by Lisa Hannett
Retrieving the glowing rod, she skewers Jax’s shoes, one at a time, and shoves ’em in far, all the way to the chimney back. The leather catches faster than expected. The laces he’d always left half-strung crumble, the tongue curls in on itself, the soles puddle. Mag covers her mouth, tries not to gag. Regret stings, the taste of it foul as burning rubber. Swallowing hard, she pushes herself up and away from the heat. What’s done were done.
Ain’t nothing permanent in this world, my girl.
Start over.
Finally Daisy’s quit her lowing, but ain’t no sign them waterworks will switch off any time soon. Pink blotches creep up the gal’s neck, spreading like lichen round her scars, then across her pale jaw and cheeks. Mascara’s smeared round her sockets, not dripping down her face like it always do in the movies, giving her grief a hollow, horror-skull look. Peering over her shoulder, Mag can see Daisy’s mind ticking over: denial in the ugly bunching of her features, disbelief when they go all slack. Reality washes in and out like the tide. With each wave, the truth of her situation slowly rises. Bit by bit, understanding fills her eyes ’til they spill.
These ain’t tears for Jax’s death, Mag reckons. Not no more. Now the girl’s blubbing against consequences.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whimpers. “Honest to God, it were an accident.”
“Later,” Mag says, weariness dragging the word long and low. Around the cauldron, the clothes is more or less gone to cinders. Stumpy beer bottles filled with Gran’s strongest elixirs is lined on the shelf above, waiting to be poured. Most likely one dose would do the trick, speeding up the simmering process right nice. In normal circumstances, she’d of glugged in half a bottle’s worth, propped open the cabin’s window and door, then left the bones to soak for two days--skimming off fat and scum, topping up the brew, ’til the rot of small tissue were almost too much to bear. But tonight’s circumstances sure as shit ain’t normal. Tonight, she ain’t gots two days spare.
At most she gots ’til midday, Mag figures. Round about then, the second delivery truck’ll pull up to Jax’s shed lugging twice the usual shipment. The first postman would of come ’n’ gone by then, after knocking and receiving no answer. It weren’t the first missed shipment Mag’s worried about--no-one round these parts won’t never question a man’s feeling dull after the previous night’s shine--but if Jax weren’t up by noon as always, signing for his parcels, offering a bottle of ginger beer for the road, well then. Mag knows one thing for certain: folk’ll consider it their Christian duty to pry.
Ain’t nothing but trouble ever comes from them good Samaritans.
Mag upends seven of Gran’s best concoctions into the pot, stirs the greenish broth, then tongs the bones in. As they sink to the bottom, the brew goes quiet. The surface belches a few grassy bubbles, then settles into a still bog. Through the water, Jax’s remains waver and seem to shrink. Disconnected, they look so damn small.
Maybe I should of brung it to the boil again first?
The sudden tightness in her throat and a twist in her insides tells her she’s ruined it. If only she’d kept the feet after all, done a test batch. If only she’d been stingier with the accelerant. Mag feels Gran looking over her shoulder, clicking them false teeth of hers as she nods. As she grins.
Ain’t nothing worth doing what can’t be done wrong a few times.
This were a mistake, Mag thinks. Ain’t no do-overs in life nor magicks.
Careful as a surgeon, she slips a metal prong into the slurry. Swirls it widdershins, willing the stuff to start frothing. Steam damps her curls as she leans close, closer, the fine hairs on her bare legs crisping this near to the fire. Ain’t nothing worth doing ... She prods a thighbone. A shin.
“Git up,” she says, shuddering out a breath as the bones begin to float. Giving it another swirl, the cloudy liquid clears and gently bubbles. Thank Christ, Mag thinks out of habit. Convinced the next few moments is crucial--what if it thickens again soon as she turns away? what if it boils over? what if that many potions mixed with them other vials was too many after all, and Jax’s limbs turn brittle underwater, and all the power they hold seeps out the cracks?--Mag watches and stirs, stirs and watches. Meantime, she unclasps her necklace. After the key slides off the chain into her free hand, she turns and tosses it over to Daisy. It clunks on the floor, landing an easy stretch to the girl’s left.
“Third drawer,” Mag says, tilting her head at the workbench.
