by Lisa Hannett
The girl gapes, unmoving.
To git her attention, Mag quick-snaps her fingers. Their blunt tips don’t so much as strike up a spark.
-- 12 --
Daisy can’t stop staring at herself.
Sure, she’s been known to bore eyeholes into Mama’s mirror every now ’n’ again--she ain’t never denied it--but this morning’s brung her a whole new world of looking. Appreciating. Loving what she sees more’n anything ever she loved before.
Despite her self-proclaimed knack for reading futures, Daisy ain’t never seen this good fortune a-coming.
“D’you reckon it’s possible,” she says, hands on corseted hips, glancing at that perfect hourglass from this angle then that, “I’m even more gorgeous than Miss Maggie were? I mean, I know it’s the very same face I gots on, the very same figure, but ... ” She turns and peers over a shoulder, smiling at the perfect perk of her caboose. Not for the first time since she come home, Daisy waggles her arse like a cottontail, picturing how amazing it’s gointa look up on the catwalk. “Maybe me being younger’n her on the inside is showing through to the outside?”
Huddled small on the edge of her bed, Mama’s ghost plays with the fringe of her lap-blanket. Yarns unravel between her ragged nails. Black ’n’ white fluffs of wool tumbleweed across her legs. She watches ’em roll off the cliff of her knees.
“Well?” As Daisy spins, Mag’s brilliant red tresses swirl round her like a princess cloak. She ain’t yet accustomed to the weight of all that hair, but wearing it makes her stand even taller. Haughtier. It pulls her head slightly back, so she gots to look at folk down the speckled slope of her nose. This is a pose she intends to strike often, for the way it highlights the length of her flawless, scarless neck. If only Jax could see me now ...
“Can’t y’all muster even a bit of excitement for me?” she says, overly brash, trying to shout down the remorse nagging at her perfect bod. “This is my chance, Mama. This is it.”
Then again, Jax ain’t never paid her sufficient attention. Who’s to say this’d change anything? With the pinmaker’s features plastered all over her, Daisy don’t need no two-timing, good-fer-nothing colourman to pretty her up. Long as she were wearing this beaut corset, she could put on any of Mama’s old rags and snag herself a worthy man’s eye, not to mention a winning place on the circuit.
Finally, she thinks, afraid to pinch blush into her cheeks lest this were all just a dream. Ain’t no way she wants to wake up before dominating the county pageant. Hell, ain’t no way she won’t be going all-state! Then she’ll nab the national crown, and after that ... Oh Lord, how Daisy dimples now. With a queen’s sash draped over her banging figure, she’ll git out of this shithole of a Holler, won’t she just. Think of the travel! Think of the postcards and souvenirs. Maybe she’ll even git far as the Red Apple. Maybe she’ll take a plane ride overseas.
Sure will, she thinks, stroking the unblemished skin under her jaw. Sure as hell will.
Mama’s ghost shakes its head.
The two of ’em look up as the front door swings open. Sparrow and finch songs trill in after Pa, them happy little warbles sharp and clear as the afternoon breeze. Lack of sleep’s darkened the bags under his eyes, staved in his cheeks, and roughed up his mood.
“Quit yer prancing,” he says. From under his arm, he pulls out a scrunched set of denim coveralls and whips ’em across the room. They snag on the bed’s footboard. “Whack them on over that hussy git-up, grab yer gumboots and some rubber gloves, then meet me in the chop-shed. We gots our work cut out fer us today, gal, and the late start don’t help none. Five hogs needs spitting, a load of sausages needs mincing and sheathing, a pair of Herefords wants to git hacked and roasted for the Vinesday barbeque at Town Hall ... and that’s just fer starters. What with that extra carcass I had to truss up last night, I ain’t so much as touched a bessie all day.”
“But,” Daisy begins--
“Hop to it, girl. After the cutting’s done and the steaks is weighed, y’all can decide what bones to keep fer them pins of yers. Orders gots to be filled, today same as yesterday. Ain’t that right, Miss Magnolia?”
“But,” Daisy tries again. “What about all this?” A swagger of hips, a flourish of tapered hands, a cute tilt of the chin. Bewildered, she looks down at the incredible magick of her. “Ain’t this worth more’n a few slabs of beef?”
