Songs for Dark Seasons

by Lisa Hannett

  “Mother,” I said, heart spasming. “You’re still here.”

  Every last giblet had been nibbled off; the flesh around them was slashed but not bleeding. Chunks were missing from her limbs, a wound yawned in her side. Her mouth was a coagulant mess. Otherwise, she was whole. Undevoured.

  She crossed her arms as if to say, Obviously. Glowered like it was my fault she hadn’t gone yet. Like I had kept her waiting, shrivelling in the cold. Like I hadn’t done all I could to see her off. She held my gaze and, gradually, started to hunch.

  “Stop it,” I said. She pulled her knees in close, flaunting how compact she could make herself. How small. “Just hold right there.”

  I ran for One-Shot, who was supposed to help shovel the bones. He was snoring on an armchair by his cabin’s woodstove, shirt unbuttoned, pants puddled round his feet. The room reeked of stale goon and the old man was heavy with it, his legs deadweight as I rummaged for the keys. By the time I got back to the pens, Claude had huddled herself so tiny, even Nettie would seem huge beside her. “Mother, please.”

  While she pretzelled herself, I snagged entrails from the bucket and launched them over the fence. Never trust a fox, I figured. Sure, they looked placid enough with their bellies bloated, but offer them a chance to bite and they’d gobble it. I raced in to wrangle Claude before the animals snapped--but they didn’t stir. Not even the vixen who usually had such a mouth on her. They just laid there in packs, thin veils of snow blowing over their russet fur. Not a breath among them. “What happened?”

  Mother shrugged, impish. Seems I wasn’t to their taste.

  “Probably too tough,” I said.

  * * *

  “Mamma!” Nettie ran to the front door when we came home, stopped just shy of hugging. She ushered Claude onto a blanket box, well away from the fire. “Here,” she said. “Let me get you some tea.”

  Mother shook her head, pursed what was left of her lips.

  “Oh,” Nettie said. Last night, she’d pegged her new necklace by the mantle; now she retrieved it. Slow-traced a finger along the runes. Reading, the sunshine in her right eye darkened to match the gloom in her left. “So it’s true.”

  “We’ve got less than eight hours,” I said, snatching the tongue, tossing it into the pot. It sank into the boiling water with a squeal. “We have to get Mother ready.”

  “You can’t--” Tears spilled over Nettie’s delicate cheeks as she studied the flames. Her skin drank in the firelight, softly burnishing. She glowed with a veneer of warmth; but when I patted her arm it was more frigid than Mother’s.

  Selfish Nettie. Taking everything in, giving nothing in return. Can’t even bring yourself to exude heat.

  After a minute, she cleared her throat and gestured at the cauldron. The jars of bryony, tansy, belladonna. The truths blistering off Mother’s tongue. “You can’t expect me to keep this a secret.”

  “Grab her ankles.”

  “No, Regina,” she said. “Enough.”

  Mother once joked that Nettie must’ve been an out-fighter in a past life--always standing back, side-stepping, forcing her opponent to take the first jab. Whereas I, apparently, was a brawler. I got in close. I loomed.

  And I jabbed, quick and hard.

  My sister dropped on the third punch, still moaning. She had the figure all right, but not the gumption to be Chanticleer. On the sidelines, Claude rolled her eyes--You’re no One-Shot--but cowered when I reached for the tansy. Two handfuls stuffed into Nettie’s little mouth should keep her well-gagged, but to be sure I jammed in a hankie and tied the lot in place with another. Four more served as makeshift fetters, wrists and ankles hogtied with tatting and lace. I pushed Mother off the blanket box and shoved Nettie inside.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said in my honest voice, lowering the lid. “Look: she can practically stretch out in there.”

  Mother laughed as I dragged her to the fireplace. A few prods, a few twists and the corpse climbed into Nan’s huge iron pot, conceding defeat. Instantly, the reek of her was atrocious; offal with an undertone of bitter greens. It didn’t trouble Mother in the least.

  Until tonight, hen, she winked, splashing me as she submerged.

  * * *

  Ringside at dusk. The town gathered to put Mother to rest, and celebrate her with a few black eyes and cut lips.