Daisy blinks at the thing like it were a roach playing dead, bound to skitter at the slightest touch. Wariness soon gives way to curiosity; she sniffs and knuckles more makeup into her puffy eyes. Ain’t every day Daisy’s allowed into Mag’s private cabinets--in fact, ain’t no day before this one--so she pulls tight the blanket shawled round her, snatches the unlocker, and shuffles to the bank of drawers.
Her face falls when she opens the third one down. Puzzled, she takes out the pageant gal’s unfinished corset and squints up at Mag. “We’re doing a fitting now?”
“One step at a time.” Mag dips a ladle into the cauldron, spooning out a beautiful bronze liquid. Clear as scotch, it gots a mulled wine aroma what lets her know things is coming along as they’s meant to: fast and fine. Clanking the handle against the boiler’s rim, she looks over at Daisy and feels a pang of guilt. Like Gran before her, Mag ain’t in the habit of welching on deals. Penny-Jane Maberry’s already paid off more’n the raw materials cost, plus half the labour. And she were expecting the finished corset yesterday ...
For once, Mag thinks, Penny-Jane’s just gointa have to live with living without.
“Seam-ripper’s in the basket to yer right,” she says. “Yeah, that one. Calm yerself, Daisy. That’s a girl. With your steadiest hand, unpick the ribbing and pull them bessie-shanks clean out--oh, don’t give me that look. You can do this, hear? I knows you can. Now go’on and prove it.”
While Daisy gits to work, Mag fishes Jax’s bones out the cauldron and lays ’em on the hearth, spreading ’em out across towels Gran’s own Gran embroidered back when Butchers Holler weren’t yet named on no maps. White sigils and runes was stitched on the white cotton fields, near-indistinguishable to the naked eye--but all them fancy letters casts a whole nother language of shadows if ’n’ when candles is placed round the borders just right. Mag knows exactly the configuration--she set it up for Gran time and again--and soon the wicks is blazing. Soon the bone shafts is changing hue, fading from clay to porcelain as they dries, as they set good and true. In round about an hour, even that green tinge from the quickening draught is gointa pale up right pretty.
Turning, Mag sees Daisy’s gots five of the twenty ribs slid out the corset and discarded on the tabletop. “Try not to break ’em, if you can,” she says. Might be they’ll have to reuse a few of them cowbones, if Jax’s thighs don’t stretch that far. Concentrating, the girl simply nods. She don’t roll her eyes as Mag would of, had Gran said something so bleeding obvious. She don’t so much as smirk.
Gotta hand it to her, Mag thinks. Daisy sure can respond to direction. Heading to the workbench, she sighs. Damn pity the gal won’t never git to perform that obedience for no audience. Pose, twirl, sparkle for the camera. Reckon them pageant judges would of creamed their pants over a simple little sheep like her.
Now Daisy’s freed seven of them sticks, Mag has gots to git a move on herself. The key’s still turned in the third lock; she slides it out, snicks it up to the first drawer. Mothball and cedar air wafts out as she retrieves the magicked smock, lingering as she slings it onto the dressmaker’s dummy. Ain’t been folded all that long, but for the first time ever it’s hanging crooked. The skirt’s rippling funny: bagging at the thighs, dipping at the crotch. Looks less like a potato-sack frock from this angle, more like a romper. A shapeless, short-legged jumpsuit.
This, Mag thinks. She ain’t so crass as to smile, not given the unfoldings tonight. But inside her a knot of anxiety unclenches, a surprising and welcome jolt of relief, like joints popping into place
after sitting on them high stools for too long. All them hours pinning and patterning a plain girl apron-dress--and this were the linchpin in her design from the git-go. She just ain’t seen it ’til now.
It takes a half-turn of the clock to unstick hundreds of pins from the front and back of the smock. Working from hem to waist, she clears a triangle of fabric more’n a handspan wide, narrowing sharply toward the belt. It’s fiddly, undoing them intricate whorls on the skirt, but eventually the pins come away neat enough; she can tidy up the edges when she rejigs the outfit, re-hems and re-fixes it together. Repurposing the back’s gointa be a sight harder, Mag reckons, since she only needs to free up a space about the length and width of a zipper. Problem is, all them pins back there is herringboned across the shoulder blades, each chevron fitting perfect with the next. Removing a full row is gointa be too much--even a half row’ll leave too big a gap for her purpose. When she’s wearing the thing, the pins has gots to touch--end to end, criss-crossed, or overlapping--else there’ll be a chink in the armour, a breach that’ll leak out all her fine hexwork. Won’t do no good whatsoever if the glamour it casts ain’t whole.