“Count yer blessings, Mags,” Butch says, tone grave. “Yer alive and breathing when some folk ain’t. You done stole two lives in one night, and won’t never pay for neither. That girl swapped her future fer yers, understand? Thanks to her, ain’t no-one gointa git pinched fer murder. Ain’t no-one gointa spend no time in the clink.”
Butcher grabs the battery he come in for, then gestures at the overalls he brung. Put ’em on, his hands say, while his tongue goes on a-wagging. “Sure, Mags’ll miss that Daisy-girl who gone scampering off while she’s stuck here working. Won’t she just. But she sure ain’t gointa to honour that stupid, runaway child--she ain’t gointa reward that fool’s selfishness--by parading round in no goddamn pageant. Mags ain’t never wanted to enter before, and she ain’t gointa change her mind now. Is she.”
“’Spose not,” Daisy admits. In the mirror, Mag’s elfin face blurs. So pretty, so ridiculous pretty, even when she cries.
Mama’s ghost gits up off the bed and shuffles over to the makeshift vanity dresser. She takes a lace-edged hankie from Daisy’s big makeup kit. Gently presses it into the girl’s hand. And with a sweep of her arm, the ghost collects all the bottles, tubes, brushes, lipsticks, and compacts her daughter gots scattered on the table. Zips them into the quilted bag and carries it into the kitchen. Without a word, she tosses the whole lot into the fire.
* * *
Clutching a willow-stick axe like a cane, the old hag stops at the crossroads to ease the stitch in her side. An ankle-length drover’s coat fights the early evening chill, while flint and steel in her pocket promise to work just as hard come nightfall. With a leather pack full on her back, a pouch of spare pins rattlin on her belt, she pauses. Scrubs a fist across sweaty lips. Recoils at the stiff whiskers she finds sprouting there, scritching against her over-large knuckles. Took her longer’n ever to git here, so she ain’t all too keen on lingering, but knows she ain’t gots a snowball’s chance of reaching the county line before sundown if she pushes her tired legs too hard now. So she waits for the jackrabbit to quit thumping ’gainst her ribcage. Pounds the end of her walking-stick into the gravel, scaring up a raucous murder of crows.
As the corn-thiefs once again settle on power-lines and fragrant stalks, a strange sound greets her. At first, seems it’s a rusted gate screeking open. Muscles in the hag’s neck click as she looks at the pasture on her left, but its fence ain’t gots no such postern. To the right, them cornfields is likewise penned behind sturdy timbers. No hinges in sight. No doors. A few seconds later, seems a pebble’s clattering round a pickup’s tailpipe--the witch frowns, mouth lemon-puckered. Ain’t no trucks drove by in ages, she reckons. Ain’t none approaching neither. As the pulse hushes in her ears, she gits to hearing better.
That ain’t no vehicle, she thinks. That ain’t no gate ...
Wincing, she recognises the new crackle ’n’ hum of her own sorry breath. Coughing don’t clear the lung-butter none, but she sputters and hacks all the same. The performance raises a decent colour in her crumpled cheeks. Masks the shame already pinking her there.
When the fit subsides, she inhales deep as her tight chest can manage. Straightens only so much as the satchel--and the crick in her spine--allows. Closes her lashless eyes. Pretends the watery sun overhead carries even a white lie of warmth to defy the promise of winter in the breeze. She’s gitting good at such tricks of the mind. Such delusions.
A black beak caws her eyes open. Bracing herself, she takes a shaky step forward. Resolves not to look back twice.
Not two or three hours past, she’d took a last labored lap round her yard before hitting the
road. Bid farewell to the chooks, freed the goats and rabbits so’s Butcher wouldn’t have to feed ’em--then kicked herself for the stupid bit of whimsy what robbed the slaughterman of a few extra pounds of good meat. She wandered through Gran’s kitchen garden, stopping more and more to skim a wrinkled palm over lavender and rosemary bushes, to crush rosehips and poppy pods, to scatter herbs what had long gone to seed. Reaching the stoop out front of her cabin, she looked up and splayed her fingers above the tips of the nearest pines. Counted how many widths ’til the sun speared its guts on them spikes. Reckoning it were time enough, she took another last lap. Then another. And just one more.
