by IGMS
Old Jain eats children who stray too far out of sight. She eats everything, leaving no trace whatsoever the child existed. It's bad luck to have one's child eaten by Old Jain. Best practice is to forget the child altogether and never mention the gruesome affair.
Old Jain never tells secrets.
Old Jain knows where all the gold in the mountain is, but it's a secret.
Old Jain can touch her elbows together behind her back, touch them to the tip of her nose, and kiss them smack on their points. She can fold herself down to fit inside a hatbox. She can whisper so low ghosts can hear her.
Madame Blye counted Daddy's final pay with severe disappointment. She asked whether I thought I was smart. Did I think the food I had been eating was free? She said she would've given me the normal fare, but I had acted confident that what I was given was well within my means. Hers was a working house. Hadn't she explained that? I had said I was listening. Yet there I was, going off on long walks all day, avoiding class, working up an appetite. With room already tight, did I plan to freeload? She could turn a profit in my room. It wasn't right.
She continued with such a purposeful account of the slight I had repaid her for her generosity that near the end of it, I wondered if yes, it was true, what I had done was wrong, and didn't I need to repay her in her fashion? It was only when she left my room that I returned to my senses and trembled. At some point, I had nodded when I shouldn't have, and it was all going to happen faster than I had expected.
Big Roy returned with a rug and an elaborate wire rug-beater twisted to look like a series of concentric hearts. I dragged the rug out front and draped it over the hitching post. Each whoomping beat reverberated through my body and numbed my hands. Sooty dust stung my nose, sending me into flights of sneezes. When I finished, Big Roy unslung it and brought another. And another. And another. I was determined to show Madame Blye she couldn't break me with something so menial. I imagined myself sweaty and spent, all the rugs clean, me victorious. But one never knows how strong something is until one cleans it. And to do the job well and quickly would only have hastened what Madame Blye had for me next, perhaps even worsened it, since it would've proven I was capable and stubborn. It was a poisonous, regrettable thought, which prolonged the task so I didn't finish until the miners who came off shift left the bathhouse and began entering Madame Blye's past me. They smiled when I defiantly met their eyes, like my resolve was a small, comely thing; they were men who worked in the dark with pickaxes and granite. They worked around explosives.
Big Roy escorted me back to my room and brought a shallow tin dish of watery corn meal, a boiled potato half-submerged in its center. He did not bring utensils. The potato looked like an egg, but tasted old and earthy and over-boiled. It tasted like something was missing.
I slept in fits with my back against the door, and woke intermittently to drafts that reached under it and fondled me. My head hurt, my stomach churned, my skin crawled.
After the rugs, it was the curtains, then the floors, the woodwork, the walls, the windows. Then, finally, the mattresses. Each day's meal made me feel more normal, allowed me to sleep further through the night. When I woke I was hungry, and the meals set me right.
The other girls remained out of sight until the mattresses, when I went into their rooms. They were wan in their corsets, like their clothing constricted so tightly their blood took its time passing through each exquisitely shaped limb. One after another, they offered advice in spitefully courteous whispers. Don't wear yourself out, you'll need your strength. Make this last as long as you can. You're Madame Blye's favorite. She has it out for you. Don't think about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the only thing that matters.
I was imposing on them. I was giving them a moment of relief. My presence told them they were being replaced, their experience not worth a damn. I was the only person they could tell the things they had learned and make their experiences meaningful. I was someone they had to teach. I was someone they had to discourage. If they couldn't, I was someone to break.
Madame Blye delivered a tray of food to my room when I finished with the mattresses. As I ate, energy quickened through me, something fully returned to the meal that had been missing since those first weeks. Madame Blye's gaze approvingly slid over me, and she said I could take one of my long walks, if I wanted -- alone-alone.