Then again, the magicks won’t work one iota if she can’t put the suit on in the first place.
Rummaging through a cutlery tray on the worktable, Mag finds a pair of nail clippers and puts them to one side. Next she grabs the biggest, meanest pair of shears in the pile--Gran’s favourites: good ’n’ heavy, perfectly balanced, blades merciless sharp--and turns round to face the smock. Behind her, the crick-crick-crick of the seam-ripper slows. Seems Daisy’s pulled out the last bit of boning from the corset, so now her hands is gone still. A nasal, hound-dog whine starts up a second later, breaking the midnight silence. If Mag don’t set the gal another task, she’s gointa fold in on herself again. Wallow in useless crying.
“Them pins I just unstuck,” Mag says. “Bring ’em here.”
Sliding off her stool, Daisy folds the corset lengthwise and does as she’s bid. Halfway there, she gasps. Mag’s took them scissors and slit the dress from knee-level to groin, first at the front, then the back.
“You wrecked it,” Daisy says, stopping short. The dish of pins rattles in her grip. Her voice shrills up an octave. “Can’t nothing stay in one piece round here? Not even that hideous old thing?”
“Bear with me.” Mag steers Daisy closer to the dress-form then crouches, gits to work. “Things is gointa come back together soon enough.”
Starting at the frock’s nether crux, she weaves sturdy new inseams--a railroad track of pins transforming the once-skirt into knee-length shorts. On the hearth, the fire’s winked down to embers by the time the pants is shaped to fit comfortable round her lean thighs. Them thighs is quivering, and her lower back’s spasming, before Mag’s finished connecting and reconnecting the hexed pin-prints. Purple twilight filters in the gable window as she finally stands and knuckles the knots from her muscles.
“Nearly there,” she whispers, startling Daisy from a stupor. Picking up the nail clippers, she fractures a thin line through the bones leading from the nape of the neck straight down to the rump. The pin-heavy fabric flaps open, the weight of it all pulling the garment off the dummy and down to the floor.
“Reckon it’s now or never,” Mag says, taking the mannequin off its stand so’s she can free the jumpsuit. “Prep the new bones. Thighs, then shins.”
A dark crease shoots up between Daisy’s plucked brows. Her lower lip juts out, wibbles. “Please,” she whines. “I can’t.”
Mag cuts her off with a scowl. “Ain’t all that different from any others you’ve split,” she says firmly, sympathy softening the lie. This were the most personal, the most powerful piece of bonework the girl’s ever gointa fashion. “A mite thinner, sure, a tad more fragile. Mind the grain as you go, same as always. Use the smallest chisel, the finest sandpaper. You can do this, Daisy-gal. So git to it.”
* * *
It’s a rush-job, Mag thinks. No doubt about it.
Jax’s right thighbone is split and planed, but unpolished. The dozen shafts destined for the beauty queen’s corset gits their rough edges coiled in braided strands of Mag’s copper hair, then sealed with potent resins--fast-drying varnishes charmed for strength, camouflage, hoax-light, twinning--and finally slid into the velvet channels Daisy bloodied her fingertips emptying. Each rib is fixed in place with tiny straight-pins splintered from the colourman’s right shin. Hasty, ugly work secured with precise words.
Dawn had broke into the cabin window hours ago, a gentle wash of rose and coral what sneaked in when they wasn’t looking, too light and carefree to penetrate the gloaming below. Splurging, Mag had brung out a week’s worth of lamp oil, sparked all the glass danglers to life. Shadows was chased well away from the workbench, above which a battalion of fire-folk now flits and flickers and flails bright swords of flame. Despite the pall hanging over them, Daisy’s delighted--she ain’t never seen such extravagance--and Mag tries to smile, telling herself it ain’t self-indulgence what’s making her waste them supplies. It ain’t that she’s set on using up what she hoarded all these years, before none of it’s hers anymores. No, sir. Not at all.