“Fool girl,” she chid herself in a voice eerie-close to Gran’s. No use looking back, child. Ye gots to face forwards to see what’s a-coming. And though she felt the truth in them words sharper’n the aches in her hexed body, it still took her a few more turns to let the past go.
Just as she were set to make tracks at last, Butcher rang the lunch bell downriver. After two or three clanks, the tin clapper stopped short. Weren’t no reason for Butch to call her over for grub, were there. Force of habit. And easy as that--realising that bell wouldn’t sing out for her, not even once more--she were yearning for one last bowlful of Butch’s rich stew, one last serve of his biscuits. One last shared lull in the middle of their days. And before she knowed it, her unsteady legs was lurching across the drive, shuddering down the slope and back up the ditch, creeping through the long sweetgrass swaying between their properties--
No, she’d corrected, forcing them willful legs to halt. It weren’t her property no more. Her cabin and the land what it stood on were Daisy’s now, and for always. Don’t matter that folk in town won’t never know it changed hands--they’ll see Magnolia Brawm tending to her beasts in the yard, carting bones over from the chop-house, heading up-pasture to eyeball steers and bessies with Butcher. They’ll see the pinmaker fishing bones from the river nearby, hewing busted apple crates for firewood, standing on the porch to welcome another batch of bleach-blonde callers into her studio. Folk’ll note how she’s took up smoking them foul cheroots all sudden-like, but they won’t say nothing--living out on so many acres like that, all on her lonesome, is turned that gal a bit queer, that’s all. No matter what folk see or say, that whole lot now belonged to Daisy. Now that Butcher’s gal wears Mag’s old face.
Or her young face, she should oughta say.
The visage Mag’s got on instead is so withered and seamed, it’s well-nigh unrecognisable. No freckles, no tan, no striking peepers. Scalp hacked to pieces, bald and sizzled like it were set too close to the hearth. No curls. No hint of red. Every bit of her’s gone so greyed and faded, she’s practically blank. Hell, for what it’s worth, she’s damn-near invisible.
The pinmaker cracks a gap-toothed grin.
Her cane scrapes on the roadside’s soft shoulder as she hitches her pack and gits back to walking. Up ahead, a slender silhouette struts towards her, moving three or four times faster’n than she herself can. Backlit against the dipping sun, the figure could be almost anyone--almost. But the haughty swing of her ponytail, the determined but still sexy gait, marks her as Penny-Jane Maberry. And the way she’s angling cross the road, aiming for that breach in the cornfield--well, that speaks loud ’n’ clear, don’t it just. Saying she’s gots that narrow path in her sights, the trail what leads through them nodding crops, through them chattering woods, and round to the pinmaker’s house. Seems the gal’s intent on paying the new Mag a visit. Seems she’s fixed on collecting a certain corset she won’t never git her manicured paws on.
“Afternoon,” the witch says as Penny-Jane trots past without so much as a nod or a howdy-do. For a few steps, the crone’s bunioned feet practically skip down the path. Invisible.
Ain’t no wrath like a beauty queen spurned, she reckons, laugh sharpening into a cackle. Miss Maberry’s gointa git wound up tighter’n the yarn Mag spins her: how Butcher’s no-good daughter hightailed it with the magicked costume, leaving not a trace. “Lovesick gal bewitched and run off with the colourman,” the new Mag’ll repeat, again and again, ’til every nose in town’s got a sniff of the story. “Little thief won’t dare show her face round here again!”
Again, the hag chuckles.
For years to come, the new Mag’s gointa have to spread lies about Daisy. Ain’t nothing else for it, lest she’s keen to leave Butchers Holler in cuffs. The firmer her fibs, the firmer new Mag’s reputation will hold--though the quality of her pinwork won’t never be the same, more’s the pity. But eventually, if she stays lucky, every last memory of her one-time apprentice will sour, turn rank, then dissolve. Same way Jax’s parts ’n’ pieces done last night in them metal tubs out in Butcher’s chop-shed.
Some of his pieces, the old woman corrects. Not all his parts.