Old Jain said she had been expecting me. She showed me how you had grown and were causing trouble. You had crawled into the stillworks and gotten stuck and afraid. She had to disassemble it all to free you. A dark shock of hair curled on your head like a wick. Your eyes were dark blue. They focused on me with profound, wordless intent. I hefted you, and told her you were bigger, but that you felt lighter than I remembered. She looked into my eyes and pinched my tongue and poked at my gums. She looked sad and asked if I had forgotten about our agreement, did I have anything for her yet? I said no, but soon. I began to nod off. She said I couldn't sleep there. It wouldn't be good for me. I said I'd just close my eyes. She said I didn't understand and took you and made me leave.
Back at Madame Blye's, I undressed before my room's standing oval mirror and examined my body in the candlelight. My determination had been wrought in strong lines upon my limbs. I was beautiful. I slumped onto the bed. Madame Blye knew what she was doing. I felt her eyes on me, like my own eyes in the mirror. She didn't just want a clean house. My beauty, my strength, my resolve, they were traps, and they had captured me.
I cried, silently, so those who passed in the hall would suspect the room was nothing more than a broom closet.
The next day, I took my first client.
Stories told about school teacher Strobel:
School teacher Strobel doesn't need his glasses. He can see with his eyes closed. He can see behind him. He doesn't hold eye contact because he doesn't need to.
School teacher Strobel never sleeps. Instead, he paces.
In case his students would poison him, school teacher Strobel drinks a little poison every day to build up a tolerance. It's why he's such a short, wiry sneeze of a man, why his mustache never grows in right. He has many bottles of poison, which he hides all over camp. He checks and rechecks that nobody has gotten into them, and regularly moves them. He can be seen darting through camp late at night like a shadow between the buildings.
School teacher Strobel was the mine's first gang boss. He was a ferocious bellower. His voice caused so many cave-ins, he lost the job. Since, he has not raised his voice above a breathy falsetto. He promised the lost miners he'd do better by their children.
School teacher Strobel can read the handwriting of the dead. It's written everywhere, invisible vandalism to most -- dirty limericks making fun of the living. He scrubs it from the walls and desks and floor of his classroom. The ink the dead use gets on his hands and seeps into his mind. At times, he can be heard reciting the limericks to himself. He will not repeat them if asked. He doesn't know he's doing it. They aren't his words, and while he recites them, his body isn't his body.
School teacher Strobel knows how many children each of his students will have and what their names will be.
School teacher Strobel has never married; he prefers men. Or children, or animals, or the company of the dead, depending on who tells it.
Big Roy opened the door to my room for school teacher Strobel. School teacher Strobel entered and sat beside me on my bed without making eye contact. Once Big Roy closed the door and his footsteps retreated down the hall, school teacher Strobel asked why wasn't I dressed like the other girls?
I told him Madame Blye had yet to finish making me in her image. He said he hadn't known me to be blasphemous, but I hadn't been to class since . . . I told him please not to talk about Daddy. He told me I should come back. I told him if he had come to talk, there wasn't much to say. I was where I was. He said it didn't have to be that way. I was smart. I could stay with him. He'd pay my way back East. Daddy was a good man. He never made fun.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
We were two people, we were one. Daddy was? Daddy is?
I wanted to tell him the plan wasn't to go back East. I wanted to ask him could he overlook that I was keeping a little wizard? Would he please not send you away? Please not punish me? Please not punish Old Jain? I wanted to tell him Old Jain was feeding off of me like Madame Blye was feeding off me, just from a different end. If I went with him, everything he had would become what I had, and he'd lose it.
Instead, I told him what he'd listen to.
I placed a hand on his leg. He jumped like it was ice on his bare skin. He told me stop. I told him Madame Blye would know if we didn't. He said he didn't care. I said there was Big Roy, too. He said he didn't want anyone to get hurt. I said it was too late for that. There was wanting and there was what was. He said they were one and the same. I told him no, he had to choose. He said he could hide me, if I was afraid. I told him hiding wasn't enough. He said Daddy was gone. I wasn't. I had to face facts.