“Miss Maggie,” Daisy breathes, boldly reaching up to brush the fresh-shorn patches on the pinmaker’s head. “Yer beautiful curls.”
“Just you wait.” Wielding Gran’s shears, Mag hacks off another thick red tendril. Then another. Another just for good measure. “Things always gits worse before they gits any better.”
What few pins they’d had time to turn from the left thigh--the sinister side, Gran use to say, and more powerful for it--was reserved for Mag.
Both she and Daisy stripped Jax to the bone, in one way or another; both of ’em turned him from something being into something gone. Both of ’em oughta wear the truth of that turning, Mag reckons. Now and always.
Closer’n close to the skin.
“Take off yer sweater and dress,” Mag says. “Undies don’t matter.” To anyone else, the command might seem perverted, but Daisy’s use to it. She don’t do much more’n sniff at being barked at before gitting started on her buttons. While the girl’s stripping down, Mag unthreads the corset, yanking out the silken ribbon zigzagging across its back. Throughout the night her fingers has cramped into talons from all the close-work, but they’s still nimble enough to plait a single slender hair-rope from the tresses she’s chopped. Still deft enough to use it for lacing Daisy into the undergarment, to stuff the bosom with feathers and a mirrored-steel amulet, to pull the stays in tight, tighter. To knot the girl forever in place.
As Daisy looks down, smoothing her hands over a newly-trim waist, Mag leans in and presses her lips against the girl’s crown. Lifting her chin, she mutters an incantation. Holds the spell along with Daisy’s gaze. Transfers what life--what future--she can by touch and by glance.
Mag ain’t never seen the girl so serious. So focused. “Sorry, darlin,” she says, the words cracking as her drained vocal chords change.
“What for?”
She pat-pats Daisy’s cheek. Admires the smooth curve of her neck. “My turn,” she says.
Quickly peeling off her oversized shirt, she signals for the smock-suit. Already Daisy’s taller and more svelte than she were a minute ago--she gathers the outfit, lithe as a nymph. Holding it out for Mag to step into, the girl stretches, elongates, morphs from pre-teen to teen to young woman in a shimmer, a blink. Fiery curls tumble down to her shoulders, replacing the drab fall of straight hair. Unfurling like vines, the new locks soon reach halfway down her proud back.
“Help me,” Mag croaks. Hitching the suit’s top-half onto her shoulders and sliding her arms through is a real effort. Not just on account of them pins spiking round the arm and neck holes, nor because the whole thing’s stiff as a day-old corpse, but because conjuring two glamours at once is more draining than she bargained for. The prettier Daisy gits--now there’s embers freckling those cheeks of hers, now her skin’s toasting to a gorgeous tan--the more M
ag withers and pales.
“Hurry,” she says. Instructing every puncture, personally selecting every shard, she coaxes Daisy into pinning her inside the jumpsuit.
“How y’ever gointa git out,” the girl asks in a new, familiar voice. “How y’ever gointa piss?”
Sealing up the suture, Daisy jabs flesh more’n cloth. Mag don’t answer, only sucks air in sharp bursts. Hundreds of tiny gashes and holes scrape up her back, matching the red now blooming under her pits, around her throat, between her legs. Warm dampness seeps through the narrow lines in the smock’s pattern, blood rimming the off-white pins the same way it does over-brushed teeth. Inch by inch, Mag feels the magicks changing her shape, making her brittle, rickety. The bodice is a bit too short, the pants gouge, the hips square her pelvis like a man’s. Soon she’s stooping, wheezing. What’s left of her hair greys, whitens, falls out. The bone-suit creaks when she moves. So do her bones.
Most of the fire once blazing deadly inside her is now lighting up Daisy instead. While she still can, Mag summons what’s left of that heat she ain’t never wanted, channels it into her palms. Rubbing them up ’n’ down ’n’ all over herself, she cauterizes them pin-gashes, sears them holes, fuses flesh and bone. Her skin blisters with a god-awful stink. Burnt hair. Frying cartilage. Overcooked fat.
Still, she ain’t never felt so cold. So settled. So permanent.
Weren’t no gitting out of this suit, she knows. Not now, not later.
“Daisy,” she whispers. “Run. Fetch me a looking glass.”