From the cornfield over the fence, a gangly shadow falls across her path. Blackbirds is squawking above and through it, flying and alighting on outstretched arms. Gobbets of meat drop from caw-cawing beaks, the spiced morsels snapped up again almost before they hits the dirt. Shading her eyes with a palsied hand, the witch looks up at the scarecrow. Butcher’s done a bang-up job ensuring the rot sinks in slow, she reckons. Parboiling Jax’s head then packing it with cumin and salt, stripping the skeleton clean as he could--he ain’t gots Mag’s skills, after all--then padding the scrawny form with beetle-rich hay. Can’t tell it’s him no more, which suits the old lady just fine. Ain’t nothing noteworthy about him now. Nothing to mark him as special.
Peppered as he is with them spices and seasonings, Jax’s straw-man smells better’n ever he did churning dyes.
That’s one change’ll take some adjustment, she reckons. She don’t mind so much moving house--there’s an abandoned cabin five miles from town what fits her needs just dandy, a little log-home nestled between the county line and the river, well away from the Holler’s fuss and bustle--it’s the stink she’s dreading. Them putrid colour-vats was reeking up the waterways long before Jax took on the job; ain’t no reason the stench won’t outlast the source. But it’s the least she can do, ain’t it: setting up within sniffing distance of Jax’s land, keeping watch on his place ’til folk gits bored with poking round. And even once they do--well, by then, she’ll be good ’n’ settled. Probably won’t want to leave, will she. Despite the smell haunting his tumbledown property across the way. Despite that god-awful smell.
To combat it, she’ll ingnite a forest of scented candles. Hang herbs to dry on the rafters of her one-room hut. Simmer broths and stews and potions. On shelves loaded with vials ’n’ jars ’n’ all-sorts of Gran’s concoctions, she’ll scatter incense and lavender. She’ll brew geranium oils, marigold, wild rose. And when the wind blows hot ’n’ rank from the south, she’ll pour them perfumes into hurricane lanterns. She’ll set them pretty little things on fire.
Ain’t it amazing, she’ll think, what an old gal can git use to.
Folk’ll track her down eventually, the cunning woman out in the boonies, she who clicks like thousands of knitting needles with every move. They’ll come for tisanes and poultices, love charms and poisoned spindles, cure-alls and leaf-readings and a fortunate roll of the bones. Sure, she’ll throw knuckles or runes carved from antlers and shins--but she won’t never take a chisel to any of ’em, not in this life. She’ll never so much as whittle a safety pin.
Truth is, she won’t miss it.
Year in, year out, she’ll stay in that new-old cabin. She’ll decide, once ’n’ for all, to stay put. Alone and happier for it. Oh, she ain’t hard-hearted. Never were. When the mood strikes, she’ll venture out to visit them dear old friends of hers. Over the river, through the corn, and back across them woods. Bearing a pack full of gifts to keep ’em long-lived and healthy. And a mind full of memories to keep ’em steadfast and true.
About the Author
Lisa L. Hannett has had over 70 short stories appear in publications including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, and The Dark. Her work h
as been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies in Australia, Canada and the USA. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, won the Australian National Science Fiction ‘Ditmar’ Award for Best Novel.
You can find her online at http://www.lisahannett.com and on Instagram @LisaLHannett.
Also by Lisa L. Hannett
Bluegrass Symphony
Lament for the Afterlife
The Female Factory (with Angela Slatter)
Midnight and Moonshine (with Angela Slatter)
Acknowledgements
“Soft Sister Sixty-Six” copyright © 2020 Lisa L. Hannett. Original to collection.
“The Coronation Bout” copyright © 2013 Lisa L. Hannett. First published in Electric Velocipede, December 2013.
“A Grand Old Life” copyright © 2020 Lisa L. Hannett. Original to collection.
“Four Facts About the Ursines” copyright © 2020 Lisa L. Hannett. Original to collection.
“Something Close to Grace” copyright © 2017 Lisa L. Hannett. First published in Murder Ballads, 2017.
“The Canary” copyright © 2015 Lisa L. Hannett. First published in The Dark, 2015.
“Little Digs” copyright © 2017 Lisa L. Hannett. First published in The Dark, January 2017.
“Surfacing” copyright © 2016 Lisa L. Hannett. First published in Postscripts, May 2016.