “then he must be out looking for me. Unless he’s already back home.” I stood. “He must be worried. I should go.”
“Why don’t we call your house?” said Matthew. “See if your father answers?”
I let the phone ring twenty times. We’d disconnected ou
r machine. I remembered the message that I’d left for Mrs. Blott that very morning, so it seemed, letting her know that I’d be by. “I have to go,” I said.
“Let me drive you. Just give me five minutes to get ready.”
MATTHEW INSISTED ON accompanying me inside Urizon proper. He’d put on a sweatshirt adorned with his college’s mascot, a bear, and I followed its scowl through the house as we searched it for Peter. I found myself glad to have him with me to push open wooden doors, remove dust sheets from sculptures, crack dry jokes at portraits; I was amazed by Matthew’s ease with the unknown. I would not, until much later, understand the calculation of the comfort he provided, the care with which he examined each possible choice before he acted, the tone of each word before he spoke.
He could tell I was afraid, although I tried hard not to show it. Voice loud, hair curling down onto his collar, the Matthew I met that night was jovial, even funny, doing what he could to abate my fears. Our quest for my father proved more futile with each empty room’s alibi, the enormity of my isolation growing larger as the house around me tripled in size.
“You know,” Matthew said, an hour in, lifting the key lid of a dust-covered piano to pluck several sour notes, “I once visited the village, as a child. My aunt told me this whole estate was empty. It’s weird to be inside after imagining what it would be like for so many years.”
We’d unveiled the old music room: a plump, retired cello, a stringless harp, shelves stuffed with pencil-marked sheet music. I lingered in the doorway, watching him sound out the melody of an old children’s song.