I slapped him hard across the face, and asked how much money he had paid for me. He said it was just to meet me, to talk. I set my arms akimbo and thinned the color from my lips. I said I was tired of people trying to make of my life what they'd have of it. He may not approve, but I made my own choices. I opened the door and called for Big Roy.
When they were gone, Madame Blye handed me the money school teacher Strobel had paid. She said she never kept the first turn. It was mine. I could do with it what I would, go with it where I wanted, if anyone would take me, take it.
I told her I'd be back.
Old Jain took the money, and said it looked like I had made my decision. She showed me how you had grown. I said there must've been a mistake. It hadn't been that long. You were too big. Your dark eye evaluated me, searched the line of my body for meaning of who I was. She said that was how it happened with little wizards. They grew up fast. Sometimes so fast they forgot they had ever been wizards at all. That was what had happened with Madame Blye, not that she could've kept the magic in Madame Blye forever; the world worked on Madame Blye, men worked on her. Old Jain regretted it. I asked her what she could possibly regret. She had a home, a baby, a working still for money, and no one bothered her if she didn't want them. She was perfectly shut up from the world. I was in it. I was out there. She wasn't.
Old Jain's eyes grew cold. She said she wished she could just make the mountain disappear sometimes. She raised a fist before her eyes, blew across her knuckles, and flattened her palm so she glared at me across it. Like that, she said. The way she looked, I felt frost crawling up my spine.
She said that during long nights, it had occurred to her Madame Blye might be responsible for the cave-ins that followed the one that claimed her father. But she couldn't believe Madame Blye would go that far. What she could believe: after the cave-ins, Madame Blye always got the girls who reminded her of herself when she was little. She never let them get away. When she had them, she made them just like herself. Old Jain said she could've done better by Madame Blye. She would do better with you. The trick, she said, was not letting little wizards forget magic, not letting the world work on them and make their memory of it seem impossible. She said one had to frequently remind them. Even if they didn't understand. More often, if they didn't understand. What's more, one had to keep little wizards from overusing their magic when it came back to them, or it'd strip their minds bare again and shrink their bodies, making them unsuited for the world. It was a delicate balance.
I asked how much she'd need to do that. She looked at me like she didn't want to answer. I told her she didn't need to say it. I already knew. The deal hadn't changed. She needed all of it. But not from me. I couldn't make any more. I wouldn't make anymore. It had to be the other me who paid Old Jain, the me from the mirror. She'd have what it'd take to keep you safe so you could grow into the wizard you were, not me.
Stories told about Daddy:
Daddy slept on a bed of snow the first winter he was at Copper's Rest. He never complained. People suspected it was good for his back and tried it for themselves, but they couldn't take it. They said it gave him character for when he'd need it. Daddy fell asleep right when he closed his eyes. When the seasons changed and the snow melted at camp he slept on a rock. He only bought a bed when he met Momma. She wanted a mattress and blankets and a fire in the stove. He provided them, and she warmed him. After she died, snow wouldn't melt in Daddy's hands.
Daddy had a way of listening that told him if someone was lying. It was something about the words that gave them away. And the silences. And the spaces between. He wouldn't teach people how to listen like he did, because then they'd know how to lie and keep people from knowing it. He never played poker, wasn't welcome.
Daddy could dance all the dances people had forgotten, but he couldn't perform them on command. They occupied his limbs for their duration whenever they liked, and once satisfied, they left. Sometimes the dances lasted for minutes, though often they lasted for only a few steps. A leap. A tilt of his head. A spin. Sometimes they came upon him so he danced inside tight tunnels where others struggled and pulled themselves along with their elbows. The bigger the room, the more the dances got lost and couldn't find him.
Daddy couldn't lie.
Daddy could take a punch. One was never good enough for him. He always asked for two.
Daddy was never young. He was always as old as he was when the exploratory tunnel caved in.