  To my left, the announcer tapped his bullhorn, flinching as the thing screeched. “Lights,” he boomed, sending the lampboys shimmying up skinned pines. They squirrelled from bulb to bulb, sky-high, weightless, fearless. Flashes of brilliance at their fingertips conjured an almighty glare. Half-blinded, I watched until tears blinked me back to the brazier on my right, to Jet stoking the embers blue-white. Cast-iron, three feet tall, the firebowl slicked the blacksmith with sweat while the rest of us were left shivering. The evening air was icebox. Folks folded hands beneath armpits, snuggled into scarves, tightened hoods. Fighters were puffed in down jackets, high-tops laced to the shins. Thom’s knees were blueing beneath his red satin shorts; he jogged on the spot beside me to keep the blood pumping before his bout. Behind him, everyone--everyone--was staring.

  Where’s Nettie? they asked.

  Mother was unrecognisable, just a pile of yellowed sticks on the announcer’s table, empty sockets gaping.

  Where’s Nettie?

  With the blacksmith’s tongs, I moved Nan’s orange-hot crown then stacked Claude’s bones on the coals beside it, making a tepee out of the ribs. Old One-Shot sidled up to pay his final respects.

  Where’s Nettie?

  “Withdrawn,” I said at last, throat seizing as I met those stares, saw the brown and gold badges on so many hatbands and lapels. My sister’s colours, ale and sunshine, in overwhelming majority. Murmurings and restlessness sifted through the crowd, separating red rosettes from the mottled. The crown is mine to try first, I wanted to shout, but tremors shook the words from my mouth.

  Across the boxing green, shadows twitched at the front door of our cabin.

  My gaze snapped back to the pyre, so small for such a large spirit. She is gone, I told myself, releasing a ragged breath. She is gone.

  Mother’s skull had a porcelain tinge, more blue than cream, and was light as a teacup in my hand.

  Door hinges creaked.

  Thom the butcher-boy passed me a hacksaw, eyebrow raised. He’d spent a lifetime with bones, chopping them to fit into crockpots and stoves. He gauged the size of this one without even touching it. He knew it’d be a squeeze.

  Please, I prayed. Let it fit.

  I pinned Mother’s dried-melon in place. Hand spread over the nasal cavity, fingers plugging earholes. I cringed as the mandible wriggled, certain I was suffocating her. Footsteps thudded on our porch, hinges creaked. The tool slipped from my sweaty palm. “Focus,” Thom said, ever the fighter. Exhaling, I nodded and tried again. Now metal teeth chewed an uneven line across Mother’s forehead, nibbled through the temples, bone dust went flying. Footsteps thudded, frantic as my sawing. Closer. Closer.

  Nearly there, I thought, rotating to get at the back of the cranium. Steady.

  With a snap, the lid broke away. A smattering of applause from the reds as the crown skidded across the table and dinged the regulation bell. My belly fluttered as I picked the thing up--not even a cantaloupe, a half-grapefruit--and ran a finger along its jagged edge. The break could’ve been better, much better. It’d be torture until it wore smooth.

  “It’s supposed to hurt,” Claude had told us, years ago. “Being Chanticleer. Speaking for these folks. Watching out for them. Bearing the brunt of their loves, their hates. It’s a right royal pain. And if it isn’t ... Well. If it isn’t, you’re doing it wrong.”

  Ring-girls shuddered in their dainties as I lifted the crown to my head. One-Shot fixed me with a rheumy glare, sprigs of rosemary bristling from his lips. Fathers lifted kids to give them a better vantage. Armed with enswells and balms, the cornermen crept up behind me, poised to daub. Thom, butcher-boy, boxing champ, judged the first la
cerations impassively. Blood trickled warm on my brow.

  Guard up, Mother, I thought. I glanced at our cabin. Shadows danced round the front door.

  Gashing, forcing, I wrenched the flimsy cap on. Deep breath, lungs filling with charred air. Pulse throbbed in my head, footsteps thudded on the porch. Don’t crack. I twisted my fingers slippery, sight sheeting red. On the stoop, shadows wavered. Please don’t crack ... I scratched and dug long after the crown was secure, my skull near-crushed beneath hers.

  I did it.

  The door slammed shut. Shadows and footsteps stilled.

  It fits.

  Mother parried two beats later--and I didn’t have a puncher’s chance.

  The world doubled, trebled. One-Shot half caught me as I buckled, my mind clobbered by Mother’s memories--bargains wheeled, trades brokered, lovers toyed, walks wiggled, ballads crooned--pummelled by thoughts of Nettie--singing, wooing, struggling against embroidered bonds--and KO’d by visions of me.

  Mother’s little brawler, getting in close. Towering. Looming over the bed. Plying her with tea. Goat-gaze seeing everything in hindsight, Claude lowered her horns and bucked.