Daddy could hold his breath for a day and go a week without eating. He stared into the sun so that he could see in the dark. He knew all the colors of the sky.
One day every year, Daddy drank a bottle of whiskey, climbed to the top of the mountain, and hammered a spike into the summit to keep it in place. The mine made him do it. Someone had to. It wouldn't let anyone else.
As long as Daddy is alive, the mountain won't go anywhere.
It's a strange thing when you do something and it changes you forever, or let it be done to you.
Madame Blye said it wouldn't always be like that. It'd get easier. Or if not easier, more familiar. I asked her if she remembered her first time? She looked into the mirror at the foot of my bed for so long I thought the question had gotten lost in her mind. Then she said no. She wouldn't look at me. She spoke to my reflection like I wasn't there anymore, only my reflection. She said I shouldn't lie to her anymore. She knew about school teacher Strobel. I asked her please not to hurt him. She placed the money on the bed, and said she shouldn't do this twice, but since the first time wasn't real, I could go on one of my walks if I liked. Take it, she said. Men always paid more for the first time. It wouldn't always be so much. If I wanted the same, I'd have to work for it. It was, she added, probably enough for a train ticket.
The trees and boulders and streams and berms that led to Old Jain's weren't in the right order. I had to backtrack and restart from Madame Blye's. Cold billowy fog spattered me with drizzle. Once I got there, you opened the door and stared at me and called inside for Old Jain. Your dark eyes were prepossessed with suspicion and fierce guarded challenge. Old Jain appeared and shooed you inside.
I told her you were so big, and the way you looked at me, had she told you about me? She looked sad and said no, she hadn't. She couldn't if you were to grow back into the wizard you were. I asked her if she could please tell you just a little about me, the right things, nothing that would keep you from becoming the wizard you were. She asked what could she tell you? Lies would be bad enough, but the truth would only make you suspicious, make you seek more truth. I asked how she'd explain my appearance in the rain, why she didn't ask me in to at least warm up and dry off. I was lost, she said. That's what she'd say. I needed directions. It was best I got to where I was going instead of linger. Someone was waiting for me.
I handed her the money. She counted it and asked if I was sure? I said yes. She said you didn't have a name yet, and she couldn't keep you forever without one. Would I like to name you? I said no. If you had found me, then you'd find yourself. She said that was an
old way of doing things, and there was no telling how long she'd be able to keep you safe once you chose a name. I asked her if that was a bad thing. She shrugged. It was an old way, she said. Things change. Things change back.
I told her I'd continue to pay her. She looked sad and understanding. I described the hollow where I had hid you when I first found you, and told her I'd put the money there. She nodded. All of it, I said. I know, she said.
The way back to Madame Blye's wasn't as I had remembered it. It was longer, steeper. The streams were louder and faster running. The trees taller and more shadowing. The moon less bright. The boulders loose. They slipped free under foot and tumbled away. I sped on to escape the instability before seeing its effect on the trail behind me. It is enough to say that I was not much hurt.
Madame Blye was waiting for me under a lantern outside her house, where I collapsed against the hitching post. She called for Big Roy to carry me to my room and bring me a blanket and a proper change of clothes.
Big Roy was gentle. He looked down at me in his arms like he was sorry. He brought me a blanket and a corset and petticoats and undergarments. Madame Blye asked if I knew how to button myself into all of it. I said I didn't. She asked Big Roy to leave, then undressed to show me. When she removed her corset, her body expanded. Stretch marks stitched her slim stomach and stippled over her hips in little wavy lines. Her belly button was an outie. She told me not to stare. Her girls didn't stare. Besides, it could happen to anyone, despite how careful they were. The trick was never to let on that it had happened. Men would grow possessive and jealous if they knew. She dressed piece by piece as instruction, then called for Big Roy. When he arrived she told him to cinch her in. With deft hard tugs, he tied her corset. She said he'd do the same for me. Don't worry, she said. Not now. He'd be back in the morning.