  Hail, Regina, she said.

  Head pounding, I staggered upright and shook off the gamekeeper’s grip. Had he heard her? One-Shot squinted, face unreadable. Footsteps thudded on the porch. Boxers shuffled near the ring, sloughing their coats, eager to get on with it. Leaning against the ropes, bookies butted their smokes, subtly giving me and Thom the once-over. Fingers twitched, heads bopped. Odds were accepted and rejected. The butcher’s kid will take the purse, given the shot.

  “Hail, Regina,” said Thom. Mother chortled at this echo, laughing me nauseous as the boy genuflected. Down and up without wobbling, a circle of snow clinging to his bare knee. “The floor is yours, Chant.” Ugly Thom strutted, impatient, flexing every visible muscle. My speech came first, then the champion’s bout. Symbolic gestures, promises before the fight, but necessary to seal the deal. “Grace us with a few words. Any bets on who’ll win?”

  All my plain, heartfelt sentiments fled as the crowd livened, out-shouting each other’s wagers. The cabin door creaked, slammed.

  Go on, hen, Mother said, triumphant. Poisoned fingers clawed down my throat, pried at my teeth. Death had stolen Claude’s voice; my coronation offered her a new one. Open up. I’m feeling downright chatty.

  Beside me, Jet stirred the bones, fishing Nan’s red-smoking crown from the brazier. Breathing down my neck, Claude Kilbane rolled his shoulders. The old man hocked up milky phlegm. Cracked his bashed knuckles. One shot and I’d be down, just like Pop-Pop. One shot and my crown would be Nettie’s. Footsteps thudded on the porch, crunched across snow. Closer and closer.

  “Speech!” cried the reds.

  “Speech,” said the brown-and-golds.

  Choking on bile--tansy-flavoured and rue--I stared at them all, and kept my sorry mouth shut.

  A Grand Old Life

  Far as she remembers, tina’s past lives can be named in this order:

  Aelia Pulcheria

  Halvdan Dagsson

  Hoelun

  Şehzade Mehmed

  Next, and last before this one, before she were born as our own Tina-Marie Dalton, is her favourite, most brilliant time-being:

  Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, she who became Ekaterina Velikaya; that is, Catherine the Great.

  Of course, betwixt such vibrant moments in eternity, I tells her, there were bound to be blackness, gaps. All those shapeless centuries she spent floating in utero, failing to stick for nine months, much less get squeezed out into the light. Decades when she were recycled as stillbirths. Countless miserable months when she weren’t barely more than an infant--over the years, I tells her, she were so many different babies--falling to fever, pox, plague. So many other, unnamed, forgettable cot-deaths. All them long stretches between real lives won’t amount to much in the way of memories, I says--good, bad, or otherwise. They’re nawt but a series of present absences. Long sleeps without any dreams.

  For ages, I reckon, she can’t have known much but calm darkness.

  But time and again, Tina tells me she don’t need no Leather Jenny to tell her what she can and can’t recall. Says she don’t need some old soothsayer reading her lives--the way I always done for everyone else on Chippewa land. No sir, she sees powerful enough visions her own self, Tina says. She sees all them bright thens before she was born, and born, and born again. All them glorious bygones twinkling throughout her forevers.

  Pulcheria. Halvdan. Hoelun. Mehmed. Ekaterina. Tina-Marie.

  Mind and gut, she remembers every one of them.

  She wears their memories in muscle and spirit.

  If there’s one thing she don’t suffer from, Tina says, it’s past-blindness.

  And yet here she is any-old-how, knocking on Leather Jenny’s front door. Wayward and suffering. Seeking my own brand of help.

  * * *

  “Brought you a pie,” Tina says, shuffling from foot to foot on the stoop, holding out a tinfoil-covered plate. Morning’s bright but damp with the onset of autumn. The gal’s shivering, I reckon, from more than the chill. “Bumbleberry and apple. Still warm, if you fancy a piece now. Got any ice cream? It’ll melt right nice into the pastry.” She stops, flustered. “Not that I’m suggesting it so you’ll serve me up some, too. I just thought ... ”

  Wavering on the threshold, she works a pretty flush into that blunt face of hers. Miss Piggy, I always think upon seeing her. Uncharitable, maybe. But with them thick-mascara blues, them long curls so over-bleached they’re pale and dry as straw, that rose-coloured powder caked on her cheeks, that upturned nose of hers, it ain’t far wrong neither. Top-heavy and tall, she’s ever-plump from bearing Ger Stout’s latest piglet--reckon she’s popped out four or five little bastards since she turned sixteen. Of course, when it comes to this gal’s looks, it don’t matter much what old Leather Jenny thinks. Tina-Marie’s opinion on herself is even higher than the collar on that old-fashioned dress of hers. She ain’t here for flattery, that’s for certain.

  Stepping back to let her in, I nod at the two-man table beneath the cabin’s main window. A round tin of gingersnaps sits there already, lid sealed tight. A few cans of collard greens, black-eyed peas, white hominy. Fine red cabbages wilting in a bowl. Plastic containers filled with rice krispie treats. Pecan tarts. Coconut jellies I always wind up tossing outside for the squirrels.

  Offerings, of a sort, intended to keep this ancient body of mine ticking along. And if I’m honest, folk round here are more generous than they rightly knows. Gratitude, so the saying goes, turns what we have into enough. Lucky for them I’m more grateful than greedy.

  I only ever takes what I really needs, and not an inch more.

  “Thank you kindly,” Tina says, clicking across the boards. The pie plate clunks on checkered cloth, then crackles on old crumbs as she fiddles with it. Pushing it an smidge this way. Dragging it back. Failing to centre it between the chairs. “Smells lovely in here, Miss Jenny. What’s that you’ve got burning? Frankincense? Myrrh?”

  Breathing deep, she lifts her chin. Rests peach-lacquered fingertips on the table’s edge. Gazes up at wooden shelves laden with jars and bones and other trinkets, at rafters clad in antler and herb-garlands. Keeps her back turned. “Reminds me of the smoke and steam-pots Father’s priests once placed around my chamber, when I was young and bed-ridden. Sweet-sharp citrus, bitter pine, a hot haze of soot--perfumes to waft a soul pleasantly into death.”

  Shuffling across the low-ceilinged room, I keep my trap shut while Tina reminisces. While she’s gabbing, her demeanor subtly changes. Pudgy shoulders lift demurely, toes turn inward; she fidgets like the five-year-old she was back in ancient Rome. Poor little Pulcheria, daughter of Theodosius I, expiring in her little bed like that, quietly and without reknown. Not like that other Pulcheria--she were the Emperor’s famous niece, Tina says, who inherited the dead girl’s name but not her bad luck--t
hat one grew up. That one became Augusta Imperatrix. Saint. Virgin.

  I snort. No way that Pulcheria could ever have been Tina-Marie. Been a dog’s age since Ger’s gal came anywhere close to virginal, but I know she ain’t here today for a dose of pennyroyal tea. If it were just another womb-emptying she was after, she wouldn’t be acting half so skittish. So humble. No scarier than getting your ears pierced, she said to me that first time, after I’d given her the strongest ridding infusion I knows how to steep. Some pinching, some pain, some throbbing, some blood. Worth it, though, she said, tone rising like it were a question. In the end.

  Ain’t my place to judge, I told her then and tells her every time since. You do what you gotta do to get by.

  There’s a bit of black coffee left from breakfast, so I crouch by the fireplace, stir up the coals. Lingering near the table, Tina-Marie’s picking at hangnails and foil. Still rambling about her short stint as that Emperor’s kid, that Roman stiff who sounds as boring as he were powerful. On the warm hearth, the enamel pot starts to pip, inviting with scent and song. While the brew reheats, I pry off the lid and splash in a good snifter of apple brandy. Pungent vapor soon sneaks out the spout.

  “It’s hot as a harem in here,” Tina says over her shoulder. “Mind if I crack a window?”

  “Go right ahead,” I says. She nods and stretches over the small table. Soon as the sash is lifted and propped on a stack of tarot cards on the sill, the gal continues her chattering.

  I listen, and stir, and enjoy the small breeze drifting in.

  Folk eventually talk theirselves round to the crux of matters, I’ve learned, if given enough air.

  * * *

  Don’t take too long for Tina-Marie to drink herself maudlin enough to turn honest. It’s the brandied coffee what draws out truth--not like gin, what makes folk too weepy to talk, nor red wine what stains ’em sleepy, nor moonshine what riles ’em into stupid fights--and the caffeine keeps her alert. Pacing in front of the hearth, she drains her mug then holds it out for a refill. Though I don’t fancy meself nobody’s servant, I oblige. She stares into the cup’s pottery mouth with a booze-blurred sneer.